(Content warning, discussions of SA and misogyny, mods I might mention politics a bit but I hope this can be taken outside the context of politics and understood as a discussion of basic human decency)
We all know how awful Reddit was when a user mentioned their gender. Immediate harassment, DMs, etc. It’s probably improved over the years? But still awful.
Until recently, Lemmy was the most progressive and supportive of basic human dignity of communities I had ever followed. I have always known this was a majority male platform, but I have been relatively pleased to see that positive expressions of masculinity have won out.
All of that changed with the recent “bear vs man” debacle. I saw women get shouted down just for expressing their stories of being sexually abused, repeatedly harassed, dogpiled, and brigaded with downvotes. Some of them held their ground, for which I am proud of them, but others I saw driven to delete their entire accounts, presumably not to return.
And I get it. The bear thing is controversial; we can all agree on this. But that should never have resulted in this level of toxicity!
I am hoping by making this post I can kind of bring awareness to this weakness, so that we can learn and grow as a community. We need to hold one another accountable for this, or the gender gap on this site is just going to get worse.
Not even about Man v Bear, but just seeing all the casual misogyny on Lemmy is extremely exhausting to me. It’s so clearly obvious that Lemmy as a whole is dominated by men. There are no spaces here for women. It’s why I still frequent Reddit, because at least there are communities there that are more diverse. I really want Lemmy to take off more, but I just don’t get enjoyment out of this platform, after the initial hype died off.
Anyway, I’m really glad you posted this, OP. I think it’s incredibly important to foster a diverse community. Unfortunately the diversity just isn’t there, and I’m unsure as to how to help that. As it is now, I can’t recommend Lemmy to my other friends who identify as women.
Absolutely. I think the powder keg of a problem has always been here, it’s just recently that there has been an opportunity to show those colors en masse.