In a poll on hexbear (see link), it was observed that there are very few cis women on Lemmy. I think this is the intersection of several problems:
- engagement of women on Reddit was always low
- fewer women in computer science
- I’m hesitant to recommend anything fediversy to people who don’t tinker with computers like I do and thus might need a more handholdy UX.
I gather that transgender people tend to be more into CS, though I don’t see why that explains entirely such an astonishing presence of the transgender community on Hexbear.
Anyway, I just thought I’d open the floor to brainstorming.
There was another poll that showed that there were virtually no transmen here. Would be interesting if someone researched that.
I think the trans community tends towards privacy oriented tools due to the political climate.
Let me tell you one of the reasons that I’m here. When I was eight I got a pc on my birthday. My sister was on that thing for two weeks using dos and acing grand prix motor. She was given a baby doll which could cry and eat and pee. That goes to show how deeply ingrained these norms are in our culture. How would my sister ever have a chance without a pc? She received the message and didn’t touch it again.
Another thing I can bring to the table is that I had game history and we learned that marketing of games used to be to boys and girls. And in the 80s or so it was figured out that marketing only to one gender group is more successful. That’s when games started focusing solely on boys.
Further, all the game authors were men, which further cements it.
For example I’ve been playing Oblivion lately and it’s almost impossible to find some proper pants. Any pants that I pick up magically transform into skirts and dresses:
Make of that what you will.
What’s the weird thing with open source community’s fixation on sex or gender identity?
I like to believe we can reach a world where those things don’t matter anymore. But I’m just pointing out that right now there’s deficit of AFAB people here. I’m not saying it’s necessarily the fault of the open source community, but I would like to understand why exactly this has occurred. Is that wrong?
Just be a cool space with cool conversations.
Ok, ladies: Would you rather out yourself as a woman online, or spend the night in the woods with a bear?
Anyone thinking that lemmy is a welcoming space to women should read through that thread first.
Edit: the current state of Lemmy and the fediverse reminds me heavily of early reddit, for better and for worse. You can curate some pretty supportive communities if you are careful picking them out, they remain well moderated, etc. But there are plenty of places where you’ll get scummy content if you wander or if posts attract too much attention.
You don’t try and attract a specific demographic. You just create the space you want and if they also value that space you they will choose to participate. It’s not 2005 there are women on the internet everywhere. Lemmy has a lot of women compared to reddit and mastodon has a decent women userbase as well it feels.
Hexbear is a bad representation of lemmy ignore their demographic polls.
As for actionable steps I think we are doing a good enough job already. The communities here are not toxic. The users are mature and call out sexist stuff when it happens. The only thing we could probably do is host more content that women typically tend to enjoy but that will come with growth of the site and is better done organically.
If you’re browsing ‘all’ without any filters there’s still a good portion of porn and porn-like content that’s objectfying and thus probably repelling women.
