Submitted 1 day ago by misterdoctor@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/44d4e3e3-f0eb-4901-981d-dba4cc5a2a24.jpeg
For those out of the loop, WomensStuff has a women-only rule, where men are respectfully asked to not reply to posts.
This entire thread makes me embarrassed to be on lemmy. On the other hand, a college course one of my kids is taking is using this thread as an example of men simultaneously demanding inclusion in all spaces while also actively antagonizing other people out of spaces. Say hi to Langara College, whiny men! I’m embarrassed to be counted as one of you.
Lol, I wasn’t going to chime in to this train wreck, but this is awesome. Hi Langara! I hope you learn what not to do here. Also worth noting: it’s easy, and good, to see how stupid the olds can be. It’s harder, by a lot, to see which new things are stupid in a new way (or newly packaged way). Good luck.
Wait are you embarrassed because of Langara College? The 1,645th top higher education provider in Canada?
I bet you placed 1,645/1,645 in your high schools standardized tests
Asmodeus, not the very same Asmodeus that stalked Mossflower Wood, surely?
fuck that bullshit. while they do have the right to exclude who they want, i have the right to be harshly critical. and i will say that any community where one is compelled to disclose any part of their identity as a requirement to participate is a toxic one. i suspect any account is subject to being pressured into proving they aren’t a man if the mods want to harass someone that way. this is why i am not and will never be a feminist in a million years.
You had a point, than you killed it with the unrelated last sentence lol.
It’s lemmy, the likelihood is probably about 25% of those threads are actual women
I’ll try to explain why women want and need a women only space here.
It is actually quite easy and has mostly to do with how many men there are on Lemmy compared to women.
Let’s say I post a question on WomensStuff. I might get 10 answers from women and one answer from a very nice and respectful men. So, no harm was done, right?
Well if you allow everybody to participate you will quickly get a lot of “not a woman, but …” type of answers. The 10 original comments made by the demographic that was actually targeted will be quickly drowned out.
This is how every post is on here. That is just how it is but that’s ok. What we want is just one small part of Lemmy where we can talk among ourselves without being overshadowed. Just accept that because our lovely mods will not back down.
If you’re tired of seeing our posts, no worries! Just block the community or asked to be banned. No harm will be done and we can continue with our nice supportive community.
Just block the community or ask to be banned
Yup, that’s what I did. It leaves… bad taste in my mouth when it goes to my main page, the topic is interesting, I go to read it, and then I see someone silencing the participants with a very smug “You’re not a woman, so please kindly fuck off from here, flowers and smiles”.
Not a woman but- No that actually makes a lot of sense :)
Everyone knows creating segregated groups ends well
Sounds like someone has never been with a woman enough to understand she needs time with just the girls. If they’re in the house chatting, you can either leave, or shut up and bring snacks. Either way, give them space.
You’re being obtuse. Men’s and women’s clubs work just fine IRL. Sports, social, and charity are just a few examples in my local community which are thriving.
If you take that away after reading my comment I cannot help you. WomensStuff is ONE community out of hundreds, just block it and move on with your life.
Lemmy is like a house party, where everybody has the freedom to talk to whomever they so choose. Segregated groups, creating segregated groups. If one butts in to a conversation, the participants are free to ask one not to participate, and are free to walk away if one insists. (In this metaphor, the WomensStuff community doesn’t even mind if you listen in.) For a house party, though, the host is well within their rights to not invite anybody, or even ask guests to leave. That’s a very strictly segregated group.
What’s been the ripple of evil from allowing house parties, or companies to pay only a select group of employees, private clubs, family dinners et cetera? Has the existence of the chain of women’s-only gyms destroyed men’s lives?
I really appreciate reading those posts, but I have mistakenly replied and had to preemptively delete my post several times now. I wouldn’t mind a ban that would allow me to read without making that mistake again.
I saw a comment on a post in the community once from somebody like you who asked politely to be banned. The mods were glad to help and it was a very wholesome exchange!
I just want to point out that ITT there are people who simultaneously refuse to recognize how men only spaces are demonized and refuse to back down about women needing women only spaces.
You fucking idiots are the reason the Proud Boys happen. Your thoughts are stupid and destructive in the same way that someone driving too slow on the highway is.
There are legitimate needs for the mythopoetic male movement. Problem is, it has been abused and warped by mysogyny into the Proud Boys, Andrew Taint, Jordan Peterson, etc. to exploit vulnerable males for profit and power at the cost of cultural degredation. Like all things, it’s nuanced and overshadowed by the bad faith actors
Who tf demonizes men spaces? There’s is wrong with men. There’s something wrong with being a fucking Nazi, that’s why THOSE spaces get demonized; kinda weird that that was your first thought when talking about ‘men spaces’.
Where in this thread are people doing that? I only see a few comments in support of male support groups and none demonizing them.
Much anger here.
Why are there so many dudes here that can’t handle the concept of not sharing their opinion on everything? I think it’s valuable to learn to just listen sometimes. A community for people commonly talked over, mansplained to, and not taken seriously should be seen as a good thing. As a cis man, I think there’s a lot of value in that for my demographic as well, because diversity is interesting.
Also I think a lot of people are willingly missing the point of this post! Nobody is going to crucify you for accidentally commenting, it’s up to you to realize your mistake. Honor system.
Consider that the Father of All Selection Biases at work here: Of course we’ll hear comments, from all the men who can’t handle the concept of not sharing their opinion, sharing their opinion of not being able to share their opinion.
Well, as someone with a moral compass, when I see disinformation being spread, I feel obligated to dispute it…
That’s rich, coming from some claiming month/date/year is objectively the best way to write dates xD
I will say that the urge to share an opinion rather than listen is not really based on sex.
What I find interesting here is that this all self identification and self reporting.
There’s no mechanism in Lemmy to force a user into such identification, so it is all voluntary.
Yes, the users at WomensStuff are banking on Lemmy users reading the rules and then adhering to them because it’s a respectful thing to do.
Unfortunately, many men on Lemmy have found this too burdensome a cross to bear.
It’s not voluntary. Comments are deleted if you don’t reveal your gender.
Well, if the user that started that community is an alt of who I think it is, that… that would track.
From my own experience, women-only spaces tend to revolve around men, ironically. I can almost bet my left ball on the fact that top post on that sub is about men, not women.
anything that excludes you is a “echo chamber circlejerk”? that’s a pretty harmful way to think. You should do some introspection and double-check if this is a mentality you want to live your life by.
anything that excludes you is a “echo chamber circlejerk”?
This is such a shallow and stupid way of thinking. Was this your best strawman argument?
You should do some introspection and double-check if this is a mentality you want to live your life by.
I do. I generally look at groups who disregard or make fun of others purely based on race or gender as not mentally healthy places to be in, like incel subreddits.
The formula tends to also be quite simple - take something a man/woman says, then find a funny counter-argument in the thread, screenshot the two together and you got a post. Does not matter which gender we’re talking about, it’s pretty much always the same. Some reddit subreddits were borderline extremist in this approach, showing signs of aggression or calls for violence towards women.
Tisk tisk tisk. Bottom surgery for free, huh? Clever scheme.
If not commenting is too hard… maybe a setting where you can only comment if you’ve subscribed would be cool
The fucking comments on here are insane. It’s not a private comm, and pretty much every comment that’s been deleted for being posted by a male user was because they explicitly stated they were male. As in started off a comment (usually on women’s issues) with “as a guy…”
Go on a linux forum and post “as a windows user…”
Go on PC gamers and post “as a console gamer…”
Would have a problem with being told “this is not for you” then? No, you wouldn’t. You’re literally just not used to being told it’s not your turn to speak. Get over it.
And to those who demand it be taken off all: fucking learn how to curate your own experience. Skip over or block it the same way you would other communities that have nothing for you
i genuinely wouldn’t have a problem with windows users on linux forums or console gamers on pc forums. maybe you should get over it.
I expect in most online communities if you made a post like “As a windows user, I am looking into linux and have heard that some common apps don’t run well. Is that an issue you all run into much?” or “As a console gamer, I find myself envying some of the mods I see through Steam/Nexus and am thinking about switching platforms. Is it hard to get controllers working well in most games?” or something similar, you would be welcomed by the people there. You just need to be respectful and on-topic.
I imagine that community probably has frustrating behaviors that men do as a common topic. Having men reply about why they would do a particular behavior or the sorts of strategies that could get other men to stop it would be not only acceptable, but valuable. Silencing their voices without cause then does a disservice to not only those users, but to the community as a whole. By not letting men reply, you’d be criticizing a large group of people while also preventing any member of the group from having a chance to defend themselves.
You can try to justify discriminating a place, but it is a high bar to clear, especially on a core part of someone’s identity like gender. It’s akin to preemptively banning someone based on that characteristic. There’s a difference between “this is not for you” and “you are not allowed here”. I can only really think of that much restriction being necessary in a very private community where content can reasonably identify someone or the members are very vulnerable.
IIRC, r/BlackPeopleTwitter had country club threads where only users the mods had verified were black could participate in. So there’s probably a compromise to have restrictions on a post-by-post basis. As it stands, if they’re primarily banning the users that include “as a guy…” in their replies then they are really just selecting against the ones that are being upfront about it. I really don’t want to see another r/FemaleDatingStrategy develop and a big contributor for that toxicity was silencing diverse opinions.
Reminds me of the dude who came in here complaining about being banned from r/nintendo or something, because he was part of the r/fucknintendo sub. Everyone was supportive of him here. The playstation sub on reddit is dominated by PC masterrace preachers too. That’s a bit annoying to me, but I don’t make the rules.
Very well said
Go on a linux forum and post “as a windows user…”
Go on PC gamers and post “as a console gamer…”
Would have a problem with being told “this is not for you” then? No, you wouldn’t.
This is a terrible example, because yes absolutely I would indeed consider the mods to be militant over-the-top a-holes if they deleted and blocked all comments from Windows or console users.
Consider what the word “majority” means and how that impacts the balance of such discussions. Especially on a platform where people vote on each other’s comments.
In the Linux forum example, the occasional “as a Windows user…” comment isn’t a problem, but it does become one when it makes up 80-90% of comments / visitors. Try to understand how this shapes a community when the fewer directly affected people are annoyed by this and stop contributing.
To add the most blatant and widespread version of “as a man”:
“But in the usa…”
Facts right here. Learn how to let people have their own space. Sometimes a thing isn’t meant for you, and that’s okay.
this reminds me way too much of the “let women have their own spaces” rhetoric when it comes to cis women wanting to exclude trans women. you can’t expect the people who you are actively excluding from your group not to be a little hurt by it, even if it isn’t something they’d be interested in.
Saying “you are not allowed here” is a step up from saying “this isn’t meant for you”
You’re literally just not used to being told it’s not your turn to speak. Get over it.
Isn’t the goal to move past this behavior when based on immutable qualities rather than merit? The ethical value of a reverse country club model is pretty controversial.
the rule isn’t based on an immutable quality - the community accepts AMAB trans women and nonbinary folks. It’s in line with the goal of the community being to discuss experiences with womanhood - people that don’t identify with any aspect of it aren’t who the community is for.
Usually self-policing is good enough for this kind of thing. as an American, I don’t have much reason to comment in European centered communities, and while I do occasionally see Americans posting there, it’s pretty rare.
That changes when it’s a community of people that are vastly outnumbered by those that have strong feelings about them. take vegan communities for instance. Check the comments of any vegan community post that gets popular, it’s often a shit fest due to the influx of carnivore opinions, and I can understand mods not feeling able to keep up when this happens.
Ideally I think this rule doesn’t exist, ideally this could be like other communities where people recognize their opinion isn’t needed here and move on - but that’s absolutely not going to happen with a women’s community.
You can very easily block it if you don’t like the idea of a community that isn’t for you, but e.g. as an American I do like checking in on European communities to see what’s going on over there. Even if they’re clowning on us. That’s ok.
Yeah, I concur. When I learned I wasn’t allowed to speak there, I simply blocked it and moved on. They can have whatever rules they want. No one is obligated to be there.
I feel based on the name of the community, some rules would be obvious. But a “absolutely nothing from you, male scum” isn’t obvious.
I posted one there yesterday or this morning, haven’t checked on it, but it’s probably deleted now. No harm no foul. It wasn’t meant to break a rule, and they can do what they want. But I would’ve never even known if not for this post.
But I will be blocking the sub now. Both because I’m apparently not welcome, and because I will probably accidentally do it again otherwise.
Eh, irkers can sit down. It’s long been a thing about paying attention to community rules before posting, and if you don’t and violate them, you don’t get to whinge.
You’re literally just not used to being told it’s not your turn to speak.
I respect their rules on that community as browsing Everything (Sync) it shows up for me fairly regularly and I haven’t had any issues.
I reject the part I literally quoted.
I care about precision in communication and fighting against entropic decay in his we communicate so I can’t compelled to respond to this quote.
I am a male have no turn to speak there so you are flat out wrong. It will never be my turn, it is inaccurate what you are saying. Please consider reframing what you said, and using literally there makes your error much more egregious, literally
Mate, i’m ASD and saying dial it back.
BS, we had the same argument on Reddit
So as a guy on some men only subreddit, I also welcomed the opinion of women while expecting them to clarify.
As a nerd in many “year of Linux on the desktop” debates, I welcomed constructive opinions from the benighted fools
As a PC gamer I want to game with my buddies so yes I want the opinion of those on consoles
So as a guy on some men only subreddit, I also welcomed the opinion of women while expecting them to clarify.
So you’re ok with a community defining how it wants people outside its demographic to interact with it?
Also similar to why religious (online) comunities will usually deny the talk if “dissents” (also atheist comunities having rules against proselytizing, which do makes sense)
In the end, it sums up to “Don’t be an asshole” rule
Blocked that comm, just so I wouldn’t accidentally violate that rule. No sense in getting emotionally invested in a post I’m not allowed to discuss.
I wouldn’t have commented except they made the main feed. I wasn’t given a warning I was just banned. That is why I’m pretty sure OP here is lying about what happened. I’m fine with them having their own thing but I don’t have feel bad about their agnst. I didn’t cause it so I am in no way responsible for their innate hostility.
Had they given me a warning and explained the situation I would have been more than happy to delete the comment and block their echo chamber. Which I did anyway.
I once commented on a pancake recipe post. The recipes they posted were weak but I deleted mine when I learned about the rule. It felt very much like the image here lol. Oh well
I am pretty disappointed eh. For obvious reasons.
Honestly, excluding any gender from commenting on the public internet is fucking braindead stupid. Also - how do they define “woman”?
easy self-check for these things:
is it OK for group A to do X? is it OK for group B to do X? …
if the answer is not the same for all the groups you can reasonably think of, something about your morals is off.
not everyone will agree whether X is OK to do. but at least you can detect, whether you are biased yourself.
Stupid expectation to have. If they want women posts/comments only, lemmy needs a feature for communities not to be advertised on the main page unless subscribed, to keep people from accidentally replying. Or does that feature exist and they are intentionally not using it?
I automatically block communities that put requirements like that on participation. If they don’t want me interacting with it, I don’t want to even see it. I also don’t think it’s appropriate for a public forum. Go make your own private thing somewhere if you want to immediately start off as an echo chamber.
Im a dude who posts on femcels a lot because i like the memes. but I kinda like dick so iono i think i get a pass?
Clearly the solution here is a publicly seen WomenStuff with whitelisted posters, and an ancillary public community called PeanitsGallery where all talk about the WomenStuff.
Well, aren’t the majority of these replies depressing. Imagine looking at a minority group that tries to make a private corner for themselves and going “yeah but they haven’t heard my take yet!”
Not a big fan of an attribute you were born with making you ineligible to comment in a community, but their community, their rules.
WomensStuff is also trans affirming so the solution is obvious.
This has always been one of the top tier funniest meme images to me.
“Men don’t feel as deeply as people like to imagine they do” - an idiot who has apparently never read men acting like absolute fannies literally all over the internet forever.
Yep, blocked this one. No harsh feelings but I don’t think it’s meant to be public. They should be free to do what they want to do with their space. On the other hand, private would hurt discoverability. I sort of understand where they’re coming from.
I’ve just blocked the community entirely, because apparently I’m not a woman based on… idfk.
This discussion reminds me of a party/orgy/something I saw being promoted and in the description it says that it was female/trans oriented (female and male trans included), but that they weren’t going to police anyone’s gender, but asked cis males to respect and didn’t participate.
I didn’t even get a chance. Post came up, I didn’t check the sub, posted a comment, Admin told me politely to get fucked and banned me.
I politely asked to get banned.
disagree with the rules, but ain’t my community, I ain’t invited, and I will politely respect it.
imagine walking into someone’s private party, only to complain that I wasn’t invited, and how dare they exclude me!!!
Just block the sub if it bothers you and wipe your mind free. That’s all there ever was to it.
zipsglacier@lemmy.world 6 minutes ago
Shout out to OP for recognizing the struggle and respecting the rule (I thought this was a 196 post at first!)
Men will lurk for years without ever commenting in some communities, and then (ITT) lose their minds when confronted with the possibility of a community they are welcome to read, but asked not to comment. Bros, you were already doing that!! Yes, it’s hard, that’s what this post is about. But you can do it!!