(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.

  • Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 months ago

    I wonder why this is? (Serious) Tiktok has significantly more female users than male… Maybe it’s a format thing?

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 months ago

        i still wonder why that is when sites like lemmy and reddit are just as open to everyone as tiktok.

        is this about staying away from the hateful reddit nerds?

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
            0·
            2 months ago

            yeah im already starting to get that feeling, but are they disproportionaly being banned, like what is actually happening?

            • CherenkovBlue@lemmy.myserv.one
              0·
              2 months ago

              We just lurk and look at memes and then go socialize elsewhere. It’s not worth the emotional energy to engage with so many males on this platform.

              I used to participate in Lemmy after I left Reddit, but migrated to another place. This is one of the rare times I am actually choosing to comment on Lemmy.

          • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
            0·
            2 months ago

            Do you want the moderators to pin your comments on every post and make them glitter? What are they supposed to do? Intrude your social life so you can spend more time on lemmy?