At least online, anonymity plays a part, but the discussions seem to have a lot of masculine energy to them. Is it maybe also like music, chess, or comedy where socialization plays a role in the male dominance?

I remember 60% of Bernie's constituency was female, but it doesn't seem to translate online. How can we work to attract more women to the movement?

  • ToastGhost [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    cuz reddit is a brofest, and this place is mostly reddit people from the old sub.

  • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
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    4 years ago

    There are a lot of female leftists outside of the internet, the internet just sucks.

    It's a combination of things. Socialization, misogyny making women feel unwelcome on the internet etc. A lot of women pretend to be male online too, and you probably don't notice.

    • TruffleBitch [she/her]
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      4 years ago

      This. I chose gender neutral usernames and hardly ever corrected people on most subreddits because I didn't feel safe enough and didn't want to risk potential harassment. I also cycled regularly through usernames.

      • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        I'm not a cis dude, femboi or trans woman. lol. :stalin-garrison: :stalin-joking: :stalin-smokin: :stalin-heart:

  • PapaEmeritusIII [any]
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    4 years ago

    A lot of irl leftist stuff tends to be majority women, actually. This place, on the other hand, is a niche internet space that grew out of an old subreddit. It’s not representative of leftism as a whole.

    The thing about the discussions here having “masculine energy” makes me wonder if this post is a bit.

    • the_river_cass [she/her]
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      4 years ago

      no, they're right. masculinity comes off a lot of the stuff here in waves.

      • PapaEmeritusIII [any]
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        4 years ago

        I agree, but the overall vibe of the post makes me wonder whether the OP thinks the “masculine energy” is a good thing

        A few aspects of the phrasing in the post give me pause. Hard to tell for sure though.

        • the_river_cass [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          oh, maybe. haha, I'm wired to read "masculine energy" and recoil so I'm not the best judge of intent here

      • TheJoker [he/him]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Shame them loud and proud if you want lmao, coming to Chapo to be a sex pest has got to be the dumbest decision, and they have no place here.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        It's weird, like, what do people expect, that they're gonna hook up with some rando they met online and don't know shit about?

      • bottech [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        You should publicly shame them, that would discourage any future harassment

        • kristina [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          did on one, the rest was just pics of not nice things and i told the admins to ban them

  • Wmill [he/him,use name]
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    4 years ago

    Why gotta use female? Kind of weird tbh honest. We got lots of women here and non binary peeps so I don't think to masculine but maybe they could give their thoughts just maybe change up the female part if you can. Will help facilitate good faith discussions.

        • the_river_cass [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          if you try and keep count in your head, 2 of every 3 being cis male is approximately accurate. I had to check too cause I interact more often with the women/enbies here.

          • Wmill [he/him,use name]
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            4 years ago

            Starting to remember those surveys and was surprised how little trans men we have here. Also I wonder just how many of those cis guys here have explored themselves? Like once again I remember a few users that start with one pronoun before changing as they grew here, don't wanna single anyone out but proud of them.

            • the_river_cass [she/her]
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              4 years ago

              this is one of those places where socialization actually matters. AMAB people are socialized as boys so they made space for themselves in populations of mostly cis dudes, like reddit (though reddit as a whole is closer to even when you take into account the beauty & fashion subs). so we tend to have more trans women and AMAB enbies here than trans men or AFAB enbies. if this space becomes more welcoming to women, the population of trans men will also grow over time as some of them discover they're men.

              • Wmill [he/him,use name]
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                4 years ago

                Ok I think I'm getting it. Just a little embarrassed to ask but what does AMAB and AFAB stand for saw it the other day and from what you wrote I think I know what they mean but want to make sure. Also back to your point if we made this space more inclusive for women then more will be here and more will find themselves. Struggling with words right now so forgive me if a bit dense trying my best.

        • the_river_cass [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          I think their point was that the OP used it as an adjective, not a noun. all your examples involve using the term as a noun rather than as an adjective in a noun phrase. "female leftists" rather than "females". the issue for me is that it's reductive on sex and the question should really be about non-cis-dudes.

                • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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                  edit-2
                  4 years ago

                  Removed my bad comment

                  Edit: I'm going to stop here because it's probably not my place as a man to argue with a woman about what's feminist. I'm going to take some time to reflect about if I'm doing a good job in regards to gender in the way I communicate online. I think I need to do better. Sorry for being obstinate and defensive.

          • Pezevenk [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            the question should really be about non-cis-dudes.

            But there are lots of trans women and NBs here compared to most not explicitly LGBTQ spaces. On the other hand there are very very few cis women and trans men, if I remember correctly combined they were less than the trans women on the sub. It has to do with what you said, AMAB people were socialised as dudes so they participate more in male oriented spaces as opposed to AFAB.

            I know a lot of the humour here is off putting to many women and especially cis women. It's just the result of being very underrepresented. I've posted about it again, what with the whole "white women lmao" stuff and the male genitalia stuff.

            • the_river_cass [she/her]
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              4 years ago

              the socialization comment was about why people self-select different platforms. this place is also off-putting to trans women, we just have more practice dealing with it. making the space more welcoming to women will help both cis and trans women feel more comfortable. I can't really speak for trans men here.

  • Sen_Jen [they/them]
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    4 years ago

    There just aren't as many women on this site as men. I know WAY more women leftists than men irl, like 80-20.

  • cresspacito [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    There seems to be a lot on Twitter, for what it's worth, most of my fav leftist posters on Twitter are female

      • the_river_cass [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        it's the assumption of default masculinity, in part at least. I think if pronoun tags become more widely adopted, this will change. like look at the beauty parts of reddit - the accounts are as anonymous as the rest of reddit but people are assumed to be women, talking about stuff that interests women, and they post there by the millions.

  • Ithorian [comrade/them, he/him]
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    4 years ago

    Is it sexest to say the dirt bag left is more male friendly? ( Honest question there, I'll gladly remove this post if I'm taking out of my ass)

    I know two women who will sometimes read this site but never post because they strongly dislike even the "friendly" hostility of this site. If that's the case and not just a singular experience the entire vibe of the site would have change to be more inclusive.

            • the_river_cass [she/her]
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              edit-2
              4 years ago

              ugh, I was typing a reply to you and @TG_TrashGirl when I got some weird harassment and she'd deleted her account by the time I got back to finish writing... uuurggggh, we've gotta stop this bleeding or we're all just going to get fed up and leave...

                • the_river_cass [she/her]
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                  4 years ago

                  this week... my inbox has been obnoxious for almost a full week now. I can't even link half the horrible shit cause it's targeted and creepy af or so bigoted it'll trigger a bunch of unsuspecting people. I know it's mostly the crowd we shooed back to stupidpol and their friends but there's enough bullshit here to go around without them. so yeah, very, very frustrated, even though I'm extremely glad the bans happened.

                    • the_river_cass [she/her]
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                      4 years ago

                      you too :af-heart:. I keep going cause I want this to be a space for all of us and I'm so angry and sad that it continuously falls short.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Maybe op is being downvoted because it's not the left in general, it's pretty much this sub.

          • Pezevenk [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            Even in the body it says "the movement" which seems to imply this place is "the movement"? Idk it's kind of a weird post. There are very few women HERE, it's a problem of this sub, not the movement or the left in general.

              • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                It's not really a semantics issue. And I really think people gotta stop making a big fuss about their interpretations of downvotes.

                • the_river_cass [she/her]
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                  4 years ago

                  hey, people get really worked up about this stuff because it's triggering and because it's something we have to fight constantly. please, please, please don't tell people what to make a fuss about... the comment has a long, misogynist history in the anglo world.

                  • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                    4 years ago

                    Users being upset about a general culture that doesn’t care about them is about their experience. It’s not about “dogpileing on them”

                    You don't think it happens online at all? Because I've seen it happen so much and it's just bad. It feels like everyone is out to get everyone else at its worst and it's gotten worse with covid. I think I'm gonna leave this place and social media as a whole for a while because the lockdown thing has made me spend a lot of time that I shouldn't be spending online because most people are either miserable or trying to make others miserable and it's making me feel like shit too by osmosis. I don't want to be the reason someone deletes their account. If saying something like what I said affects someone so much even after attempting to explain myself then I really don't wanna stick around and be the reason this happens again.

                    It's not just this issue either. A while ago some user was upset because I posted a joke attacking the target of their post and they misinterpreted it as an attack on their post itself, and because apparently I had said something negative against one of the other (completely irrelevant) post they recently made, they thought I had a personal grudge against them and I was going around attacking them. It's like it's 100 times harder to communicate anything properly, and everyone is already either pissed, tense or depressed so any misstep from anyone leads to shit flinging in the best case, or really depressing shit that hurts people in the worst case and I don't want more of that. May this pandemic end so that we can return to talking to people and organising irl, achieving fucking anything at all, and reaching some kind of understanding. I miss it and it's been months since I had meaningful human contact and this is not a substitute, this is worse than being alone.

                    So yeah bye I guess.

                      • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                        4 years ago

                        , I absolutely guarantee that your attitudes towards LGBT people alienate them irl and not just here.

                        I am LGBT. So are like most of the people close to me irl. Might as well just off myself since I'm clearly alienating everyone I care about.

                          • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                            4 years ago

                            Ah ok, I said I don't think being trans or being gay or being straight or being cis or whatever the fuck is necessarily biological and inherent at birth, so that means I don't care about trans people because you decided I was saying being trans is western decadence. I don't think there is anything I can say to convince you honestly.

                              • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                                4 years ago

                                Okay so if it’s not inherent at birth it’s something that people either choose or are taught right?

                                Something that is determined at a very early age maybe helped by some kind of hereditary disposition helping in most cases. Yes. Why is that bad again? It's literally been part of my experience as I explained before, as well as the experience of some people I have talked with, is my experience "disgustingly harmful"? Is it "straight out of a reactionary playbook"? Am I supposed to tell reactionaries that no, you see, it wasn't my FAULT, because I was born like that? How is that better from telling them "fuck you it is what it is and it's not my issue if you don't like it"?

                                If people are taught to be trans and some cultures have more trans people those culture taught more people to be trans. So then Western culture teaches people to be trans and if not for Western culture there wouldn’t be trans people.

                                What? Trans people don't exist just in "western culture", and there are cultures where it is much more commonplace than "western culture". Do you think there is western culture and a homogeneous block of non-western culture?

                                Like cool, you may not agree and you may think it's true, and that the effect is purely biological. But why are you trying to paint me as some kind of reactionary for arguing it? Do you know how easy it would be to paint you as a reactionary for arguing nature above nurture? I'm not doing it because I think it is unfair, why are you doing it to me?

                  • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                    4 years ago

                    Like, I literally made a big struggle session post about that same issue more than a month ago, before this shit started, just leaving it here before someone starts accusing me of not wanting this conversation to happen or whatever: https://hexbear.net/post/55018

                      • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                        4 years ago

                        I am not telling you the issue isn't real or whatever, jesus, this is EXACTLY the stuff I am talking about, just interpreting everyone's posts the worst way possible. I am saying that just because someone downvoted this post it isn't because they don't want this conversation to happen or because they're sexist or whatever the fuck, because people are now getting banned over downvoting stuff so this has to be said apparently. I don't disagree with the damn post. IN THIS VERY THREAD I supported its main point. Like, this sub having an issue is literally part of my first reply to you.

                          • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                            4 years ago

                            Alright, serious question, what did I say that might hurt someone?

                              • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                                4 years ago

                                OK. I am sorry if this made you feel that way but it genuinely isn't what I wanted these posts to be read as. I didn't want to dismiss the concerns, as I said the reason I posted this was about the downvotes in particular because there are tons of reasons why someone might want to downvote something. It wouldn't be a big deal and I wouldn't feel like I should say that if banning people according to what they downvote wasn't a policy.

                                Also maybe my responses came off more aggressive than I wanted because (not just due to this sub but other places too) lots of people are extremely suspicious towards other people all the time, and they just take the most uncharitable interpretation of what they're saying just to dogpile on them, and it makes everything very miserable and exhausting. That's what I thought you were trying to do when you said I was complaining about people making a fuss about this issue in general rather than just the specific part about the downvotes. And yeah I don't think all of the downvotes the post received were of the kind I said.

                  • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                    4 years ago

                    Ummm no? I think people have to stop the dumb downvote thing, I didn't object to this kind of conversation. Another thing people have to stop is twisting what others are saying.

    • the_river_cass [she/her]
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      4 years ago

      the megathread and the interest specific comms are more in this vein, but yeah you're right.

  • Qelp [they/them,she/her]
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    4 years ago

    I mean this site has quite a few women in it compared to other sites. Like every moderately popular thread has at least one [she/her] in it. Def not the majority , probably like a 70-30 or 60-40 split if you’re only counting active users