It's not impossible for a concept like this to work. GirlGamers on Reddit allows men to comment, but not make posts, and the men there are on the whole very respectful. You would occasionally get a toxic guy, but it was pretty infrequent and the moderators removed those comments quick. There are also a lot of moderators on that subreddit.
However, lemmy has a really peculiar monoculture of men who are left wing, but either get extremely defensive whenever someone brings up feminism or are actively anti-feminist.
Case in point: I feel like that group you mentioned kind of already exists, and it's witchesvspatriarchy, which gets brigaded by angry men on the regular, to the point where it's sometimes difficult for that community to operate as it was originally intended. I would be concerned that it would turn into a space where women get drowned out by large brigades of men in the community, and it just becomes an echo chamber where men criticise women and feminist thought; it would be an open fire hose for any moderator on that community.
So I'm just not sure if it would work on Lemmy. At the very least, not until more women start using the platform.
It would only be ironic if the women of Lemmy were the most powerful people on the platform and used that power to silence men across the website. As it stands, women are a superminority on the fediverse, and men have the numbers to run roughshod on these communities and effectively prevent them from being spaces where women communicate with each other. This is an ongoing concern on c/witchesvspatriarchy, where thread after thread gets derailed from its original purpose by men. The goal isn't to censor you so much as defend ourselves. So it's not ironic.
Especially since c/menslib could make its community men-only and you wouldn't hear any complaining from me.
Condescension and gatekeeping is never okay. If a woman did this to a man, I would defend the man. So it's not a double standard.
It's just that women frequently deal with this when they partake in male-centric hobbies. When this happens, there's often some element of misogyny at play. So it's okay for us to point out that specific situation and say it's frustrating, and doing so doesn't mean we're saying this has never happened to men, nor that it's morally virtuous for women in subcultures to condescend to men.
Also, this culture war thing is so exhausting. Everyone reads between lines and assumes the worst in everyone.
I live in fear of this type of person, especially as someone who listens to metal which tends to be male-dominated. I'm an album person and I'm not always checking the table of contents when I listen. There are bands I've been a fan of for over a decade that I don't have five songs memorized for. I love these bands and I don't think I'm fake for liking them or wearing a shirt.
Hey, got any grapes?
This thing shows up in your bedroom after your first two-hour night of sleep after four consecutive all-nighters at work.
He's nice, at first. You feed him grapes and he snuggles up to you. Then as he grows you start to realize he's strangely aware of his surroundings and your speech. One of the people in your neighborhood passes away, but he's a stranger and you don't think too much of it. He begins to eat entire rotisserie chickens on his own, but he's your squishy and he's worth it.
You start to get compulsive, intrusive thoughts that you've never thought before. You quiet quit your job until you get fired, but you don't know it because you haven't logged in for two weeks. The newscaster talks about a handful of people who have mysteriously died of brain hemhorrages. You become a master hand at woodcarving despite always being clumsy in the past. You make wood cookies and chairs for the villagers, and display art at a local gallery. Your squishy supports you every step of the way. You're a squatter now and all your money goes toward lumber and raw beef for squishy to consume.
One morning after a long night of woodwork, a full-sized man sits on a chair you made in the downstairs living room. He says he has outgrown you and it is his time to see the world, but not before one last meal. He doesn't say that, you just hear it. The figure turns around and his face is a mass of tentacles. He tackles you as you struggle to reach for the door. You kick squishy in the face and run and run with tears in your eyes.
The subway you live in is warm and cozy as you huddle by a roaring bonfire with the other survivors. Every few hours you hear a piercing scream from the outside. You know the ways of the wood and starting fires is simple for you. You send makeshift lumberjacks on operations so you can build your underground city. Some come back alive. But the scores of huts and enclosures tunnelling and tunneling into the vast subway networks is exquisite. It is your obsession, your drive. Thank you squishy. Each morning the king of the BMT sends a new villager up top, and they are never seen or heard from again. But fortune shines upon you. You are never picked. You live to be an old woman, the builder matriarch of your worker colony, for He has treated you well.
One day, you feel compelled to walk up top. It is time. Up top, all the buildings are covered with vines if not disintegrated entirely. There is no life. You look up at the burnt sunset sky and see squishy, several times the size of the moon, from your view. A tentacle speeds its way down to the atmosphere. You place a woodcarving of your youngerself and a baby squishy in its outstretched palm. A flash of light.
You see galaxies before your eyes. You're endlessly hungry, grabbing stars and swallowing them whole. You will live forever, and everything is within your grasp. Perhaps now, though, it is time to build something new.