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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I did not, I don’t know who that person is actually. Thank you for thinking that it is a reasonable compromise.