"How can we make lemmy a safer place for women? Is it even possible to?" - literature.cafe

Well, really the only way to do that is to try and fix the underlying problem, which is largely the ignorance and or malice of men IRL. That's a societal issue though, and one that can't be fixed by Lemmy on Lemmy.

The best method online is just good moderation and not to let their (harmful actors) disingenuous "but mah free speeeccchh" arguments work.

This is unfortunately an extremely pervasive problem on the internet. I think we're making a lot of headway in recent years, but unfortunately you'll still find a lot of fragility online. It's entirely unsurprising to me that the thread was quickly populated with a fragile male voice (how dare you exclude men, that's sexist they proclaim, when you explicitly don't exclude them 🙄). It's unfortunately not something you can solve as it's a cultural issue. The best you can do is curate a space which is heavily moderated and one in which fragility which is implicitly misogynistic or derailing is not tolerated. Asking for this feedback without making it explicitly clear that fragility won't be tolerated will just allow a thread to be populated with fragility, as many people with fragility problems are hyper-online and get emotional support through validation in that context.

Allowing a space to be populated early with this voice discourages engagement for your intended audience. I've seen this happen time and time again on the internet when people ask for input from only for people to chime in some characteristic with "I'm not that characteristic, but..." Even when it's not fragility, these people often end up make the space not welcoming to those which the space was intended for simply by their insistence to colonize the space.

I was always aware of the subtle misogyny on Reddit, however, it wasn't until the end did I understand how truly bad it was. All it took was one post and 24 hours for me to see how awful some men can be.

I made a post to a collapse support subreddit detailing how I, a man, had been treated by other men in the workplace. I also explained how the men I have been surrounded by were sexist, racist, homophobic and intolerant to anything "unmanly." I also went on to explain how the everyday treatment of women was not much different than how leaders and businessmen of the world acted. The only difference being the scale of which their actions affect other people. I also provided a few personal examples of how men manipulate women in every subtle way possible. My main motivation for making the post was finding out a former co-worker of mine was attempting to sext with a legal but considerably younger person we both knew. He is married and has two young girls with his wife.

The comments section was... interesting. I received many comments from women who had agreed with me, acknowledged what I said or expressed gratitude for simply being acknowledged from what I posted. Some men and wives of men also commented saying they experienced similar treatment in a bunch of different fields of work. Those comments made me satisfied with the post.

The other half of the comments all claimed I was promoting hate and that my post was hate speech. There was no middle ground or attempt at discussion. Worse, once they caught on that the subreddit moderator was a woman, they descended into her dm's with hate filled messages, threats and declaring that she was supporting hate speech against men.

The harrasment was so much that my post was removed by the moderator but she did reach out to me beforehand. It was quite clear to me that my post had unintentionally affected her mental health. We had an understandable back and forth and I don't blame her for taking an unfortunate step in trying to protect her community she worked so hard to build. A community she needed for herself as well.

The last thing she did say was going forward, she would be more heavy handed with the bans and to be less tolerant of intolerance.

Unfortunately, I quit reddit following the API changes so I don't know how that subreddit or moderator has progressed over the past months.

I think stronger moderation for such vulnerable communities is a necessity. I also think being a moderator is also a nightmarish position to be in as well. I imagine seeing countless negative or awful comments would have a lingering effect on a moderators mental health. Even worse when it's a passion project.

I have been trying to be more vocal on Lemmy when I see men attacking feminism and feminist groups. I also try to come from an empathetic and understanding place because matching hostility seems to end the comment thread in flames from my observations.

Unfortunately it seems my comments get ignored while women commenting under the same post will have their comments picked a part letter by letter from hostile men. It seems their goal is simply bullying women.

I wish there was a simpler way to filter out the hate and intolerance but when dealing with so many people, how do you even know where to start? Fighting complexity is a nightmare and people are fucking complex.

I honestly don't know...

Many of the admins and mods on the threadiverse are cis men, and cis men with a history of reddit norms informing how they approach community building here. And in combination, that means that lots of the subtle stuff, the "just asking questions" guys, the "not all men" folk etc, end up shaping the threadiverse "overton window". And that means that the "we like the status quo as it is" voices dominate the conversation and ensure that nothing changes.

The only way it will change is people who aren't happy with the status quo actively start challenging it and moderating in a way that shifts it.

And I don't see that happening en masse. There's a reason beehaw is close to leaving, and that's a large part of it. They tried to shift that status quo, they tried to challenge it, and they have very little external support in doing so :\

This is the flow-on effect of the association of STEM hobbies/toys/interests with males. The toy aisles in shops are better than they used to be, but toys marketed to boys are still heavily STEM labour-oriented stuff while the girls get a lot of Homemaker and Caregiver and aesthetically-driven stuff etc.

Even if you give your kids both, they still interact with other kids at school who primarily get the gender role toys, and make the gender/interest association. By the time they hit teenage years and are starting to engage with the internet, the learning and interest gap is there.

And when you do get girls who start exploring STEM stuff individually, they stumble into communities that are mostly male, everyone assumes everyone else is also male, and they very quickly feel like an outsider and a piece of meat. The constant mention of hentai as a "hobby" is one weird manifestation of this on Lemmy, and the amount of porn featuring heavily-edited thin young women. For anyone going to one of the main instances right now for the first time, there's a good chance that's a large portion of the feeds.

The endless transphobia is also a huge contributor right now, for cis or trans women. So many people commenting about how they define a woman to be from the male perspective. Written as though they're talking about a hypothetical group of others, instead of asking the women who are definitely already here for their lived experiences.

tl;dr huge multifaceted cultural problem that is unlikely to be solved by lemmy alone. If you want to help, try not to assume male defaults, post content and mod communities that women have historically engaged with online, and tell your boys and girls that anyone can play with the Lego and trucks and fashion dolls and cooking sets. Actually, do one better and play with your kids with the toys you didn't get as a child because of your genitals and explore something new together.

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