This is a women-only discussion community. If you do not identify as a women or fall under the umbrella cited in the community sidebar, then please refrain from posting or replying.

We’re fighting a losing battle. This is a space where we are very clearly not wanted, and we cannot discuss women’s issues without hostility.

Keep it limited to makeup and fashion, I guess, unless you want to be brigaded!

I’m over it. Let the boys have their playground. Lemmy is not a space that is welcoming to women, and, because of that, unless sweeping changes are made, I just don’t see myself ever recommending it to any women as a good place to make a community.

I’m not going to contribute to its growth or content any longer. “PROGRESSIVE” space. Garbage. Absolute fucking hypocrisy. I’m so sick of having to explain myself and be made to feel like I need to justify my existence here.

Good luck, sisters. I’m desperate for community, but this feels more like a battleground than it does a home.

We appreciate the sideline supporters who respect the community rules & expectations and are respectful enough to not interject. You are very much loved and respected, brothers. 🫶

EDIT: This community & its moderators have been nothing but kind & respectful to men who post here, and are constantly shit on & downvoted because of it.

I have resorted to being hostile! And I see very little difference in how this is being received compared to them.

My blood pressure too high rn.

EDIT 2: Mods… I’m sorry for leaving you to find this dumpster fire of a thread! I gotta go to bed and I’m sick of trying to explain things to people who don’t actually care or want to understand.

Women: attempt to foster & curate their own community to talk about women-centric issues and experiences without being drowned out by majority voices

The rest of Lemmy:

  • MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    511·
    6 months ago

    It’s frustrating. It feels like even progressive men here (not all, but many) aren’t willing to listen, while making it all about them. And because of the vast male majority, it feels like most threads on womens’ issues consist of off-topic defensive comments. I don’t recommend Lemmy to women either.

    That being said, you’re all worth it. Reddit as a whole isn’t what it once was. And womens’ Reddit communities tend to have lots of people, which can sometimes lead to negative spiraling when bad things happen. I get it, but it would make my mental health worse.

    On Lemmy, it’s a small, friendly space much like the old internet. I recognize a lot of the same folks on these communities. We uplift each other.

    Lots of people here can very hostile about us being here, but we’re making this place a little friendlier and more inclusive, and I’m glad we’re all here. We’ve got each other’s backs.

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      14·
      6 months ago

      It feels like even progressive men here (not all, but many) aren’t willing to listen, while making it all about them.

      I mentioned this in past messages that got deleted (not by the mods here).

      But basically this is what women’s groups in uni were like for me when they tried inviting “allies” from among male students. These well-intentioned (I have to stress this, they were not being jerks deliberately!) men would come to meetings and by the end it was only the men talking.

      It’s just in the nature.

      This is why we went back to “women-only” groups with occasional “open house”-style gatherings which were just social events.

  • DearMoogle@lemmy.todayEnglish
    18·
    6 months ago

    It’s not good, but that’s why I generally keep it super simple. Makeup, fashion, hobbies, if I’m going to participate lol. Nothing remotely political. In fact - much like online video games, I have other accounts where I don’t reveal my gender or I’ll even talk like a dude on purpose. I already know we’re vastly outnumbered here, so I don’t care to invite mean comments from men. Big kudos to any fighting sisters out there, but I don’t want that stress in my life.

    Maybe I should start treating this place more like my Tumblr and just post pretty pictures I like without giving a fuck lol

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      I’d be down for that. Having pretty between all the goons would be a relief.

    • SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      231·
      6 months ago

      I get it, but I’m not going to only talk about “safe” topics just because it makes men uncomfortable.

      Women are not a political commodity.

      I don’t feel sorry for men who get hurt feelings over women putting down / requesting boundaries.

      • growsomethinggood ()@reddthat.comEnglish
        15·
        6 months ago

        Not a solve-everything solution, but I enjoy blocking every user who is even slightly a shit. My experience of slowly curating out the dumbasses has certainly made my experience a better one!

  • Alice@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
    81·
    6 months ago

    Lemmy in and of itself is very toxic, hostile, negative, and filled with extremists and thrives on drama. I’ve been on lemmy on and off for 5 years, and that’s not something I see changing.

    Having said that, I would say the best route, is to just ignore any men who are in the women’s community. The mods seem to do a really good job at it keeping them out

    Lemmy fosters negativity and I just don’t see that ever going away unfortunately. Just work around it, that’s what I do.

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      Any system that has visible scores that people vote to get is going to foster negativity. The Original Sin of online spaces was assuming that “popular” is “good”.

  • LadyButterflyshe/her@lazysoci.alMEnglish
    461·
    6 months ago

    Hey Shark, you have absolutely nothing to apologise for. Not a thing. Your post was basically:

    You: I don’t feel safe on lemmy because there’s so much hostility towards women Manosphere: Y R U NOT INCLUDING US?? STFU U MISANDRIST! STOP EXISTING WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!! MEN R BEING OPPRESSEEEDDDDD!!!11!!

    They really refuse see the connection between their behaviour and our actions. I really understand your points Shark. There’s aggressive comments to and about women all over lemmy, I’ve had Manosphere types attack me outside of here cos I created this group. It’s horrible and I’m sorry you’re experiencing this. Know you’ve got your own army here backing you up💜

  • klemptor@startrek.websiteEnglish
    26·
    6 months ago

    Keep it limited to makeup and fashion, I guess, unless you want to be brigaded!

    We should make all post titles pertain to makeup and fashion so the men won’t even bother clicking. (Not a serious suggestion but it probably would work!)

    Seriously though: I feel you on this. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for some men to just leave women in peace, and it’s exhausting. Our mods do a great job but the flood of rude, unwanted men seems never-ending.

    I don’t get it. I’d never go into a men-only space and have the hubris to think they need to hear my opinion. It’s men-only for a reason! Maybe they have women brigading their communities, but I sincerely doubt it’s comparable to what we see.

    (To any men lurking who are respecting the community’s rules, thank you. We appreciate your courtesy!)

  • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    13·
    6 months ago

    Really? This has not been my experience at all. I feel fine here. Maybe I’m ignorant, but I haven’t seen hostility at all on my end.

  • MTK@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    6 months ago

    Sadly Lemmy really isn’t all that fit for this situation. I think the best that can be done is making a womens only instance, which should actually work pretty well but would be hard as visibility would be low (women who are new to lemmy might have a hard time even learning of the instance) and of course the admins would have to work hard as they would have to vet new users.

    I think this can be done if there were enpugh willing admins, but I’m not sure there are. I personally don’t have any experience on being a Lemmy admin but I do know IT and I am willing to help, so if anyone does want to make a womens only instance you could PM me 🙏

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      The issue isn’t “men not listening or understanding us”, it’s “men not respecting basic requests of common courtesy and decency like … not commenting in a women’s only space”.

      At least that’s the part that gets me extremely salty right now.

  • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
    151·
    6 months ago

    I have a technical question: is it not possible to set up a community that is “member-only posting” in Lemmy? (Genuine question, I have no idea. I don’t run an instance or a community.)

      • Arkhive (they/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        41·
        6 months ago

        @lemmy.blahaj.zone is sort of a general queer instance, but has a big population of trans femme folks already. Plus pretty much everyone on the instance “gets it”. Come check it out! We’ve got safe spaces and good memes. I would say blahaj.zone is a very women friendly instance. Not to say it will magically fix the Lemmy experience, but at the very least we have an admin that pulls zero punches when it comes to banning the jerks.

        • Lucy (PieFed edition) [she/faer]@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          4·
          6 months ago

          I am on Blahaj Zone tho ;)

          What I mean is that, when you make your post local-only on e.g. blahaj, you also prevent good people at Beehaw and other safe instances from participating. I DO support moving to Blahaj though, I think it will improve the situation a little. But the struggle will continue nonetheless.

          • Arkhive (they/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            5·
            6 months ago

            Oh I didn’t even open your profile! Love seeing someone who jumped on the PieFed instance!! I anticipate Blahaj and a few other instances eventually putting their federation with the melting pots to a community vote, or something like that.

  • bigtiddygoth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35·
    6 months ago

    You may have better luck having it hosted on Beehaw.org. They’re dead serious about keeping it a friendly community. They’ll ban the shit out of trolls lickety split.

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      35·
      6 months ago

      I just did a search on Beehaw local for the keyword “China”.

      Somehow I don’t see it being any more welcoming than any other site I’ve seen in the … well, Fediverse actually. The western left is not a whole lot better on that topic than the western right.

    • foxglove (she/her)@lazysoci.alMEnglish
      13·
      6 months ago

      I support moving to Blahaj as well ✅

      Pros:

      • only upvotes (no more harassment through downvotes)
      • Ada has already banned lots of bad actors from the instance, so moderation will be easier
      • Blahaj’s community and instance is already women friendly

      Cons:

      • there is probably some work to move another instance (I’m not sure what that would take - or if we would just shutter the lazysoci.al community and start a new one on Blahaj?)
      • Ada’s rules can be pretty strict, which means we might lose some control over moderation decisions and discretion; you could view this as a pro or con, part of the reason Blahaj is so welcoming and such a good option is because of Ada’s strictness - I only bring it up because of the 196 drama that happened recently where the mods of that community felt they didn’t align fully with Ada’s approach - so that’s just something to get clear on, what are the expectations, and are we comfortable with those expectations
      • Blahaj defederates from some instances and likewise some instances have defederated from Blahaj, so that might impact our users a little bit (again, this could be a pro depending on how you feel about the instances that are defederated from one another; I suspect Hexbear users who like this community would be upset if we moved to Blahaj, because Hexbear defederated from Blahaj).
    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      202·
      6 months ago

      Tell me, how insecure are you that you COME HERE to tell us that we are somehow going out to scream at you?

      You. Came. Here.

      Not the other way around.

      How shrivelled is your manhood that you can’t stand being asked to not be here? What is behind your obvious misogyny? (What’s that? You don’t think you’re misogynistic? Tell me how you’d respond, then, to someone going to a metal-oriented channel and saying that all metal sucks and that only losers and wasted goons listen to that shit: real people listen to waltzes.)

      Now piss off, child. Adults are trying to continue with a conversation. The toddler table is over there.

  • Head@lemmings.worldEnglish
    121·
    6 months ago

    The older I get, the more I want to be a lesbian. Thank you for this post.

    • SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      238·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, we wrongly expected men to respect this space.

      Guess that’s too much to fucking ask.

      You have the rest of this fucking website to do whatever you fucking want. And we have ONE single tiny space we respectfully requested you do not post to.

      And yet. Here you are!

      EDIT: Ladies, if there’s not a lock on your door, regardless of the “please do not enter” sign, you can’t just expect men not to enter! IT’S THEIR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT!!!

        • SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
          154·
          6 months ago

          It’s like standing in the mall and shouting that the floor tile you’re on is yours and yours alone and then getting mad that someone says “ok”

          No, it’s like we requested a room in the community center for our meeting, and some fucking dumb-ass barges in, sits down, and inserts themself into our conversation!

          Or! You could stay out of women-only spaces when requested! No?

          I don’t have the time or tools to host my own instance, so maybe just stay out of our fucking room until we do.

    • Alice@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      If anything lemmy needs more communities like this. Communities that AREN’T political and strictly focused around a specfic topic.