(Content warning, discussions of SA and misogyny, mods I might mention politics a bit but I hope this can be taken outside the context of politics and understood as a discussion of basic human decency)
We all know how awful Reddit was when a user mentioned their gender. Immediate harassment, DMs, etc. It’s probably improved over the years? But still awful.
Until recently, Lemmy was the most progressive and supportive of basic human dignity of communities I had ever followed. I have always known this was a majority male platform, but I have been relatively pleased to see that positive expressions of masculinity have won out.
All of that changed with the recent “bear vs man” debacle. I saw women get shouted down just for expressing their stories of being sexually abused, repeatedly harassed, dogpiled, and brigaded with downvotes. Some of them held their ground, for which I am proud of them, but others I saw driven to delete their entire accounts, presumably not to return.
And I get it. The bear thing is controversial; we can all agree on this. But that should never have resulted in this level of toxicity!
I am hoping by making this post I can kind of bring awareness to this weakness, so that we can learn and grow as a community. We need to hold one another accountable for this, or the gender gap on this site is just going to get worse.
If outcasts are people who don’t feel welcome in any irl or mainstream communities; women are just as likely to be outcasts. Women online can avoid outing themselves because even female oriented online support spaces get brigaded by men. There are a handful of female artists in my circle who identify as male online because they kept getting creepy dms. They still get them, of course, but less so. Less violent and rapey.
Who knows how many women are out there, lurking in the shadows, just trying to look at memes about linux and communism.
I think they’re including people that aren’t exposed to communities even if they would be welcome. Men are more likely to become socially isolated (I’ve only seen studies for 30+ yrs of age), which means they generally turn more to online. Definitely a surprising amount of women lurking, but look at any group online meet-up and it’s almost all men (even if all members show up)
How does one look at any group online meet-up? Is there a place where all group, online meet-ups are posted?
As an example, if you look up “reddit irl meet-ups” it’s either a majority men or an overwhelming majority men, I’ve met up with a community for a game I’m interested in and it was mostly men. Maybe men would just be more likely to show up? but anonymous statistics on websites also report the same.
I looked that up and couldn’t find any data on the demographics for reddit IRL meetups. But we were debating whether or not more men or women go online to find community. My point what that women don’t always out themselves because of negative attention. The most recent statistics I found showed that women in the US are self reported to more likely to use social media than men. Worldwide, it varies by the platform, but the disparity is highest on Twitter, with more male users. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t work when people are actively avoiding being recognized as women, and online communities can vary widely in their gender makeup.
I don’t believe there have been studies on irl reddit meetups, but usually there is a photo posted. With image recognition tools you could probably get a rough distribution, but my theory that most who show up will be male is based on anonymous polling data, which I don’t believe women would hide their gender on. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255182/distribution-of-users-on-reddit-worldwide-gender/ Many women use Instagram or snapchat or tiktok etc, but I think you’d agree those aren’t general conversations focused. Most (all that I have seen) that focus on discussion are majority men. You could say the discussions that happen on these sites are just more appealing to men, or that women get pushed out, and I can neither prove or disprove that. If you know of any websites that focus on general chatting that are mostly women I’d be curious to hear about them. Omeggle I know actually was pretty neutral on gender.
I’m not arguing that women don’t look for online spaces, the statistics aren’t even that lopsided and I know many women IRL who spend much more time online than I do. It just seems to me if men are more likely socially isolated, they are more likely to become outcasts, and hence more likely to spend all their time online. Not that women won’t be in these spaces, or some communities aren’t majority women.
Evidently online usage for the younger generation is almost exactly even across the two sexes, but I’m not sure how much of this is for conversation vs how much is watching tiktok/posting on Instagram.
I don’t believe evey meetup posts pictures of their entire groups, nor do I think there’s a database for that, or that, if that database existed, it would be a good tool for assessing whether or not men are more likely to be outcasts. Reddit is only one social media site, like I said, and has a shrinking market share. Whether or not other social media platforms are conducive to conversations was never my point, it was the one-sidedness of saying men are more likely to be social outcasts. I don’t think looking at a few pictures of reddit meetups proves anything.
I don’t see what other outcome being socially isolated can produce…? I suppose you could be isolated but not rejected by society, but the person who comes out of that isolation is not going to be a normal person (depending on the length of isolation), and likely won’t be accepted by most normal people, which would make them an outcast no?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10409601/ this is a recent study showing social isolation by gender and age, and it turns out after age 55 women are more likely to he isolated, so what I’m saying only applies to young and middle aged men.
Excellent explanation, thanks for this.