With more people joining Lemmy and other decentralised networks there is a growing shift to the common misogyny and sexism we find on other social media networks (YouTube, Reddit, etc.).
I think it’s pretty obvious that the reason is that there are even less women here than other places online. What are your ideas on how to change that? Or do you feel it is a lost cause?
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How do you know they’re less women here than other places?
Because all communities and topics that have engagement from women on, for example, Reddit are practically dead on Lemmy.
I found it to be similar for the male communities too (askmen, malefashionadvice, etc). There’s a pretty nice balance on Mastodon, so maybe Lemmy needs time?
We can totally work on issues in the meantime too, not saying there isn’t an issue :)
As for the question, I don’t think it’s a lost cause. I’ll write out some ideas in a bit!
Ok so I think that growing the women-oriented communities would follow similar steps to any other community. A big part of that is just communicating the benefits and risks.
Positives:
- backup of existing communities
- more inclusive by including those who left Reddit for privacy/ads/accessibility reasons
- You can actually make an instance owned, funded, moderated, and operated by women
Negatives:
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privacy - You can’t ever delete something on the internet, but it’s even harder with federation. This isn’t a woman specific issue, but it’s one that could affect women more/differently so it’s worth talking about. It’s harder to fight against doxxing, and it’s harder to ensure your account is deleted if you’re trying to fight stalkers. Some of this can be fixed by improving the software, and I’m not clear on what the implications are just yet. But it was worth noting
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Lemmy specific: Moderation tools aren’t strong enough yet. Women-oriented communities might attract trolls.
How to grow the communities
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get in touch with existing community moderators and set up a parallel / sister community setup. Encourage people to post on both, let those moderators moderate on Lemmy. Trust would help a lot in this case
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need more time to think of specific points, but for now other community building ideas would apply too
Thank you for your thoughts!
I want to emphasize this one:
Lemmy specific: Moderation tools aren’t strong enough yet. Women-oriented communities might attract trolls.
I think the Lemmy instance beehaw is predominantly or exclusive led by women and well, when I remember correctly it had to aggressively defederate from multiple bigger instances… Heavy moderation costs time and thereby money. And a huge factor in this is that instances and communities which announce heavy moderation seem to attract that extra truckload of trolls. I don’t want to start a drama discussion here, just to underline that moderation problem.
My personal opinion as a trans girl? We need to stop pretending that social networks are THE solution. We need a balance between social networks and anti-social networks. And by “anti-social networks”, I mean traditional blogs.
Funny thing is, Fediverse is actually very well equipped to deal with Blogosphere. The fact that you can easily ignore the other side is a feature, not a bug.
I agree! Also websites that are just personal (and personalised) internet “homes”. I made a community for Neocities a few days ago just for that reason. To hopefully get some people who feel overwhelmed with finding a hoster etc. to try and make their own little website.
The web has become too commercialised and competitive I think…
Last time I saw a female-centric issue brought up on Lemmy, folks were very openly hostile. It also became a discussion of “well, what about men?? Men also experience this issue!!!” while frothing at the mouth (search up “women-only Lyft” to see the hostility + comments completely missing the point).
Sure, you need to be a bit more tech-saavy to use Lemmy, but the spaces & discussion here meant for women are often invaded by unfriendly folk and people who barge in to joke about/make light of the things that are being discussed.
Yes, that’s actually one of the topics I was thinking about when I made this post!
There are also some bigger communities still completely missing from Lemmy that I think should have a voice on this platform (for example r/blackladies). And the Lemmy pendant of “Witches VS Patriarchy” only has 15 subscribers. ╮(￣ω￣;)╭
I think it would be better if there was an option to opt out of appearing in all when you post something. It seems like certain communities/posts get down voted by people finding them in all. And this IMO presents a chilling effect on those communities/posts.
For example another user in this thread mentioned a post about women only ride-sharing and there being hostility towards the concept by men from all.
Women or any other group of people won’t want to join Lemmy if there isn’t spaces that contain content that interests them.
I know, some people downvote(d) every post in the community I mod.
Misogynist posts are also fine, apparently. Like a “Fuck, Marry, Kill” post with three female characters from Star Trek. (Not sure if I am allowed to link to it.) Interim it had over 50 upvotes. And people in the comments seem to participate “in the fun”. It’s great it got downvoted so hard in the end and I am not for banning or deleting such posts per se. It just gives me pause to think that people feel okay to make them in the first place.
Women or any other group of people won’t want to join Lemmy if there isn’t spaces that contain content that interests them.
Definitely. For example there are very few hobby communities that aren’t tech focused. My concern is that hostility will build up more and because of that the communities won’t grow in the first place. And also what is a good way to promote Lemmy to a more diverse group of people.
Hi I’m a woman!
You said “less women,” but I think you meant *fewer women 😉
I recall being subscribed to this subreddit years ago but they banned me for saying something that probably didn’t align with their typical man-hating narrative.
I’m going to switch my settings now and make sure the only things that appear on my front page are that which I’m subscribed to.
Sorry, English is not my native language. Is it incorrect to say “less people”?
It’s because we are in deep tech/programming territory here where you traditionally find less women. I do think it is shifting a lot recently, and find Lemmy fairly mild in terms of misogyny. But then I also actively avoid communities where dudebros tend to flock and be all rational and such.
Of course there’s always more work to do. More women mods, more women led communities, as others have said. Maybe downvoting and reporting instead of blocking sexists. Calling people out on their shit, making women feel protected.
I think in part this topic is also because I try to encourage more women to be active in techy places. I am always motivated to think about ways on how to bring more diverse people into tech hobbies like programming. It’s what I do at university with activities for IT newbies.
And I got the impression that especially women, LGBTQ and minority people feel more safe to try out these stuff when the instructors are women and it seems to have a low barrier. There is a lot of “I am too dumb for this” from internalized stereotypes and I think that’s going on with the Fediverse as well.
