Lemmy has an undeniable woman problem that it carried over from Reddit. I’ve lost count of the number of pathetic blokes that I have blocked on here for anti feminism.
yep it’s pretty horrible. any time gender issues are brought up there’s dozens of comments saying “what about the men” and completely missing the point
The response to “what about men” comments is, we’re already talking about men when we talk about misogyny. Misandry and misogyny are the exact same problem, strictly enforced gender roles. If you deviate, you are punished. The men that are caregivers are derided just like the women that refuse to rear children. Every other related paradigm punches down into the people who do not conform. Stoicism in men, histrionics in women.
Either is a foil for the other and it’s exactly the same bullshit.
What about the me
You can’t spell me with me.
What about them
As a guy, I do recognise that men are disadvantaged in many areas and need to be put on equal footing with women-- like courts disproportionately award custody of children to mothers, regardless of how unfit the mother is to be a caregiver. But broadly speaking from my pespective, women are still at more disadvantage. I used to live in a bad part of my city for many years and have had little to no issues. However, it is a different story from women I spoke who got harrased, and another hit on the head. They said they will avoid going to the city ever again. I remember sharing the accounts of these women to other men, and the men were surprised because their experience is the complete opposite. Women are still seen as weak. And in the corporate hierarchy, men (of tall statures) disproportionately make up the board of directors and executive roles.
The court thing is not universally true. I worked in a family law firm for several years, and the practice in the courts here is to start from a baseline of equal custody and placement, and I’ve heard the same about other states. The men who lost out were the ones who wouldn’t fight, because they were convinced that the courts were biased. But hell, in one case, we got full custody and placement for a guy whose son wasn’t even biologically his! (His wife cheated, and he didn’t find out until well after they’d emotionally bonded.)
yep. the difference is, when women have been disadvantaged they tend to create spaces and pathways to talk about or change it. unfortunately a lot of men tend to isolate, even though they are not alone. then when they see something about a women receiving help through programs created by women for women their feelings of being abandoned by the system come up again. it’s just another way that toxic masculinity hurts everyone. the fix for that is of course feminism, but it’s a pretty massive barrier for most men to accept that.
Men don’t always isolate by choice. There’s a large cultural aversion to creating and sustaining male-only spaces, and that aversion comes from all sectors.
Every college campus has a women’s club but if you try making a men’s club you’ll probably get reprimanded.
every college campus has men’s clubs theyre called fraternities
You know that’s not what I’m talking about.
then I guess I’m not sure what you’re really talking about then.
it goes back to my original point though. if you feel there should be those spaces, no one is stopping you from making them. there were a few subreddits I used to browse (maybe it was mensrights or menslib or something similar) that was super respectful and held genuinely helpful and important conversations about the issues men face. trust me, absolutely no one will stop you from making those spaces. if those spaces you’re trying to create aren’t respectful, then yes I imagine people might not like that.
yeah, thats the problem. The only mens places are altright infested shit holes. Its liftest mens places that are discouraged.
Man, I have been in SO MANY internet arguments where I am simultaneously arguing against a woman that yes, men have problems, while also arguing against a man that no, those problems are not worse on the whole than women have.
Back when the whole “bear in the woods” thing was going around misogynists would try to jump in and support me.
Woman: “all men are rapists”
Me: “that’s insulting and hurtful and misandrist, and also not even close to true”
Misogynist: “Yeah! And also women are heartless bitches!”
Me: “I don’t remember asking YOU a goddamn thing”
no one is saying all men are rapists. what they are saying is that the statistics are great enough that women have to be on edge around all men. I wish you would take the passion you have for arguing against a generalization and devote it towards making sure the men around you aren’t part of the issue. I say that as a trans women who has seen the issue from both sides. I understand where you’re coming from, truly, but having been socialized male I saw that every man has chances to change the people around them and 99.9% fail to do so.
no one is saying all men are rapists
You know that’s not true.
No one is saying all men are rapists…
Proceeds to say ALMOST all men to the level that ALL women are afraid of them.
Well, what do you want done?
Oh, it’s not just me. Yeah, it feels at times like being thrown back a few years. I agree! We could use this. It should be welcoming to everyone leaning toward the feminine gender spectrum, or anyone with questions regarding it. No terfs, no racism or other forms of prejudice ideally, etc. Making a safe place for women or anyone leaning toward the feminine spectrum isn’t misandry. But people will break a sweat to try to insert that narrative.
EDIT: Look at the responses to this comment for the proof.
100%
It’s really bad and lemmy is really in denial.
Sexism here is much worse than it was on Reddit.
It feels like 2008 Reddit here sexism wise, except instead of Ron Paul libertarians tooting their horns everywhere we have heavy tracked vehicle enthusiasts.
I did hope lemmy having a left leaning culture would help but it does not.
Try making any post that focuses on situations uniquely or disproportionally experienced by women and you get mostly “everyone has that why think about women” or “what about men” or “men have it worst” responses.
Some instances have a left-leaning culture. Lemmy.world definitively does not.
I mean if you use the Marxist/Leninist definition of left then obviously not. But I mean left leaning in terms of the societal understanding.
Oh yea? One time I got kicked in the balls and it kinda hurt. Women have it soooo easy.
Alas I have been shown to be wrong! If not for my womanly ways I would have been the wiser!
you mean the comments that have been downvoted to the bottom?
But the fact that the majority (or perhaps less than half now) of the responses literally prove the point I am trying to make proves my point downvotes or not.
You have to remember the people who would literally unironically make such a post that proves my post are the densest of the dense.
Most sexists, while dense, are less dense than a black hole and would not prove my point for me under such a post.
Try making any post that focuses on situations uniquely or disproportionally experienced by women and you get mostly “what about men” or “men have it worst” responses.
that’s kind of just how controversial things are on the internet though.
Evens shitposting from men will get similar responses from women, it’s just how it is now. Sort of always has been.
THIS. EXACTY THIS RIGHT HERE. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN.
Me: talks about issue disproportionately affecting women.
Lemmy User: It’s not really about women. Everyone suffers from this.
Lmao look at that douchebag’s comment history. Its arguably worse that than comment itself. God I wish there was a male loneliness epidemic because these fuckers stopped talking.
Its arguably worse that than comment itself. God I wish there was a male loneliness epidemic because these fuckers stopped talking.
oh no funny man on the internet yaps a lot about things.
I come here for sociological research more than anything.
I seriously doubt you know what the word research means.
i seriously doubt you have any concrete view of politics or sociology to begin with.
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yeah bro, it’s the internet, everybody has opinions.
“yeah so actually i think this is a big problem”
“yeah evidently it must be a problem, but like, this has always been a problem, and seems to be a consistent problem”
“YOU’RE LITERALLY THE PROBLEM!!!”
Lemmy User: It’s not really about women. Everyone suffers from this.
also to be clear, you are literally straw-manning me here, i’m not saying that “men have to suffer with women having an opinions” nobody cares, it is what it is, i think it’s interesting actually. You’re the one arguing that because people discuss topics that they find personally relevant is somehow “oppressing women”
I’m not saying you shouldn’t shitpost about that stuff in shitpost threads, by all means do, there’s interesting dialogue in it. I’m just saying this is a common occurrence anywhere on the internet, for any community. Hell go find a community for something as mundane as lego, you’ll find the same shit there.
Not everybody NEEDS to have their own specific issue that specifically effects them for it to be a valid or real problem. I just think this issue is far broader than most people expect it to be, ironically, i could argue you’re literally behaving the exact same way you claim i am. Because you are, and that’s exactly what’s happening.
Do i care? No, i don’t it’s the internet do whatever you want.
I bet you can take any situation and make yourself a victim
Stttooooppp you’re giving me old school internet sexism nostalgia. 😂 That 2008 energy.
Do you miss halo 3 lobbies too?
Mhm i knew it haha
Yep. Picking the bear.
what if im the bear?
Nah but have you ever considered that the reason that you think that there is a male loneliness epidemic is because nobody wants to hang out with insufferable misogynists?
no, i don’t think that’s a reasonable answer, because you’re doing the fascist thing of “these people are wrong they need to change, and if they don’t we can justify whatever shitty behavior we want, because we’re morally superior”
It’s not dissimilar to a lot of nazi rhetoric.
I think the problem ultimately stems from a disconnect in social development through out society. Feminism has pushed women forward, successfully in a lot of ways, but it has also pulled men back, in a lot of ways, that’s not necessarily bad, but there is now a void there, and there is nothing filling it in, that’s why the manosphere got so big so fast. It’s literally capitalizing on an empty market.
If you want to solve the manosphere, the solution is simple, we need to fill in the void, and fix this disconnect that’s been happening for probably 75 years now. How we go about that is complicated, and not particularly simple, but i think it’s pretty clearly evident that the problem is aimless/directionless guidance for men especially in the last 20 years. Paired with historically contradictory ideas of manhood. Men are supposed to be strong and protect the weak, but it’s hard to do that when they don’t want it, or need it.
Once this void is filled in, this shit stops happening, simple as.
Create one!
Youre absolutely welcome to join Blahaj zone. Our wonderful administration team (both of whom are women) bans misogyny whenever it comes around to our communities. The mods for our main communities share a very aggressive moderation policy.
As much as I appreciate the community and users, there are (or at least were) serious moderation problems on Blahaj, I did not feel safe there when I tried it a year or two ago.
They also ban real users instead of the people literally calling their gender “dragonfucker” and “attack helicopter”
There were a bunch of users who got angry about these users mocking gender expression and then when they told the trolls to fucking stop Ada banned them
The blahaj admins are trolls
I give Ada a lot of credit. In the early days, I had the following interaction:
TOPIC: Something about sexual/gender preferences, I don’t remember, asking people their preferences
Me: responds with my preferences (I’m straight cis male, I like women so I’m down with post-transition trans women but pre-transition don’t turn me on)
Some random user: respectfully asks if I would be willing to date a pre-transition trans man
Me: I guess, but it probably wouldn’t work due to the fact that what I like about their body, they hate
Some of those professionally offended people took a misleading screenshot of my response and started screaming about “chasers”.
Ada did an admin post to the community backing me up and calling those idiots out.
So unless she’s changed a lot, I don’t think she’s a troll. It would have been easy to go with the mob but she stuck up for me.
Still could be TERFS.
I don’t have any deeper knowledge of that instance, just what I saw in all, so I don’t want to put anything on them. That thought just came across reading your comment.
I have made a mental remark in the past that the posts and users on this instance are better treated from afar, though.
It’s pretty harsh to just casually suggest that a person be a TERF without any specific evidence.
They also turn a blind eye to misandry.
You are part of the reason lemmy is unpopular with women.
i dont understand, please explain further. if blahaj mods have ignored misandry, that would be a bad thing. hate is generally regarded as bad, and misandry is hatred of men. therefore, misandry should be generally regarded as bad.
That’s true on face value. The issue is that accusations of misandry are almost always unfounded, and only made as a way to deflect and to attack women. So when people start talking about misandry, that’s generally a red flag.
It’s similar to how “all lives matter” is definitely a true and good value - but yet it is almost always said as a way to divert support away from vulnerable groups. So although the literal meaning is good, it is fair to assume that people saying it do not have good intentions.
If women have to be misandristic, then I’m quite happy to exclude bigots
Would you mind giving me some examples of the misandry? To see what you are talking about.
“dragonfucker” and “attack helicopter”
i mean, if they’re doing it as a haha funny, i see no harm, but if they’re also being assholes, i think that takes precedent. You aren’t legally required to fill in your gender tagging appropriately so.
They are an asshole though, a serial pot stirring drama seeking troll that gets people banned for reacting to their ragebait. Yeah I identify as a refurbished ebike and you must relearn English to refer to me, and you only rather not because you agree with literal genocide. Funny!
lmao good meme, sounds like a mess ngl.
I haven’t seen the attack helicopter and the joke is pretty damn old tbh, but drag at least is/was kinda funny. Drag’s profile specified that drag’s pronoun is “drag” in not just third, but also first and second person, which is an interesting concept. Drag also stayed in character in drag’s posts. Drag didn’t ever really bother people with the whole thing IMO.
yeah, it’s a dead beat joke, it’s come around to the point now where you can do it ironically and nobody cares. Though i guess you could still just be an asshole at that point lmao.
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also our wonderful admin kaity did what the lemmy devs couldn’t and nuked the dm spam :)
It really seems like instance admins tend to do a much better job with a lot of stuff on here than the core devs. Its a shame that forking would take as much work as it would.
well some of the devs are too busy arguing over which authoritarian boot tastes the best, all under the guide of leftism, so yeah I imagine the bar isn’t exactly high
Pfft, I’d say overly aggressive to a fault. It’s not a good thing when they’re banning people for a passing comment where the worst offence is “gatekeeping” rather than something that matters.
Probably the … fourth-worst well known instance. Idk if that’s a good suggestion.
Even if not, you can create one :3
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
It really comes down to this: if you want your own space for particular interests, you should create one and find likeminded people to populate it. Just waiting for it to magically appear isn’t going to work. Be assertive.
Community wise we have !WomensStuff@lazysoci.al its a women only community by women for women.
The comments here make me very disappointed in our little corner of the internet. If anyone wants this but doesn’t know how, neither do I but I’d be happy help.
There’s !WomensStuff@lazysoci.al
Call it out when you see it. Keep the bar nazi free.
I am disappointed but not surprised. The attitude of men here reminds me a lot of default subs in Reddit. People tend to be more civil, but there is so much “but what about men?” when talking about women’s issues or belittling women still. Business as usual on the Internet, but I can see why it would cause women to avoid Lemmy.
I haven’t been back to Reddit, but it makes me miss the small niches where I didn’t see that as often.
I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again, gender relations here are worse than they were on reddit when I stopped using it.
It’s a more niche “back room” kind of forum, so there are less casual browsers and more technerds here, which makes it predominantly male for a lot of reasons that require a whole other discussion to analyse, but it’s exactly like when reddit was a niche “back room” website gaining popularity.
Lets not forget when reddit started, it was absolute chaos, some of the very worst communities imaginable where at home there, and the userbase RAGED every time some pedo or hate sub got purged. But they did get purged, and it became welcoming for a more diverse group of users to participate in. (Until the bot nation attacked)
i wonder if it’s not just worse on lemmy, but gotten worse over time, with the manosphere shit and all it’s relevant problems, neither feminism nor the manosphere, or traditional male gender role has really addressed this issue comprehensively, and we’re starting to see pushback from this issue in real life now, men are enrolling into college less than women, they do worse in most environments, and also are generally worse when it comes to mental health.
I wonder if we just need like a dedicated “social issues space” where people can talk about this stuff.
I mean there’s like 3 women on lemmy, and 2 of em are trans. I don’t think there really ARE any gender relations here.
I think you’re underestimating how many women use the internet. They just don’t go swing that around much because of the harassment it tends to attract.
lemmy =/= the internet
Ignorant
womans only spaces (popping up because of male dominated spaces) do lead to male only spaces but who cares, ppl that want to be in those spaces can stay there idrc, they dont want my input I dont want theirs
Yeah, it’s natural to have spaces that aren’t for me. It’s fine. I really just have an issue with spaces where I am supposedly welcome to be hostile towards me.
I think there’s a few tutorials about how to set up your own lemmy instance. If so compelled; go for it! If you have any sort of IT background it’ll probably be pretty easy.
Most of the fediverse is male, and there’s a significant trans woman space, but there’s no spaces that really cater to cis women or to trans men specifically that I’ve seen.
And yes, I think it’s reasonable to look for a space that is strongly (though not exclusively) cis-woman, in the same way that a Protestant would feel out of place in a Catholic community, even though they’re all Christian. I imagine most cis women feel the same way as I (a cis man) feel when going to blahaj - like a friendly, allied visitor in a foreign land.
We have !WomensStuff@lazysoci.al
I can’t think of a single online space ever that has catered to trans men. It’s always infinitely easier to just act like a cis dude 99% of the time.
I guess there is Hudson’s Guide lol.
I want there to be a witchesvspatreiarchy here, but I’m a dude and it’d be messed up if I started it.
instance friendly link for those on other instances :)
Thanks! I was looking for witchesvsTHEpatriarchy for some reason.
Subbed.
Honestly chuckled a bit after checking out the front page and pretty much all posts were about… men
But that (making fun of men) might just be the idea behind that subreddit and I’m looking at it wrong
EDIT: I dun goofed
Probably the “vs patriarchy” part
Probably should have googled the meaning of that word first
Lemmy,blahaj,zone is run by Ada, who is a woman
I wish I could recommend blahaj, there are a lot of trolls in the space that the admins have successfully been guilted into supporting.
And terrible at adminning
Ahhh, now that explains a lot.
Like what?
I rememebered Blahaj people accusing Lemmy instances of being misogynists left & right without any evidence
& were censoring anyone, just because they asked for evidence.
And what’s the insinuation here, given that being told the instance admin is a woman your response was “That explains a lot”
The insinuation here is the instance behaves like a raging misandrist, nuff said.
lemmy.blahaj.zone has a decent amount of women and both their admins are women, it’s not a “women’s space” as one would describe since everyone is welcome there but it’s probably the closest thing one would describe as an instance “by women for women”. I am obligated to mention that it is a queer instance and that many of the women there are either trans themselves or strongly supportive of trans people, and do not tolerate transphobia or anti-LGBT sentiment (including refusal to support LGBTQ people) at all.
As much as I appreciate the community and users at Blahaj, in my personal experience, the moderation was fairly wanting. At least a year or two ago (not sure about now), they tolerated some pretty freakish right-wing people who enabled chasers and other weird shit on their communities.
Beat me to it. Their zero tolerance for misogyny/transphobia extends to who they federate with. If a server doesn’t care about its users being transphobic then it gets the axe. I remember it being a big hub bub because an instance was actually using its defederation option.
spinster exists but I think its the opposite where its antitrans
Yeah Spinster is generally considered a hate site, and consequently is very widely defederated, even from general purpose instances like lemmy.world. Also it’s less of a Reddit alternative and more of a Twitter alternative but is technically redundant since you can do everything you did on there on the real thing instead.
We all pretend that it didn’t exist and do not acknowledge its presence; that’s the informal rule.
Like Finland if it were real.
I thought that was mastodon. Do they have a lemmy instance as well?
Thought it was
blahaj.zoneAnyway, they dont have it AFAIK
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Everyone Except Fascists and/or Tankies
I think that kind of goes without saying.
I wish
Community-wise there’s !WomensStuff@lazysoci.al
unfortunately I think this is the current answer, at least on Lemmy.
unfortunately?
Meaning there isn’t an instance for women, nor are there multiple communities - as far as I know there’s just this one community.
oh, I see.
Pardon my ignorance but what would be the point of that? You can sign up on any instance and participate in any women’s communities. It’s not like there’s any way to verify the user’s gender anyway.
You really don’t see the benefit to a group of similar people to have a space focused on them, their wants and needs and daily lives? A community of people like them? It’s one of the most fundamental human desires.
That’s not what I said.
A community like that would hopefully ban misogynists who go unbanned on other communities.
“Community” is the operative word there. OP is asking about an instance.
An instance can be a community in the general sense of the word.
Right but it has a very specific meaning here.
Local feed I guess. I wouldn’t trade my french local feed to another despite the abillity to subscribe to the community that made it.
Local feed is one of the best parts of Lemmy conceptually and a very clear indicator that the intended behaviour for users is to sign up to smaller insurances related to their location or otherwise significant individual interests.
our local french feed 🤝
Couldn’t you sign up on another instance and still subscribe to all the same communities?
with enough admin and moderation you could circle jerk your way into a “woman positive” or “woman friendly space” which would be the idea.
its kinda sad how one of the biggest women’s community on the lemmy/mbin side of fedi is !femcelmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone…
i mean, it’s a great community, but yea.
There seems to be a majority of males even in that community though
Are you talking about browsers/commentors? Cause almost all the prolific posters are women, unless you’re being transphobic
every femcel community gets invaded by guys at some point. see: r/letgirlshavefun and r/femcelgrippysockjail. theres one that went private and thats keeping out the men really well (and is the only community im still on reddit for)
Well maybe if girls weren’t weird and trying to make shaving fun they wou
I don’t know how to finish this joke I’m tired. Finish it for me i give quest xp
Idk the majority of posters there are transfems afaik, with a smattering of femboys posting as well.
Hahaha the name doesn’t do it justice tbh, *cel has connotations that femcelmemes really just doesn’t have
This seems like a very good niche for someone willing to do it. Problematic accounts could get a site-wide ban instead of each woman having to ban someone herself.
Niche? Bruh, they’re half of the population lmao
Unfortunately it is niche right now in the fediverse based on the stats. That could change but probably requires a different approach to achieve.
Nicole is on a mission to single-handedly skew those stats
we all know there’s currently only 1 chick in the fediverse
There WAS 1 chick in the fediverse.
The situation took a dark turn recently.
P in that case Nicole’s DMs are the Lemmy women’s sub.
I would guess that most women wouldn’t feel the need to be on a woman-focused Lemmy instance for their main / only account. But, some might want an alt account to discuss certain things there.
While this won’t be the case with everyone, it was mentioned a few times in a post I made here a long while back
I’m a woman, and make no attempt to hide that fact in my posts. That said, I also don’t personally have much interest in talking about being a woman, so don’t sub to any of those places you linked.
Over on Reddit I just sort of let people assume I was male a lot of the time, since it wasn’t really relevant to what we were talking about. But from the start on Lemmy I’ve made sure to call out incorrect assumptions, downvote and give a talking to people stereotyping or being misogynistic, etc etc. And the more of us (of all genders) that make that same decision, the better things get
That’s pretty brave of you. It’s a lot of work to fight people’s assumptions, and I’m sure it results in harassment.
But, you’re right that things will never change if women don’t do that. It’s a chicken and egg thing. Nobody wants to be the first to do it, because whoever’s first gets harassed the most. But, if enough people do it, it won’t be abnormal anymore.
Good luck, and thanks for trying to make women on the internet more normal.
Zero women have tried to make one so far regardless of how many would use a new instance. So it can’t be all that in demand.
I think it naturally would occur if Lemmy grows in size. There’s not many people here to begin with.
There’s !WomensStuff@lazysoci.al we started a little over a month ago and recently hit 1000 members
I don’t know of any “men only” instances, the fact that it’s gender-specific is niche rather than the specific gender.
Same reason womens magazines are more popular than mens magazines and womens subreddits and websites are more popular than mens.
Maybe one day we’ll have full equality and it’ll be weird to think of “women’s spaces” as something that’s necessary. But it’s very much so today.
I don’t believe they actively intended to exclude anyone, but there is/was Dull Men’s Club, and I believe they’ve recently rebranded to “Dullsters”.
It’s not niche being a woman obviously. What’s niche is having a community exclude 50% of the population. Nothing wrong with it, but it is niche.
this is a bit of how Blahaj works as I understand it, so it’s a good model - if anything I would think Blahaj might already be poised for this kind of instance-level protection of women
EDIT:
one of the Blahaj guidelines does include removing bigotry, including sexism, and would be a candidate for a safe space for women:
Inclusion and Acceptance
Embracing inclusion and acceptance means listening when people tell you who they are and what their needs are. It means not telling people that you know their experiences better than they do. It means not gatekeeping experiences of identities of others. It means no bigotry such as racism, sexism, anti LGBT commentary, ableism etc. It means doing your best to ensure that you don’t over-talk the voices of folk who don’t share your privileges.
That said, the women spaces on Blahaj are mostly for trans women, so a more general women’s community would be nice.
Lemmy needs block lists users can subscribe to like they can on BlueSky, it would make a huge difference imo.
