Lemmy is a worse platform for women than Reddit was

Here's my take: the bear thing is causing such a visceral reaction that it is very hard to take a step back, not take it personally and have a rational discussion about it. Even if you know the statistics. Even if you're absolutely certain you'd do the right thing (or maybe especially then).

I was exposed to a somewhat similar experience in college: while walking through the campus one evening I realised the girl in front of me was a good friend of mine, so I rushed to catch up. When she heard me she quickened her pace close to running, and only stopped when I said her name and something like "wait up!". I was just happy to meet a friend. She, on the other hand, was absolutely terrified, and told me all about it as we walked towards the exit.

That evening I realised that women experience the world much different than men. That there's an underlying level of potential violence that they evaluate and weigh against potential benefits from encounters and interactions with men in almost all social contexts. And knowing that has recalibrated my behaviour to a certain extent, as I realised women can't afford to give me the benefit of the doubt, especially in contexts where they feel vulnerable.

I wish more men would get this point, especially in their formative years. It's not a judgement on their character when women that barely know them are careful around them. Trust needs to be earned. And for a woman, the cost of misplaced trust is too damn high.

The irony is that the poor behavior explains why many women would pick the bear

The bear scenario is the perfect division inducing shitstorm.

It’s understandable what the memes portrays the danger that women face, daily. The fact that they frequently don’t feel comfortable or even just basic safety is definitely valid and worth discussion.

However, the bear vs man thing was just the worst vehicle to induce that discussion. On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.

The members of the other side who see all the angry men getting defensive at them for expressing this view and think it’s purely because they aren’t empathetic to these issue, they “hate” women or they’re marginalising what is a real and daily danger.

Of course there are actual trolls, toxic arseholes and people who have 0 interest actual discourse or understanding but fuck them, I agree ban em.

It was never going to end in a productive, calm or rational discussion and frankly I think tarring the entire of lemmy for it is equally as unproductive. I’ve seen plenty of people initially aggressive to the meme, come around. I’ve seen more and more people make light jokes about the same meme without the accusatory tone. If you want discourse theres space to do so; it just has to be done better(imo). Preferably without snark or accusatory tones.

Every time I see something about that bear vs man thing it just turns into a shitload of people straw-manning the hell out of the opposing gender. The whole thing is fucking stupid.

To be a woman online means to feel unwelcome. Leaving a new community is pretty much inevitable unless you are willing to swim in toxicity.

I've lost count of how many 'welcoming' communities for game/hobby/interest that I have left because of the inevitable creep of (male) toxicity and harassment.

And it sucks to watch so many people not speak up, and to be targeted for further harassment simply because I said rape jokes weren't funny. (Or tying and drugging up a woman so T could have a girlfriend, if the group I play online games with are stalking my account read this. You guys are part of the problem.)

I just want liked minded people to share my interests and play games with.

I, and other women shouldn't have to navigate or ignore toxicity to simply exist in public spaces.

[Downvotes prove my statement. I'm not welcome or wanted, I get it. See you after my funeral.]

I am a cis male mod of multiple communities here on Lemmy and all I can say is that I try to moderate as fairly and equitably as I can, but I also don't have time to read every single comment on every single post in the communities I moderate, so you have to flag posts you find violate community rules. Every community I moderate has a civility rule, and shouting down or harassing women who are telling personal stories would be against those rules.

But I may not know that it's happening unless it's getting flagged.

the challenge with lemmy is its immaturity with moderation, and many instances allowing pretty vile members and communities to flourish, which then spill over into other less extreme communities

Same goes for harassing those men who rejected the notion of the meme with civility.

Plenty of simple trolls trying to insert the word "incel" wherever they can, and plenty of people trying to invalidate everything men have to say.

Lemmy is becoming more known, and with that comes the point at which bots and trolls emerge. We have to respond accordingly - and remember to be united and civil, even in disagreements.

And yes, ragebait content should be banned. The bear hypothetical is one of those, since it does imply anti-male sentiment, but does it in a way that can be minimized to "women just complaining". It is a very malicious attempt at generating a lot of hostility, to the point where it's hard even to give benefit of the doubt.

As per "how we attract women" in particular, I think the most important part is to make Lemmy less about tech and politics and more about all sorts of hobbies, occupations, and a fun time. While women are very welcome in the tech and politics spaces, those spaces are historically dominated by men, and for as long as those are the pillars of the Lemmy conversations, we'll see this gap over and over.

We can't take bias in support of women just to attract more of them on the platform, this won't end well. We need to protect everyone from the harassment and trolling, regardless of gender.

Seems to me that the rage bait did it's job, but the only who won was the author and website that got all the clicks and ads serving, while lemmy got a shitstorm for nothing.

This bear thing has got out of hand lmao

This is the equivalent of saying that MS Outlook is a community. It's not and neither is Lemmy. Each server has its own rules, and each community on those servers can add rules beyond that.

Address a specific community or server, there's no central control over the fediverse.

People get really upset over a hypothetical. I don't like posts that put all men down, but this wasn't one of them.

Also bears generally mind their own business as long as you keep your distance, with statistically less than one person per year dying from a bear attack in America. The last time it happened in my state was several years ago and due to some dumbass intentionally getting close to it to take photos.

I want to put out there, that as a man I shared my story... And I was down voted and disrespected.

So you can probably remove 'for women' in the title. Lemmy is very much an echo chamber. You don't have to look around very hard to see that there's a large amount of intolerance on Lemmy.

Mistake number one is sharing anything about yourself online. There's wackos everywhere, just make shit up and look at memes.

The bear thing; good god, yes... the number of people just not getting it was/is incredible. It's a good example of how arguing for the logical position completely misses out on any nuance over why someone might say they're choosing, for example, the bear.

I know some of it is folks having difficulty reading between the lines, spectrum stuff, male socialising, etc etc... but man. That was a tough one

I would not recommend a visit to Reddit on this issue. I just checked out of curiousity.

I think the distributed nature of the Fediverse is a big part of it. Lot of moderation policies at play, on a lot of different instances and some allow some real jerks to flourish and spill out elsewhere. I have zero tolerance for any of that garbage and am very quick with my block/ban buttons, but those are only effective on my own instance or the few communities I moderate outside that.

OP, best I can suggest is to report them. Most of the communities I interact with are pretty responsive to those kinds of reports and similarly don't tolerate it. Mods, unfortunately, can't read every comment and often rely on reports to know when to look deeper/take action.

And don't feel bad about blocking the jerks. There's a lot of them, lol.

Narrowminded cisgender ragebait did what? Please tell me it ain't so!

The bear thing isn't controversial, it's just ragebait. You ragebait, you get rage. It is not a serious argument, which is why it constantly has to spark as ragebait over in the meme communities. The people taking it as a serious argument are making their serious arguments look bad.

Regarding Man v Bear I think the topic is rather silly. Most bears aren't looking to have a meet and greet if you do come across a bear one of three things are true. It's here to eat you, it didn't leave because its a she-bear and it has cubs its protecting, or you just startled it. If any of the above is true you are at best in serious danger. If it is actually trying to prey upon you then you are probably fucked. Whereas 100% of the bears you surprise in the woods are extremely dangerous 99.99% of people you meet man or woman are just people like yourself not looking for trouble.

It's not shocking that the 99.9% of men who aren't predators waiting in the bush feel justified in feeling unfairly vilified.

I've not even heard of this issue you are talking about. Maybe it's not representative of the Lemmy experience as a whole? Besides, most social media postings seem fake as hell. Why put any emphasis on what people have to say. I think walking away is probably the healthiest thing you can do. No one is going to fix this place or any place for that matter.

There is literally nothing better about the clientele of this platform than reddit except people are nicer and probably less miserable on average in the comments. If anything its users are less socialized and more insular - e.g. I use linux server extensively for work where it controls most of the internet, but most of the hot takes here about linux here are beyond stupid. If anything, between Lemmy and reddit, the users here are even more convinced they're knowledgeable and infallible connoisseurs, if that's even possible. So when fallout does happen, it's generally more ugly.

Also, the bear thing is not controversial - except with infantile man-children. Those people don't get to represent a demographic.

You’re telling me that something that was intentionally supposed to induce division between normal ass people is inducing division between people?

Oh no!

Anyway, moral of the story, don’t get caught up in silly ass things like this. It was created to do exactly what it is doing.

I missed the kerfuffle, but my $0.02 is Lemmy is still in infancy. It's also a federated system made up of different instances, some of which - and you know who I mean - aren't as cool.

So utilize the tools provided, reporting, blocking, etc. and find the communities you like. /$0.02

Yep. I agree. I’ve been bullied on Lemmy for sharing the fact that I have been bullied in my own home town because local law enforcement hired exes of mine who have abused their law enforcement powers. I now have a person, or group, that follows each of my posts and comments to immediately downvote them, even if they aren’t even controversial. I just receive an automatic downvote. That pales in comparison to the verbal bashing I’ve received from that group, or person. Each time I speak out, I have this one commenter that tells me that I’m crazy and need meds to make me shut up about having been abused by an ex that was hired by our local sheriff’s department. I wonder if they sniffed my phone to follow my account. I guess that would be crazy and just earn me more hateful comments from “random” people on Lemmy, huh? My question is, do I blame Lemmy as a whole, or will people on here finally admit that some certain local in my area is stalking my account?

When comments have become as bad as “strangers” telling me to “get raped with a rusty lawn mower blade”, I have to wonder if it’s all coming from the same IP address and if the mods even care.

I think regardless of the platform it will get ugly when topics are controversial. How ugly it gets is mostly depending on the level of moderation. It doesn't need many trolls or ill willing people to derail a discussion among hundreds of good meaning people.

We also tend to concentrate on the things we consider unfavorable. If among 100 comments 5 are sexist, these 5 will get far more attention than the other 95.

I mean, I've seen people uttering death threads on YouTube, because the YouTuber used butter in a recipe, not margarine. One of several hundred comments under that video, but the only one I remember...

The whole "bear vs. man" thing proved that there are still a lot of people out there totally unable to get over themselves. On one side you see people piling on women not knowing the everyday struggle the average woman goes through everyday, on the other side there are people that get mad at memes not accepting that the statement was meant to be over the top in the first place, so it's ok to find irony in it

If the fear for a typical woman is this bad, then we need to be better about teaching boys. I’m a pretty empathetic person, just ask my new very rapidly made female best friend. But despite the wife, and a few pretty damn close female friends, close mom, sister…. The fears expressed in my short reading on the current discussion have never been as clearly communicated, well the fear was definitely clear, but not the magnitude.

I agree with the sentiment that it’s just a bad premise. It puts everyone straight into a defensive posture, and no one learns anything when they’re trying to defend their sense of self.

On the other hand, if people are going to DMs to harass beyond the context of the heated conversation… well they ARE DEFINITELY the kind of people who are a threat, and need to be dealt with.

Not even about Man v Bear, but just seeing all the casual misogyny on Lemmy is extremely exhausting to me. It’s so clearly obvious that Lemmy as a whole is dominated by men. There are no spaces here for women. It’s why I still frequent Reddit, because at least there are communities there that are more diverse. I really want Lemmy to take off more, but I just don’t get enjoyment out of this platform, after the initial hype died off.

Anyway, I’m really glad you posted this, OP. I think it’s incredibly important to foster a diverse community. Unfortunately the diversity just isn’t there, and I’m unsure as to how to help that. As it is now, I can’t recommend Lemmy to my other friends who identify as women.

I've been away for a few weeks and I've missed this whole thing I think, does anybody have a link?

Nice to see someone say this out loud. At the end of the day no platform is immune to hive mind thinking or ignorance, but hopefully there are solutions for open platforms to enrich people's lives some.

The most accurate response I can think of is many people on Lemmy want to be technically right (and I am no exception to this myself). You can see this in our many debates if the Democrats are a hindrance or the "best of the temporary solutions we have" in our debates in the best way to eventually form a working government.

The post in question (man vs bear) summarizes how much fear men have caused women throughout history in meme hyperbole fashion. Most people would "just get the point" that the meme is actually making. Women have suffered a lot from men. However, some of these Lemmy users correctly point out that its predatory behavior that should be called out; not "man vs woman". After all, anyone regardless of age, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc. can be a predator. The meme is correct but those who oppose the meme are "technically correct" as well.

I literally have no clue what man vs bear is and honestly sounds like it should stay that way1

Nobody needs my comment but here it goes. I don't take it personally, it has nothing to do with me. I don't have any issue with people's answers. I know that many people have PTSD and bad experiences and they'd prefer to avoid weird situations like this.

But privately there's a part of me that likes to solve problems and consider everything for myself. I think the question is set up to imply danger by comparing a wild bear to a strange man. If the scenario were different I would expect different results: You are hiking in the desert and you become lost and you have no water. After several days you see a man who offers you water and directions. Do you choose to turn away and continue into the desert or do you accept the man's offer to help provide water and directions to safety?

I have had traumatic experiences with people and one day I realized that I was negatively effected by them and I chose to start practicing Jiu-Jitsu where you need to be in close contact with people as you struggle to gain advantage and win points. I no longer feel the same fear and apprehension about being close to people like I did before.

If people feel a certain way I just wish them healing.

The same is true of all social media platforms. There are always bad actors and jerkasses that have been banned everywhere else. Eventually, the admins of said social media platform must crackdown and ban those people. Eventually, that will happen to the Fediverse.

This is essentially the problem with forums that grow faster than mods can keep up. Everything is fine until something like this comes along. When the brigades come out, trying to maintain order and read every comment for content becomes impossible. Unfortunately all we can do is hold each other accountable. Those that can take the abuse stand their ground for others that can't. And when the dust settles, hopefully someone will have learned something. Even if that something is just reinforcing their choice. It's all part of maturing, both for the site and for the people. Just don't let it get you down. This site is not representative of the general population. Neither is Reddit. There are more people in this world that empathize with you than there are on this site.

Everyone has a vested interest in 50% of the population feeling good about the other half. And certainly we should all feel safer about being with fellow humans than with a bear. The fact that some of us don't feel that way means we should try to make them feel safer.

Thanks for the post. Does anyone have advice on how to become a moderator?

This is really the terminal issue with Reddit alternatives. They are just Reddit minus the most recent controversy as of foundation. Reddit is overall just a popular content aggregation website with poorly design discussion features.

Upvotes and down votes, while intended to help users weed out bad arguments and spam, only achive in promoting sophistry and tribalism. What ends up getting upvoted is what "wins" the argument, while good arguments that come from unpopular viewpoints get downvoted.

And with that comes all the toxic elements from old Reddit ruat we all hope just won't be a part of our replacements. Reddit's format works at a smaller scale, where users are typically more enthusiastic and therefor better informed, but as the sites get larger you'll notice they typical hyper-snarky "owned with facts and logic" attitude take hold of a community as more people with a weaker investment jump on the bandwagon and upvote everything that makes them feel smart.

Eventually, the site becomes just like Reddit, but for a smaller and more insulated community, and users begin to question why they're here instead of Reddit which has the established user base that can reliably cover more topics you are interested in.

We have not learnt from history, and we are doomed to repeat it. Maybe it'll be different in the future.

Whoa I missed this whole man bear thing. Is it like ManBearPig?

Think of it like this, we as a civilization stand on the brink of collapse. Can we change it? Yes. Are we trying to? Yes. Is it working? Debatable.

About Lemmy, there's all kinds of people here. Those with the know-how segregated themselves into particular communities and blocked out all the rest. They're just quietly doing their thing wherever, with no fucks given about what's happening outside of that.

Beyond that, in my opinion, are two types of people left to roam the default maelstrom. Those without the know-how and those who thrive in the drama. The former are usually driven out by the dramartists.

I'd see it to be the same as in society. There's people doing their own thing, trying to be left alone. There's people just stumbling through life, not knowing what they want or need, nor the means to get them. And then there's the people who thrive through conflict and making things miserable for everyone else.

Both on Lemmy and in society, guess which ones usually end up in charge...

The answer though is simple. Get involved. Don't want to deal with the toxic waste? Well tough shit, because the planet's full of it. We're at the stage where we all have to clean it up. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Want to give up and run away? Good luck with that! When there's no more room left, all that toxicity will just spill all over you, no matter how hard you tried to get away.

As individuals, each of us is a minority. And if we keep running from the issues that plague us as a group, we'll never be allowed to thrive.

Well my block list on lemmy grew a whole lot faster and is longer now than on it ever was on Reddit.

But This was even before the bear debacle.

Lemmy is not as good as advertised.

the internet is a machine that turns attention into currency, it does this at the same rate for negative and positive attention, and negative attention is a lot easier to get. you just burst onto a platform unbidden and say something that will piss people off. You get rewarded, the platform gets rewarded, everybody wins except the users who have a gross toxic time in the comments. Lemmy may not run ads, but it's structured the same way that other platforms are and we already have a way of using those types of platforms built into our cultural knowledge, so Lemmy just turns into a loose confederation of reddits.

Meanwhile its the opposite for me. Character assasinating everyone who wasnt a fan of the bear meme and mods deleting any post that wasnt fully inflammatory has made me second guess whether I want to be here far more than the Tankies ever did

Who will win: Gender equality or a funny bear

I don’t know how you can solve this. Lemmy has become a refuge for outcasts. Men with social/personality issues are the biggest group of outcasts. Women are much less likely to be outcasts and so have far less interest in being here.

To create an environment that is welcoming to a particular group takes a certain critical mass of people from that group. If you’re such an extremely small minority you’re going to have a very difficult time reaching that critical mass and the negative environment further discourages people from joining.

wtf been going on around here

I hear what you are saying. It makes me think of the LGBTQ people when some Mastodon instances gave them a safe space to communicate. Safe spaces do however depend on well working moderation.

I'm not a bear but on behalf of bears I think it's funny that many women prefer bears which unironically explains how deranged everyone is

i'm just a little disappointed woman seem to consistently be a minority here

It was not interesting to see how different cohorts responded to the topic. It certainly landed the hardest in this one. More discussion to be had I guess.

Which instances are we talking about? I've not seen this debate crop up on Kbin or Beehaw.

im totally ootl. someone explain?

I rip on the Man versus bear thing because it's boring and repetitive and spammed everywhere.

Honestly yeah, Lemmy overall has seemed like it's gotten a bit iffier over the last few months. I feel like maybe it needs to be tweaked a bit in how it functions. Or maybe just needs more people.

Lemmy honestly is not friendly or welcoming. My wife left after being attacked for any comment she made where she mentioned being a female. The man vs bear debate wasn't even around until a month or so later.

If you're not a tech savvy male and you're lurking just don't get involved. They'll belittle anyone who's isn't. You need to have PC for gaming on a Linux computer having the ability to program within Linux while running your internet through a pihole so your jellyfin server can remain hidden through the VPN. If you even ask any question about anything I said prepare to be shamed for not knowing how to already know.

What is this anyway ? :

“bear vs man”

The good thing about lemmy is that it don't get directive from any governments to censor certain issues like what happen to Google, reddit, meta and other social media For any other case, the mods will take care of the instances. If you don't like it, just block whichever instances, communities or users you want. Whats so difficult about that? Nobody is forcing you to be in whatever toxic instance/community is or to read posts that you don't like.

I'm sorry for what you had to go through.

I’m a man and I would take my chances with a bear over a man I don’t know. I don’t blame women who feel safer around a bear.

Sorry your experience here was awful.

Can anyone share the bear thing? I've no idea what you're talking about.

Ya'll don't like getting called out on your bullshit. Ofc I'm not gonna let myself get grouped into something worse than a fucking animal. Go have your rights and empathy activism someway it doesn't clump men in the "not people" category

No offence but you're going around posting bait and fanning the flames of what's proving to be a very polarizing topic and now you're posting politics in a community where the number one rule is 'NO POLITICS' probably only for the reason that they don't have enough time in their day to deal with the shit this topic brings.

I commented about it and some guy replaced every instance of the word “men” in my post with “Jews” to prove to me that I am a bigot. His comment was removed by mods, but later un-removed because we’re big fans of bad faith arguments and invalid comparisons on this platform.

e: argue this point with women in person and see how well it goes.

I think its more or less you come in swinging most people are gonna swing back, the bear thing gave both sides a reason to 'rightfully' be angry when the question literally couldn't matter less than Lego fortnite

The introverted tech nerds have always had a problem with dismissing anything they don't immediately understand

What about non binary? You fucking transphobic piece of wood

So finding an instance that doesn’t allow that. There is no “lemmy” like Reddit. There are n instances you can run to for your preferred safe space. Beehaw for example

Surely you don’t expect every single lemmy instance to fall in line with your values do you???

Your post belongs in this community, it’s unpopular because it’s a naive take that doesn’t consider how Lemmy actually works

there's an unpopular community here? Funny that i haven't seen it until now.

Anyway, on the bear man thingy. I thought that was rather interesting, as a "man" myself i saw a rather similar situation but from the opposite perspective (i hadn't seen or heard of this before, so i was really fucking confused initially)

incoming personal opinion btw, if you're scared of those, you should look away :)

I think it's less "bad for women" more "The internet causing people to yell at each other over stupid shit for no particular reason" than anything. Naturally it was an incredibly polarized topic. The wording was specifically designed to generate outrage and attention around it (i feel like i don't really have to explain why) and a lot of people were taking very tribal stances on either side, with the information they had, without properly considering all factors (because thought experiments turn out to be more than surface level, weirdly enough.)

idk, i just didn't really experience anything that wasn't "fuck u/spez, he probably rapes little girls" levels of shenanigans. Then again, i'm internet hardened so you wouldn't be able to shake me with anything really.

Lemmy just sucks in general. It feels like almost every instance is run by extremists of some description that will ban you for disagreeing with them or criticizing them. That, or you have LW which is run like Reddit.

didn't know that. i was thinking of a small flower that doesn't seem very durable.

You want an unpopular opinion, okay here's one: I'm okay with Lemmy not being a good place for women and am strongly in favor of doing nothing to change that. Women aren't on my side. Therefore I am not on theirs.

It used to be a place where mostly leftists hung out - now, unfortunetely, it's overflowing with liberals... with predictable results.

Personally, I don't think the bear thing is very controversial. I wouldn't even call the manufactured outrage peddled by the pro-rape brigade controverisal - that has become a mundane thing, too.

https://www.vidlii.com/watch?v=A500uuWTk1S

https://www.vidlii.com/watch?v=A500uuWTk1S