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.

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.

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.

Just a post of someone saying they’d rather be stuck in the middle of the woods with a bear rather than with an unknown man, been posted lots of places not just lemmy.

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)

Yeah 100% I think the post was kinda ragebait though so people were being angry and hyperbolic.

Thank you for writing this🙏 Only thing I think is missing is how it hurts people who are already on your side too if you overgeneralize.

An example is dr K a psychiatrist who does youtube videos, with some focus on gaming addiction. He had many women (and some men I’m sure) calling for him to speak out on women’s experiences, so he made a video talking about how women’s experiences were much harder and men were living on “easy mode.”

I personally haven’t watched any videos of his after that, not because they aren’t interesting psychology topics, and I know exactly what he means to say, but it was just such a hurtful thing to hear from someone that felt like was on my side. The comments were people who understood what he meant feeling hurt and disengaging, and the people who needed to be reached just getting angry, and now it’s ousted a lot of people who were already empathetic towards women’s struggles.

I think most people are somewhat oblivious to them making others feel uncomfortable because they can clearly see you and they don’t feel nervous, so their brain tells them no one around them feels nervous. The more the reverse happens (them feeling followed) the more aware they’ll become that they’re doing it.

I think saying “an unknown man with no consequences is very dangerous if you’re a woman” is fair, and also sexist in a way. That’s just the reality of how things are.

If I replace woman with “an unknown jew… is very dangerous” it’s similarly saying “this group is bad” but is also completely untrue. Understanding that it’s sexist is important, but swapping the word out can be an invalid comparison imo.

Hopefully people see this and stop posting ragebait 🙏

Especially when saying “no cheese” 8 times means you will definitely be getting cheese

I would’ve agreed with this a few years ago, but when you realize things can have subtle effects on our body that aren’t easy to measure or readily apparent, you shouldn’t fully trust something just because studies say it’s safe. A study can’t really show that “50 years of repeated exposure caused slightly more exhaustion,” for example.

However, we DO know tooth decay is a major health risk for our whole bodies. Avoiding a maybe possibly slightly harmful chemical isn’t stupid, but avoiding something that prevents known and documented dental harm and the effects that has on your entire body, that’s just letting fear override rational thinking.