A person whose username appears in this post has asked me to blur their user name, this is not some that is possible for me to do. Only the OP has the ability to make edits to their post. I am going to remove it for now as this is the only way I can affect the post. If OP wants to blur the user names I’ll restore the post. Thanks for understanding.
post about women’s only space
150+ comments, 50 downvotes
Close enough. Welcome back reddit
Yeah, I’m downvoting this shit. This is not mildly infuriating, this is just unnecessary ragebait and the fact that OP didn’t even blur out the usernames clearly shows their intention to go against rule 5.
X only communities shouldn’t be publicly viewable.
If they’re not publicly viewable, how do you expect people to know to look for them? How many communities / subreddits have you become a part of because you saw a post from it crop up on your feed?
tons of FB and reddit communities are private. you can see they exist from search but you can’t access content unless you join
Reddit or Lemmy isn’t a great to lace for private communities. If you want to be restrictive of who can participate go to a service that supports it like discord. If you want people to join your X only thing that is a you problem, it’s not on everyone else to help you with it.
i love how this common sense reply is downvoted because it isn’t agreeing with the weird popular sentiment here that you should be able to take public space and make exclusive rules about who can use it.
also the hypocrisy of the reactions if the community in question was male only and women participating against the rules would be see as heroic instead of transgressive.
It’s a public community - anyone is welcome to read the content. They only ask that people with the specific lived experience comment in the threads. If you’re not interested in the content then, like the rest of Lemmy, it’s on you to block it.
It’s not public if you block participation.
But if you do that, every community will be men-only because all the women will have left 🙃
Right, women can only exist in exclusive environments.
When men make up 97.5% of Lemmy’s overall traffic, yes, literally this but non-sarcastically. If women make posts in women-focused communities and the posts get overrun by men and the women get downvoted and dogpiled in their own communities, do you think they’re just going to stay on Lemmy?
No, they’re going back to Reddit where there are enough women users to have an on-topic conversation that doesn’t immediately get derailed.
Where’d you get that stat? That feels high. I certainly have never been asked to show my penis on Lemmy or anything like that. The signup thing also doesn’t ask for gender.
It’s a stat someone provided on c/womensstuff a long time ago when I joined. It’s something I just accepted without investigating further. I don’t remember whether that poster cited any sources, although it might have been from survey I can’t find, so I investigated it last night, anticipating this exact (and justified response).
Certain instances, instances like lemmy.ca, do run demographic surveys. But when I looked at that, it was actually a different number than what I gave. For instance, lemmy.ca’s (to my knowledge) most recent survey put women at 6.4% and men at 87.8%. Now, there are inevitable methodological flaws due to the nature of lemmy being a federated platform. ca’s survey had 513 participants, which is about half the sample size you’d want for a proportion to be representative of a population. But even if we had a sample size of 1000, it still probably wouldn’t be representative of all of lemmy, because I would assume Beehaw and Blahaj have a higher proportion of women and nonbinary people while many of the other instances would be mostly men.
That being said, just given the posts I regularly see on lemmy and the commenters on there, I would assume – with an unknown margin of error – that lemmy.ca is somewhat representative of lemmy, in that there is some male majority on the platform. It just makes sense because early adopted technology tends to be mostly male and most of the comments I see appear to be from men.
Because it’s hard or even impossible to prove a negative (my assertion that women aren’t an ultraminority on lemmy), I realize how easy it is to pick apart and dismiss my core argument based on my estimate of the number alone. And I don’t really have any recourse to this when data is as limited as it is. Initial signs point to the platform being a supermajority of men, but I could definitely be wrong.
Feel free to reply and contribute to the discourse, but I’m going to mute this thread and take a break from lemmy for a while. There’s such a vocal (likely) majority who are so offended by the idea of women having one community to call their own. I don’t think I’ll ever convince the folks here why I think c/womensstuff has the right to exist in its current form, and they’ll never convince me. Discussions on c/witchesvspatriarchy constantly get brigaded and go off-topic to the point where it’s often not usable as it was originally intended, and womensstuff would become that too if it allowed male commenters. If the mods change the roles or if other instances defederate Blahaj over “segregation,” there’s nothing I can really do about that and I’d probably just be done with internet forums at this point.
I’m remembering how I left Reddit in the first place because of how toxic those communities could get, and how comparatively harmonious lemmy is. That’s still the case, but I’m tired over all the discourse toward this one community – it’s a reoccuring thing – and I’m actively making things worse by continuing to debate people over when there’s no way one group will ever successfully convince the other.
It’s just…the internet I guess?
Go into the various “Ask” communities, and you’ll see things like this constantly:
Women of Lemmy, what’s something that…?
As a man, I …
Americans of Lemmy, what is your favorite…?
As a European, I…
Definitely mildly infuriating when people just butt in when they’re explicitly not the target audience of the question. If I’m somehow doing that with this reply, lol, I apologetically appreciate the irony.
It is significantly more likely to read:
“Europeans of Lemmy……?”
“As an American……!”
I’ll take your word for it, though I assume it is the case. Like I said…it’s just the internet doing what it does (for better or worse).
“As an American” (though speaking only for myself) when I see those, I don’t even go into them because my opinion wasn’t solicited. I also don’t throw out my opinions in non-American news/politics communities for the same reason. Also, I wish that was a two-way street.
Also, I wish that was a two-way street.
That would be nice! I understand that everyone probably feels entitled to comment, given the amount of US-centric content one is bombarded with, and the shit-show our country has descended into.
Still, I see a disturbing number of upvoted comments that are just anti-Americans (i.e., not disparaging the government, but the citizenry). Shitting on people for where they were born is as valid as astrology, and nationality is not a good indicator of moral fiber.
Is that why US political posts are always filled with people from other countries?
Same idea
That’s because US politics is interfering in other countries.
every countries politics interferes with its neighbors.
USA just has global reach. So does China and a few other countries.
As a professional opinionator, I…
I’ve accidentally commented in that community more than once when it was a generic post…but the top comment nowadays is a reminder of the rules.
Very, very different than the examples you describe
The issue is that people want a public forum to be private and controlled as such.
Like if you go to a public park and want to kick out anyone who isn’t a part of your party you want ot have there… the issue is you. it’s not the other users of the public park. but there are stupid and entitled people who would host a party in a public space and then get pissed off other people are using the space.
that isn’t how it works. if you want a private party you need to have it on a private piece of land. which is totally fine. just like you can geo-IP block access to your website if you wanted.
In a public park, you can absolutely ask random people to leave your party area. Not the park, but the space you are using. Double so if you’ve gone through the official channels to reserve that section.
And that goes both ways: If someone is clearing having an event and one inserts themselves where they’re clearly not invited, then that person clearly has issues respecting others’ boundaries.
you’d also be an asshole. you don’t own the park. you have no exclusive rights access it or use it.
and tying it up for personal use and going around kicking out other well meaning people is just you being a selfish dick.
if you want exclusive access… hold your party/event in a private space.
it’s not that hard of a concept… but people want the privileges of exclusivity without the costs. and get butthurt over it for some stupid reason. if i wanted a party that was exclusive to my friends/invitees only I would never hold it in a public space.
i’ve inserted myself into plenty of events at parks. usually it’s only the dipshit karen types that have an issue with it. most people don’t care because they aren’t anxious/controlling types and they understand that their event in a public park means they will have to be welcome to strangers. especially when your event spills over into a walkway or heavily trafficked space.
Ummm… what do you think the park picnic space rentals are?
Also, parks with camping have reserved spots.
Seems to me either you don’t get out much, or you are one of those assholes that refuses to leave a space someone already paid to rent.
That person is giving me “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!” vibes. lol.
They’re kind of being an asshole all over the thread. I don’t know why women asking men to not comment in a women’s forum has them so hot and bothered, but it sure has them on the warpath lol.
Probably 'cause they commented to the same thread.

I agree that the guy in the post is mildlyinfuriating at best, and much more likely a douche (never hear a woman use male as a noun like that, a very particular shibboleth). But I’m not sure I love. This community becoming half posts picking on specific users. Should we blur the usernames? Otherwise its an easy path to brigading and bullying.
never hear a woman use male as a noun like that
I heard ‘male’ the same place I heard ‘female’, and this wasn’t surprising. I’m jealous at your certainty that you haven’t yet and thus never will. Apparently, though, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”
That’s on me, there’s a few typos in my reply. I was just saying I’ve never heard it, not that I think I will never hear it ever. And genuinely the only menfolk I’ve heard use it earnestly were akward teenage boys, and the older lads mocked them and told them they sounded lame.
This is in the UK (and ten years ago), so maybe it’s much more common in Australia or the US or something. But from the reaction it generally gets online, I get the feeling it’s generally looked down on (outside of humor, or sci-fi).
same. it’s so weird to me when people pretend like women don’t act this way… and can’t be sexist douchebags.
there are entire media outlets past and present that are basically dedicated to female douchery spouting crazy sexist hateful shit. but it’s normalized and not seen as a threat to society.
Ya I don’t think folks need to be called out twice in a row in two different places. This would be a pathway for repeat offenders who refuse to acknowledge feedback perhaps?
Absolutely. In fact, I would extend that past the user, to the community as well. This is a gate-kept (correct spelling?) community; that’s fine and I don’t think the rest of lemmy should care, but I somehow regularly come across discussions about the community or related, with many people in the comments frustrated. That frustration is natural and isn’t going to go away anytime soon. I don’t care about said community, but it’s annoying to keep coming across posts like this.
These posts are clearly just causing argument over a fairly small, specific community that most people aren’t, I presume, involved in. I wish we could just leave it alone; it’s gate-kept, let’s honor that and also not talk about the community outside of said community (exception: meta-communities dedicated to stuff like that).
I’d be annoyed if people couldn’t stop talking about e.g. the Linux community outside of the Linux community as well, with tuns of the comments angry about the Linux community because they don’t use Linux and are offended that the community doesn’t welcome them talking about windows or complaining about Linux. Obviously the community is intended for Linux users and while it’s not actively gate-kept, windows users (not looking to transition) aren’t exactly welcome. Funny parallel there.
If I weren’t a Linux user, and had blocked that community, I would be very annoyed at regularly seeing meta-commentary about the community I don’t care about and can’t contribute too. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but you get the gist of it.
It just seems to draw purposeless attention and outrage to something people could otherwise probably ignore. That being said, this is all pretty minor; I would have ignored this post as well, if it weren’t for the below. Clearly a number of people didn’t ignore it though.
I don’t know, I’m just lying on my sofa with a cold, and yelling at the sky…
Edit: Jesus Christ how did that get so long. I need to get healthy and get a life again. Being sick sucks.
Should we blur the usernames? Otherwise its an easy path to brigading and bullying.
Nah, it’s a public, open forum. “Brigading” is reddit nonsense & bullies can be reported.
The real crime is breaking accessibility & usability by not linking to the comment.
Ferengis are known outside of the Star Trek fan base. A well travelled species.
Segregated anything is fucking dumb. Segregated internet communities are especially fucking dumb because anyone can be anyone on the internet.
Congratulations, you’re the man they’re trying to forget exists for 10 fucking minutes a day in their off time!
I am in full support of the community rules but that’s an interesting claim when like 1/3 of the posts are about men lol
Downvote me all you want
Ok
Who said I was a guy? Again, anyone can be anyone on the internet.
You did in reply to this post
glances at profile
Def a guy
Funny how some people downvote even the most innocuous comments.
You can assume my gender or race all you want. It doesn’t make you right.
So based and repelled bro. You’re for sure postmaxxing. Absolutely mewing on the haters. more dunks than a 90s kangaroo. You sure told those bitches.
Anyway to be serious for a moment: “the internet is full of wreckers so why even bother” is a fucking wrecker argument. You are the problem. Do you see?
I think you’ve replied to the wrong person since my comment is about assuming genders of people on the internet not wreckers on the internet whatever that might be.
What the hell is a wrecker?
I downvoted because it was a deflection that didn’t address the very real issue presented to you
The issue being what? And how did I deflect? I refuted their comment, that’s not a deflection, that’s showing how dumb it is to claim you are anything since people can claim to be anything on the internet.
Now I’m a ghost and will start a ghost only community.
Give up, brah: you lack conclusive proof. Lemmy doesn’t require ID verification, so anyone can be anything.

Replies like this make me wish Lemmy let you give people Gold like Reddit.
Bingpot.
A segregated internet would be more like if they had a whole version of Lemmy for all topics but only for women, and then didn’t also participate in the other one.
This is just one community calm the hell down they can have their space.
If they want their own space, they are just bigots. That’s what they called me when I excluded them from the general space in the past!
-the people arguing against that comm, probably
You’ve angered the incels.
Fuck em. “Oh but it’s a free Internet people can participate wherever they want”
Yeah you have a right to be a total dickwad and scream in people’s faces at the grocery store, don’t be surprised when everyone thinks you’re an ass though. They don’t want your input. That. Simple.
Also I wonder how it would look if we made a Men’s Club community where only men were allowed and women were openly mob-scolded for participating. Would probably be considered a pretty sexist environment.
FWIW that community is just inspired by something that already exists outside of social media. The community owner kept !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world up since it’s pretty active, but the new official/recommended one for dull stuff is !Dullsters@dullsters.net . They explicitly wanted it to be more inclusive (not that DMC was only restricted to men posting).
The official Dull Men’s Club website encourages women to participate as well, so I don’t think it should be considered as a men-only community:
Though it started with men, women now belong too.
If 99.9999% of users are men, it’s effectively a place where men can express themselves without the fear that some women will flood the comments.
That’s what women want with their women only spaces. And while that man wasn’t being that rude, until women feel more comfortable let them have their bubbles.
That’s quite an “if” that you’re starting with.
If 99.9999% of users are men, it’s effectively a place where men can express themselves without the fear that some women will flood the comments.
The point of the community is to share the dull things you’ve accomplished, not to go there and talk about stuff with the expectation that only men will respond. I was trying to tell that commenter that, despite the name, it’s not trying to be a man-only space, and people hopefully should not react to or expect the community to be as such. I just wanted to clarify since I think the comm is cool.
There’s another similar community called !dullsters@dullsters.net if anyone objects to the name itself.That’s what women want with their women only spaces. And while that man wasn’t being that rude, until women feel more comfortable let them have their bubbles.
I agree with you.
I know I’m sending mixed signals, but those things are not equivalent. All of modern society is patriarchal and women face exclusion from spaces their entire lives because of their sex or gender. Things have improved slightly over the decades but this kind of misogyny is still a global pandemic. When men are called privileged this is why. That ignorance is a privilege. Lucky you, that you haven’t experienced this constantly for your entire life. Want to create a “Men’s Club” community? We’ve all been living in it our entire lives. Nothing new to see there.
I still feel dirty thinking about the womensstuff community, though. The first time I stumbled in there I had no idea where I was and someone said “As a man…” and then asked a question, and they were told to be quiet. Women experience that constantly, and it’s worse for girls. So much worse. Especially if you are the chatty type of autistic that I am. Having experienced it, I would never subject others to that. I felt that interaction viscerally and immediately blocked the community. I understand wanting to have a safe space, and I do have those with certain private groups, but seeing that behavior was awful. Even queer spaces are welcoming to allies, and I feel inclusion of allies in all social matters is critical for progress to happen.
those things are not equivalent.
If by “those things” you mean a men’s club and a women’s club, that’s kind of my whole point. They should be considered the same but are not. Given men’s history of women’s oppression, there’s a lot we can’t do without the assumption of possibly being oppressive or sexist. Sometimes it’s hard being a man of one of the first generations in the starting centuries of women’s liberation (if it will even ever conclude).
Not as hard as women have had it of course, but if we want equality for all, that means we have to act the part, from both sides. 🙂
Hey, go for it! If c/mensliberation became men-only, I’d support them! There are some communities where women wouldn’t have anything to contribute, and that’s okay and wouldn’t be sexist.
But just don’t go full kiwifarms with a men-only community and I’d say that’s fine.
I’m not interested in a men’s only club. How very boring. What would we talk about that women wouldn’t be able to join in on the conversation? I never understood that. Women’s perspectives are valuable, just as any person’s perspective. 👍
It isn’t all or nothing, though. No one is taking away co-ed discussion groups. It’s okay that you think it’s boring, but it’s another thing to argue that single-gender spaces should not exist due to those personal preferences.
Both can exist. Both is good. :)
I agree. I’m not making an argument that they shouldn’t exist. If someone wants a single-gender/-sex community, that’s fine by me. 👍
Literally nothing is stopping you from creating a community for men with a rule that only men participate. The difference is that in the community you’re thinking about though, women wouldn’t be constantly trying to mess with it. There are hundreds of communities to choose from. You’re not entitled to participate in them all.
women wouldn’t be constantly trying to mess with it
Is someone purporting to speak for all women? Seems arrogant.
The major point isn’t whether or not it’s possible to create it. The major point was that it would be considered sexist, I imagine. Or at the very least a little cringe.
The mens club you’re talking about DOES exist though. Since men are not a marginalized minority, that club is just called society.
Your logic mirrors asking, ‘Why not create a whites-only club?’ Technically, you could, but people would rightly view it negatively because white people, as a group, are not marginalized. Exclusive spaces for minorities exist to provide relief from the discrimination or bias they routinely encounter. For groups that do not face those barriers, everyday society already functions as their ‘exclusive space,’ which makes it difficult for non-minorities to understand why others might need a separate environment.
We’re talking about Lemmy communities here, having a men’s-only space to discuss men’s issues is totally fine. Also, demeaning men’s-only spaces and placing men in a uniform category as “the oppressor group” is awful for society
I didn’t place them in the oppressor group, I said they weren’t oppressed.
Ok, let’s walk through the implication.
-Women are oppressed.
-Men are not oppressed.
Who again are you saying is doing the oppressing? You’re blind to the fact that most men are also oppressed, and pretending that men can just go out in society and be safe being vulnerable is willfully ignorant
You’re putting words in my mouth and confusing the difference between a demographic and an individual. AS A DEMOGRAPHIC, women are oppressed. AS A DEMOGRAPHIC, men are not. We’re talking about statistics here, not individual experience.
The fact that some men are oppressed does not imply men are equally or more oppressed than women.
The fact that women AS A DEMOGRAPHIC are oppressed and men AS A DEMOGRAPHIC are not does not imply all men are oppressors. It DOES imply that men opress women, but like… fucking duh? If men aren’t pressing women, then who is? It doesn’t mean all men are oppressors, but are you seriously going to sit her and act like the majority of domestic abusers, sexual harassers, and discriminators AREN’T men???
You’re interpreting a defense of women exclusive spaces as an attack on individual men. You should unpack that.
Well then not all man are oppressed isn’t that okay to have a man-only communty?
Men are also being oppressed by the societal norms. Sure. Thing is, the severity of such oppression is not on the same level, and while real, is not a valid comparison to female oppression.
The oppressor is patriarchy, both men and women enforce it. Not everyone, but many. The way our societal norms, and other people in society peer pressure us into boxes is oppressive, and again, while men also are affected negatively by it, it’s just not comparable.
So yeah, you made up that implication due to, and this is me being benign here, your misinformed self. Given that the percentage of male/female users on Lemmy being so male skewed, its effectively a men only online space. Let women have their women only online spaces.
Society doesn’t allow women? And openly scolds them for participating? I dunno. It’s “similar”? I guess? Anyway, the other person makes a lot of the points I would make too so I’ll let y’all hash that out amongst yourselves.
It exists. Or did. Menslib over on that other platform.
Maybe the mods over there need to start doing genital inspections to determine who can participate or not.
I wonder too- if a woman posts there and then transitions… Should he go back and delete all of his posts?
exactly. this is the whole problem with trans stuff and gender essentailism.
who the fuck is to say what a woman is? a lot of people tie to totally arbitrary nonsense.
the concept of gender specific spaces is loaded with the notion that one sex/gender is worthy and the other in unworthy.
It’s entirely about self identification. There’s no gender policing, they just kindly ask people who start their comments with phrases like “as a man…” or “not a woman, but…” to refrain from further commenting. They don’t even delete the comments unless the guy keeps going. Even still, inevitably if the post reaches the front page all the women in the comments will be drowned out by highly upvoted “as a man…” commenters. They just want to have a conversation without being shouted over.
That’s really ignoring a mountain of history. Up until a decade ago, “there are no girls on the internet” was a common saying.
I just see it as a way to foster and encourage an under represented segment of the community. It feels completely valid when that segment is still often met with hostility from weirdos.
there are no girls on the internet
You misunderstood the meme. Unless anyone verifies IDs, anyone online can claim to be whoever, and everyone’s a fucking liar. 12/f/cali? Definitely FBI.
Simping for someone online claiming to be female is senseless. Personal characteristics shouldn’t matter. Better to assume they’re a nameless, sexless avatar.
Was it a common saying or were you just on 4chan too much?
Extremely common. In gaming, twitch, YouTube comments, forums, 9gag comments, Reddit… The presence of women has been minuscule for a long while, and that’s translated as hostile to women.
9gag
Really? I don’t even remember the last time 9gag was known for anything other than being uncool and irrelevant.
Sounds like you’re in a bubble of a lot of sexist communities. That’s real unfortunate- you should maybe try to get out of that.
some people in certain communities get high on their own farts by thinking everything there is sexist, any anyone who participates must also be sexist. and then also participate.
you can’t fix stupid. i remember being part of dating communities in the past and everyone thought the community was sexist against their own sex, mostly when people challenged their sexist assumptions about the other gender being another but awful and horrible. like all the women who said men were shitty and awful sex fiends thought the community was pro-male. it was hilarious. and vice versa for all the women haters.
what it was was shitty people being shitty and engaging in self-fulling prophecies, for the most part. and it would be funny when they dated someone who didn’t fit the ‘x is awful’ trope… they would complain how ‘boring’ and ‘weird’ the person was. the funny thing about the people who weren’t sexist as hell… was they never really whined about things being sexist.
Why are you saying I am in those spaces now? You asked in past tense, I answered how it was 15 years ago.
I left most of those a long time ago and several have changed. It’s important to remember history, 15 years is pretty recent.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet
It seems like it started before 4chan. 4chan probably amplified it and helped spread it though. All the bad things either start there, or it’s users violently clutch and hang on to it until it seems like it started there.
That is were I heard it first though so you are right in calling me out. It’s been a while, longer then just a decade ago thankfully, but I spent a bit of my teen years on there. It really feels shameful to admit. Overall, just a gross place.
I spent a couple of my teenaged years there too. I remember I printed out the “rules of the internet” post, which includes that “rule” and had it on my desk in high school. “For the lulz”. It’s important to grow and change, both as individuals and as a society. My friend group back then was a bunch of supposedly straight cis teens who threw around all kinds of slurs, and we thought it was okay as long as we weren’t actually being mean to other people and we kept it amongst ourselves. Largely, it was. But a lot of the same people who loved to throw the F slur around back then have boyfriends now. At least one person transitioned.
But my broader point is that it’s very easy to convince ourselves that something common in our own bubbles is ubiquitous across the internet and across time. Other people close to my age had very different experiences with the internet because they were in different communities. I’m sure that the youth today, with TikTok and Roblox and whatever else they are doing, have an entirely different culture. The older people on Facebook have a very different culture. I’m sure non-English speaking communities have different cultures.
And that’s also part of why I’m against segregated spaces. They create an echo chamber and reinforce societal divisions.
Any time some bigoted anti-trans law about bathrooms is proposed, progressive people advocating inclusivity point out that it’s impossible to define what a “woman” is in a manner that both excludes all trans-women and includes all cis-women. And I fully support that, which is why I have a hard time supporting exclusionary policies on the internet too.
things aren’t any different today dude. my teenager nephews do the same thing.
Your teenaged nephews may do the same thing, but my teenaged nieces do not. The internet is a gigantic place, and it’s dangerous to extrapolate our own limited perspective onto the whole.
It’s definitely common and it’s been around forever. We’ve always been here, but the vast majority of guys on the internet are so fucking toxic we just hide it. It’s true for me, at least. There are reasons I avoid PvP games like the plague, avoid toxic places like the Steam Forums, and refuse to use voice chat unless it’s a private game among friends. It gets hammered into you the first time you make the mistake of thinking you can participate with a group of boys, and that goes back before the internet. The internet creates an illusion of anonymity that makes those bad traits infinitely worse. So we mask and hide, but we’re here.
My experience has been the same and I’ve been on the internet since the mid-90s. I have always avoided voice chats unless with friends or trusted guildies and avoid things that will identify me as a woman because people can get so toxic. This happens in real life too, especially in gaming spaces. I’ve been laughed at when I said I taught my male partner how to play MTG until he confirmed it. I used to hear I’m “not a real woman” because I’ve been playing video games since I was a kid, it’s a lot better now, but it’s still there.
The womensstuff space is a huge breath of fresh air and I love having a space to speak about topics with fellow women. Quite a number of men have commented there and are very polite when they are corrected.
the point of the saying was that your sex/gender shouldn’t matter for internet comments.
it wasn’t to exclude women.
self identifying yourself as a man or women will radically change how people interpret your comments. a lot of people assume i’m a woman from the way i comment. then they would find out i’m not a woman and harass the shit out of me for upsetting/subverting their gender expectations.
Women-only spaces always seems to lead to TERF-dom. You’d think people would learn eventually. It just reinforced heteronormativity and viewing gender through a binary lense. It sows division.
A lot of the posts people complain about these spaces could very well be made by cis women who just aren’t perfomatively feminine enough. The “No True Scotsman” fallacy and all that. Back when I was on Reddit whitepeopletwitter and blackpeopletwitter used to have drama all the time about the racial identities of people using anime girls as profile pictures.
Yeah, you guys. We shouldn’t let women talk among themselves, they’re so irresponsible it ALWAYS leads to the EXACT SAME place. Let’s make sure we keep an eye on these females, just to make sure they’re not getting out of line. Pfft, “women only?” You’d think we’d learn by now! These women NEED a man to keep them track, we know what ALWAYS happens. Jesus christ.
Are you suggesting that women are such dainty and delicate creatures, they can’t handle a man’s internet? They need protected from the smarter and meaner 14 year old boys from 4chan?
Maybe the real solution is to just keep everything separate but equal? That famously works out well for everyone and never leads to any issues /s
As a man… just stating that it has nothing to do with the rest of my comment, but when I see those communities I just filter and move on. I do the same for all the gross *Moe communities with cartoon children dressed inappropriately.
Reading this as a self hoster: god damn it, is there ANOTHER fucking instance I need to defederate?
Just FYI, those are almost all on the same instance, and you can block that instance as a whole. It’s dedicated to anime, so there’s not a ton of collateral damage.
If you block the instance then you block legit communities too though
Yes, but that’s only an issue if you are interested in those other communities. In this case, the instance is dedicated to anime, so it’s only an issue if you want to browse those other anime communities.
one of the few communities I have blocked one of the things I value is being able to chip in
So you blocked it? Lol seems strange
I blocked it too. It’s not strange at all. If a community disallows people to contribute based on gender, race, etc… I disallow them to appear in my feed.
When I first started here I had a relevant point for a women’s only community on the front. I asked if my opinion was welcome, told it was not (but fairly respectfully), and the only comment I left was an apology.
Like it’s not hard to be respectful, even if you hold a slightly different opinion. I don’t go to any of the “on grad” posts and let my opinions about Stalin fly(which are largely negative despite me agreeing with a lot of the tenants of communism).
The only exception I make about being respectful is anyone bragging about not voting last election in the US. You all suck and I will not let you live it down peacefully. Ffs vote third party! But don’t brag about being a lazy POS and standing by while fascism takes over!
Ffs vote third party! But don’t brag about being a lazy POS and standing by while fascism takes over!
And what if your political party choice is ‘no parties’? Everyone else can vote 3rd party to appease their choice, except for those who don’t believe in statism?
You’ll be tolerant to fascists, yet hurl disrespect to anarchists? How alarming.
You out here actively supporting by being hazy and pretending your farts smell better.
You out here actively promoting ‘throwing your vote away by voting 3rd party’ but hating other people who act on their political values because they what, wasted their vote? It’s a contradictory and ill-thought out stance.
Well even if you believe political parties shouldn’t exist, you should still participate in your democracy. It’s not like the system goes away if you refuse to participate, so you might as well work within it
Not-voting is participating in representative democracy.
You get one day every four years to have a say, and this is a chance to say ‘No.’. That’s just as valid as ‘Yes, but…’.
I enjoy that community as a non-participant. A user’s decision to merely interact can reveal much more than they intended to reveal - super interesting to me. Just the existence of the community pits dudes with insecurities against their own lack of self control or social tact, for all to see.
Future me might comment there too quickly after overlooking the community name. I’ll get a warranted Tsk and I’ll see myself out. No big deal. It’s not a kick in the nuts unless I make it one.
I have seen men comment there, get the reminder, and then FLIP THE FUCK OUT. As if every part of the internet should have to put up with them.
A community like that is hard to monitor, and they are pretty chill about people making honest mistakes like coming in from /all. I feel like it’s obvious (or very quickly becomes obvious) which comments are mistakes, and which are butthurt males. They don’t seem to be hostile to the honest mistakes.
Whenever I see that happen, I think “wow, thanks for showing why this community needs that rule in the first place”. If dudes were more chill about women trying to build their own spaces, then perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary to have such a hard rule.
Incel behavior includes using “female” as a noun when talking about women. Using “female” as an adjective is perfectly normal and common. It is fine to write “female coworker” instead of “coworker who is a woman.”
Some people are hypersensitive to wrongspeak.
I don’t think people are bothered by “female coworker”, which is perfectly normal. It’s the reference to a “female-only” community, when the actual com is called WomensStuff and describes itself as “women only” and “a women’s community”.
Not every female is a woman. Some of them are ladies or girls.
I don’t know what to else to say, the community describes itself as “women only” and he described it as being “female only”. You could (but probably shouldn’t) take it up with that community if you really feel their “women only” rule excludes girls. But I’m not sure I see how it excludes “ladies” which are generally considered a subset or synonym of “women”.
To continue your point, it’s true that not every’ female’ is a woman, indeed not every female is human. You get female seahorses, penguins and even female plants (dioecious ants like asparagus or holly). But for most English speakers, in most situations, female is an adjective and not a noun. So, you might ‘have a female friend’ , but you’re not usually ‘friends with a female’.
In my experience, the only linguistic situations where it is common to use female as a noun are 1) in scientific writing “the male mantis is decapitated by the larger female”, and even their is usually just to avoid repeating the name of species. Or, 2) within groups of akward men. I’m not sure if they’re trying to sound intelligent by aping scientific terminology, or are so removed from regular contact with women that they see them almost as another species.
Obviously it doesn’t mean that everyone who talks about ‘females’ is an incel, but its use is highly linked to people who spend time in communities that don’t involve a lot of women. Just as not everyone who uses “bogan” is Australian, but most of them are. Or, have spent a lot of time in Australian-adjacent situations.
Ok. I somehow missed that. I scanned for other uses of “female” a few times but was blinded to the one right next to coworker.
Maybe it’s just me, but in female-only community, I’m using female as part of a composed adjective. I’d say male-only community too, it just feels more natural. In fact, in an earlier comment I wrote women only, and then writing man only felt SO bad that I changed both to female and male.
Now that I think about it it’s probably because I used man instead of men. I’ll change both back but OOP miiight have followed my logic? Idk
In trans-inclusive spaces we use “woman,” in reference to the gender, as opposed to female, which usually designates sex.
Like a nature documentary, for example: “The female meetkat seeks out her pack,” as opposed to “The woman meetkat hollers at the girls.”
Incel behavior includes using “female” as a noun when talking about women.
Sure: A -> B != B -> A
You … know that, right?
I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate, but I do understand the logical expression you used.
Probably trying to say that just because incels (allegedly) use the term “female,” it doesn’t mean that a person using that word must then be an incel.
Thanks. I’m not saying the poster is an incel. I’m just saying the objection to misuse of “female” has been primed by incels (and Ferengi). Without incels, there wouldn’t be such a knee jerk revulsion to it.
i really don’t even understand the concept of policing other people’s language use.
it’s like saying people who don’t have perfect grammar are stupid.
It’s not about the grammar. It’s the underlying mindset that might lead to specific word choices. If someone exclusively refers to women as bitches, that may be because they don’t hold much respect for women.
More subtly, if someone always refers to women as girls but rarely to men as boys, it could be telling us that they think of women as immature and less like fully formed adults.
For the word females, it’s more subtle again. It would be normal to refer to animals as male and female. For people we have the gender-specific terms man and woman. If you refer to women as females but not men as males, you may be revealing an underlying dehumanizing attitude. This is corroborated by what seems to be a common trope of incels calling women females.
Incel behavior includes using “female” as a noun when talking about women.
Non-incels, too. Women, too.
The noun “female” isn’t a problem. Some don’t mind. Seriously. And it’s used self-referentially “in-group”: it shows up in feminist book titles, in dating communities (eg, “F4F/M”), classifieds (eg, “need a roommate […] females only”), etc. In conventional language, it’s an acceptable word.
The problem isn’t so much the word, but its usage, ie, the message. These superficial word criticisms fail to meaningfully engage the fuller context & meaning.
Imagine we make the name for an entire class a derogatory word! Meanwhile, the name for other major gender/sex remains innocuous. Seems like classic stigmatization: who is that serving? Is opposition to the noun “female” unwittingly subscribing to stigmatization & sexist thinking of those who’d welcome the stigmatization?
Ironic given the community you’re posting to, and its own rules. But 🤷♂️.
Which rules do you mean?
“no inciting harassment”
this thread is def inciting harassment against the OP.
Explain how merely showing publicly visible content (without requesting to threaten, intimidate, or demean) necessarily “incites harassment”. Is this type of harassment merely irritating or bothersome behavior or would it meet a legal definition?
You’re a cunt. You know what OP did. You know how instigation works because you can string two words together. Ergo, you’re trying to dismiss valid concerns because they’re about a man and you couldn’t give two fucks if they got lynched.
Your double standards are as apparent as your gross misandry.
You’re a cunt.
Are you an authority on cunts? Ad hominem fallacy.
Answer the questions from before. My answers: it does not. Reddit stretched the concept of harassment to include public transparency, freedom of information, and nuisances[1] nowhere near legal standards for harassment, and no one should welcome misguided efforts to bring that shitty moderation culture[2] to lemmy.
The fact is OP did not request any attacks by merely showing public information, the public is entitled to public information, OP is no more responsible for misconduct anyone else chooses to commit than the public hosts of the original information[3], reporting actual abuse is the proper way to handle such incidental misconduct, and you know that.
Ergo, you’re trying to dismiss valid
There is no valid suppression of public information.
they’re about a man
That’s unfounded speculation & irrelevant.
lynched
Impossible to do with words over the internet. Overdramatic.
Your double standards are as apparent as your gross misandry.
No double standard[4]. Strawman fallacy.
text on a screen we can all disregard ↩︎
that spreads accountability unjustly beyond moral reason to bystanders reporting information anyone can see ↩︎
if showing public information is wrong, then the original hosts are wrong, too, which they aren’t ↩︎
There mere act of showing public information does not constitute abuse, and claiming it does leads to disastrous consequences. ↩︎
You can tell this guy posted himself wearing a “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt on linkedin.
Really not the point of this community, the mod doesn’t care so I guess why should I. Leaving.
Hence “mildly”
Mildly witch hunting?
look, I get it. you see a dude getting lambasted for thinking he needs to make sure women know what his opinion is, and you think that if he gets called out for it, then you will too the next time you shove your opinion somewhere it’s not wanted.






















