"Maybe one day I'll set up to Identical threads with gender roles swapped"

[TheFabulousIdiot]

..." under different usernames and check the responses"

Am I being unreasonable to think that this is actually happening right now on mumsnet?

The quote above is from a goady thread in relationships a few weeks ago about men and women getting different advice and I can't help thinking that there have been a few threads started lately to test this very theory?

See, I don't think that genders side with their own kind. Plenty of women are given a very hard tiAndover a range of subjects but at the same time there will be people speaking up to support them. and in fact it's very rare to have a thread where every person responding will answer in the same way.

I can never understand when people come onto mumsnet and accuse the women here of being a collective voice siding with eachother and giving posters a hard time when there is clear evidence time and time again that responses are often very different.

Women also get told the their advice can't be taken seriously because the are just bitter about their own experience which I personally think is a silencing tactic from people who want to perpetuate this myth that we all speak with one voice, a voice that should not be heard.

There isn't a collective voice, but on the AIBU and Relationship boards there is usually an overwhelming majority, and a dissenting minority. And if there is a man at 'fault' in some way then the dissenting minority can be tiny, maybe only one or two posters. If the issue is between women then the opinions are usually better balanced.

I can see the appeal of posting identical threads to see the responses, but there really isn't any good reason. Firstly, it dupes well-intentioned posters into wasting their time, secondly, if you watch long enough, the same issues come up over and over with genders swapped organically - emotional affairs, infidelity, disagreements about more children, SAHPs doing housework, etc etc. Thirdly, if you're trying to prove the site has a pro-woman bias, too late. Yes, it does, very obviously. I don't know who disagrees, even the regulars on the FWR board agree it's biased (but that the bias is justified because other sites have a male bias).

I'm convinced that this is happening and said as much on the thread to which you refer, TheFabulous.

I was extremely suspicious about a thread started a few days before that poster made that 'Maybe I'll..' statement. Shockingly, it detailed a woman OP having sex without her male partner's consent. I reported both threads and lo and behold, the sex one got deleted with MNHQ stating:

Thread Deleted. Message from MNHQ, poster not genuine.

It's a misuse of the site, isn't within its ethos and any suspicions that it's happening should be reported every time.

What we are talking about are false threads not men looking for genuine advice, but deciding that for some reason, the advice will be more supportive if it's a woman OP.

Personally, I think it's madness to believe that since men and women are socialised so differently, the same advice should be meted out regardless of the poster's sex. Context bloody matters.

But as an antidote to the 'men get a rough' time view, I've also seen posters who would usually be very robust and succinct with a woman poster- sometimes even cruel- change their tone completely if it's a man posting. All of a sudden, they spend ages crafting long posts and if they can criticise the man's girlfriend or wife, they'll be quite vicious about it.

"In all seriousness the briefest perusal of AIBU in particular surely puts paid to the notion that women get unqualified support here? If a woman talks shite or rings alarm bells she is ripped to shreds."

Actually, I agree with you here. AIBU has always been my favourite forum. The most madcap variety of threads and generally no bias. It's the relationship forum that ocassionally sets me off, probably because there's the most situations there that pitch man vs. woman. But even relationship threads in AIBU seem to be more balanced.

My experience of AIBU is that there are certainly more man-pleasers there than on Relationships. I regularly see women posters told on AIBU that they should put up with porn, lapdancing clubs, stag night sexual experiences and general laziness in men, presumably because those AIBU posters put up with it too. Not so much in Relationships, thank goodness.

We have very different views of life, FrancescaBell mine is that people are free to the define the terms of their own sexuality. And your use of "man-pleaser" is just nasty.

You have no idea of my 'views on life'. Nor do I have a clue why your professed view of people are free to define the terms of their own sexuality has got anything to do with what I was saying about men who go to sex clubs and who are lazy and the posters who tell women they should put up with that behaviour even though they don't like it.

FWIW I think everyone's free to define the terms of their own sexuality as long as they are honest about it and as long as the people in their lives don't get commanded by others to accept it, if those 'terms' make them unhappy.