Is MN feeding unhealthy attitudes towards men?

Some threads I've read this morning have helped me to realise that my thinking about men has changed since joining MN. And not in a good way.

Is this during the same time span of increased global violence against women and girls? I'm guessing from that statement you also don't read or listen to any news media outlets and just live in a MN bubble?

Or maybe this is a crap April 1st wind up?

Yes - I said “Logically people will agree and share that frustration.

You can’t possibly think that is representative of everyone’s relationship, or day to day experience.”

If someone describes an objectively bad situation in a post, others wouldn’t then, instead of comment on that specific post, decide to explain why not all situations are like this.

say someone posts “just found out my DH has been having an affair”. You’d expect the average poster to offer support and call out the husband. Not say, well there’s good men out there because my husband hasn’t had an affair.

It’s a bit like online reviews - most people only really post “it was great” or “it was terrible”

I fear this is a you problem.

There’s some bias, I agree, but there’s bias everywhere and here is really minimal. If you think it’s bad here, go to male dominated websites and you’ll see what’s truly vile.

One poster used those words, yes, and went on to explain to you what she meant by it, that it's a meaningless concept without power.
Which is similar to my point, that without the power to act on an emotion, the emotion is largely irrelevant outside of the mind of the person feeling it, so doesn't really merit a special label that frames it as akin to misogyny.
I took her meaning not to be literal as in 'no women hate men', rather challenging the notion that hatred of men is an ideological stance that causes harm to a group.

Mumsnet has changed my attitude to men in such a healthy way that I'm finally happily single and haven't been putting up with mediocre effort from dates, situationships, short term relationships etc for the past few years and have learned fantastic boundaries and realised I am not the problem, as all the past ones made me feel. It's made me realise that a good man who treats a woman with respect and as his equal is rare and worth being single for.

I see things written here that I spot more quickly in men around me and am able to untangle myself from their weaponised incompetence (the real main one) and just not have them in my life.

Yes, I hate that too - I find it really creepy when posters automatically jump to that conclusion.

I wonder if some of those people insisting that looking after children is exclusively the preserve of women then go on to blast men for essentially agreeing with them and seeing it as 'women's work' and leaving them to it.

Actually, an MNer did once try to literally tell me there was 'no such thing' whatsoever.

The BBC programme on the Manosphere really highlights a group of men who clearly have never had a conversation with a woman.

The problem with MN is it's full of women who have too much experience of awful men.

Good post. Women are at far more risk from men than vice versa

Absolutely this

Rather than picking at men, women are clearly calling out toxic male behaviour.
How many threads have there been where someone is being abused and it takes pages before the Op finally understands?
There is gaslighting, blaming and people falling over themselves to explain or excuse shitty male behaviour
Behave like a decent, adult, fair human being and there would be zero issues

Yet here we are...

I’d like to think I can make up my own mind based on my own experiences. I can’t be influenced by other people’s personal experiences. Some men are great and some men aren’t. I have been unfortunate in my choices. I can take some of the blame for my historic poor taste but why are men like that in the first place? The men in my family, dad, uncles, siblings etc have all been good men. I have brought up my sons to be decent men and, so far so good.

Absolutely agree. The recent stag do thread about the sex worker abbreviations was full of people saying their partner wouldn't have gone.

Just because someone the OPs partner doesn't even know happens to be going on the same stag do and is planning on using sex workers OPs partner obviously is too. He definitely can't be trusted to go and not do anything wrong! All sorts of people go on stag and hen dos, no-one can control what someone else chooses to do.

Also there's so much hypocrisy. If it's a finances post with a woman saying she doesn't want to spend her life savings on her husband it's her money, if it's a man saying it it's their money.

I'm not sure what your post is getting at.

What does women talking to each other on Mumsnet have to do with how they treat boys and men? Is there any indication that discussion of class violence online translates into women treating boys and men in harmful ways in real life? Because from what I see, women commenting on threads are generally very protective or fair-minded when it comes to the men they know, unless they're the OP, who's usually just venting.

Are you concerned that twelve-year-old boys might be reading the discourse on Mumsnet, and have their self-esteem damaged?

Your other comments aren't exactly accurate either. When it comes to men in ECE, the threads are usually split in opinion - ditto on women having high dating standards, or being friends, etc. There are very few where the overweening opinion is 'anti-men', or where most posters are in accord.

I'm sure The Men (TM) will be gratified to know of your sympathy, though.

"Often" is doing all the heavy lifting there though.

Sex is sometimes a key element in the relationships between men and women. Equally, sex is sometimes absent from those relationships entirely.

Men often use friendship as a gateway to sex, and so do women. Men and women also use friendship as a gateway to nothing more than friendship, and those two sentences are not contradictory. (They also use friendship as a gateway to social status, career connections and many more ulterior motives. People are complex! Boiling it down to only sex is silly.)

Friendship between two people who are attracted to each other often leads to sex, but if one or both are in non-open relationships it often doesn't, unless one or both lacks moral fibre. I'm aware that affairs happen a great deal but "finding someone attractive and then doing nothing about it on account of already having a husband/wife" also happens a great deal, and is not as dramatic to talk about.

People don't say misandry doesn't exist. They say it doesn't exist as the equal opposite to misogyny, which it's so often framed as.
Some women do hate men because they are men. However the instances of this on here are grossly exaggerated, and the term 'misandry' often thrown around with gay abandon whenever women discuss patterns of male behaviour.
The more pertinent point though, is that while misandry exists, it largely remains a emotion in the mind of individual women, with no evidence that it translates to something that harms men on a societal level.
There is no evidence that 'misandrist' women do any more than malign men in discussion and avoid them in real life. There are no statistics to suggest that midandrists are posing a risk to the safety and wellbeing of men, unlike mysogynists who's behaviour has been described as a 'national epidemic' beyond the scope of policing.
If people find a reluctance to accept misandry as an issue of concern, then the onus lies with them to demonstrate that it is.

I wouldn't be that kind to incels, many have had no experience with women.

Oh don't get me started on all the threads where poster after poster lines up to declare that men who are short, or not high earners, or shy, or upset, or vulnerable, or bisexual, give her the ick. To me, learning about feminism and gender theory was what allowed me to unlearn all the traditional gender roles I'd been brought up with, both for men and women. It generally seems on MN that posters are happy with every traditional gender role except that men should do housework as well.

(Which is such a pointless thing to argue from a feminist standpoint. Yes, men should do equal amounts of chores and parenting. That's sorted out in my relationship. No one can step in and sort it out in yours though.)

Im not sure how you read that into my post, its so off the mark!!!

I agree completely that men are treated unfairly when they come here. Particularly when a separated Dad dares to question the way the mother is doing things. Or even when they don't come here, women calling their ex partner an abusive narcissist are usually met with an enthusiastic chorus of support regardless of if the detail suggests that he's done nothing wrong and she's the problem.

It's also true that the men described on here often really are absolutely dreadful and have no business being anywhere near a woman or a child.

I don't agree that it affects the way I relate to my own husband at all, if anything I appreciate him a little more. I am not influenced much by what strangers online think.

So you post a thread venting your frustration at your DH's brainless mistake that's cost you money, time & effort or worry. You seem to be thinking it'd be appropriate for loads of women to turn up and tell you their husbands never make brainless mistakes?

I can promise you it would not!

Same. I don't want to date since my marriage ended a few years ago but that's not because of what I've read on MN, it's because I've yet to meet a man I'd want to date.

Yes I agree OP. I think overall attitudes are very unhealthy. Sometimes it's wrapped up in humour but you can tell the underlying messaging is deadly serious. It's that I find most concerning.

No i think for myself.
It's their piss poor obnoxious behaviour that makes me feel less than keen on them. I can name a few good men but I the whole they are shit and mums net isn't why I think that. Its poolside bollock washing, public phlegming oh and the sexual harassment since early teens.

Yep, this is a women's forum and it logically follows that a lot of the problems they'll be discussing are problems with their relationship, ie men. It's not misandry, it's just statistics.

I don't think misandry exists anyway except in incel and perhaps lesbian separatist circles.