Is MN feeding unhealthy attitudes towards men?

The last sentence is easy enough. Most want a good partner as good partnership makes life easier. They just struggle to find one.

The Rules of Misogyny
1. Women are responsible for what men do.
2. Women saying no to men is a hate crime.
3. Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.
4. Women’s opinions are violence against men, thus male violence against women is justified.
5. Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless.
6. Women who go around being female AT men by menstruating and breastfeeding babies deserve punishment.
7. Women should always be grateful to men for everything.
8. Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.
9. Men always know the “real reasons” for everything women do and say.
10. The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.
11. Whatever women suffer from, it is worse when it happens to men.
12. Women’s ability to recognize male behavior patterns is misandry.
13. Angry women are crazy. Angry men have trouble expressing themselves.
14. Women have all the rights they need: The right to remain silent.
15. Men are the default human. Women are strange subhuman others.
16. Everyone owns and controls women’s bodies except the women themselves.

There are three things above all others that women are not allowed to do - stand up for their own interests, question how things are or tell their own truth.

In a world where woman are told every day of their lives they are there to serve everyone else, to defer and be kind and to put the needs of others before their own it's some how radical to say "fuck this shit, it harms me and my interests and I'm worth more than being a doormat".

It's bloody depressing to think that not being willing to tolerate misogyny and merely look after ourselves on our own terms and be able to advocate for ourselves is not acceptable.

It is THE ACTUAL PROBLEM that women are not seen as worthy of this as a minimum.

I think the main point is to advice wives not to direct hate at the OW when this obscures the H's responsibility. The OW did not seduce him. He participated enthusiastically and freely. I've seen a wife be praised by multiple posters about her cheating H, in relation to why she is staying with him, ' Why should he be punished for one mistake' whereas the OW was ' not fit to lick my boots.'. You can understand the psychological motivation for this warped thinking from a wife who needs to persuade herself why she is justified with staying with a man who betrayed her love and trust, but its not right and its not healthy if its used to keep you in a marriage you are best out of.

At the end of they day, the OW does not really owe you anything. She is not making your H cheat. He is. His responsibility was not to pursue the OW or not to respond to her early interest. The fact of there being unfaithfulness in the marriage is entirely on him.

Top post.

Yes Reddit has a whole board of women who post saying they’ll do anything for money and men offering and suggesting all kinds of disgusting and depraved things.
it is vile.
mumsnet is very middle class British. Reddit does have a much wider range of voices and perspectives though

Kind of agree OP. There are good men out there. Some (not all) posters seem to expect to be worshipped by the man, all take take take whilst contributing far less (HE needs a better job so WE can have more money, or outrage that an affair has been discovered then adding "we haven't been intimate for 4 years" etc)

I know there is a negative attitude towards men on here @Grtscott

But I really, REALLY don't care.

Mumsnet is a wonderful outlet to vent your spleen, about all the awful, negative things about men and how much they piss us off!

Nothing 'unhealthy' about the attitudes towards men on here. Many of them are justified.

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What are you talking about? You haven’t managed to call anyone out. You had a weak, half arsed point and as that poster correctly pointed out, you’ve stretched a couple of posts to fit the whole site.

Get yourself over to the relationship boards, have a read of what some of those women are going through and then ask yourself if it’s misandry you’re seeing, or whether it’s women who are encouraging other women not to accept crap treatment.

Of course women can be terrible partners as well. Nobody is disputing that. But as this is a site that has a majority of female posters, unlike real life, then you won’t see that reflected in the majority of posts. So of course it doesn’t reflect real life. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it would.

I disagree, I've changed emails/usernames many times over the years but mumsnet has always been somewhere I came to ask for opinion. It helped me realise how badly my stbxh treated me. I've read many threads on here of women who've experienced similar or worse so I'd say it's opened my eyes to the scale of the issue with men tbh, and to pretend there isn't an issue is no longer an option. They're generally more selfish than women as a minimum.

I think in previous generations women weren't able to communicate in such wide communities that we now have online. I will admit that I will forever be suspicious of men - I doubt I would ever trust one again but it's been such a comfort to have so many women tell me that I'm not crazy, he is abusive etc. Where else can you get that support anonymously and accessibly?

It makes me happy when I see young women refusing to accept what I did and valuing themselves. I hope this decentering of men will continue.

Reddit gives a more balanced view?

Some subreddits are great it really depends which ones you use. There's a lot of misogyny there, horrific porn subreddits allowed to stay up, red pill subreddits etc There's also a lot more extreme anti-male rhetoric on some subs than you'd find on MN.

Also I cannot imagine a website making me reassess my partner.

If I was it would likely suggest there was an issue I had been, ignoring until that point.

@Bolonese I've honestly never read any hate speech against men on Mumsnet.... I've been here a long time.... Maybe the boards in not on? Derogatory terms for all men? Never seen them. Name calling of a particular man around certain behaviours... absolutely

Apart from obvious jokes, I can think of only one LTB that was wide of the mark.

Well it’s all true. It’s not just one woman - it’s a global experience!

Here are some threads you apparently missed...

Have you missed this entire board? Lots of Iran detail here.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/conflict-in-the-middle-east

All the Ukraine threads.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5475572-ukraine-invasion-part-60

I actually think the opposite. I think that in our wider society women are conditioned to accept an awful lot of crap. On here this perspective is challenged. Generally this is a good thing I think.

Obviously the caveat to that is that you need to take the LTB chorus with a pinch of salt. But on the whole it's good to be more aware of the effects of the patriarchy.

I was wondering when somebody would call this out (I'm not brave enough to start the discussion!). I spent too much time on Mumsnet after my first child during Covid. I developed unhealthy views about men. I found it deeply destructive to my relationship at a fragile time. I read an article this week that the language used on female message boards about men showed the same toxic hate speech traits as incel message boards about women. You would well believe it on some Mumsnet forums. I eventually withdrew from the site to use Reddit, which because of the gender balance, gave a more measured view point on different topics. The responses on some of the Mumsnet discussion boards are so predictable now could be written by AI. I've tentatively returned but try to proceed straight to topics of interest where I can chat with like minded women.

What you after read on a thread is that that man can't take responsibility for things. Not all men (obviously). Reading threads on Mumsnet I am both depressed and appalled at level of crap that many many women endure. Does it change my view of DH? Of course not, he wouldn't behave in that way and if he did I'd kick him into touch. But I am able to be financially independent (if needed) and have good self esteem and never ever 'needed' to be in a relationship or wanted kids so badly that is put up with crappy behaviour from a partner.
Sadly many are not as fortunate as I. Plus many many men exploit societal structures and norms around gender roles and expectations to exploit or control women, from getting them to do all the domestic to not providing for their children or shouldering joint childcare costs (maternity leave having to be saved for by solely the women for example. Then there are the alarmingly large number of men who use threats of or actual physical violence.
Is Mumsnet promoting unhealthy attitudes. Absolutely not. It's a place for women to learn from other women that they didn't have to put up with this shit. It can support women to find strength and break free from shitty shitty situations and on a good day hopefully stops some women getting into them in the first place.

I genuinely don't understand this 'cliquey' thing. This is a site of 8 million people, 7000k of whom post each month. Amongst those posters you'll find people who agree with you and who disagree with you. Sometimes people who disagree resort to name calling.
As a left wing person, when I go on benefits threads or Reform threads, I know I'm going to encounter people who will call me 'woke' 'snowflake' etc, but also that there will be others who will agree with me.
If you find yourself having a different view to other posters, there's nothing at all to stop you offering the alternative perspective. If your view happens to be a minority one on that thread, you persevere if it's important to you and if your arguments are valid, you may be able to convince people over to your viewpoint.
Ultimately this is a discussion forum and the whole point is to exchange views. Calling people who hold a different view from you and who happen to be in a majority on a thread 'cliquey' is as bad as calling people 'pick me' or 'snowflake', reduces discussion to an emotional level.

oh disingenuous twaddle! men are FAR worse about women everywhere on the internet. Of course they don't come on MN and post that crap because the posts would be reported and deleted (as they should be elsewhere but aren't)

Thank you for a quick fire lesson in how to use the internet. Don't know how I would cope without you.
I'm referring to some of the threads / comments on Mumsnet.

I need to use X for my work. I cannot tell you the amount of toxic abuse I get. Some from anon acs, but also from men under their real names because there are no consequences and it has been normalised.
People who think MN is all man haters have never been in the real world.

Absolutely not.

I'm forced to suppose that OP and her/his supporters don't spend much time around normal women having normal women's chats.

Much of what you read on Mumsnet is, in fact, normal women's chat. Like it or not, nobody's pushing a narrative of useless or unpleasant husbands - they simply exist, so women talk about them.