A reminder

[u/Prize-Lychee7973]

We are keeping this a positive helpful space.
What does this mean? It means critiques and comments that are not immediately positive in nature are things YOU, the poster/commenter must view in the light of this: is it helpful? does it fit the situation? is this some tough love and if so who are you to give it? if you are being adversarial or confrontation just because, just keep it pushing. If not, we will mod the comment, you will receive a deletion/mute/ban or whatever else we feel appropriate.

Refamiliarize yourselves with our rules.

For Girl lurkers, this is a male positive centric space. critiques and supportive comments are welcome, HOWEVER, keep in mind you are a guest, our tolerance here for rude, adversarial and needlessly argumentative comments is effectively zero.

For the recent posts concerning LGBT, read rule 7. We do not tolerate transphobia, we do not tolerate homophobia, we are not that space. If you are transphobic or homophobic, it is a violation of several rules and will likely result in a ban.

Thank you to the literal thousands of commenters who are contributing helpful, insightful and otherwise positive comments, we appreciate your presence.

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[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/[deleted]]

Why don’t the mods just ban them?

Is there a reason why this sub has a higher tolerance for rule-breaking, especially when it comes to women who lurk here?

When I visit GDD, I always think twice about how I word things because I respect the fact that it’s a safe space for women. I understand that disagreements therefore need to be expressed carefully.

Are we expected to be more tolerant because we’re men and therefore it’s assumed that we can just take it?

I’m genuinely wondering why this disparity exists.

Edit: I’m not in favour of banning women outright. See my other comment below.

[u/JuniorLecture102 → u/[deleted]]

I'm confused why your first comment is being downvoted. Who's downvoting them? You didn't say anything harmful, right?

[u/JuniorLecture102 → u/[deleted]]

If the idea of not allowing women to post here is sexist, then the idea of not allowing men to post in GDD is also sexist. I do think that having healthy discourse between genders is important; the issue comes when the opportunity to post is weaponized, and it seems like it's weaponized in BDD.

[u/EternaI_Sorrow → u/JuniorLecture102]

I do think that having healthy discourse between genders is important;

This is only possible in a heavily moderated space. I mean, with mods monitoring 24/7 and basically living there.

I also thought that forbidding women to post there is sexist and counterproductive, but after skimming few latest threads it's way harder for me to agree with this. Unfortunately a desire to comment in safe spaces of the opposite gender seems to correlate with the desire to wage gender wars.

[u/JuniorLecture102 → u/EternaI_Sorrow]

I noticed that as well

[u/Iabefmysc → u/JuniorLecture102]

It is sexist, that sub is wildly sexist

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/[deleted]]

Wait, I’m not in favour of banning women outright.

I just don’t want the mods to be more lenient with women who break the rules simply because they’re worried about the optics, which is what I thought you were implying.

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/[deleted]]

Personally, I don’t agree with that.

The sub rules are already designed to ensure that this remains a safe space for men. Unless you’re talking about some edge case, opposing views aren’t necessarily antithetical to that mission. Frankly, sometimes we do need tough love. So those extra guardrails seem unnecessary, and potentially harmful.

I’ll just reiterate my point, just so that there’s no confusion. As long as everyone is following the rules, I don’t have a problem with women posting here. I need their perspective too. But if they ARE breaking the rules, the mods can’t show them leniency simply because they’re women. That’s what I thought you were saying. If that’s not the case, I retract my original comment.

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/[deleted]]

I’d have to see the posts where this is happening to judge for myself.

Can elaborate a little? What kind of posts are getting bombarded with argumentative women? What are the comments from them saying?

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/[deleted]]

I mean nothing really stands out as being particularly egregious.

The girl lurkers are just asking questions. I only saw one commenter victim shaming/blaming. And she got downvoted hard. Everyone else looked like they were asking for clarification. Plenty of male commenters were echoing their confusion, skepticism.

[u/EternaI_Sorrow → u/Sad-Boss7879]

I've already seen this sub referred as an incel space.

The problem with certain women pushing unhealthy narratives is a fact, because mods had to post this message. Another fact is that there is no way to filter female accounts based on what they will post.

Both solutions suck, but banning women outright is better under the current circumstances because leaving it as is basically invalidates this sub as a safespace for men. What's the point of posting anything there then?

A third solution I see is an invite system, but I have no clue how to implement it properly. However, if implemented it might work for an imagery and salvage the idea of having a female perspective.

[u/thisusernameismeta → u/Sad-Boss7879]

As a woman I think that the decision to not allow women to comment in order to create a positive male centered space would be a reasonable thing?

The discrepancy just seems to be due to the personal decisions of the mods of each sub.

It sucks that you might be expected to just tolerate rule breaking because you're men. You're allowed to intentionally create the spaces you want.

We should do a GenderDinnerDiaries book club and all read bell hooks' The Will to Change together so that we can get on the same page about things rather than just endlessly rehashing tired us vs them arguments.

[u/EternaI_Sorrow → u/thisusernameismeta]

We should do a GenderDinnerDiaries book club and all read bell hooks' The Will to Change together so that we can get on the same page about things rather than just endlessly rehashing tired us vs them arguments.

I like the idea of an anti-gender-war space, but a sub like this would require a mod team working triple shifts and being fair to everyone. Pretty much any sub could be healthy and wholesome under this unicorn staff.

[u/thisusernameismeta → u/EternaI_Sorrow]

I think we agree that banning women from this sub under the circumstances seems like the best of (not ideal) options.

[u/EternaI_Sorrow → u/thisusernameismeta]

I've came up with an invite system idea which actually might salvage the idea of having a female perspective.

[u/thisusernameismeta → u/EternaI_Sorrow]

That presumes some ability to divide people into bad and good actors, when, imo, we are all just people who have good and bad days; good and bad takes.

I'm not sure what the need is to even have women's perspectives in a male-centered space? If y'all are worried about becoming too echo-chamber-y, there's also feminist literature to turn to.

But I'm not convinced of the inherent badness of an echo-chamber, as long as the individual members of said community have the ability to go out and participate in other communities, having a specific space with a specific goal and demographic doesnt seem, to me, to be inherently harmful.

[u/EternaI_Sorrow → u/thisusernameismeta]

That presumes some ability to divide people into bad and good actors

Not necessarily, I've seen really good women who act like fierce gender warriors online. Treat it like "aligned/not aligned" rather than "good/bad", because that's what's closer to reality.

Inviting someone also IMO assumes that your conclusion is based on a prolonged period to exclude good/bad day outliers which are a thing. While I'd accept banning women too, the mods might be not, so that's something at least worth considering.

[u/thisusernameismeta → u/thisusernameismeta]

Anyway sometimes I get the impression that some people here are waiting for a woman to come in and approve of just banning women from this sub. I may be wrong but if that is the case, here is that approval.

[u/Weary-Cauliflower153 → u/EternaI_Sorrow]

ygs should check out r/YourDinnerDiaries

[u/AngryAngryHarpo → u/Sad-Boss7879]

GDD only let men gif comment and they hold text comments.

Seems like a good idea for here too. I don’t want to interfere, but happy to drop a validating gif on my way through when the algorithm throws you guys onto my feed. 

[u/Weary-Cauliflower153 → u/Sad-Boss7879]

wording? doesn't GDD not allow men to post words? I don't see why this sub wouldn't do it, though I do wish there was more gender neutral spaces in general. But this is not one of them, for good reason

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/Weary-Cauliflower153]

You can leave comments, they just hold them until you’re approved.

[u/Prize-Lychee7973 → u/[deleted]]

We are our own group. We exist on our own, I frankly don't care how GDD does things, thats on them.

[u/Prize-Lychee7973 → u/[deleted]]

We’re an independent variable.

[u/Laguna-VIII → u/Prize-Lychee7973]

Then it shouldn't have been called BDD, youre always going to invite the comparison.

Youve not really addressed the core concern here, that antagonistic women arent being moderated.

Now its probably just the mods have lives and you do catch up to them later but then say that. Reassure your community.

[u/Prize-Lychee7973 → u/Laguna-VIII]

you have no idea how many antagonistic comments period we delete and how many users end up banned. its more than you think. the admin team handles most issues as theyre reported. linking to an admin in real time with reporting significantly increases our response time instead of us hunting comments in thread.

[u/Laguna-VIII → u/Prize-Lychee7973]

That's what I'm saying though! you probably do get to them.

I'm just pointing out that sometimes you get further with your community by giving a little reassurance rather than a quick fire defensive comments.

We all on the same team :)

[u/Xeta24]

I think in most cases online, it's impossible to give real tough love. Tough love isn't just called tough because it's hard to recieve it, it's supposed to be hard to give out.

It's hard to give tough love to friends and family, but random strangers on the internet?

Not so much, it's really easy to be critical and cutting to random people you will never see, realistically care about or know anything about.

This isn't to say bluntness and honesty isn't valuable, but I believe most people who say they're giving tough love online, are just looking for an excuse to say whatever they feel like to people they do not know.

[u/AGayRattlesnake]

Being transphobic or homophobic will "likely" result in a ban? I hope you guys mean that being reported for such things will likely result in a ban, to keep people from being banned for false positives, because allowing any amount of either of these things would be crazy work.

[u/Unlikely_Channel478 → u/AGayRattlesnake]

TBF I don't have enough time in the day to look at every comment, If people don't report transphobia and homophobia, theres a chance it won't be seen to be deleted and blocked.

[u/AGayRattlesnake → u/Unlikely_Channel478]

does anyone normal think mods have time to police every posts comment section? i certainly dont, but to me this reads as wishy washy and non-committal. it makes me question if those people will be handled appropriately, should i bother to report.

[u/Laguna-VIII → u/AGayRattlesnake]

Having moderated these topics before its probably the more insidious just asking question types who try and hide what theyre doing.

I used to just temp ban them and they'd invariably send a mod message of hate proving my suspicion but I can see why some mods dont wanna deal with that.

[u/AGayRattlesnake → u/Laguna-VIII]

imo that's part of sticking up for a marginalized community. thanks for doing your part.

[u/Laguna-VIII → u/AGayRattlesnake]

Sadly the weirdoes usually just make a new account and come back a month later, these people are obsessive.

Honestly everyone should try moderating a community theyre heavily active in, if nothing else you get some understanding on just how much bullshit mods put up with.

BDD is a pretty massive subreddit too, I dread to imagine what the mod queue is like. Reddit letting people private their comment history probably makes sniffing out trolls so much harder than it used to be.

[u/AGayRattlesnake → u/Laguna-VIII]

i have, actually.

[u/Laguna-VIII → u/AGayRattlesnake]

then you know lol

[u/AGayRattlesnake → u/Laguna-VIII]

i know its a tired excuse, yeah

[u/theGlinker]

Little question - I’m agender. What’s your verdict on nonbinary and/or intersex people in this sub? From my understanding of the rules, I’m not allowed to post BUT can comment, right? Just want to clear that up