https://lemmy.nz/post/18610200/13255360

This user describes how most of the women-centered communities on Lemmy were shut down due to harassment of their members.

Another user adds “We need a safe space, but most of the women I know on here don’t have the time or energy to moderate it. And there’s so few of us, it feels like it’s not worth the effort anyway.”

  • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Back when I used Reddit, one of my favorite subs was TrollX. If we had a sub with that spirit, it would be a good start.

    Are there secret communities on Lemmy? Not that secret communities should be a default, but I was invited to a secret sub on Reddit years ago that was all women. It was a true safe space from harrassment, where we could talk about feminine things that we knew wouldn’t gain traction in main subs. I have no idea how it started, but I knew that users who were invited to join had previously been vetted by the sub’s mods - they saw that I’d made feminist posts and multiple comments about being a woman, and didn’t go around picking fights. It was like a background check.

    I don’t believe there is any one solution, but starting with dedicated communities (in the spirit of TrollX), with mods that smack down misogyny and (actual) trolls, sounds like the best way to start.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      1 month ago

      Yeah private communities on Reddit are an actual delight. /r/centuryclub was an unexpectedly fun community to be a part of. I kinda miss the memeing that went on in intro posts on there.

  • WhatSay@slrpnk.net
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    1 month ago

    I had much more toxic behavior at reddit, but it is hard to imagine any safe space online anywhere.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      1 month ago

      it definitely depends where you go on all platforms. blahaj zone is good, world is bad. places moderated by mods with actual experience are generally good, places moderated by jordanlund and similar get pretty toxic pretty fast. :(

  • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 month ago

    Lemmy is a relatively small and niche platform, imo small platforms tend to be like that. First men show up, then transfems, and then cis women. We seem to be at the second stage and while things can be done better (like a female only instance) I do think things will get better.

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    In Mastodon, this is typically solved with defederation, block lists, and admins enforcing mod policies. How come this approach doesn’t work for Lemmy? Is it not decentralized enough?

    • Luffy@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Yes. Just look at .world. As long as world is still federated into other communities, the fediverse is not federated.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      1 month ago

      it’s not decentralized enough is exactly the answer. lemmy.world holds a huge portion of users and communities despite having middling at best moderation. illustrating this, one of my favorite communities (196) just recently tried to force everyone to migrate to .world. fortunately, the community at large openly rejected that absurd move, but it definitely exemplified the centralizing forces at play.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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    1 month ago

    I run a few communities that I would consider to be fairly women-oriented, or at least I would expect them to be interested. I do not expect many men to be interested, and hey that’s okay. I welcome anyone who wants to, but no harm if it’s not your thing.

    But any post that gets made gets downvoted to hell. I routinely have to moderate and remove posts of “Why is this here” and “This is stupid” even though there are people who enjoy it, they are just swarmed by other commenters, and it’s made my members less active.

    It’s pretty clear how people vote and act here, I’m coming up on 2 years here and it’s been like how you’d expect. Downvotes don’t mean “I don’t think this adds to the conversation” or “This is appropriate”, they mean “I personally don’t like this” here, and I think that kills a lot of our smaller communities.

    • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      Very disappointing to find out the real reason why women-oriented communities aren’t exactly thriving here. But not surprising, I guess, although I was expecting better from a platform that seems so generally left wing. Can’t even expect the men here to stomp that shit out. And now I’m waiting for someone to come and respond something along the lines of “not all men” while not addressing or confronting the issue or taking any steps to push for change.

      Edit: aren’t admins able to see who is downvoting? So basically the admins of your instance are just sitting back and allowing certain people to ruin things for others in communities that don’t concern them?

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
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        1 month ago

        So basically the admins of your instance are just sitting back and allowing certain people to ruin things for others in communities that don’t concern them?

        Yes.

        • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          I feel like fucking rioting now lol. Hopefully one of these days there’s enough of us here that see red over this shit to do exactly that.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        1 month ago

        I can, but the problem is how do you sort out genuine downvoters from as you put them, the stompers? I’ve been working with a few other admins to have a more automated solution. Right now I have to go into the database and do queries about once a month to find trends

        • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          If it’s a particular community being targeted, I’d probably start with people who aren’t subscribed or don’t contribute but camp out downvoting everything anyway. I mean, to me it sounds very much like this user’s community is being blatantly targeted, so I’m not sure I understand why trends still need to be researched before anything can be done about it.

          But I’m not an admin and I actually don’t know what tools you have available to you. I was just under the impression that you could see when people who don’t actually belong to a certain community go there just to downvote everything. Reddit managed to make people fear consequences for downvote brigading though, not sure how they pulled it off.

          If this really is something that admins on various Lemmy instances are just too helpless to do anything about, then I apologise for directing my anger towards admins. And then I don’t know what the solution is either because without any sort of assistance in the matter, women are just going to give up even trying to set up spaces here (actually seems like that’s already happened for the most part). And so the culture will just never change.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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            1 month ago

            From the UI, we get to see who downvoted a post, but nothing more than that unfortunately.

            Trying to see who consistently downvoted posts, or who does who isn’t subscribed is not available in the UI and requires going in the database and running scripts. Which I do, but it’s a whole other later that I need to automate but haven’t had time to do.

            • macroplastic@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              I’d be happy to write a bunch of sql for this type of thing and throw it on github if you have any more specific requests / if instance admins would find it helpful

      • Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        I was devastated from the most recent US election as I learned a similarity between all political views is hating women. On another note, it’s been 17 hours and I am immune to sarcasm; NoT aLL mEn

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      1 month ago

      Downvotes don’t mean “I don’t think this adds to the conversation” or “This is appropriate”, they mean “I personally don’t like this” here, and I think that kills a lot of our smaller communities.

      Yet another nasty redditism inherited by Lemmy… and frankly that’s why I think that we should have multiple types of downvote, this way people can express their disagreement in a fast and pseudo-anonymous way without fucking everything up.

      • .Donuts@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s just the internet, not necessarily a redditism.

        And instead of a rainbow of downvoting options, just disable showing the vote counter.

        This way, you can still downvote, but nobody sees the end result except maybe mods and admins for moderation purposes.

        You can still use the upvote/downvote ratio to sort comments or posts in your feed, but it would be working under the hood instead of out in the open.

        • 3dmvr@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          Also you can always hide them, most apps allow hiding them (that ive tried)

        • 3dmvr@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          I like seeing it, this site has less value without it, why are you on lemmyworld when it has upvotes/downvotes? You have other options without them.

      • chuymatt@startrek.website
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        1 month ago

        Kind of like slashdot modding of yore? I don’t recall if they still do it, but they had multiple positive and negative tags for moderation.

    • inlandempire@jlai.lu
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      1 month ago

      I’ve experienced this (though on a much smaller scale), Lemmy should have the option to disable downvotes for users not subscribed to a community, or at least not members of the instance

      • Jomn@jlai.lu
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        1 month ago

        I really like the idea of having to be subscribed to a community in order to be able to vote. It would encourage people to use the correct tools (subscribe/block) if they like or don’t like a community itself.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Apparently mods can and do ban people who just downvote everything they see, there’s even been posts here about it.

      Perhaps this is the solution?

      • lath@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yes. The correct solution is to kick them out. Why are they even there if it isn’t to participate? If the topic is inappropriate, make a report and let the mods handle it.

        • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
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          1 month ago

          Drag’s philosophy on content policing is this:

          The mods choose the rules and remove content that breaks the rules. The users downvote and argue with content that disrupts the space without breaking the rules. If actions that disrupt the space without breaking the rules create a pattern, the mods create a new rule. The users decide if they agree with the new rule. If they don’t, they create a new community and the two compete.

          Downvotes are absolutely essential to this ecosystem. Platforms without downvotes, like Twitter, suffer for it. The algorithm can’t tell the difference between hostile engagement and positive engagement, so comments that damage the space and provoke arguments are boosted as long as they don’t break the rules badly enough for the admins to get involved. Some platforms try to solve this problem by having mods and admins do three times as much work to remove all the comments that would be downvoted. This causes mod fatigue and over-moderation.

          Downvotes are a disagree button BUT your disagreement is public, and if your disagreements form a pattern, the moderators should be able to action it.

          What Lemmy needs is better mod tools to show analytics on downvotes (technical problem; could be solved by any determined programmer), and better action on downvotes from the admins (social problem; requires the community to dump instances that don’t moderate their users)

            • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
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              1 month ago

              Which will in fact just be a combined “block user + hide post” action in the backend 😏

          • lath@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Better mod tools are a repeatedly requested feature. The question remains whether it’s being ignored or it’s difficult to implement and cover the entire fediverse.

            • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              My guess is a bit of a mixture of both - but it at least can’t be a trivial thing to implement, or else it probably would already have been added to the project by someone, it’s free software and open source after all.

              • lath@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Not necessarily. As free and open as it is, not everyone can add to it. There have been some caught, yet almost successful attempts to insert malicious code in open source software.

                Also, the contributors might be passing on the torch thinking in the same way. And far as I remember, the original devs did a similar thing by letting others add in whatever.

                So I’d say that until someone says they’re specifically working on it, nobody actually is.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        1 month ago

        It is, I just wish it wasn’t. I don’t want to ban people for having negative opinions, but there are a lot of people who only downvote, and for them it’s the only option. There also aren’t tools to easily automate it.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I think I understand why one of your communities is getting downvoted, it probably attracts some dedicated megas. I’ll try to go in and upvote to counter act. I’m not a fan, but I’ll try to help out.

      Reddit used to have a rule that you couldn’t downvote more than 3 or 4 posts in any community for a certain period. They went inactive while still showing as active. I think that might have been the beginning of fuzzy votes, but turned into so much more shittyness. It still might be a good solution for here. I still think mods should also be able to tag users as default, it’s really hard to remember who was hateful yesterday and troll baiting, but acting all nice today.

    • CatZoomies@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Thanks for running those communities. I try to post to one of them where I can (I.e., make memes), but I’m not really a content creator. I just like to lurk in comments and respond when I feel like it’s worth me putting in my opinion or effort.

      I’m aligned with your perspective. Hard to create or promote content when people downvote it due to hive mind. It’s discouraging and unwelcoming because it sends the signal “why is this here, you don’t belong in Lemmy”.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        1 month ago

        Thank you, Zoomies, that means a lot, honestly. I’m not one either, but I try to keep them going. I see the upvotes, people enjoy it, but I think many are a bit nervous to comment, but it’ll grow eventually. I’m going to put some time on this over the next week to automate something I think

        • CatZoomies@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          One thing I need to do is try to comment more. Hard to come up with stuff to say. And I’m one of those folks that types stuff, then second guesses it and backs out from posting.

          I upvote what I can, but that’s always bare minimum effort. Consistent commenting is much more effort. And the extremely hard part is making original posts along with memes. I have no idea how Picard Maneuver does it. Bro carries Lemmy on his back alone lol.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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            1 month ago

            I appreciate when you do, and I think others do too. One of the things I had to do was just stop caring about what other people thought. If they liked it, they’d upvote, or maybe they’d downvote, but no matter what you’re adding to the conversation. I just dump out whatever I’m thinking now!

            I do have to step up my meme game tho

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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    1 month ago

    Yup, that’s a problem. Specially because, once the gender ratio gets too skewed towards one side (it is), the Petrie multiplier kicks in; then the sexism targets each woman more and more frequently.

    Potential solutions that I see for the problem:

    • Perhaps creating a few instances for women? I don’t mean instances to talk only about feminism, but for general stuff. With higher standards against harassment.
    • Better mod policing against harassment. Collective action, so it’s easy to say and hard to do it, I know.
      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        The admins of what? There is no singular “admins” of the Fediverse. That’s kind of the whole point.

          • Ech@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            I still don’t read it that way, but assuming it is, that is still unreasonable. There are simply too many differing viewpoints, by design. The best option for this sort of thing is to start a female focused instance. It won’t be able to affect the wider fediverse directly, but it would be able provide the space that is seemingly absent atm.

            • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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              1 month ago

              If I’m reading it right, I also disagree with it, on a practical level; it’s like herding cats and not enough. I also think that an instance for women is the way to go, at least at the start.

              However, to be fair with drag those actions aren’t mutually exclusive, and even if only a few admin teams keep a closer watch on sexism, it’s already improving the situation.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
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              1 month ago

              There are simply too many differing viewpoints, by design

              The instances which support women don’t have to federate with the instances whose viewpoint is that harassing women is fine.

              • Ech@lemm.ee
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                1 month ago

                Maybe they should, but it’s not going to be a black and white issue for most admins. There’s a reason instances like blahaj and yiffit exist. A space like that for women would be the most realistic way to get the protections for female users in the fediverse that you’re saying should exist.

      • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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        1 month ago

        I think that it would be a good start. But only a start; sexism is a social problem, so even if you ban the individuals saying sexist stuff, you still see sexism elsewhere.

        And even if you ban overtly sexist users, others will keep:

        • focusing on topics typically enjoyed by men, and typically disliked by women;
        • interpreting what each other says based on masculine social norms;
        • assuming that they’re dealing with other men unless explicitly told otherwise;

        etc.

        That’s still aggravating, you know? You can’t pinpoint why but it still makes you feel unwelcome.

  • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    It seems to be one of the problems where Lemmy feeling a bit like old Reddit is really, really bad. Remembering from back then, it took many years of concerted effort and dedicated subreddits attacking sexism (that were in turn harassed and hated on by the “mainstream” Reddit audience, like SRS for example) to slowly change the culture. And it’s not like Reddit is some sort of safe haven even now.

    • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
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      1 month ago

      So, something like Hexbear’s the_dunk_tank, but against bigotry? Not sure any of the admins on the Fediverse would allow a community like that. Everyone in charge here seems very anti-drama, which is another word for pro-status-quo

  • Riley@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    It’s especially jarring coming from Mastodon, which is broadly more diverse than Lemmy. I’ve witnessed some really questionable comments here during the last year. I really hope something can be done to improve things. I think a feminist-specific instance might be the best option, much in the way someplace like Hexbear has managed to create a fairly strong community bloc with strong core beliefs.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Sadly hexbear doesn’t have a ton of really active comms specific to women. Though at least they’re very aggressive removing misogyny across the instance. It’s been categorically less stressful posting on hexbear vs the rest of lemmy simply because I’m not then checking an inbox with replies/dms calling me ‘removed’ or ‘it’ or other charming insults.

      Removing downvotes makes sense too, though I also like keeping them and using them to ban people abusing it. The voter is only visible to admins though.

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzOP
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        1 month ago

        Hexbear might be safe for binary women, but as far as drag can tell, they’re still sexist against a few million other gender identities. Drag went to Hexbear and searched for discussions about dragself pronouns. It wasn’t good.

        • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          I wasn’t able to find posts drag is referring to, as near as I can tell both instances drag uses defed hexbear. Feel free to send me a link.

        • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Not exactly the point. Spaces reserved for a specific community of people alone tend to be breeding grounds for extremist viewpoints and toxicity

          • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            Not sure you can call half the population a ‘community’ but OK. Women come from all walks of life and ideologies as I’m sure you’ll have to imagine.

            Also, even in the majority of women-centric spaces in the internet, men are still allowed s long as they aren’t assholes. The only purpose would be to make a specific spot where women can post without fear of being harassed.

            • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              If you’ve participated in any women-centric sub on Reddit you’ll know what I’m talking about. Try r/Askwomen or r/feminism. The toxicity on those subs is over the roof.

              Something similar might happen if women-centric instances (not even communities) are created. Kinda like a hexbear-esque situation.

              • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
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                1 month ago

                I have for years and haven’t seen any of the toxicity you’re talking about, except towards men showing up being right cunts. I’m guessing that’s how you encountered it, too.

                • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  Nope, there’s toxicity there and it’s widely complained about on Reddit (including women themselves) - especially concerning the first two subs i mentioned. Have you considered you’re one of the toxic participants?

  • Sop@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 month ago

    The is why dull_mens_club gives me really bad vibes. Any similar community aimed at women would be harassed into oblivion.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      Any similar community aimed at women would be harassed into oblivion.

      And why is that a problem with dull men’s club? I mean I’m not subbed to it but it occasionally appears in my feed (I browse /all) and it seems to be just what it says on the cover: A dull men’s club.

    • zox@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I do get the joke; Even so, to this post’s credit, that this comment [at time of writing] is +3 is a great representation of their challenges.

      The whole point is about people feeling legitimate using the platform. Jokes feeding on the trope “there aren’t women on the Internet” reinforces alienation. It makes sense they wouldn’t feel comfortable if dismissal is the community upvoted response to them -already- feeling unwelcome.

      • ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        I really don’t see how upvoting a silly joke is a representation of anything.

        It was solely meant for some giggles, to relax the conversation about a serious topic a slight bit. If you will, it’s more like karma whoring [no pun intended].

        • zox@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Understandable! Apologies if I came across overly chastising towards you specifically.

          Instent vs impact is pretty hard in this case. Part of my response is from conversations with friends in STEM fields and the impacts of the male centric nature of the space (comp sci especially) has on them. Especially with how much men self-reinforce that position. It truly is an exclusionary space for them.

          I hadn’t read as many comments in this thread yet and there are some well thought out discussions here too, which I’m glad to read.

          • ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            There’s nothing to apologize for, really, you weren’t harsh and certainly not towards me specifically. You even acknowledged the joke, and just stated your opinion, which I simply don’t fully agree with.

            I can’t remotely relate to the struggles some women have to go through in male-dominated fields.

            I’m a software developer myself, by passion, and I have had some female coworkers with whom I had been designated on projects. And TBH, it never occurred to me to treat them any differently than male coworkers. Also, as far as I could tell, none of the other male coworkes treated them differently either.

            So, just because there are some men out there acting like a douchebag by giving women a hard time to feel included in a field, doesn’t mean the world is full of these people. They’re simply more conspicuous, than the others.

            Now, is this a cultural thing, that depends on the country one lives in? Or does it depend on the size of the company one works for? Maybe, I don’t know! I’m not a researcher/psychologist to provide any meaningful insight into this issue, since I neither can’t relate on a personal level, nor have I witnessed it.

            All I can do, is either just continue scrolling, or, if I’m in the mood, post some silly joke to (hopefully) make at least one person giggle while reading through the comments.

            PS: I really like the richness in your vocabulary.

  • wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    Is there anything others can do to help? Feddit.uk wouldn’t tolerate this but I’m not sure what a regular user can do apart from look out for harassment, call it out and report promptly