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• eupraxia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    True, I guess immutable wasn’t the right term. It’s mutable, but it’s not really a choice.

    I do disagree that banning men is necessarily helpful for the discussion of women’s issues though. Yes, some women’s issues are so far removed from our experience that most male advice wouldn’t be helpful. But I believe there is always value to be found, even-- actually, especially-- from the outgroup. This is the exact rationale for DEI, or at least the one that I find reasonable, which is that having perspectives from people with a wider variety of experiences represented in a space can improve the discussions within it. When done correctly, this improves the experience of the people who the group is “for”. Mixing perspectives with outgroup members like this also improves the mutual understanding between the group’s members and nonmembers, which in this case especially is important. And it allows people to more easily become allies.

    What we don’t want is people with a hostile view of the group to be free to participate as much as they want. Maybe banning all men from the community is necessary, or maybe just efficient, to fulfill this purpose. In this case the ban might be worth it, but the loss of external perspectives is a downside and that should be considered here and always.

    Like another user replied, there’s a difference between “this isn’t for you” and “you aren’t allowed here”. There aren’t a lot of other public high-quality places to discuss women’s issues, so as a man your options are to:

    • Not discuss them, at most trying to understand by watching
    • Start your own community for men to discuss women’s issues, which without womens’ perspectives is not likely to go well
    • Start a community for all genders to discuss it – maybe I should do this one tbh, although maybe it might be smarter to expand the topic a little

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    • eupraxia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Maybe banning all men from the community is necessary, or maybe just efficient, to fulfill this purpose.

      Yeah, that’s more or less how I see the rule too. Ideally it wouldn’t exist, but without something like it in place, the majority of comments in a women’s issues community would come from men, especially on popular posts. The tradeoff is between creating a community where women can speak to each other on these issues, or including men, some of whom would positively contribute to discussion and have their own relevant experiences to offer. The former isn’t really something that exists on the site and I do feel it’s important to have a community to fulfill that purpose. I don’t see a more inclusive mod policy that’s simple enough to communicate as a rule for WomensStuff, but other communities could definitely step up to fill that role.

      The last two bullet points are good ideas and it’d be completely valid imo to respond to a post in WomensStuff in another community including men. (“Guys, how do we feel about this?” kinda threads) !mensliberation@lemmy.ca may be what you’re looking for, it’s primarily for men and masc people but it is open to everyone to comment. There you’d find discussion of issues men face too, and discussion of women’s issues could be framed around how men can respond to them.

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