WomensStuff

Picture a well-intentioned man. (I'm not even talking trolls who do this deliberately and strategically.) This well-intentioned man intrudes into a conversation about, say, workplace sexual harrassment experiences. They say something ham-fisted like:

How is it 'creepy' if I put my hand on a woman colleague's shoulder when looking at something on their desk to help? I do the same with my male colleagues.

Again, we're presuming a well-intentioned man here. Not a troll who's deliberately triggering. Just a well-intentioned man who genuinely believes that it's fine to do this.

Now five women, say, have been comparing war stories about sexual harassment at work. They each respond with a further example, or a a plausible progression from "hand on shoulder" to real life experience that ended badly or whatnot. Each of these five women brings up a different point or point of view, so this isn't just repetition.

Now the well-intentioned man responds to each one, asking for more details, or failing to understand and needing explanation, or whatever.

We now have, with only one round of this, a situation where five women in total have spoken: one twice (to report the original story, and then to respond to the man), the rest once each. Six messages from five women in total. And from one man we have six messages.

And this never ends in one round, does it? In no time flat we have a thread that is 80% written by one man and 20% written by five women. One man's voice is drowning out five women's voices.

Now multiply this by the number of men (again, here we're assuming only the well-intentioned!) and the number of threads and you rapidly have a forum for women that is mostly men talking.

That is how you "talk over" a group on Lemmy.