Ask Lemmy

Mod notice: semi-controversial but serious question has been raised about an actual issue. Keep it civil and stay classy.

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Or at least be tastefully funny about it.

EDIT:

Look, I'm not about to post comments myself in those places, but happening upon one recently after a previous post like this, I noticed how poorly the rule was displayed.

Each post should have a stickied mod comment at the top stating commenting is for women only. Otherwise it's easy not to notice what community the post is in that you're responding to, especially on mobile.

You can expect people to know the rules of any community before posting, or take the time to look, or whatever, but the only person you're hurting is yourself for having those expectations.

If your community is public, the onus is on you (or rather, the mods of the community) to make it as clear as possible what the rules are, if they exclude people or go beyond "be civil."

Personally, I block pretty much all exclusionary communities for a few reasons:

• I frequently do not see the community name before looking at a thread and finding something interesting to converse on, partly because of my neurodivergences. This leads to breaking rules without intending to. Safer to block.

• I sometimes have experienced RSD as a symptom of my neurodivergences and thus intentionally take action to prevent it.

• I value inclusivity and anarchic social organization as fundamental parts of my ethical framework and find social exclusion based upon a person's immutable traits incredibly offensive (the intensity of this is definitely related to my neurodivergences as well).

This is not to say that I don't believe that women deserve a space where they have control and agency, especially with the immense amounts of misogyny on the Internet and meatspace. Nor do they need to consider my feelings nor any other man's when deciding their rules and whether to be inclusive or exclusive.

I do, however, think that the hard-line exclusionary practices diminish the perspective, both for the participants and for men who could definitely use the insights into the bullshit that women have to continue to deal with. Lots of missed opportunity to build understanding and strengthen allyship. It also makes it easier for toxic exclusionary ideologies, like TERFs to take root (every group excluded makes it easier to excuse excluding another) while also preventing people who have not discovered their feminine gender identities from participating in conversation with other women in ways that could help them to uncover important things about themselves.

Anyway, enjoy and I hope that you find your space helpful to you, regardless of what myself or any other man feels about it. If the community does become inclusive, I'd definitely like to to know so that I can unblock it.

Honestly the varied mobile platforms don't always present the channel/groups rules in advance. Especially if one is just browsing trending topics. There can potentially be no way for some users to be informed enough before they see a topic they want to interact with.

Best solution I found for similar issue is polite advisement of the rules via dm or other preferred method and helping them learn and have better internet etiquette.

Calling folks out publicly can get alot of negative associations with it as well which might end with you group on the wrong end of a troll.

Why the hell SOME women can't stop generalizing men's behaviour?

What the fuck is wrong with you, guys?

the rules are clearly presented

I use Voyager. Community rules are hidden unless you specifically go to that community page, open the menu, and select "sidebar". It's incredibly easy to miss.

If a community only wants some people posting then a quick fix is to not allow just anyone to post to it.

TIL there is women only spaces on the internet. How do you even enforce it?

"The rules are clearly presented"

WRONG! Posts show up in aggregate lists. You know, like the main page of lemmy instances. Where individual community rules do not appear at all if someone clicks on the post directly. I bet a significant amount of the time, people do not even realize which community they're replying to posts in.

Don't like it? Maybe Lemmy needs a way to either remove communities from standard aggregate lists, or to force a popup of community rules when a post is navigated to for a first time viewer that hasn't even seen the community page. Then I'd totally understand being pissed off at first time rule violators.

That's a bit of an overreaction.

The rules are not clearly presented when you're just scrolling through a generic AllPost feed. I've almost commented to one of these just the other day before realizing at the last second what community it was.

Also, when you're discussing men, especially negatively, and expect men to not jump in to defend themselves, that's a bit naive to think they'll stay out of it. Some of those threads can get really echo chamber and dogpile feeling.

And people would be throwing a shit fit if the genders were reversed here. I'm sure there are some bitter people out there that don't like the double standard. There seems to be a lot of overgeneralization where the bad behavior of a select few gets broadly painted onto the entire gender. This, again, has a double standard of being an acceptable thing to do, to the point that even within this thread someone is mocking others for pointing out "not all men" as a response.

Based on the comments here and in the previous similar post I have seen, the vast, vast majority of people (presumably men) highlight how this is a problem of visibility of posts in public feeds.

It's a tradeoff between having the community public for discoverability and accepting that many people will not check the rules and violate them, some inadvertently.

The alternative is to make the community private, and accept that women will need to discover a women-relates community by searching for "women", which doesn't seem incredibly unlikely.

From the sentiments I read, most people wouldn't care at all if the community was private and wouldn't have a desire to "invade" it. I definitely feel part of this group.

Considering that it's in the interest of the community (apparently) to have only women, I think it's fair to expect the (minimal) effort from future members to look for it (plus advertising it in posts etc.) on them instead of expecting the vast majority of the users (the fediverse is mostly males) to add friction and having to check the rules of every single community of every post they open (now it might be a community, more might come). Yes, community rules are important, but being realistic, if you don't behave like an asshole you don't need to worry about them in 99% of the times.

However, if this tradeoff is not deemed acceptable, I think there is no point complaining about people "invading" women spaces because it's guaranteed that many people will comment without reading the rules, as I am sure the almost totality of users does all the time. Even without counting the ones who intentionally violate the rule, there is always going to be an organic amount of people who will do so inadvertently.

At this point I think the tradeoff is so clear, that discussing the topic in such a confrontational way looks more like rage-bait than anything aimed at solving the problem.

It's not immediately obvious when it appears in your feed, I also don't think people expect to be excluded due to protected characteristics. I know I wouldn't have expected a community to discriminate.

Man here, there have been several times when I have found a thread talking about men and shitting all over all men and painting with broad strokes, claiming that we are all awful and just looking to use women.

I feel offended at indirectly being included in a group like that, and have joined in discussions in the past to try and explain that we are not all terrible people.

Over time however, I have learned to ignore the hate spewers and just move on.

Personally, if I see a community where the rules are politely explaining the situation, I just block the community out of respect for the xommunity.

the rules are clearly presented. either youre not paying attention or youre just an asshole who purposefully throws their opinion in a place explicitly not wanting it.

what the fuck is wrong with you guys?

The same as with those women wanting to get in this men space? I wonder...

More seriously, you ask a legit question (as it would be legit if it was a man asking why some women so badly want to join in men-only spaces), a question that could trigger an interesting discussion, but why does it have to be so fucking angry? (See how poorly it passes?)

Lemmy is a public space. Everyone can participate.

Imagine if lemmy was a physical piece of public land. Could you create a community on it that can only be accessed by women? Something like this village?

People in general want to be included and some even more so when they’re told they’re not allowed in.

It’s easy when it’s a physical space, ropes and security keep the riff raff out. With online spaces, it requires active moderation, mods who are willing to enforce the rules and ban those that violate them.

Say I'm a trans female. Can I post then? Trans man? Gay man? Gay woman?

It's self policing. If they're being obnoxious or killing the environment or culture of the space, downvote/block/report and move on.

These comments…

what the fuck is wrong with you guys?

+1

Community rules are community rules, and you can either follow them or get banned from the community. How is ‘women only’ any different?

As for the excuse of visibility: the rule is very often in the title, and the initial post, yet not followed.

As for the excuse of how they can tell: well if they can’t, okay, you evaded detection. But posts very often declare “I’m a guy and this is my take…”

I honestly don’t get it, especially on an internet “refuge” like Lemmy where users should be sensitive to persecution and the importance of safe, moderated discussion spaces.

Make it a private group. If it shows up in the general list, it's a free and public spot.

Lmao the thread shows all the exact problems laid bare.

You got the denial guy, you got the false equivalency guy, you got the not all men guy, just incredible they're all here.

Something about a women only space triggers people. Just look at the people replying here. They can't seem to help themselves.

Would be nice if Lemmy and Piefed had a way to limit posting and commenting to subscribers. That should at least stop accidental comments while keeping visibility.

Not for me, because I'm aubscribed because I'm curious and might want to share interesting threads with my wife.

Anyways, brb making a feature request.

Edit: !womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone moved to Piefed, so the feature request should be made there. And I just lost a half typed request to Android's bullshit memory management and now I don't have any energy left. Someone else can take over.

"Why the hell can't blacks stay out of white only spaces"

Successful woman-focused spaces incorporate men, because men are fathers of daughters; brothers of sisters; sons of mothers; and partners, friends, coworkers, mentors, and teammates of women. Men are relevant and important to addressing women's issues.

Are women allowed to answer this question? It's directed at men.