this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Lemmy is super uncomfy for women right now. The women i know are either still on reddit or just gave up on social media altogether.
I presume you are a woman? I am a woman too and see Lemmy just as comfortable or uncomfortable as Reddit was. Granted there are less communities focused on women though, is that what you mean? Or you really mean Lemmy is more toxic?
Yeah I'm not sure what they mean either, and I chat to other women on here every day. Not to say they've not had a bad experience obviously but it seems far from universal.
OP if someone is being a sexist creep, smash that report button!
Can't say I've noticed anything different to most places, other than right back at the start when I called a few people out for assuming everyone was a guy it actually got upvoted, which was nice ๐
I'm going to quote it wrong, but there was a funny post on Reddit about 10 years ago that went something like "Statistically, you're probably a white guy aged 19-22 in the USA".
Honestly, the comments were hysterical because yes. Half the respondents met all those criteria, and most of the rest met 3+ of them.
And yet we have the audacity to upvote things like this ๐ https://lemmy.world/post/5033708
Probably it's more the former reason. I used to curate my experience on reddit carefully and mainly participate woman centric subreddits, and few male centric ones, and I got used to that. Lemmy looks more like what would happen if you browse default subs on reddit, which tend to be very toxic. It's a chicken and egg problem: you won't attract women unless there are spaces women feel comfortable, and those spaces don't exist unless there are women there to create them.
I still find myself going back to reddit for certain niche fashion or fitness things. And when i try to get my normie girlfriends to look at lemmy, it's hard to sell them on it. They don't care about politics or mod drama and reddit is still better for them.
Yes, that makes sense, thanks for clarifying. My interests are covered here and I forget I'm not into a lot of normie girl stuff.
Not OP and not a woman, but yeah, there are way fewer communities for women here, but Reddit was much worse and a lot more sexist when it was just finding its feet. There is still a bit of a boys club mentality around Lemmy though.
What reasons are they uncomfy and is there any way we can make women safer here? Not sealioning, being genuine. I try my best to make my instance as inclusive and welcoming as possible and would love to know if there's anyway I could improve. I honestly would go as far to say there's a pretty high ratio of women on literature.cafe compared to other small niche focused instances, but I don't have any actual statistics to gauge from to say definitively.
You're welcome to join us on slrpnk.net. We're a safe and inclusive space, and also we're defederated from most of the shittier instances by default.
I can vouch for slrpnk.net. Their staff team is fantastic and extremely proactive in engaging on matters pertaining to user safety.
Out of curiosity, what changes would you suggest to make it a more welcoming place for women?
How so?
You don't have to reveal your gender on here.
If OP is getting unlucky enough to, idk, encounter a solid stream of sexist memes in their feed or something, "revealing" gender is kind of irrelevant to the level of uncomfy they might feel.
I don't know why it's uncomfortable for women here, but I assume they would feel that way whether they revealed their gender or not