AIBU to treat male and female posters differently on feminism threads?

EatsBrains, I think you have misrepresented my engineer analogy. You are happy to engage with women asking basic questions, but not men - have I got that right? You also respond to the same question differently, depending on whether a man or a woman posed it - have I also got that right?

If so, then I would be justified in answering James' question differently to Sally's if they come to me at work. It seems to be the sex of the questioner rather than the content of the question that you object to. Have I misunderstood?

Sorry,that was to EatsBrainsAndLeaves,not to you,MoreBeta - good post.
I have definately been on threads where it seemed a poster was getting criticised and having their motivation interpreted in a particular way just because they were male,and I don't like it.

Wouldn't it be interesting if it were technically possible just for one day to hide who the poster was, and so all posts would have to be responded to on their merit?

No,I wasn't suggesting you were trying to be provocative at all,I was trying to acknowledge that some men in the feminism threads do post to be provocative and derail rather than in a spirit of genuine enquiry.(Have I just invalidated my own point here??)

YABU because treating someone differently because of their sex, race, colour or religion is wrong and is based on prejudice and leads to unfair discrimination

I post occassionally in feminism and most of you know I am a man. I post here because the issues discussed here matter a lot to our society and men should engage with them if they want a better society. ButterPecan - said it right I think. How can feminists expect to change anything if they will not engage with men who want to understand more of discuss the issues with an open mind?

I post judisciously, and avoid certain threads where my voice will not be welcome and I will not have anything to add but on the other hand as I said on a recent thread 'millions of little conversations' is how I feel we can tackle many of the issues routinely discussed on MN feminism threads.

I have posted probably twice under a different name because my posts contained quite sensitive information and did not reveal I was a man in my posts because it was not pertinent. However, it became obvious on both occcassions that I was assumed to be and being spoken to as a woman and it was very noticeablely a lot different ho wpeople responded to me. When I did eventually reveal I was a man on one of those threads I was immediately was berated for not revealing I was a man right at the beginning. It would not have made a difference to what I had said but it clearly mattered a LOT to some other posters and their tone changed immediatley. I strongly feel that a few posters in feminism are deeply prejudiced against men and use feminism threads as 'cover' to present their prejudice. It is wrong and most people on the feminist threads don't do it but a few posters routinely do it. I sometimes wish other feminist posters would call them out on it. They are as bad as MRA trolls.

I read a heck of a lot more than I post on feminism and have learned a lot and yes I do understand my privellege. I have a lot of privellege as a white middle class man. I don't think I need to have it shoved in my face every time I post or be treated differently.

Just ignore the fact that I am a man. Please feel free to just ignore me if you want. Just don't treat me differently.

'I am a MAN who has a question, therefore the discussion must stop and all the women here should immediately gratify my wish to have this question answered.'

But isn't this how we all feel to a certain extent? Not 'I am a MAN ..." but "I am a PERSON who has a question,or a brilliant point to make,and I want you to engage with me now..." (or is that just me??)

And the argument that feminists shouldn't have to spend time educating someone on basics they could look up elsewhere applies to women as well.Some people would prefer to ask a person their questions rather than read about it - any of us could just be reading a book rather than talking here,but talking to actual imaginary constructs on the internet people is different,and I've found talking here has altered my views on some subjects in ways that reading hasn't.

It would be helpful if icons popped up next to each post to tell us if someone was a genuine poster,or just posting to be provocative...

I'm new to all this, so apologies if stupid question. Do all men have 'male privilege'? I ask because in certain strata of society, it seems that the old male privilege has disappeared and they are under an immense amount of pressure. This isn't to dismiss women in a similar situation, it is just that an automatic assumption that a male is privileged does not seem valid in all cases.

I am firmly of the opinion that a genuine enquiry from any poster should be accepted as such and therefore openly engaged with. If we repel men from any discussion of feminism we real are shooting ourselves firmly in the foot so to speak. There are men out there (rare I know right now) that are genuinly interested in understanding feminism and challenging the actions of other men.

We really do need to get past this issue as 50% roughly of the population are male. And of the other roughly 50% there are many that don't want to engage with feminism. And then you have the women who are damn right hostile to feminism and actively support the patriarchy. By not being willing to engage with men we are effectively reinforcing the perception that feminists are their enemy, when in fact taking down the whole system of patriarchy is to the benefit of everyone.

So on that basis it is my belief that you are being highly unreasonable.

I am a man, so Eats will ignore this. However, I wonder what others think about my dilemma. I am an engineer at work. I get asked technical questions by both male and female colleagues. Should I answer them differently, or treat them differently?

This is intriguing. I think one major problem is the lack of coherency in what people consider feminism. I think that on one hand it cannot be right if you see feminism (as I do) as a conciousness raising activity that seeks to manage away automatic disadvantage for women v men, and greater all round human awareness, to then say 'well men can't get involved in fairness or understanding or education or changes in the law or power' or 'men can't truly 'own' feminism' or even 'men and women should have their opinions and discussions marginalised from one another' (which sounds so like a model of 'men change things women talk about changing things but don't want men to know what they think' that I feel it just cannot be right).

My main problem with feminism's operation is that by complaining about patriarcy it by definition defines and acknowledges patriarcy - complaining to the boss is by definition a subservient act that acknowledges 'boss' power iyswim.

On the other hand I see the point that understanding that someone's 'shorthand' on the topic might be useful and that might relevantly mean knowing someone's sex (and here is another problem, is that the same as their gender??).

Now I also know that many feminists would regard what I say above as showing a complete lack of understanding about feminism.

I also know that when I was in a sociology department, the line 'you clearly don't understand contemporary feminism' was used almost parrot fashion as a put down line from a particular feminist academic to any question, naive, challenging, interesting or otherwise from male sociology students. I felt very uncomfortable with this. More so when one male student asked to have a discussion on smth like 'given the imbalance in performance favouring girls at secondary level, and the increase in female teachers at this level, are women still appropriate teachers for male students?' I could see some great angles here for talks, but funding was blocked because 'the topic showed a complete misunderstanding of contemporary feminism' maybe so, but that wouldn't have excluded talks from people who DID understand contemporary feminism (and masculinities perhaps) being presented. Just one crap example, but can you see my point - its difficult to debate different routes and philosphies within feminism if you have to stick to an accepted definition iyswim.

But then perhaps my idea of the 'mission' of feminism is different/from a different paradigm/wrong/midguided etc and so this opinion should be disregarded.. I don't really know but I think MN is different from an academic forum, its about mistakes and loose cannon comments being examined and challenged. In which case why exclude men from scrutiny?

Eats, yes it is indeed odd behavior on my part. No doubt an internalized need to gain men's approval, and make them see that feminists are not man-haters! Pathetic I know, but hey... you can take the feminist out of patriarchy but you can't take the patriarchy out the feminist!

Women can't be sexist btw, only prejudiced, important differentation imo

Men could always be referred to this space
finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

which answers a lot of feminist faq and stops discussions being derailed.
Sorry if my answer is somewhat abrupt but I have drunk a lot of wine and vodka this evening.

Meow, you're misunderstanding the meaning of the term "privilege" in this context.

Basically, if you're interested in discussing feminist issues, that means you're acknowledging that feminist issues exist and are real, ie, that women are at a disadvantage compared with men, either always, or in certain situations depending on your view, but you are at least acknowledging that certain situations exist where women are disadvantaged compared to men. That is what feminism is about addressing, after all.

So if you turn this on it's head, it means that [in certain situations/in life in general] men have an advantage over women, just by being men. It does not mean that in all cases a man will win over a woman, or that a woman can never succeed if there is a man in the running, it just means that a man is more likely to do so, all other things being equal (and sometimes, even if all other factors are not equal) - this is known as male privilege.

Everyone has privilege of some form, whether male privilege, white privilege, straight privilege, class privilege, able-bodied privilege, privilege relating to where you live... it's inescapable, nobody chooses it, nobody is in control of it. You can't revoke your privilege or decide not to act on it, because it's not an act, it's just a state of being, an accident of birth.

If you are discussing feminism with women you need to be aware of the fact you have male privilege. Otherwise you're missing the point, absolutely and totally.

If you wish to argue about whether privilege exists I would suggest that feminism probably isn't the place for it.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to react differently to women and men who post without much knowledge of feminism - I think the phenomenon of feminist posters being expected to explain basic feminist positions over and over again to male posters (on discussions that are not for that purpose) is an extension of placing responsibility for managing men and their feelings on women's shoulders.

If men want to ask sincere basic questions about feminism, there are plenty of privilege and feminism 101s out there that they can look at first. It's unreasonable to expect feminists to drop whatever they're discussing and instead expend their time and energy educating you on something that you can probably find the answer to reasonably easily. I think men who ask those kinds of questions often think of themselves as the good guys, but don't realise that it is in itself a manifestation of privilege - 'I am a MAN who has a question, therefore the discussion must stop and all the women here should immediately gratify my wish to have this question answered.'

I'm not saying that men shouldn't post in feminist spaces - I think there is a place for both spaces that are women only and spaces that include men. I think men can enrich feminist discussion and learn from it. But if you refuse to recognise how asking these kinds of questions in this way is derailing, then you show that you are part of the bigger problem.

OP, I think you're being very honest. Of course it is technically wrong to treat male posters differently but to a level it is understandable: by virtue of the culture in which we live men cannot possibly know how our experiences have affected us, just as we cannot know theirs.

And many of us have met many men who engage in an attempt to mock feminism so we have become wary. If they seem genuine though I probably try even harder to get them on board, because I appreciate that they care when they do not have to.