Not all women

Um, just delurking here to say that I, and many, many women have been alerted to feminism purely through reading these boards.

Not only are they informative and educational, it is precisely this kind of interjection by (some) men, which solidifies opinion.

There are lots of men who post on these boards, who are brilliant. They get it because they are both invested in women's rights and informed. That is the key word - informed.

Many women like me are NOT educated about the basic tenets of feminism. But, as we ARE women, what we read on here just resonates - I recognise it. The lived experience of being a woman, if you question it, cannot fail to lead to feminism.

It's women's lived experience that leads to them educating themselves about feminism. As men don't, and can't, have that, they have to learn first and then accept it on faith.

It might not feel to them as though they are derailing or trolling but to the women who can predict it almost from the first sentence, it's obvious and follows a highly predictable pattern.

"One at least pretends to listen to what the answers are and engage with them, the other merely bangs on and on with whatever drum he came here to bang."

By 'engage' you mean agree - not engage critically. I'm off. This is silly.

what is the difference between a man propounding a reasonable criticism to what is being asserted as feminist, and misogynistically trying to detail threads and draw attention to himself

One at least pretends to listen to what the answers are and engage with them, the other merely bangs on and on with whatever drum he came here to bang.

You obviously do not want critical voices on here.

Well, that's rubbish. We have one or two who post regularly, and when they have their sensible heads on, they engage and actually debate. They do tend to be female though and tend not to need to drag their soap boxes out at every opportunity.

The only exceptions have been the "happy hookers", but then again, that is entirely understandable.

Actually that's, 'the poor taken up by Women on MN never mind rest of the female opulation worldwide.

Feminism is a specialist subject. The basics are not universally known and take some learning

That explains the poor take up by WOMEN on MN, never mind men.
The answer to all those threads asking, 'why don't you come on the feminist boards?' Why don't you identify with feminism?......

You are wrong, Josef.

YetAnotherSpartacus what is the difference between a man propounding a reasonable criticism to what is being asserted as feminist, and misogynistically trying to detail threads and draw attention to himself?

Or isn't there one?

It seems that you don't want anyone, particularly men, coming on here and arguing against the general consensus of the community. You want more of a forum for exclusively feminist women sharing thoughts and experiences. That's fine, but that should be clearer.

Because no matter how a man phrased any objections to what any of you are saying, or how faithful he was to the thread, he would still be accused of 'mansplaining' and trolling and derailing and everything else. I doubt someone could challenge any feminist tenets on here without eliciting that response.

You obviously do not want critical voices on here.

Very articulately put Yetanother, exactly!

And here:

Why we entertain these trolls (or potentially one troll using different identities - they are all so similar it would not surprise me) instead of just ignoring them I really don't know

I don't know either, it's happening to virtually every thread lately and I've definitely been feeling it's a deliberate invasion and seems like one person with different names. Posting style the same, all over the board, but one at a time, you never see them together do you? i know someone said on another thread that they engage for the lurkers, to argue the points, but it is making many discussion threads on here pointless and unreadable.

It seems a rather self defeating position to adopt if it means that taking an interest in issues which affect women has to be treated as some sort of unpopular syllabus choice

I've never seen rookie feminist women patronised or corrected here, though. What I have seen is women engage and actively learn, often though asking genuine questions or testing views. I've also seen male posters who think they know it all and / or ask 'innocent' questions that are designed not to elicit responses to learn from, but to provide a further platform for them to grandstand their latent misogyny and or 'BLT tactics' (yes, I'm so stealing that once).

Feminism is a specialist subject. The basics are not universally known and take some learning

That presumably explains the take up of around 9% of women in the UK who say they are feminists.

It seems a rather self defeating position to adopt if it means that taking an interest in issues which affect women has to be treated as some sort of unpopular syllabus choice.

I hadn't heard it before but it does resonate with what is happening here!

BTL?

Oooooohhhhh 'man hating'. As an aside, I always love it when a frothy misogynist defends their rights to porn, women's bodies, women's labour, women's space, women's energy and women's time, etc. whilst also defending DV, rape and other abuses and then as a final parting shot accuses us of 'man hating'. :)

(Sorry! That was all off topic!)

On topic, no I've never heard a man say NAWALT. Heard lots of both men and women say NAMALT.

Probably you get women thinking about individual men more as exceptions, and wanting to stick up for them and defend general men, because women are taught and socialised to care about other people loads and to try to empathise and sympathise with others, but men aren't really.

If a headline says "Father found with three slain children and dead wife" I always understood that the journalist is either signalling to you that the guy in the story did it - because they're not allowed to say so explicitly yet.
Or, they're just trying to get the point across that he did it in shorthand at the start, it's like tapping your nose, it isn't about the wife not being as important, I thought.

Similarly, I thought when they include details about him - "the quiet gardener who volunteered at the church" etc., it isn't to try to humanise him, it's to say - 'Look, this monster was hiding in plain sight! People said he was shy! The neighbours only thought of him as that badminton addict! But, he still did this terrible thing, nobody would've expected it, now think about what secrets all the other people in the world could have, people you know. Any one of them, seeming normal to you every day at work, they could be different, evil, to their close family.'
It's just titillation really, to make the story a bit scarier, so it'll stick in your mind more, so I assumed!

I'm perfectly fine with male contributors to the board.

Contribution being the key point. A word that usually implies a positive addition

Cadno, you've goaded this board for years. No need to make representations to MNHQ for me to consider you've made not a single contribution in that time.

Yetanother - Reading this thread I'm appreciating your initial point

Phoolani - thank you for raising such an interesting topic for conversation. It took me a while to grasp quite what you meant, but when I did I realised how interesting it was. And the thread began with some interesting ideas and discussion from women too. However, where you say, I lost track of this thread I totally agree and I am so sorry that it has yet again gone the way of the trolls and their apologists. I did kind of predict that at the start because it happens so often.

The general pattern is

• interesting topic raised
• interesting discussion
• male poster appears pretending to be some sort of sympathetic ally pontificating his extra-special point of view which is always ever-so-slightly off-track or whiffy
• conversation turns to that post / poster and thread is derailed
• that poster generally asks stupid questions, delves into tangential theory and his own ever-so-special ideas to show us from his position of testosterone fuelled objectivity that we are wrong / doing it all wrong and if we would only listen to him and his special powers of manly objectivity we'd be doing ourselves a big favour (and can't we see where we've beeing going wrong all this time?).
• as the thread evolves the man takes his rightful place by nature as the centre of attention and women's energy is diverted into answering him (if they are being nice) or telling him to fuck off (if they are being nasty). Either way, he gets what he wants, which is to be the centre of attention and to sap women's energy and time and to divert what we want to talk about.
• sometimes the thread also attracts the more common garden misogynist who is clearer and more direct in their dismissal of women and feminism. Usually, this poster does not waste too much time - they simply post outrageous one-liners that posit the usual misogyny.
• the 'reasonable' troll then uses these posts to show that he's not a misogynist because he disagrees with this common garden stuff don'tchya know.
• the 'reasonable' troll usually reminds us that he has a view too and the internet is a free space, blah, blah, blah.
• sometimes because they play the hurt little boy or 'reasonable' man they successfully divide and conquer amongst women posters.

Why we entertain these trolls (or potentially one troll using different identities - they are all so similar it would not surprise me) instead of just ignoring them I really don't know. I do find it quite sad, though, because good conversation would be had otherwise if it wasn't all about them or being diverted to having to explain feminism 101 to men who are actually not interested at all or arguing against peurile latently misogynistic POVs that they think (or present) as somehow new and ones we are not already fed to the fucking teeth with.

piss everybody else off - Yeah, some only support free speech as long as it accords with their own views.

Perhaps I didn't explain myself well, Josef. My point was that you wouldn't expect to engage in debates on any specialist subject unless you too were equally well informed. It's rude and intrusive

Is feminisim a "specialist subject" ? As opposed to something which in theory should be of interest and relevance to 50% of the population?

There are other boards for discussion of theory. There's Feminist Theory and Feminist Activism

Which almost nobody posts on.