Hey, I get where you're coming from, especially since everything calmed down before I checked the reply.

However, I want you to consider where I came from. Like literally what led me here. It was from my "All" feed. I don't really recognize the name of this community, so it's probably either my first time interacting with a post here, or I've interacted with the community in the past but was also ignorant of where the posts were coming from.

So when I referred to the "request," it wasn't because I read the rules and subscribed and then came in to plead that I get special rules. It was because I was close to tapping "Post" and I saw some caption text asking for only women to reply. That's why I said anything.

One of the things that keeps me coming back to Lemmy every single day is being able to hear the direct words of people very different from me without having to go through algorithms and corporate filters. When it comes to communities on here dedicated to a certain demographic or to marginalized groups, it's usually pretty clearly "X group and allies" because it's more about having a safe space and less about exclusion or gatekeeping. And it seems like the decent folks here are no different!

And I'm not accusing you of the exclusion/gatekeeping stuff. I get that it was just a rush of anger with my wording and with you actually knowing the community rules, etc. But hey now thanks to this I'm going to subscribe and follow this community. And maybe I'll break the letter of the law and comment again, but I'll probably follow the spirit of the law 99% of the time. :)