https://lemmy.nz/post/18610200/13255360

This user describes how most of the women-centered communities on Lemmy were shut down due to harassment of their members.

Another user adds “We need a safe space, but most of the women I know on here don’t have the time or energy to moderate it. And there’s so few of us, it feels like it’s not worth the effort anyway.”

  • WhatSay@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    16 hours ago

    I had much more toxic behavior at reddit, but it is hard to imagine any safe space online anywhere.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 hours ago

      it definitely depends where you go on all platforms. blahaj zone is good, world is bad. places moderated by mods with actual experience are generally good, places moderated by jordanlund and similar get pretty toxic pretty fast. :(

  • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    23 hours ago

    Lemmy is a relatively small and niche platform, imo small platforms tend to be like that. First men show up, then transfems, and then cis women. We seem to be at the second stage and while things can be done better (like a female only instance) I do think things will get better.

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 day ago

    In Mastodon, this is typically solved with defederation, block lists, and admins enforcing mod policies. How come this approach doesn’t work for Lemmy? Is it not decentralized enough?

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      21 minutes ago

      it’s not decentralized enough is exactly the answer. lemmy.world holds a huge portion of users and communities despite having middling at best moderation. illustrating this, one of my favorite communities (196) just recently tried to force everyone to migrate to .world. fortunately, the community at large openly rejected that absurd move, but it definitely exemplified the centralizing forces at play.

    • Luffy879@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      Yes. Just look at .world. As long as world is still federated into other communities, the fediverse is not federated.

  • wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 day ago

    Is there anything others can do to help? Feddit.uk wouldn’t tolerate this but I’m not sure what a regular user can do apart from look out for harassment, call it out and report promptly

  • flatbield@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Keep in mind that this is probably very instance dependend. I use Beehaw which generally does not tolerate this sort of thing and this expectation is stated very clearly. For us down voting is not even possible. We also do not federate with nodes that cause the biggest issues. So there are things that can be done but it is not perfect and has consequences.

    Just mentioning.

    Edit: Even with that, there has been discussion of Beehaw leaving the threadiverse due to these issues and lack of mature moderation tools. Not sure where that stands.

  • spujb@lemmy.cafe
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    relevant discussions:

    this issue of such a massive proportion can only be solved with intention—it’s not getting fixed by accident. recognizing the problem is the first step.

    • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      I’m not quiet about being a woman, but have yet to receive dms or inappropriate responses or dismissals due to that fact (via lemmy).

      EDIT: although elsewhere in this post’s comment section I just received such a dismissal by someone who thought I was a man. Indeed, this is the direction in gender space along which I am used to experiencing such behavior, and it is why I have chosen to emphasize the fact that I am a female with a vagina so much in recent years: to get women to stop harassing me.

      So I’ll shout it out here: I’m a woman, if anyone has a problem with that or just wants to talk about it, please reach out.

      I want to help solve the problem but I need to see it better first. I only ever see cherry-picked examples like you have collected here instead of seeing it in the wild. Don’t get me wrong, the cherry-picked examples are bad, but I need more than a handful of outliers to really understand the problem and where it comes from before I can understand what I can do to help.

      • spujb@lemmy.cafe
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        these aren’t cherry picked? these are quite normal—that’s why i started collecting them because they were so easy to find.

        i respect your expression of experience of not having been on the receiving end of this that much—i will thank you to respect mine!

        • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          21 hours ago

          I do want to respect your experience and help to address the root problems leading to it.

          That’s why I am asking and engaging in this conversation: to be better informed and to help others subvert hate in this hate-filled time.

          I’m also an odd case, as an intersex person who was socially raised (predominantly) male but in recent years transitioned to female mostly to avoid harassment. I get so much less hate when I’m perceived as a woman that your experience is somewhat foreign to me. Whether presenting as a man or as a woman, I get hate overwhelmingly from women. Women in our society are hate-filled and angry and don’t know how to process emotions like discomfort caused by their intersexphobia nearly as well as men do.

          A curated collection of the worst examples meets the definition of cherry picking. Cherry picking doesn’t mean that your argument is invalid, just that there is missing context from the rest of the distribution of interactions. Any sufficiently large community will have enough assholes that bad behavior can be cherry picked from the extreme end of the distribution to be used as examples if someone wants to paint the whole community in a bad light.

          That said, the extreme and cherry-picked examples are still a problem that need to be taken seriously. My life is an extreme and cherry-picked example that runs counter to the common narrative from “feminists” who think that blocking and ostracizing dissenting voices is a solution, instead of recognizing that reaction as exclusive and anti-diversity. I understand that extreme/unusual or cherry-picked examples need to be taken seriously and considered as edge cases. I am not trying to dismiss you, although my word choice last night maybe could have been more explicit on this point. I’m sorry. What I’m trying to communicate is that I need to better understand the problem (in context) to be able to help be part of the solution.

          We need a better solution, and I want to help work towards that. I believe that starts with discussions like this one.

          • spujb@lemmy.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            20 hours ago

            Yeah okay thanks i guess it just comes off really not nice for you to say that.

            if you posted a list of the worst incidents in your experience of abuse, i truly doubt you would love my response to be calling you a cherry picker. even if you don’t mean it, it looks like siding with the abuser. it’s NOT cherry picking to tell my literal own damn story of what i deal with. if you truly mean differently, maybe choose different words

            • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              20 hours ago

              Any list of my experiences of abuse is a fundamentally cherry-picked list because my experiences are so far outside (what feminists claim to be) the norm.

              I am explicitly calling myself a cherry picker and would have no problem with you doing the same. Everyone else sees my problems that way. It’s just the truth.

              I mean what I said.

              EDIT: and to be clear, that includes my statement that even cherry-picked examples need to be taken seriously, however within proper context. I see that you’ve already downvoted me and probably moved on. I’m taking your lived experiences seriously, and you aren’t taking mine seriously. I hope you will reconsider if you actually want to solve the root of the problems that we both are experiencing.

              • spujb@lemmy.cafe
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                16 hours ago

                This situation seems to have spiraled a bit—I logged off for a few hours and came back to a bunch of DMs from you.

                I want to make it clear that I don’t have any hard feelings toward you. However, this conversation has reached a point where it’s no longer productive.

                You wouldn’t go to the comments of a person of color as they share their experiences and feelings about racism and say, “I only ever see cherry-picked examples like you have here.” But that’s essentially what you said to me about gender-based abuse. That kind of comment is: a) dismissive and encourages others to doubt the stories of victims, and b) a conversation-ender.

                What you communicated to me is that my lived experience isn’t enough for you. As someone with a normal life and not a researcher, I have no way to provide the additional “data” you seem to require.

                • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  9 hours ago

                  Ok, since you brought up my two short DMs, I’ll post them here for public consumption.

                  I am very much trying to continue the conversation that you started about experiences of gender-based abuse by adding variety of experience from a very different perspective that contrast with the cherry-picked list that you provided of things you read online that resonated with your preconceptions. My examples are cherry-picked from my life; yours are cherry-picked from lemmy.

                  I am repeatedly echoing the sentiment of your original post: that we need to talk about and understand these things if we want to learn and grow. It’s how humans share data.

                  You claim that I am being dismissive only because the cherry picked examples from my life experience come from an opposite tail of the distribution of gender-based abuse as your list. I can’t help where my life experiences lie on this distribution, but I can share them (as you did) to provide some additional data that helps to fill out the range of the population.

                  You are dismissing me by saying that my experiences must be shared in bad faith to be dismissive/encourage doubt/end conversations. Please re-read my words. They are trying to communicate that I DESPERATELY want a conversation on this topic so that we can all learn and grow from each others’ experiences. Just because my experiences are different from yours does not make them bad-faith.

                  From your behavior, I’m starting to suspect that this is projection and that you are a bad-faith troll who refuses to engage with others if they have different life experiences. However, I don’t believe that yet because you and I have had several other conversations in various other comments sections over the past year which have been good and productive and I have grown to like you.

                  I want a productive conversation on this topic, yet you only seem to want to dismiss my perspective. This runs contrary to our past interactions. Please, I’m trying to have a productive conversation.

                  That said, the examples you give aren’t your personal lived experience as much as extreme examples of sexism that you’ve stumbled across on this site and curated. The examples that I’m giving are genuine and personal lived experience as a gender minority (neither male or female) rather than things I read online. I don’t think that that makes one set of examples more valid than the other, just that these fact make your most recent comment seem highly hypocritical. You are replying to a minority trying to share their experiences and feelings by dismissing me, encouraging others to doubt me, and ending the conversation without engaging with our differences of life experience. Then you accuse me of doing that instead of actually engaging with my perspective. Please reconsider. I’ll end this here, but if you want to have an honest and genuine discussion about how to solve the issue of gender-based abuse that you brought up, my DMs are always open.

      • Fungah@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        I am a male with a penis but it is a very feminine penis and I stand in solidarity with your vagina. In fact,. Ny.penis’ name is Cassandra, which is neither here nor there but it is indeed a fact.

        Being serious for a moment though: I agree with your rational approach here. I have found Lemmy to be more hostile than reddit overall, and while I condemn hostility based on gender or race (I very much applaud hostility based on religion though) I think we NEED THIS SO FUCKING BADLY.

        The entire internet has become a bland cesspool of meaningless garbage. I think the current state of things has proven that what inevitably begins as a laudable attempt to stomp out hhate speech (which I condemn) the window invariably gets wider and wider until meaningful dialogue is silenced.

        We should be very fucking hostile towards Nazis. We should be hostile towards avaricious governments and unchecked human greed. We should be hostile towards proselytization, and anyone that cant understand that freedom FROM religion is as, or more important than, freedom OF religion. And while I can see the need to ban outright calls for violence as being necessary, the ubiquity of iron-clad moderation makes me very concerned about what will happen when there is a legitimate need to react against violent acts from entrenched power systems towards the oppressed.

        While the comments here about “go make your own instance” are dismissive, I do agree with then in spirit. I want to participate in communities that eschew group think and promote real dialoguue. Especially dialogue I don’t agree with.

        The power of the fediverse is that if someone wants to copy the bland corporate safe space that is the rest of the internet there is fuck all stopping them.

    • parrhesia@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      2 days ago

      Hard agree about it being worse then Reddit. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t engage as much as I want to and thinking about going back to Reddit. I’m sure there are people that would like that.

    • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      2 days ago

      Oh God I remember seeing that “incredible find” comment in the wild and being like, “What the fuck? Who thinks like that?”

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    135
    ·
    3 days ago

    I run a few communities that I would consider to be fairly women-oriented, or at least I would expect them to be interested. I do not expect many men to be interested, and hey that’s okay. I welcome anyone who wants to, but no harm if it’s not your thing.

    But any post that gets made gets downvoted to hell. I routinely have to moderate and remove posts of “Why is this here” and “This is stupid” even though there are people who enjoy it, they are just swarmed by other commenters, and it’s made my members less active.

    It’s pretty clear how people vote and act here, I’m coming up on 2 years here and it’s been like how you’d expect. Downvotes don’t mean “I don’t think this adds to the conversation” or “This is appropriate”, they mean “I personally don’t like this” here, and I think that kills a lot of our smaller communities.

    • CatZoomies@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      Thanks for running those communities. I try to post to one of them where I can (I.e., make memes), but I’m not really a content creator. I just like to lurk in comments and respond when I feel like it’s worth me putting in my opinion or effort.

      I’m aligned with your perspective. Hard to create or promote content when people downvote it due to hive mind. It’s discouraging and unwelcoming because it sends the signal “why is this here, you don’t belong in Lemmy”.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        Thank you, Zoomies, that means a lot, honestly. I’m not one either, but I try to keep them going. I see the upvotes, people enjoy it, but I think many are a bit nervous to comment, but it’ll grow eventually. I’m going to put some time on this over the next week to automate something I think

        • CatZoomies@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 day ago

          One thing I need to do is try to comment more. Hard to come up with stuff to say. And I’m one of those folks that types stuff, then second guesses it and backs out from posting.

          I upvote what I can, but that’s always bare minimum effort. Consistent commenting is much more effort. And the extremely hard part is making original posts along with memes. I have no idea how Picard Maneuver does it. Bro carries Lemmy on his back alone lol.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            14 hours ago

            I appreciate when you do, and I think others do too. One of the things I had to do was just stop caring about what other people thought. If they liked it, they’d upvote, or maybe they’d downvote, but no matter what you’re adding to the conversation. I just dump out whatever I’m thinking now!

            I do have to step up my meme game tho

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      48
      ·
      3 days ago

      Apparently mods can and do ban people who just downvote everything they see, there’s even been posts here about it.

      Perhaps this is the solution?

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        33
        ·
        2 days ago

        It is, I just wish it wasn’t. I don’t want to ban people for having negative opinions, but there are a lot of people who only downvote, and for them it’s the only option. There also aren’t tools to easily automate it.

      • lath@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        2 days ago

        Yes. The correct solution is to kick them out. Why are they even there if it isn’t to participate? If the topic is inappropriate, make a report and let the mods handle it.

        • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          2 days ago

          Drag’s philosophy on content policing is this:

          The mods choose the rules and remove content that breaks the rules. The users downvote and argue with content that disrupts the space without breaking the rules. If actions that disrupt the space without breaking the rules create a pattern, the mods create a new rule. The users decide if they agree with the new rule. If they don’t, they create a new community and the two compete.

          Downvotes are absolutely essential to this ecosystem. Platforms without downvotes, like Twitter, suffer for it. The algorithm can’t tell the difference between hostile engagement and positive engagement, so comments that damage the space and provoke arguments are boosted as long as they don’t break the rules badly enough for the admins to get involved. Some platforms try to solve this problem by having mods and admins do three times as much work to remove all the comments that would be downvoted. This causes mod fatigue and over-moderation.

          Downvotes are a disagree button BUT your disagreement is public, and if your disagreements form a pattern, the moderators should be able to action it.

          What Lemmy needs is better mod tools to show analytics on downvotes (technical problem; could be solved by any determined programmer), and better action on downvotes from the admins (social problem; requires the community to dump instances that don’t moderate their users)

            • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 day ago

              Which will in fact just be a combined “block user + hide post” action in the backend 😏

          • lath@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            2 days ago

            Better mod tools are a repeatedly requested feature. The question remains whether it’s being ignored or it’s difficult to implement and cover the entire fediverse.

            • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              2 days ago

              My guess is a bit of a mixture of both - but it at least can’t be a trivial thing to implement, or else it probably would already have been added to the project by someone, it’s free software and open source after all.

              • lath@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 days ago

                Not necessarily. As free and open as it is, not everyone can add to it. There have been some caught, yet almost successful attempts to insert malicious code in open source software.

                Also, the contributors might be passing on the torch thinking in the same way. And far as I remember, the original devs did a similar thing by letting others add in whatever.

                So I’d say that until someone says they’re specifically working on it, nobody actually is.

    • inlandempire@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      2 days ago

      I’ve experienced this (though on a much smaller scale), Lemmy should have the option to disable downvotes for users not subscribed to a community, or at least not members of the instance

      • Jomn@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 day ago

        I really like the idea of having to be subscribed to a community in order to be able to vote. It would encourage people to use the correct tools (subscribe/block) if they like or don’t like a community itself.

    • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Very disappointing to find out the real reason why women-oriented communities aren’t exactly thriving here. But not surprising, I guess, although I was expecting better from a platform that seems so generally left wing. Can’t even expect the men here to stomp that shit out. And now I’m waiting for someone to come and respond something along the lines of “not all men” while not addressing or confronting the issue or taking any steps to push for change.

      Edit: aren’t admins able to see who is downvoting? So basically the admins of your instance are just sitting back and allowing certain people to ruin things for others in communities that don’t concern them?

      • Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        I was devastated from the most recent US election as I learned a similarity between all political views is hating women. On another note, it’s been 17 hours and I am immune to sarcasm; NoT aLL mEn

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        2 days ago

        I can, but the problem is how do you sort out genuine downvoters from as you put them, the stompers? I’ve been working with a few other admins to have a more automated solution. Right now I have to go into the database and do queries about once a month to find trends

        • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          If it’s a particular community being targeted, I’d probably start with people who aren’t subscribed or don’t contribute but camp out downvoting everything anyway. I mean, to me it sounds very much like this user’s community is being blatantly targeted, so I’m not sure I understand why trends still need to be researched before anything can be done about it.

          But I’m not an admin and I actually don’t know what tools you have available to you. I was just under the impression that you could see when people who don’t actually belong to a certain community go there just to downvote everything. Reddit managed to make people fear consequences for downvote brigading though, not sure how they pulled it off.

          If this really is something that admins on various Lemmy instances are just too helpless to do anything about, then I apologise for directing my anger towards admins. And then I don’t know what the solution is either because without any sort of assistance in the matter, women are just going to give up even trying to set up spaces here (actually seems like that’s already happened for the most part). And so the culture will just never change.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            2 days ago

            From the UI, we get to see who downvoted a post, but nothing more than that unfortunately.

            Trying to see who consistently downvoted posts, or who does who isn’t subscribed is not available in the UI and requires going in the database and running scripts. Which I do, but it’s a whole other later that I need to automate but haven’t had time to do.

            • macroplastic@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 days ago

              I’d be happy to write a bunch of sql for this type of thing and throw it on github if you have any more specific requests / if instance admins would find it helpful

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        2 days ago

        So basically the admins of your instance are just sitting back and allowing certain people to ruin things for others in communities that don’t concern them?

        Yes.

        • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          I feel like fucking rioting now lol. Hopefully one of these days there’s enough of us here that see red over this shit to do exactly that.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      Downvotes don’t mean “I don’t think this adds to the conversation” or “This is appropriate”, they mean “I personally don’t like this” here, and I think that kills a lot of our smaller communities.

      Yet another nasty redditism inherited by Lemmy… and frankly that’s why I think that we should have multiple types of downvote, this way people can express their disagreement in a fast and pseudo-anonymous way without fucking everything up.

      • .Donuts@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        It’s just the internet, not necessarily a redditism.

        And instead of a rainbow of downvoting options, just disable showing the vote counter.

        This way, you can still downvote, but nobody sees the end result except maybe mods and admins for moderation purposes.

        You can still use the upvote/downvote ratio to sort comments or posts in your feed, but it would be working under the hood instead of out in the open.

        • 3dmvr@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          I like seeing it, this site has less value without it, why are you on lemmyworld when it has upvotes/downvotes? You have other options without them.

        • 3dmvr@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          Also you can always hide them, most apps allow hiding them (that ive tried)

      • chuymatt@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 days ago

        Kind of like slashdot modding of yore? I don’t recall if they still do it, but they had multiple positive and negative tags for moderation.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      2 days ago

      I think I understand why one of your communities is getting downvoted, it probably attracts some dedicated megas. I’ll try to go in and upvote to counter act. I’m not a fan, but I’ll try to help out.

      Reddit used to have a rule that you couldn’t downvote more than 3 or 4 posts in any community for a certain period. They went inactive while still showing as active. I think that might have been the beginning of fuzzy votes, but turned into so much more shittyness. It still might be a good solution for here. I still think mods should also be able to tag users as default, it’s really hard to remember who was hateful yesterday and troll baiting, but acting all nice today.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    I do agree that the reports and downvotes of topics geared toward women are very widespread which is exhausting, and can make it hard to talk about the things you want to. Most of the virulent, misogynistic comments get removed quickly but often the damage is already done by then. I have learned over the years on the internet that sometimes I should let womens’, trans’ and other races’ people’s spaces be their spaces, and check carefully if whatever I have to say really adds to the conversation or just minimizes/drowns out the opinions of the minority audience the community is for. So I have had the urge to participate but have backed off. I’m a bit torn because the lack of activity can also make a community feel unwelcoming, but I am concerned that even my most well-intentioned comments could have a blind spot or inherent bias that makes it also unwelcoming.

    The solution I see is that a woman safe-space instance is needed, whose admins ban misogony, unhelpful comments and reports, mass downvoting etc., to the point where some might feel the actions are like PTB. Beehaw has a strict moderation stance, they even defedded from lemmy.world due to the amount of toxicity they had to deal with, but they are able to curate a more welcoming experience. We are still “early days of Reddit”, it will take time and effort from users of all genders to make it a better place.

  • GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    2 days ago

    One of my first experiences on Lemmy was a bunch of mens rights activists celebrating a women’s tech job fair being overrun by men.

    I’m not surprised that this is a problem. Lemmy’s main demographic is the tech obsessed, that’s always going to be filled with misogynistic neckbeards.

      • SoftTeeth@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        2 days ago

        You’re a man quipping back on a post about men forcing themselves to women’s spaces.

        I used to think differently, but men who force their way into conversations just to say “not all men” are part of the problem.

        There’s no actual understanding, just correction and dismissal.

        • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          2 days ago

          I’m a woman quipping back to say that if you have the defeatist stance that the “tech obsessed” demographic will “always” be misogynistic, then it will never improve.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      12
      ·
      2 days ago

      the tech obsessed, that’s always going to be filled with misogynistic neckbeards.

      Generalizations are hateful.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    2 days ago

    Yup, that’s a problem. Specially because, once the gender ratio gets too skewed towards one side (it is), the Petrie multiplier kicks in; then the sexism targets each woman more and more frequently.

    Potential solutions that I see for the problem:

    • Perhaps creating a few instances for women? I don’t mean instances to talk only about feminism, but for general stuff. With higher standards against harassment.
    • Better mod policing against harassment. Collective action, so it’s easy to say and hard to do it, I know.
      • Ech@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        30
        ·
        2 days ago

        The admins of what? There is no singular “admins” of the Fediverse. That’s kind of the whole point.

        • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          2 days ago

          I understood “the admins” as “a meaningfully large amount of the admin teams of the Fediverse”. Collective action.

          • Ech@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            2 days ago

            I still don’t read it that way, but assuming it is, that is still unreasonable. There are simply too many differing viewpoints, by design. The best option for this sort of thing is to start a female focused instance. It won’t be able to affect the wider fediverse directly, but it would be able provide the space that is seemingly absent atm.

            • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              2 days ago

              If I’m reading it right, I also disagree with it, on a practical level; it’s like herding cats and not enough. I also think that an instance for women is the way to go, at least at the start.

              However, to be fair with drag those actions aren’t mutually exclusive, and even if only a few admin teams keep a closer watch on sexism, it’s already improving the situation.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              2 days ago

              There are simply too many differing viewpoints, by design

              The instances which support women don’t have to federate with the instances whose viewpoint is that harassing women is fine.

              • Ech@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                2 days ago

                Maybe they should, but it’s not going to be a black and white issue for most admins. There’s a reason instances like blahaj and yiffit exist. A space like that for women would be the most realistic way to get the protections for female users in the fediverse that you’re saying should exist.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        I think that it would be a good start. But only a start; sexism is a social problem, so even if you ban the individuals saying sexist stuff, you still see sexism elsewhere.

        And even if you ban overtly sexist users, others will keep:

        • focusing on topics typically enjoyed by men, and typically disliked by women;
        • interpreting what each other says based on masculine social norms;
        • assuming that they’re dealing with other men unless explicitly told otherwise;

        etc.

        That’s still aggravating, you know? You can’t pinpoint why but it still makes you feel unwelcome.

  • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    Thanks for the enlightening thread. And that puts a dampener on the enthusiasm that I was feeling for this place. Not that I should be surprised or anything.

    I might misunderstand how things work here but it sounds to me like if entire communities are getting bombed by downvotes, then it’s the various admins across instances that are allowing this to happen. And it puts a bit of a dark cloud over this place now for me.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      2 days ago

      Blahaj.zone has disabled downvotes, so at least that part can’t be weaponised against folk on our instance.

      As for the rest of it, yeah, lemmy is better than reddit, but it did get a lot of users from reddit, so its still closer to reddit culture than I’d like. But, it’s also got a lot of better aspects than reddit ever did, and hopefully that trend will continue

      • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 day ago

        I think it would be interesting to see how the experience of women pans out by instance. I can imagine it being a fundamentally different experience on blahaj or beehaw, when compared to more generalist instances like .world

        • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          Which is a problem, IMO. Maybe the solution is to have a women focused instance and I would be all for it. But also, that’s a little bit like India having a women only train because the men are too rapey on other trains. It allows safe passage for women for now but doesn’t actually fix or address the problem of rapey men.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      One of our admins was banning people if they saw you only downvoting. This place is so much better than reddit, that growing pains are fine with me.

    • SoftTeeth@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Another issue that’s starting to pop up in “inclusive” communities that don’t have active enough mods and admins is users had to start policing their own spaces, and then the admins get upset with the vitriol directed at the trolls and force the community to repsect the trolls and wait until the reports eventually get through.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        18 hours ago

        Fuck off with your targeted bullshit drama.

        Not only are so you juvenile as to to bring it up in this context, you’re clearly more interested in being a passive aggressive little bitch about the thing or you would never have seen this post in the first place after you blocked OP like a responsible adult.

  • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Back when I used Reddit, one of my favorite subs was TrollX. If we had a sub with that spirit, it would be a good start.

    Are there secret communities on Lemmy? Not that secret communities should be a default, but I was invited to a secret sub on Reddit years ago that was all women. It was a true safe space from harrassment, where we could talk about feminine things that we knew wouldn’t gain traction in main subs. I have no idea how it started, but I knew that users who were invited to join had previously been vetted by the sub’s mods - they saw that I’d made feminist posts and multiple comments about being a woman, and didn’t go around picking fights. It was like a background check.

    I don’t believe there is any one solution, but starting with dedicated communities (in the spirit of TrollX), with mods that smack down misogyny and (actual) trolls, sounds like the best way to start.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      Yeah private communities on Reddit are an actual delight. /r/centuryclub was an unexpectedly fun community to be a part of. I kinda miss the memeing that went on in intro posts on there.

  • Riley@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    It’s especially jarring coming from Mastodon, which is broadly more diverse than Lemmy. I’ve witnessed some really questionable comments here during the last year. I really hope something can be done to improve things. I think a feminist-specific instance might be the best option, much in the way someplace like Hexbear has managed to create a fairly strong community bloc with strong core beliefs.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Sadly hexbear doesn’t have a ton of really active comms specific to women. Though at least they’re very aggressive removing misogyny across the instance. It’s been categorically less stressful posting on hexbear vs the rest of lemmy simply because I’m not then checking an inbox with replies/dms calling me ‘removed’ or ‘it’ or other charming insults.

      Removing downvotes makes sense too, though I also like keeping them and using them to ban people abusing it. The voter is only visible to admins though.

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        2 days ago

        Hexbear might be safe for binary women, but as far as drag can tell, they’re still sexist against a few million other gender identities. Drag went to Hexbear and searched for discussions about dragself pronouns. It wasn’t good.

        • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          I wasn’t able to find posts drag is referring to, as near as I can tell both instances drag uses defed hexbear. Feel free to send me a link.

        • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          Not exactly the point. Spaces reserved for a specific community of people alone tend to be breeding grounds for extremist viewpoints and toxicity

          • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 day ago

            Not sure you can call half the population a ‘community’ but OK. Women come from all walks of life and ideologies as I’m sure you’ll have to imagine.

            Also, even in the majority of women-centric spaces in the internet, men are still allowed s long as they aren’t assholes. The only purpose would be to make a specific spot where women can post without fear of being harassed.

            • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              1 day ago

              If you’ve participated in any women-centric sub on Reddit you’ll know what I’m talking about. Try r/Askwomen, r/FemaleDatingStrategy or r/feminism. The toxicity on those subs is over the roof.

              Something similar might happen if women-centric instances (not even communities) are created. Kinda like a hexbear-esque situation.

              • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 day ago

                I have for years and haven’t seen any of the toxicity you’re talking about, except towards men showing up being right cunts. I’m guessing that’s how you encountered it, too.

                • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 day ago

                  Nope, there’s toxicity there and it’s widely complained about on Reddit (including women themselves) - especially concerning the first two subs i mentioned. Have you considered you’re one of the toxic participants?