How women act differently in the presence of men

ime the really graphic photos, insults, over-the-line banter happens via private whatsapp groups or facebook messaging

That's an interesting point though. The kind of all-male environment behaviour I was talking about earlier, you can't really do in a pub. Because it's not actually an all-male environment, it's mixed.

But the all-female environment stuff we were talking about nearer the beginning, I get that in a pub/restaurant/cafe when in a large enough all female group and not just at people's houses/in the loos/online/etc.

Of all the post that's what you picked up on?

If a woman tells you that she was there and it's not flirting no way, that's not good enough for you, you need to tell her she's wrong?

Bizarre.

It wasn't flirting. It was male bonding that I happened to be around for and they didn't "mind me". That is what I am telling you.

And the amount of SHIT that women and girls get told to put up with from men on the basis that oh they fancy you/they're flirting/they don't know how to behave around girls/they're just trying to get your attention etc it's bollocks. I didn't expect it to happen on here.

male dp is back from the pub where he was with all male pals

in the interests of research i have asked dp what they talked about. (note that although i trust he is telling the truth i have no way of checking, and he's hardly going to tell me if they've been sitting around watching hardcore porn)

these were some of the topics:

• talking about work
• gossiping about who is dating who at work
• sport
• passing comments about the barmaid's large breasts
• some crap about a tiff on facebook
• weddings/engagements
• unfortunate surnames for army officers

I'm not a man and obviously I'm extrapolating from a fairly small sample of experience here, so I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting things (although I think my position was made clear in the first place, I hope!)

The "talking about women or not" thing you're saying is correlating, though. What I mean is men don't tend to sit around saying "Wow, women. A bunch of bitches." like women sometimes tend to sit around saying "Men, what a bunch of lazy arse bastards." It was more that I noticed an increase in the use of sexist language, but this might have been more that all of the men in that group were sexist or accepting of sexism whereas in mixed company it would be likely they would offend. Similar to how some people are horrifying racists in the privacy of their own homes but put a filter on it in public, at work, etc. When they realise or think they are in the company of other racists they will quite happily drop the filter. We probably all do it to an extent with something or other - I do it with swearing. Literally could not, actually find it physically uncomfortable to swear in front of my mum but as soon as I realise I'm in a "sweary group" it flows freely and I have trouble stopping it!

Flirting (assuming we're talking between a man and a woman) would have to take place in a mixed environment where all participants are aware the environment is mixed, the inclusion accidentally or secretly of a man/woman in the exclusive opposite sex environment is quite different and wouldn't involve any flirting at all because the whole point is that the majority group in that room/situation at the time believe the group to be exclusive. And when people are comfortable that the opposite sex (or whatever other group) is securely out of the situation, that's when behaviour changes.

YY and it wasn't flirting when done around me either. It was my cousin's boyfriend and his army mate and c's BF was laughing and saying oh, no, you don't want to see this one, no don't show it to them X, gf gets really upset. Neither of us were "targets", I had a small toddler at the time and quite obviously wasn't up for casual sex and the other was already attached to one of the guys.

Yes it's upsetting, no shit. We decided to go to bed and leave them to it. Had an, um, enlightening chat about the boyfriend with my cousin when the two of them went out the next night. But this was about 3 years ago and they're still together. Depressing TBH.

I don't think my behaviour is very different and I don't recognise a lot of these scenarios. If anything I am more likely to take more care over my appearance and try to 'impress' in female company because women notice and judge these things much more than men in my experience.

Flirting with a women doesn't necessarily mean a man fancies her. flirting is two a penny.

If the refer to DW, i am for a split sceond i wonder if they are male, or lesbian. Then i just read on.

Bertie - I disagree with you there - men (again its only my experience) might talk about individual women - such as what their girlfriends or wives are doing - it's discussions about women in general we don't have - to be honest, we're just not that interested.

I really don't think that a group of blokes laughing over the sort of images I am talking about and then offering the single girl present to see it (no thanks) was a clumsy attempt at flirting.

And I mean actually. Hey girls! If a man or group of men tries to show you a film of a woman having something diabolically painful and/or humiliating done to her, don't worry about it, it just means he fancies you!

Yes. the porn that they share - that I have seen/heard about - is extremely demeaning and featuring women.

So no they don't sit around saying "so my wife said X and I said blah", they sit around saying look at this OMG that's gross and bond over images of women having humiliating / revolting / painful stuff done to them.

Again, IME. People seem to overshare with me though for some reason - so I was often lucky enough to see some of this behaviour although watered down probably.

A bloke I worked with used to forward on the emails that his group of male friends circulated at work FGS. This was back in the days before people realised that circulating obscene images on work email could get you sacked...

Some men I suppose do go giggling over / discussing porn - and probably do it in front of women - as a sort of way of getting a 'rise' from the women, a good or bad one, they don't much mind - they're just pushing at boundaries... a sort of clumsy attempt at flirting and I do think that its a much more 'exciting' topic for younger men's banter when women are present.....but in general men don't much bother if women aren't around.

I doubt he'll venture onto MN - he's probably on an online gaming forum.

Yes see I almost put that in Seven but I didn't in the end because I wasn't sure if that was just an isolated incident (and it was really awful and upset me quite a lot actually).

I think it's partly an "internet enables fascination with stuff you shouldn't look at but do anyway" thing - I remember a friend's brother showing me videos on his phone when videophones first came out of a man pushing one of those fibre optic things down his urethra, and then progressively bigger objects until the last one was a dildo. He then snogged me weird chat up attempt! But no now I think about it, I remember one of my friends from uni who lived in halls with a big group of blokes and they would get pissed and put "weird porn" on. And a friend of mine was a bit infamous among the other blokes for his fascination with hentai.

They don't tend to talk about women in the way women talk about men, meaning they don't talk about specific/individual women, no. But they appear to feel freer to make rape jokes and use more general objectifying language. Which I suppose makes sense?

Hello Oubliette's brother!!!!

If he was here we could reminisce.

Don't invite him though is wimmins space

Thinking about it, although I find male-dominated groups easier in person, I prefer female- dominated groups online. I wonder if I change my online persona if I'm in a male-dominated forum?

Ah - I went to the other science one (which has since de-merged from a larger institution, and was convenient for the proms). My brother went to your one.

Probably depends on the group of men / how old etc

Don't they giggle over extremely revolting "porn" stuff?

They sometimes used to do that when women were around I imagined that sort of thing would be even worse if no females there.

Men on their own rarely talk about women - at least that's my experience.

And yes I can see some men wanting to protect their space to engage in humour like that, and to have their pissing competitions without being eye rolled at. But mostly if you think about the kind of men who campaign for all-male space to be preserved, it's about the same kind of stuff that you see on We Hunted the Mammoth. The Jackass type stuff is harmless enough I suppose but hostile sexism isn't. But perhaps that will die out (we can hope )

I haven't experienced the "bitchy all girl environment" thing since school. Although I have heard that it's common in certain working environments. I've generally found all-female environments - and it's not an immediate thing, it's always an established one although the ladies' loos does count as established particularly when everyone is pissed - in adult life to be supportive, understanding, genuinely warm and funny and often (weirdly) more intelligent and introspective than women tend to be in company.

I don't think men regulate their behaviour "in front of ladies" as much as in the past, in the sense that in mixed environments and especially slightly male dominated ones you get a lot of good hearted banter, creative swearing and low level teasing and some silly pranks etc in a way that (I think anyway) can be really fun and generally is a good thing. It's just that when you take women away and they get comfortable in that all-male environment it goes to another level which is (IMO) beyond fun and just stupid and tends to be quite hostile to the concept of women in general. So, OK, I'm not a man and perhaps it is fun and not stupid () but the anti women sentiments can get pretty scary, and not something that I feel safe or comfortable being around, in all honesty. And I've never seen anything remotely like that in an all female environment even when there is a reason to be hostile towards men - when a member of the group has been treated badly for instance.

I meet up with a group of women every week; we knit, we eat cake, we chat, and I really enjoy the company. I can't put my finger on why, but I'd really hate it if a man was ever to join our group.

I get on really well with men as a general rule - lots of male friends, very constructive relationships with male colleagues - but my experience of men is that they always expect to be listened to, that their opinions hold sway and that they like to be in charge. Which can be a good thing, in certain situations, but would just upset the equilibrium of our group.

But if I feel like that about my knitting group, I suppose it's not unreasonable that men should feel the same about the groups that they feel a part of. If being all male is an important part of the identity of those groups, it's not surprising that they resent women butting in.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooh dan dan DAAAAANNNNNNNN

I need to think of a clue!

1. It's been consumed by another institution now
2. Vimto