(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.
most women aren’t internet nerds. sorry to disappoint you.
the ones in my life seem to use the internet almost as much as me.
regardless of that i’d love for lemmy to not be a place just for male internet nerds.
well, then be get ready for it to get as shitty as reddit, as it gets flooded by a diverse set of assholes instead of a select set of assholes who at least don’t take shit too seriously.
i’m sure there will be more assholes in general as it grows, but due to the nature of lemmy, i think its gonna boil down to the specific culture and public of the instance in question.