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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think there is a group on MN deliberately trying to downplay the institutional oppression of women?

999 replies

PerryPerryThePlatypus · 18/10/2017 08:13

I've been hanging around these here parts since Pom Bears were just a bizarre crisp but more and more I see posters chipping away at other posters experiences, feelings of unease etc. It's difficult to articulate but it's just a shift from NAMALT to women are just as bad so stop complaining. An almost subtle silencing.

OP posts:

KrytensNanobots · 19/10/2017 00:13

Yes I think the majority would agree definitely. I really don’t get why Tara is so intent on defending random men at train stations

Oh, FFS. We were getting into intelligent debate and everyone was agreeing with each other and now we're back at square one.
Read frequency's post that united both sides.

taratill · 19/10/2017 00:15

krytens have you read Frequency's subsequent post?

KrytensNanobots · 19/10/2017 00:15

mittens are you deliberately being obtuse?

cross post.

Frequency · 19/10/2017 00:23

It's not all men but also it is not a minority of men. It's quite a sizable chunk and in many ways, it's kinda understandable. Society and the media has taught men that this is what women want. They've learned the behaviour from their heros.

www.cracked.com/blog/how-men-are-trained-to-think-sexual-assault-no-big-deal/

However, that does not excuse it. Especially since men are responsible for those films and the creation of the myth that all women want male attention, we just play hard to get because that's what nice girls do.

If it wasn't a sizable portion then it wouldn't be an issue. It would be a few twats causing isolated incidents. Sadly, the incidents are not isolated. Yes, most men don't rape but most women know at least one rape victim. Most women have been the victim of a sexual assault.

How many women on this thread have not had to fend off unwanted male attention on more than one occasion? How many women on this thread have not been catcalled?

It's not all men, I agree, but it is pandemic.

Mittens1969 · 19/10/2017 00:25

No, not meaning to be obtuse. I hadn’t read Frequency’s post actually. Apologies.

Mittens1969 · 19/10/2017 00:27

*If it wasn't a sizable portion then it wouldn't be an issue. It would be a few twats causing isolated incidents. Sadly, the incidents are not isolated. Yes, most men don't rape but most women know at least one rape victim. Most women have been the victim of a sexual assault.

How many women on this thread have not had to fend off unwanted male attention on more than one occasion? How many women on this thread have not been catcalled?

It's not all men, I agree, but it is pandemic.*

This 100%.

KrytensNanobots · 19/10/2017 00:28

I think women are starting to get sick of sexually aggressive men demanding our attention and are speaking out more loudly against it than we used to. The rhetoric of not all men/women must be polite/men are just trying to be nice/it's our responsibility to manage male behaviour is starting to get old. And it's not helping. Women are still being raped and sexually assaulted and catcalled when all we want to do is go about our daily business in peace. Men really are shooting themselves and other men in the foot with this behaviour. I'd guess around 98% of women would turn away from a man in a coffee shop or on a train because experience tells us the conversation will to turn into a thinly veiled come-on and we worry it will get aggressive if we don't reciprocate.

That's at odds to what you said in your last post. You say men and women can converse normally then you say that because of the actions of some, women feel uncomfortable just in case they get raped/harrassed.
Speak for yourself. I can talk to males just as easily as I do females.

taratill · 19/10/2017 00:31

Are you deliberately avoiding my question frequency which is how does treating all men like potential attackers assist the cause?

To be clear my concerns about the approach being advocated is:

How is that better than educating young people/boys and challenging the norms of society?

Why are you using we 'are tired' of educating and don't see that we have to (paraphrasing here) as an excuse not to educate?

How exactly does this (treating all men the same approach) assist future generations of women?

How is it right to say that because it is your experience it is the experience of all women and all women must agree with it otherwise they are apologists?

Bowing out for the evening now.

BitterLittlePoster · 19/10/2017 00:32

Why can't a man pay a compliment? Genuine question.
I'm trying to imagine myself approaching a random man on my commute tomorrow to tell him he looks nice today. Why don't you try it, Krytens? And report back. Pick a young man under 25 who's on his own.

Just because he says "I like your dress" for example doesn't mean that's code for "I wanna shag ya."
Now that I'm older I don't get this but when I was younger, it always meant exactly that.

KrytensNanobots · 19/10/2017 01:12

How is that better than educating young people/boys and challenging the norms of society?

Yes to this. Surely that's the way to go.Educating the future generation. So they see it as normal to treat everyone the same.

Why are you using we 'are tired' of educating and don't see that we have to (paraphrasing here) as an excuse not to educate?
This too.Seen it a lot. Educate. Not mock or shout down. Far more effective.

How is it right to say that because it is your experience it is the experience of all women and all women must agree with it otherwise they are apologists?
And this.Not all women's experiences are the same, doesn't make them sympathisers to abusers/rapists.

HandbagKrabby · 19/10/2017 07:31

So rude to my posts last night! You don't even read what I say, you read what you think I say and go off on one.

I clearly stated upthread I talked to a stranger who was a man just last night!

I can safely say after several decades on this planet I will not be making life long friends with a random bloke who decides that he wants to speak to me. Why is that his decision to make and not mine? I rarely get time to myself so when I do I don't want to spend it making small talk. It is not my responsibility as a woman to put up with it because some men haven't been taught social cues. If they don't start up convos with men because they're worried they'll think they are gay then that simply proves that generally men believe there is a sexual motive behind this type of interaction.

whiskyowl · 19/10/2017 07:38

"Why can't a man pay a compliment? Genuine question."

I have no problem with men paying compliments. I would quite like a bloke to come up to me and say "Wow, you have a staggering intellect supported by an extraordinarily wide ranging knowledge of your subject, and you completely owned me on that conference floor with your searingly well-chosen question which went to the heart of a theoretical problem I haven't noticed in my work". But you know what? The kind of bloke who wants to pay me compliments never actually wants to give them about anything where we might actually be in competition with each other, and certainly doesn't want to acknowledge me kicking their ass. They want to pay them about my body or my behaviour, and it's often a very subtle way of saying "I am not going to allow you to be my equal here". The kind of bloke who compliments me on a dress or on my body is exactly the kind of bloke who will not compliment my work.

Men are far more ready to give each other credit than they are to give it to women. Check out this study, which found that male undergraduates consistently underestimated female peers, and consistently overestimated female peers:

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0148405

I think this bears out a lot of people's anecdotal experiences, that to be acknowledged as a woman you have to be superlative, whereas to receive the same level of acknowledgement as a man, you just have to make average.

whiskyowl · 19/10/2017 07:39

Sorry, that should read "constantly overestimated MALE peers".

I'll get my coffee!

taratill · 19/10/2017 07:39

Handbag how exactly was I rude to you? I was asking why you felt the way you do, that's not rude it's curious.

If you felt it was rude I am sorry for that it was absolutely not intended that way.

BertrandRussell · 19/10/2017 07:44

"Educating the future generation. So they see it as normal to treat everyone the same."

OK. I'm up for this. How do we do it?

whiskyowl · 19/10/2017 07:51

Well, to treat everyone the same, you'd have to have a world in which they were treated the same, wouldn't you? Because inequality isn't just about how one person treats another person. It's about how institutions and power structures treat groups.

taratill · 19/10/2017 07:52

Betrand I don't have all of the answers to this but it must be doable.

Recent changes in advertising which make it illegal to show women in a cleaning role/ men as breadwinners is a start.

Perhaps schools could take some responsibility and use (what used to be PSE time) to promote equality more? I'm not talking about just rights in education or rights in the workplace I'm talking about teaching boys that have as much right to express their feelings as girls, role play on social clues within drama lessons.....Enabling both sexes to start a dialogue about worries and concerns from a young age.

taratill · 19/10/2017 07:57

whiskyowl agreed to an extent but to use race discrimination as an example, how would blacks ignoring whites have helped them in a situation like appartheid?

What you need to make change occur is to have dialogue not shutting a conversation down.

It won't happen over night and not everyone will agree to it, but it can get better.

Ultimately those in power can only really change attitudes if they challenge from bottom up. It is key that we don't say to our young boys you don't cry that's what girls do and teach them to read social clues. Without doing that society won't change it's views imo.

Ignoring men certainly won't change anything.

BertrandRussell · 19/10/2017 08:00

Or men could stop and think for five minutes and realise that they have some responsibility for their behaviour and that of other men and actually do something about it? Rather than expecting to be educated again by women?

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 19/10/2017 08:01

its a trite question but caitlin moran said 'are men doing it' as a way of saying that something may be an issue

So are men approaching other men in the same way?

Well in some cases yes, especially depending on the age of the people involved

But a lot of the time the answer is no

Thats it

taratill · 19/10/2017 08:06

bertrand of course men should stop and think for 5 minutes. I bet many of them would be willing to discuss these issues if you actually asked them to!

I just don't get this women shouldn't have to be involved in this discussion it's men's fault attitude.

In race issues, do you think that the world would be the place it is today if people like Nelson Mandela / Martin Luther King (etc) had taken that approach?

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 19/10/2017 08:10

Ive probably got the word trite wrong

Apologies if i have (i bet i have)

whiskyowl · 19/10/2017 08:13

taratill - Oh, I'm absolutely not advocating the two sides ignoring one another. I think your ideas are great and absolutely are part of the package we need. I am a bit pessimistic, however, that they are sufficient on their own. In no recent struggle that I can think of recently has dialogue alone worked, because generally the people in a dominant position don't really want to relinquish that dominance. To pick up on your point about race - think about civil rights. It was by organising and campaigning and marching and publishing and speeching and living the struggle (and sometimes that struggle involved staring down the barrel of a gun) that some basic rights were won in the USA.

For me, the first position is to shift the discourse away from the idea that individual men are the problem, and towards the idea that we need to change the power structures. Instead of expecting men to reform out of good will, for instance, let's increase sentences for sexual harassment and assault and stigmatise them by putting individuals on some kind of publicly checkable sex offenders register. Let's change rape trials so they are more victim-friendly, and encourage women to come forward, and let's make it so sentences are brutally long - why should someone get longer for fraud than rape? Let's beef up tribunals, so those found guilty of harassment at work have to be fired and have to declare the reason for their firing for a number of years, but also so that those managers found presiding over those cultures are held responsible. Let's put in free, high quality childcare, so more women rise to the top of professions and challenge the kind of male dominance that leads to these cultures in the first place... I could go on and on here!

whiskyowl · 19/10/2017 08:19

taratill - the white communities wanted dialogue with the (militant, revolutionary, communist) Mandela so much they persecuted him and locked him up for years, and with MLK so much that they shot him dead!!

taratill · 19/10/2017 08:22

whisky I totally agree with the suggestions in the second paragraph.

Incidentally I'm an employment lawyer so act for many women who suffer harassment and discrimination in the workplace. I know it is rife. I'll never forget the day a male senior manager asked me with a completely straight face , 'so how do I avoid employing women of child bearing age then?' I'm self employed so I told him what I thought of his attitude!! He did continue to work with me! His issue was a fear and misunderstanding of the maternity pay system and an assumption that you couldn't ever dismiss someone who is a woman or who is pregnant for any reason (which is patently untrue -you just can't dismiss them because they are pregnant!).

Love the idea of free quality childcare but how exactly would that be funded? Maybe require the employer to bear the cost? No way the current government would do that but I don't think that is a sex issue it's a money issue.

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