Just A Heads Up For Anyone Female/feminine Presenting That Has An Interest In Mushrooms.

Just a heads up for anyone female/feminine presenting that has an interest in mushrooms.

The online mycology community is dominated by middle-aged cis men who are generally speaking, hitting retirement age, and have ample time on their hands. They know little to nothing about the online world, but they seem to know a shit ton about fungi and boy are they eager to share their knowledge with anyone who will listen (even if you haven't asked for it).

They will belittle you, they will make you doubt yourself, your knowledge and your skills because they do not like women/feminine presenting people knowing more about something "outdoorsy" than them. Even if you state you are still learning, etc. They will, for whatever reason, assume you are competing with them.

You will get spoken down to in the mycology (online) community more often times than not, but it will always be one of these middle-aged men that's doing the intellectual degrading. If they are called out for their rude behaviour, they plead ignorance under the guise of "just trying to share knowledge."

The online mushroom community is also rather incestuous. Everyone with big accounts is known by everyone, and even most of the smaller accounts all follow each other. That means little cliques within the community form. Mainly again, cis middle-aged men share and encourage, repost, and advertise each other's photography/discoveries/research but will never share a woman's work on their page or even credit a woman on their page.

They also LOVE to find young men to "mentor" but will never offer the same "mentorships" to women within the community (the exception to this being women with PHDs or degrees relating to nature sciences etc.) They will mentor women with higher educations, the woman in that case is usually more knowledgeable than them by a mile but she is made to believe she needs the man "mentoring" her to establish her space in the community or gain recognition in some way.

This is just my own observations. It may not reflect your time in online mycology spaces. But yeah, just a heads up that a lot of the online spaces for mushroom fanatics are male lead and a little bit toxic imo.

Edit: Also, in general, mobile phone photography is still a massive taboo among photographers online. If you don't own/use a camera for your photography, getting it shown/promoted within the online community is damn near impossible.