I'd argue that sometimes the issue is what people think normal looks like. There's a lot of folk out there that think some really awful stuff is normal
From my perspective the issue I see with a thread like this, given what you've mentioned, is either two scenarios:
Either the people here are not normal, in which case the answers aren't going to be helpful at all (even if said answers were expanded past "just be normal")
Or
The people here are normal, in which case that leads to... well just be normal (such as treating everyone with respect and kindness)
If that all makes sense, at least.
In terms of addressing the original question you proposed though, I think we should continue our efforts to push the bad folks away as much as we can, along with trying to get Lemmy to be a place that is appealing and inclusive to general audiences (rather than the niche side of the tech space). Which, isn't an exact answer, but in general I've already had a pretty big "internal" struggle of how I can help and contribute to Lemmy.
I can understand your point. Normal, in this case or at least the way i meant, was;
Just dont overthink or "lay out the red carpet"
Most women just want a place where they are treated as any other. Not some fake "look how we cater to women" on the one hand, or a place where men simp like fuck at them.
The appeal to join a social network is broadly the same for both men and women, human interaction.
As more people join lemmy, communities will become more active, drivibg more traffic.
For now, the biggest barrier to entry is how technical the concept is, having to explain how the federation works and how to interact with it, how to find communities, how to block communities and servers.
Compare that with how reddit did it, you join a simple site, find subreddits and quickly start posting.
On lemmy you not only need to find (and in some cases create) a community, but you need to find the right community on the right server.
Going to redheads on one server may be a community about hair care and styling of red hair, but on a different server it is just porn.
This sometimes confusing nature of Lemmy is good for redundancy and information preservation, but bad for finding the right community to post in.
I'm not totally sure, big picture. Obviously, downvote, comment, etc.
Perhaps women need an explicit safe space, st least for now while the site is male dominated. A sub or instance or something that's women only, no exceptions.
Putting an end to those really creepy posts on All that seem to be collecting and categorizing random photos of women into name-specific communities like they were Pokemon, baseball cards, or some other collectable might not hurt.
I came across a couple of those and clicked them wondering what they were, because it was some woman I'd never heard of. Just tons of pictures of a woman, that I assume is somewhat famous. It's super stalkery. I assume they're all beating off to the picture. It's just so weird.
There's a lot of communities there dedicated to sexy celebrity photos.
It's also meant to be a catch-all for porn, which I think is a good idea. It lets people block the majority of the porn posted to Lemmy by blocking the instance.