How can we make lemmy a safer place for women? Is it even possible to? - literature.cafe
literature.cafe
So to preface this is posted in literature.cafe’s meta community but this question is primarily aimed at generally anyone in the lemmyverse who is NOT a cisgender man no matter what instance they may be in. The purpose of this thread is to present a stage for conversation for those willing to contribute, and although cisgender men are not excluded I kindly ask you to be mindful of the fact what this thread is meant for and try to avoid talking over others here. If you are a cisgender man interested in learning and seeing how lemmy can improve like I am: welcome. For those who are here to cause issues or talk over others though, you will be promptly removed. I do not know the demographic data of lemmy, but I would wager a large portion are male. And over the past few weeks I have witnessed women on numerous occasion discuss their discomfort on here. Reddit very much had a very “bro-y” feeling culture for many, that felt like a barrier to entry to many women. With lemmy, there’s a potential to break this. But the answer really is how? Lemmy has begun to develop into its own culture already independent of Reddit quite rapidly, and it’s been awesome to see but I am wondering if there’s a way we can push it a step further and implement ways to make the platform more welcoming to women than Reddit previously did. Thoughts?

Conversation ongoing over there, inviting anyone who wants to participate to please consider sharing their thoughts if they are willing to. If you wanna post in the original thread from your instance copy and paste the link into your instances search panel

As I said in the thread, if you aren’t comfortable posting feel free to DM me here or on matrix and I can post anonymously for you.

    • AdaEnglish
      8•8 months ago

      The internet should be free from social bias of all sorts, including sex and gender

      It’s not though.

      It wasn’t when that document was written, and it’s not now.

      Hiding our gender doesn’t stop the bias and it doesn’t stop us seeing the bias. All it does is make it less likely to target us specifically, because people are making incorrect assumptions about who we are.

      I nearly always use my name online and I don’t keep my gender a secret. On the few occasions I have been anonymous though, all it has meant is that people assume I’m a man, which again, is not the same thing as “no bias”

      • @jarfil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4•8 months ago

        Adding to that… I was there in the 90s, I used the electron, the switch, and the baud… and the IRC.

        My nick was gender neutral, but from time to time, I heard women comment on how unfriendly the Internet was. One day, out of curiosity, I entered a somewhat popular IRC channel with a fake nick, “natalie” IIRC… and got instantly DDOSed by something like 100+ private chat windows with all sort of “openings” from the male population.

        Yeah, the 90s are not a good model to follow in this regard. On the other hand, if you haven’t got 100+ DMs yet, maybe we’re going in the right direction after all 🤞

  • @kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4•8 months ago

    As a woman, maybe more men should identify as women on Lemmy to make targeted misogyny both less accurate and more diluted?

  • @surewhynotlem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2•8 months ago

    I’ve seen it and call it out, or in, or whichever direction it would be since I’m a cishet guy (I can only guess the people I’m speaking to are also men). But that’s a bandaid. I’m interested to see any ideas on how to fix it at its source.

  • @Chickenstalker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    -1•8 months ago

    I think women should roll with the punches online and not shy away from shitting back on people who shit on you. Of course, take commonsense precautions like not DDOSing yourself, but give em back as good as it gets.

    • @mrcleanup@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8•8 months ago

      On the surface, of course, this sounds completely fair, while at the same time, insisting that these women have to not be themselves and instead must do extra things just to get respect isn’t fair at all.

      You shouldn’t have to be willing to be baited into a fight to be respected.

  • @CherenkovBlue@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
    -2•8 months ago

    I’ll take a go at it. I am a woman. Don’t automatically assume whoever you are responding to is male. Also, if we are specifically talking about women, then let’s not forget that cis women, specifically, exist and don’t have to do all the heavy lifting for every other non-cishet-male. Sometimes on R****t I felt that cis women were stifled in that regard. I will be very, very curious to see how this comment gets voted on and engaged with…

      • @CherenkovBlue@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
        -1•8 months ago

        Regarding erasure, in an effort to make language more inclusive, women’s identity is often erased. “Pregnant people” removes women (the vast majority of people who are pregnant are cis women). Other language like that. So use language that actually does acknowledge women and doesn’t contribute to their erasure. “Pregnant women and people” perhaps, for example. When all you are usually dealing with is text on a screen, language matters.

        Re: the other point, it’s less Lemmy-specific. Cis men need to step up and do the work for inclusion as well. It seems there is a default expectation that of course women should be leading the charge since they’re already a “minority” group. It’s tiring.

        • FranziaEnglish
          2•8 months ago

          Did you get this talking point from Ana Kasparian? She recently made arguments like this, but they were a lot less reasonable. “Pregnant women and people” sounds like an easy compromise to me.