William PietriWomen only, a quick question: How bad is the reply guy problem on Mastodon? (Please boost for a good sample.)
No problem
Happens a little
Significant
Huge
Poll ended at .
And for those unfamiliar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_guy
Somebody asked me privately if trans women were welcome to reply. My answer: Yes, all women! And really, anybody who people perceive as a women enough to cause reply-guy behavior, as what I'm interested in here is the level of impact. So yes, please vote!
Ok, poll closed! From the number of people asking me about results, I guess some clients don't always offer the option to see them. Here's a screenshot of the results just in case.
There were a lot of interesting replies giving further detail. I'd sum it up by saying that women say they are more likely to experience reply guys when
* posts are boosted widely
* they're more visibly female
* they're talking about tech
* responses come from certain servers, including fosstodon and mastodon.social
A number of women mentioned discomfort seeing reply guys on other women's posts. When I worked on abuse previously, this sort of bystander harm had a significant chilling effect on the willingness of people to post when they identified with the people targeted.
To me, this is a pretty clear example of what Kate Manne describes in Down Girl: "misogyny enforces patriarchy by punishing women who deviate from patriarchy".
The post also attracted quite a lot of reply guys who were stridently defending their god-given right to spew opinions in response to any question mark anywhere in the world. Without regard to what the person posting might want, and with an ardent refusal that any negative impact should be brought to their attention, let alone carefully considered. This too is consistent with Manne's "Down Girl", which I recommend to anybody interested in these dynamics: http://www.katemanne.net/down-girl.html
Sylv 
@williampietri oh yeah for sure. it seems all the techbros from fosstodon and mastodon.social love to do that, at least in my experience. i notice it's less common on servers like tech.lgbt where you're less likely to find people harboring that attitude.