"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?"

  • Owl [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    It'll take time.

    Banning creepers and misogynists is great, but they often go months without harassing any women. If your banning campaign hasn't been going on for months, you still haven't even gotten through the initial wave.

    Adding pronoun flairs is great, but women will be slow to adopt them for fear it'll single them out, especially if you haven't banned all the creepers and misogynists yet.

    Huge chunks of the internet have fewer than 50% women because women have spent a very long time being excluded from all sorts of online spaces. It will take a very long time for women who don't participate in online discussion to hear, through word of mouth, that it's actually okay on some specific website.