I've noticed the same thing on Reddit in subreddits where women make up 50% or more of the population. When I'm posting in these communities, I tend to be given the benefit of the doubt and receive a lot more supportive or cheerful replies instead of walls of text/sarcasm/"well, actually". It's made me unconsciously change my posting habits.
I can confirm that the general quality and civility of discussion in TwoXChromosomes spiraled downward extremely quickly once it was made a default subreddit. It was designed as a haven for women to discuss women's issues with other women on reddit, and has become one more public pool for gentlemen to tip their fedoras and "raise a debate" on paternity law, when the community was never meant for that sort of discussion in the first place. The day it went public every thread was full of long time community members begging for it to be reverted immediately, and pretty much everything they predicted came true.
That just shows that any time you open stuff to participation by the general population and lift it out of obscurity, it turns to shit. Just look at our elections. We'd be better off just having a monarch.
