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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to think men seem to have taken to MN in their droves recently......and I don't like it

814 replies

LadyBlaBlah · 14/01/2011 13:33

Every thread I go on, there are men putting forward their opinion

I have enough of men in RL. AIBU thinking they should bog off to DN or go play the X Box or something?

OP posts:

LeninGrad · 16/01/2011 09:26

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

northernrock · 16/01/2011 09:37

This all seems a bit off the point to me.

Firstly, language needs sometimes to include words to describe offensive behavior.

Mansplaining seems to me to just mean patronising and boorish behavior by a man towards a woman.
It's just shorter and more concise than actually saying all that.

I don't get the jump some posters have done from that word being in existence, to the fact of it's existence meaning that all men are patronising boors.

The word mysogyny exists, meaning to hate and fear women. The fact that it exists does not mean that anyone thinks that all men hate and fear women.

The existence, and occasional use by women on this forum of that word, does not generalise at all. It specificates.

Meaning it is describing a specific incident or behaviour.

And I agree with Coley's metaphor about "whitesplaining"
If I am white, why would the existence of that word apply neccessarily to me?
The fact of it's existence would simply mean that one section of society has recognised a certain behaviour from a different section of society.

LeninGrad · 16/01/2011 09:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 10:26

Sorry Cabbage but I think it is completely unreasonable to hold up the example of a PITA teenager as a demonstration that "defensive racism" is a reality. This kid obviously had lots of rage, but not the political analysis and language to express it - of course she was a PITA, she was a 15 year old. Weren't all of us PITAs at the age of 15? How old is she now? I bet she doesn't think the way she did then.

She was a teenager and she was operating in an environment where she was being treated as "the other" and then being told that her experience of being "othered" was all in her imagination - her reality was being denied by everyone around her, all of whom had the luxury of not having the first fucking idea of what it is like to live as the person who is the outsider of a group. Of course she was fucking angry. I'd have been steaming in her shoes.

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 10:27

Oh and re the "normal view" thing - when I refer to normal view, I'm not inferring that everyone in the world thinks a certain thing. Just that it's the bog standard orthodoxy, that's all.

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 10:32

And oh, no-one thinks that individuals are going to be persecuted or discriminated against, by other individuals. When people talk about racism, sexism etc., we are talking about structural practices, behaviours and attitudes. This whole reactionary nonsense about everyone being individuals, no such thing as society, no such thing as collective movements, the zeitgeist, the cultural imperatives, stops people anaylysing how society works.

That's why I think we have all been talking past each other. Because if everything just comes down to individual behaviour, you can't anaylse trends and cultural assumptions. Everybody operates in a vacuum, uninfluenced by the society around them. And we know that's bollocks, don't we?

CurlyBoy · 16/01/2011 10:36

In a sort of self fulfilling prophecy I have just joined because my wife has been womping on about this site and this thread in paticular. I'll try not to come off the Xbox too much but I AM quite opinionated...

salsmum · 16/01/2011 10:37

well men do pinch 'our' magazines and then leave them in the loo so i don't see why they shouldn't jump onto our exclusive only wife whinging site mumsnet I just wish he 'they' would change the user name from ours when he's they're having a rant
disclaimer of course I'm not talking about my truelove who is making me a sizzzzling bacon sarnie on my day off

2rebecca · 16/01/2011 10:38

I find men on the site less odd than people without children under 18. At least the men are usually parents of kids.

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 10:46

Are there children under 18 on here? I'd never noticed, except the occasional trolling teen at half term.

But are there kids participating in threads? Offering helpful hints on how to manage your parents?

vesuvia · 16/01/2011 10:48

CabbagefromaBaby wrote - "It does feminism no favours because" ...

If feminists had a pound for every time that was said.

What does feminism favours?

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 10:59

Yes, we're supposed to beg for approval.

I feel this might be an appropriate time to post this

All about how much polite and smiley feminism has achieved.

sakura · 16/01/2011 11:28

when I first saw the word mansplain here on MN, no-one explained to me what it meant. I knew instantly, with instinct that a gaping hole in the English language had been suddenly filled.
If men have no idea that the mansplaining phenomenon exists to the point where they're denying its existence, then it shows that feminism still has to make strides

CabbagefromaBaby · 16/01/2011 11:43

HerBeatitude Sun 16-Jan-11 10:26:19
Sorry Cabbage but I think it is completely unreasonable to hold up the example of a PITA teenager as a demonstration that "defensive racism" is a reality. This kid obviously had lots of rage, but not the political analysis and language to express it - of course she was a PITA, she was a 15 year old. Weren't all of us PITAs at the age of 15? How old is she now? I bet she doesn't think the way she did then.

She was a teenager and she was operating in an environment where she was being treated as "the other" and then being told that her experience of being "othered" was all in her imagination - her reality was being denied by everyone around her, all of whom had the luxury of not having the first fucking idea of what it is like to live as the person who is the outsider of a group. Of course she was fucking angry. I'd have been steaming in her shoes.

HB you have just made up that entire post. Congratulations on an excellent imagination! Barely ANY of it is true though, sadly. The age, the scenario, what she had been 'told' etc etc.

I can't believe you just did that!

CabbagefromaBaby · 16/01/2011 11:51

The Suzanne Moore article is such a load of generalistic bollocks though. She's right about curfews and rape but most of the other stuff is utter tripe. (imho)

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 11:54

Cabbage, you don't know what she'd been told. If you are not black, you do not know what experiences she had had, that made her feel othered.

Sometimes people are angry for a reason. And if lots of people are angry for seemingly the same reason, then maybe they should jsut be listened to, instead of being dismissed because their experiences don't tally with our own?

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 11:57

And if my scenario is all wrong, would you like to elaborate on what the actual scenario was?

CabbagefromaBaby · 16/01/2011 11:57

I certainly know more than you do about what she had been told. Seriously, you took the basic outline I gave you and wrote an entire post filled to the brim with total speculation.

I'm not arguing with you that we should listen to people with different experiences...that's totally not in question here.

But I can't argue with you if you keep making things up!

sakura · 16/01/2011 11:58

LOved that article HB

CabbagefromaBaby · 16/01/2011 12:00

Crossed posts, sorry, but no, I don't want to spend all day on this...I checked in for a minute, was amazed at your post and wanted to set that down, but I haven't got time to go into it further. I feel that I made my point based on the situation I described and the details are not terribly relevant.

Anyway, have a good day.

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 12:02

So put the record straight then. What was the actual scenario? You said that she was only one of 3 black children in the entire school and that the place she lived was very white.

NetworkGuy · 16/01/2011 12:39

... go to bed for a few hours and see what happens while your eyes are shut ...

Crumbs - has there been a motorway crash onto the main-line ? This is a massive derailment from the OP's query as to whether men should bog off...

Needs a new thread for 'mansplaining' etc or at the very least an apology for massive hijack!

HerBeatitude · 16/01/2011 13:12

Hey, it was Unquiet who took up the mansplaining thing and guess what? If a bloke tells a feminist she's wrong about something, she's not going to simper, bat her eyes and say "oh sorry, of course, you may well have a point." We're going to argue our case. And we're going to keep on arguing it as long as someone's arguing against us.

It's why men hate us so much.

2rebecca · 16/01/2011 13:13

I said people without children under 18, not people without children who are under 18. It is the people who either have no children, or whose children have grown up who still post on mumsnet I find odd. If they wanted a chat forum I thought they'd go for a hobby based one, not a parenting website.

Coleysworth · 16/01/2011 13:18

I must be odd then. My DCs were 11 and 9 when I joined mumsnet, and now they're 19 and 17. There's plenty here to stay for apart from the practical parenting stuff, which I am now at liberty to ignore. Especially the feminist topic

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