I’m a woman on Lemmy with a gender-neutral username, which means I don’t have to try to “pretend” anything - people assume I’m a guy by default. Hell, it also happened back when I was on Reddit and used a female-coded username, which is even more confusing.

I can only imagine the gender performances these guys are putting on if they’re able to easily convince others that they’re women. Some people apparently take “there are no women on the internet” literally and can’t seem to process when women appear online (in a non-porn context, at least. Which is really disheartening.) I’ve had people full-on argue with me that I couldn’t really be female, because I once posted a picture that included my hand and apparently it “wasn’t feminine enough.” (That’s what I get for keeping my nails short and disliking nail polish, I guess. Who knew even women’s hands are expecting to conform to rigid gender expectations?)