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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think I've forgotten how to interact with other women.

205 replies

downbutnotout2018 · 08/09/2019 15:30

I've just been to DDs friends kids party. A sea of women all chatting away (I am a 41 year old female myself).

They were all in little cliques and I couldn't face trying to get into one. No one invited me in either. I had a very quick conversation with one woman and that was it, before she wandered off to speak with a group of others.

I work in a fairly male dominated environment and think I am just more familiar with interacting with men. They talk more loudly and slowly and deliberately (generalisation I know) and I can follow their topics of conversation more easily. They are not bitchy.

I ended up striking up a conversation with one of the dad's whose wife and I are organising an event with. a group of 3 mum's (who had previously ignored me completely) now looked over and gave me awful deadly looks like I was trying to chat him up or something (I genuinely had no interest whatsoever and was just trying to kill time).

AIBU in thinking I have forgotten how to interact with women or is this just a particularly carry group of women?

OP posts:
HollysTeflonSeptum · 09/09/2019 18:42

Love your builders anecdote aqua00.

I would say easily out of my closest friends (mostly women, some men) the bitchiest by far is my good friend Michael. He freely admits it. He does have other redeeming qualities thankfully and knows my MN name so he'll probably read this - but fuck it.

And shockingly...he's not even gay Shock.

.

HarryYerAWizard · 09/09/2019 18:54

@ManOfReason that’s not a challenge, just do an advanced search. They’re usually in relationships. There was one a little while ago that ran to hundreds of posts. And if we take MN out of the equation when talking about male ‘bitchiness’ you only need to look at the relationships subreddit, never mind their ‘AmITheAsshole’ and ‘petty revenge’ subreddits. And that’s before we even look at real life. Or pop culture which is full of in-law jokes and drama from a male point of view.

ManOfReason · 09/09/2019 19:16

Ok, but statistics show that women collaborate less well than men (or even men with women), are less willing to help a female who is senior to them at work, and prefer to have a male boss to a female one.

HerSymphonyAndSong · 09/09/2019 19:20

Ah a prime example of one of those men who is SO much less obnoxious to spend time with than any other woman Grin

HarryYerAWizard · 09/09/2019 19:21

Ok, I can’t comment on that because I can’t speak for ‘women’ and I’ve never seen any of that research. None of that is ‘bitchy’ comments though. And none of it relates to the OPs complaints, which some of us have tried to help her with, rather than just denigrate over half the population.

C8H10N4O2 · 09/09/2019 19:59

But I do challenge you to find me a MIL thread started by a male poster. Or even a FIL one.

Amazing. All I see is the text of peoples' posts, what kind of x-ray vision shows us MN posters' genitals?

HerSymphonyAndSong · 09/09/2019 20:00

Testicles of objectivity and rationality C8H10N4O2. If we women didn’t have wombs clouding our vision we’d be able to see the truth.

fallacy · 09/09/2019 20:02

We're all 'hysterical' after all

RuffleCrow · 09/09/2019 20:05

Sorry OP but threads where women prefer talking to men never go down well on MN. Personally i know where you're coming from. I don't bother with school cliques male or female. I get enough politics on the radio.

C8H10N4O2 · 09/09/2019 20:05

If we women didn’t have wombs clouding our vision we’d be able to see the truth

Indeed. Good point. There was me thinking that the ninja tech team may not have fixed deletion messages because they were so busy implementing leading edge scanning technology.

Gutted.

NoTheresa · 09/09/2019 20:08

ManOfReason

I don't see how anyone who is a regular visitor to AIBU can honestly say that women aren't bitchy (well, at least compared to us men).

There's even a thread moaning about it right now! grin

Careful - you are off message...

NoTheresa · 09/09/2019 20:09

@ManOfReason

What sort of username is that, pray?

NoTheresa · 09/09/2019 20:11

RuffleCrow

Sorry OP but threads where women prefer talking to men never go down well on MN. Personally i know where you're coming from. I don't bother with school cliques male or female. I get enough politics on the radio.

Indeed! I shall prefer speaking to whomsoever I wish.

Original poster
downbutnotout2018 · 09/09/2019 20:16

Sorry OP but threads where women prefer talking to men never go down well on MN

I actually tried making eye contact with nearly all the women in order to initiate a conversation. They all averted their eyes and blanked me. So all I had left to talk to was the men. It wasn't a deliberate thing.

OP posts:
Hedgehogblues · 09/09/2019 20:18

But I do challenge you to find me a MIL thread started by a male poster. Or even a FIL one.

It's not as if because of the patriarchal society we live in that women's relationships with their in laws are way more pressured, time consuming, and complicated than mens with theirs, or anything

formerbabe · 09/09/2019 20:22

I actually tried making eye contact with nearly all the women in order to initiate a conversation. They all averted their eyes and blanked me.

I can imagine. I remember picking my DC up from an activity. As I got to the entrance there was a group of four mums standing in a circle talking...I knew two of them. The two I knew turned round to say hi to me. Then they all turned back into the circle and continued to chat. Now, if that had been me, I'd have stepped to the side to let the other mum join in. I'd heard their conversation, it was nothing salacious or anything...general chit chat I would have joined in with. I mean how fucking rude...I stood there like a lemon.

ManOfReason · 09/09/2019 20:25

Ok, I'm not trying to say that women are 'bitchy' by default - I can see why that would piss people off!

However, men are definitely vocal about their frustrations IME. Aside from young men arguing/trolling on YouTube/Reddit etc there really is no male equivalent of mumsnet where 30-something year old men complain daily about their neighbours/family/workmates etc.

HarryYerAWizard · 09/09/2019 20:53

It’s not young men arguing or trolling on reddit - there are men of all ages on reddit subs asking for advice on relationships with their colleagues, friends, family, in-laws and partners. As I mentioned the subreddits relationship advice and Am I the asshole are just two of them.

ManOfReason · 09/09/2019 20:55

'Less vocal' I meant to say...

HarryYerAWizard · 09/09/2019 21:10

I disagree. Every man I’ve ever known talks and complains about their day/wife/family.

Mumsnet, digital spy, reddit, MSE, social media etc have men talking about their ‘frustrations’. As do newspapers, magazines, stand up comedy shows, pop culture, work places, my home right now etc.

It’s human nature to complain and men are human. Have you never seen ‘one foot in the grave’ 😁

ManOfReason · 09/09/2019 21:20

my home right now

So is this an admission that you are in fact a whinger yourself? If so, then perhaps you are projecting.

Or are you saying that we've made staggering leaps and bounds in dismantling toxic masculinity and that men are now freely discussing their problems?(I'd expect the suicide rate to drastically fall if this is the case).

HarryYerAWizard · 09/09/2019 21:23

No, I’m saying I live with a man who is complaining in our home at the moment.

Men are not freely discussing their problems, no. They’re ‘bitching’ about their wives, colleagues, neighbours, family and friends all over the internet and in real life.

ManOfReason · 09/09/2019 21:23

Sorry, that was meant to be little tongue in cheek but came across a bit confrontationally!

My experience is that a lot of men I know don't like to 'show weakness'. But then again I work in a very male dominated non-officey technical environment and my hobbies are boxing and powerlifting so maybe this is just a different demographic.

Personally, I'm more than happy to discuss my feelings FTR.

HerSymphonyAndSong · 09/09/2019 21:25

When women do it it’s “bitching/whinging”, when men do it it’s “discussing their problems”. We’ve heard it all before.

ManOfReason · 09/09/2019 21:28

But most men don't 'discuss their problems'. That's the issue. Men like to pretend they're ok and this self denial is evident in the widely recognised situation where men are very reluctant to seek medical help compared to women.