Sure, women are allowed pretty much everywhere, but it still doesn’t mean that we are safe from harassment or that the spaces aren’t extremely male-dominated. And if an oppressed group wanting their own space and complaining about their oppression is a hate group to you, look inwards.
I see where this is coming from, and from that angle, it might seem (and sometimes be) noble.
The problem arises when the oppressed group starts falsely lumping everyone outside the group into oppressors, which so often happens around gendered issues, among others. So many times I’ve seen women in such spaces lashing out at men at large and then bringing this mentality to the world outside the group.
“Men can’t be discriminated against - they are oppressors”
“Men are abusive by nature”
“Men are unsafe to be around”
“Men are the problem”
“It is always men”
“Sure, a man might just be a chill person, but he always carries privilege and is thereby part of the problem”
“Men go through different socialization that breaks them and makes them abusive”
These are just few of the arguments I’ve seen in the wild, on several occasions.
To be clear: it’s not by any means exclusive to women. There are plenty of examples of men grouping together on much the same grounds, spreading similar false narratives about women. And this is something that shouldn’t happen, ever, under any premise. It erodes our ability to build bridges, to communicate, to find actual solutions - and to support each other, whatever the gender distribution of any given place is. And currently, Lemmy is certainly not the worst on the scale, even though it could fare better.
I personally do not care, I usually do not want to go into communities/places where I’m not welcome. But disceiminating basing on gender, sex, sexuality, race, ideology, etc… usually frowned upon.
I just find that double standard quite pronounced.
I would agree with you but this is like being surrounded by men for 99% of the time all the time forever and then having a community that is not 99% men.
That said I don’t fully agree with them, half the time it really is weirdos downplaying women’s experiences, but the other half is a woman giving a story and ending it with something like “men are disgusting,” and someone (not very nicely) replying “what do you mean men are disgusting??”
I wouldn’t say that’s a reasonable response, but definitely understandable, and I’ve seen it downplayed as an incel response pretty often
I think your stats are a bit skewed, it’s likely more than 1% of the entire population (internet or otherwise) that are women, trans women, or NB. (I know you’re speaking entirely too hyperbolically rather than literally, but)
I mean, just in the US alone:
The total population of United States is estimated to be 332.39 million with 164.55 million males (49.50%) and 167.84 million females (50.50%). There are 3.3 million more females than males in United States.
I find it hard to say that 3.3mil more women than men is “99% men all the time,” sounds like it’s closer to 50.5%.
As for them having their own community, idgaf really, have fun, but also:
It’s definitely a double standard, and fraternal organizations are often met with just as much hostility and discrimination suits (ex: Boy Scouts were pressured to allow girls, while Girl Scouts not only never faced the same pressure, those leaning on Boy Scouts to br inclusive actively defend Girl Scouts as a male exclusionary space, and I cannot grasp the cognitive dissonance that takes). Personally I think we need to pick a lane as a whole either direction, it’s either fine or not to have exclusionary orgs and comms like that, no double standard, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Also I think it’s somewhat of an invitation for problems to have your exclusionary non-public community in public. Should prrooooobably just have something more secure that people won’t constantly stumble into, but if one has fun with constant moderation I suppose it’s a good way to feed one’s addiction. Seems like it’d get old, personally.
It’s especially ridiculous to me to make someone’s demographic the subject of a post, while barring that demographic from participation (at least on that post.) I guess I get it, it’s like talking shit behind someone’s back instead of to their face, which is a lot easier, but it is telling that if you replace the demographic in question with any other of your choosing, the problems with the practice would become glaringly obvious.
That said if they want to be exclusionary, reactionary, and complain about an entire demographic without them there to speak their side? Well I’m used to it, you should hear the shit my uncle says, so I say have fun, fuck it.
On lemmy as well as reddit it is by far majority men, idk why you’d think I was talking about irl. A lot of people talk way more online than irl.
I do agree having just a men’s space is important, I think the reason for things like boy scouts being mixed is so you can have people of both genders interacting while building and doing things together, which is really important learning and doesn’t happen much in schools. Is this more or less important than having a purely boys space, i really don’t know. That said I’m not opposed to pure male spaces once people aren’t in school anymore, and it likely is important, but I can maybe try to explain the double standard.
I think we would both agree men are generally more aggressive and competitive, due to higher testosterone. That means they will generally take up more of the space and conversation, and be more boisterous. This means a few men in a woman’s space will impact it much more than a few women in a men’s space. Women being generally less aggressive stern competitive etc their voices are often just lost or very quiet in normal life. People want to talk to others with similar experiences and commiserate, and that’s hard to do for women if they’re not hearing other women. I think irl even if you didn’t identify as a woman but had very similar experiences to women, most good groups would say ya you’re also welcome. It’s sort of just a bad categorization for shared experiences, but the best one we have for now.
Idk I don’t look at people venting against any demographic and think I need to speak up (as long as it’s not just hateful or wrong). It’s like if I said “I have to lock my car in majority black neighborhoods,” most non radical leftists would say “ya true but they’re not more dangerous because they’re black its because they’re poor” to which I would say “ya. I still have to lock my car here though.” Same thing in that thread, men wouldn’t do that if they had more support from men AND women, but the statement was totally fair and not really that negative, it felt more like “it’s sad this is the way things are right now.” Though, testosterone DOES sorta push men to think being nice = in love, so it’s not a totally fair comparison.
The reason it’s public is to make it as easy as possible for women to stumble into it and post and comment, and hoping everyone else will be understanding. Making it private or sign-up only or whatever basically loses the whole point of being able to hear other women.
Online communities don’t have to have the same demographics as physical locations. Why does it seem weird to you that either gender would want to vent about the opposite one without reading 100 replies by the group being vented about.
That’s not the weird part (beyond being by nature exclusionary so if you think that is weird then I guess there’s that) but rather the semi-public-but-not-really aspect, personally were I to have a woman exclusionary forum, it wouldn’t be out in the open but something more controllable like a discord server (preferably without the privacy nightmare but I have no will to create this space and prefer places where all are welcome so I haven’t done much research on where I’d create that.)
Just seems like inviting unnecessary conflict and work for the mods, unless that’s the goal I suppose.
Yeah, men should go to the back of that bus right?
Oh, poor poor oppressed men that aren’t allowed anywhere on the internet!
The problem is not being allowed somewhere. Women are allowed pretty much everywhere, too.
What is inadequate is building what are essentially hate groups and not letting the opposite side defend themselves.
This turns to unnecessary and brutal radicalization that is antithetic to a productive change.
Sure, women are allowed pretty much everywhere, but it still doesn’t mean that we are safe from harassment or that the spaces aren’t extremely male-dominated. And if an oppressed group wanting their own space and complaining about their oppression is a hate group to you, look inwards.
I see where this is coming from, and from that angle, it might seem (and sometimes be) noble.
The problem arises when the oppressed group starts falsely lumping everyone outside the group into oppressors, which so often happens around gendered issues, among others. So many times I’ve seen women in such spaces lashing out at men at large and then bringing this mentality to the world outside the group.
“Men can’t be discriminated against - they are oppressors” “Men are abusive by nature” “Men are unsafe to be around” “Men are the problem” “It is always men” “Sure, a man might just be a chill person, but he always carries privilege and is thereby part of the problem” “Men go through different socialization that breaks them and makes them abusive”
These are just few of the arguments I’ve seen in the wild, on several occasions.
To be clear: it’s not by any means exclusive to women. There are plenty of examples of men grouping together on much the same grounds, spreading similar false narratives about women. And this is something that shouldn’t happen, ever, under any premise. It erodes our ability to build bridges, to communicate, to find actual solutions - and to support each other, whatever the gender distribution of any given place is. And currently, Lemmy is certainly not the worst on the scale, even though it could fare better.
I personally do not care, I usually do not want to go into communities/places where I’m not welcome. But disceiminating basing on gender, sex, sexuality, race, ideology, etc… usually frowned upon.
I just find that double standard quite pronounced.
I would agree with you but this is like being surrounded by men for 99% of the time all the time forever and then having a community that is not 99% men.
That said I don’t fully agree with them, half the time it really is weirdos downplaying women’s experiences, but the other half is a woman giving a story and ending it with something like “men are disgusting,” and someone (not very nicely) replying “what do you mean men are disgusting??”
I wouldn’t say that’s a reasonable response, but definitely understandable, and I’ve seen it downplayed as an incel response pretty often
I think your stats are a bit skewed, it’s likely more than 1% of the entire population (internet or otherwise) that are women, trans women, or NB. (I know you’re speaking entirely too hyperbolically rather than literally, but)
I mean, just in the US alone:
I find it hard to say that 3.3mil more women than men is “99% men all the time,” sounds like it’s closer to 50.5%.
As for them having their own community, idgaf really, have fun, but also:
It’s definitely a double standard, and fraternal organizations are often met with just as much hostility and discrimination suits (ex: Boy Scouts were pressured to allow girls, while Girl Scouts not only never faced the same pressure, those leaning on Boy Scouts to br inclusive actively defend Girl Scouts as a male exclusionary space, and I cannot grasp the cognitive dissonance that takes). Personally I think we need to pick a lane as a whole either direction, it’s either fine or not to have exclusionary orgs and comms like that, no double standard, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Also I think it’s somewhat of an invitation for problems to have your exclusionary non-public community in public. Should prrooooobably just have something more secure that people won’t constantly stumble into, but if one has fun with constant moderation I suppose it’s a good way to feed one’s addiction. Seems like it’d get old, personally.
It’s especially ridiculous to me to make someone’s demographic the subject of a post, while barring that demographic from participation (at least on that post.) I guess I get it, it’s like talking shit behind someone’s back instead of to their face, which is a lot easier, but it is telling that if you replace the demographic in question with any other of your choosing, the problems with the practice would become glaringly obvious.
That said if they want to be exclusionary, reactionary, and complain about an entire demographic without them there to speak their side? Well I’m used to it, you should hear the shit my uncle says, so I say have fun, fuck it.
On lemmy as well as reddit it is by far majority men, idk why you’d think I was talking about irl. A lot of people talk way more online than irl.
I do agree having just a men’s space is important, I think the reason for things like boy scouts being mixed is so you can have people of both genders interacting while building and doing things together, which is really important learning and doesn’t happen much in schools. Is this more or less important than having a purely boys space, i really don’t know. That said I’m not opposed to pure male spaces once people aren’t in school anymore, and it likely is important, but I can maybe try to explain the double standard.
I think we would both agree men are generally more aggressive and competitive, due to higher testosterone. That means they will generally take up more of the space and conversation, and be more boisterous. This means a few men in a woman’s space will impact it much more than a few women in a men’s space. Women being generally less aggressive stern competitive etc their voices are often just lost or very quiet in normal life. People want to talk to others with similar experiences and commiserate, and that’s hard to do for women if they’re not hearing other women. I think irl even if you didn’t identify as a woman but had very similar experiences to women, most good groups would say ya you’re also welcome. It’s sort of just a bad categorization for shared experiences, but the best one we have for now.
Idk I don’t look at people venting against any demographic and think I need to speak up (as long as it’s not just hateful or wrong). It’s like if I said “I have to lock my car in majority black neighborhoods,” most non radical leftists would say “ya true but they’re not more dangerous because they’re black its because they’re poor” to which I would say “ya. I still have to lock my car here though.” Same thing in that thread, men wouldn’t do that if they had more support from men AND women, but the statement was totally fair and not really that negative, it felt more like “it’s sad this is the way things are right now.” Though, testosterone DOES sorta push men to think being nice = in love, so it’s not a totally fair comparison.
The reason it’s public is to make it as easy as possible for women to stumble into it and post and comment, and hoping everyone else will be understanding. Making it private or sign-up only or whatever basically loses the whole point of being able to hear other women.
Online communities don’t have to have the same demographics as physical locations. Why does it seem weird to you that either gender would want to vent about the opposite one without reading 100 replies by the group being vented about.
That’s not the weird part (beyond being by nature exclusionary so if you think that is weird then I guess there’s that) but rather the semi-public-but-not-really aspect, personally were I to have a woman exclusionary forum, it wouldn’t be out in the open but something more controllable like a discord server (preferably without the privacy nightmare but I have no will to create this space and prefer places where all are welcome so I haven’t done much research on where I’d create that.)
Just seems like inviting unnecessary conflict and work for the mods, unless that’s the goal I suppose.