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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to think that Mumsnet is becoming increasingly less feminist and that this..

857 replies

BertrandRussell · 29/11/2019 11:33

..is a bad thing?

OP posts:
T0tallyFuckedUpFamily · 01/12/2019 17:28

Don’t let it bother you theunknownknown. We always get multiple new posters at the weekend who send out the klaxon for our resident MRAs to circle the wagons. It’s really quite fun working out who the name changers really are and waiting for their masks to slip. They try to slander the FWR board in order to deter new members from joining up. Proof, as if it was ever needed, that they don’t really know women very well.

theunknownknown · 01/12/2019 18:02

Yes T0tally I hadn't considered that. I guess it is obvious as there are never any examples of transphobia - whatever that means.
I just feel so disheartened at the lack of critical thinking rather than the concern over hurting men's feelings.

Pinkblueberry · 01/12/2019 18:18

The main thrust of the posts on that board are not anti-trans but pro-women.
Self-id threatens women's rights. How some women don't see this is baffling.

Perhaps they struggle to see it because the aggressive stance taken by many on the FWR board doesn’t exactly help convince anyone. It’s intimidating and alienating. It’s like you don’t really want many others understand - like you quite enjoy the exclusivity and being more enlightened than others. If everyone agreed you wouldn’t feel quite so special and superior.

T0tallyFuckedUpFamily · 01/12/2019 18:21

It’s like you don’t really want many others understand - like you quite enjoy the exclusivity and being more enlightened than others.

I’m sorry you find the conversations to difficult to follow, but I’m sure if you stick at it, you’ll start to comprehend what the posters are discussing.

BertrandRussell · 01/12/2019 18:25

I honestly don’t see what’s so hard to understand on the FWR boards. I can see why lots of people might not agree, but not understand? Surely not...

OP posts:
UtuNorantiPralatongsThirdEye · 01/12/2019 18:39

As an extrapolation- Barbie- that absolute stereotype of femininity - has always been well into horses. But not other sports

Barbie has been a basketball player and baseball player in the past.
Also an astronaut and a rapper.

Pinkblueberry · 01/12/2019 18:44

I’m sorry you find the conversations to difficult to follow, but I’m sure if you stick at it, you’ll start to comprehend what the posters are discussing.

Thanks for illustrating what I mean. I didn’t say I couldn’t follow them. I didn’t say I couldn’t comprehend. The exact same thing thing happened on this thread to me yesterday - I say something, and then get told I said something that I did not. So I’ll repeat what I said yesterday... You cannot have a sensible debate with someone who puts words into your mouth and then replies on the basis of something you haven’t said. I might as well reply to you ‘yes, I had a lovely weekend thank you...’ you didn’t ask me, but fuck it that’s where I want the conversation to go and that’s where I’ll try and lead it whether it makes sense or not... that’s what trying to join in on the FWR board is often like. What you say is happily taken out of context or there’s no context at all. And then you get belittled or insulted. As I said... completely alienating. No one’s going to be convinced by that.

SmileEachDay · 01/12/2019 18:45

Barbie has been a basketball player and baseball player in the past.
Also an astronaut and a rapper

I bow to your superior Barbie knowledge and retract my horse comment Grin

It’s like you don’t really want many others understand - like you quite enjoy the exclusivity and being more enlightened than others. If everyone agreed you wouldn’t feel quite so special and superior

Nope. I want as many people as possible to understand.
I’m not sure what the whole inverted snobbery thing is about, or why you’re being so scathing?

theunknownknown · 01/12/2019 18:47

PinkBlueBerry
It's actually not really that difficult. The aggressive agenda to introduce self-id is detrimental to women's rights. The word woman means nothing if anyone can define themselves as a woman. Crime stats, medical stats etc are meaningless. Sex based rights would be meaningless.
I don't think it is that difficult to understand personally.
The FWR board is the first one I look at when I log on. I have yet to see a post that is anti-trans. After all, live and let live and all that. But not at the expense of womens' rights. They were too hard won to be handed back to men.

T0tallyFuckedUpFamily · 01/12/2019 18:49

So you don’t want to understand why feminists have concerns? Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?

theunknownknown · 01/12/2019 18:51

Sorry PPB, cross posted and now see from your subsequent post that you do understand.

So if you understand it, why the scathing?

thatisnotfeminism · 01/12/2019 21:04

So you don’t want to understand why feminists have concerns? Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?

it is impossible to understand the inability to debate issues without it descending into personal attacks on the FWR boards, I think. There is a fairly narrow dominating view point there - and that view point is not shared by all women who consider themselves feminists. It isn't "feminist" to tell other women how to think.

I actually think that there is also a more sinister side to how things are dominated by a fairly narrow viewpoint in the FWR board. For example, cosima1 and seneca raised issues about porn up thread, and I would say that this is true feminism issue, yet you have a pp "feminist" saying "but what can we do?". There is a lot that can be done, and the problem is that serious issues like this are being lost in the torrent of hyperbole about trans issues and women not being "real" feminists unless they agree with the narrow viewpoint of the FWR board. You (as in, FWR board frequenters who follow the narrow view point) are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

"but what can we do?" - raise awareness of it and its consequences in the general public, start new threads about it on mumsnet (instead of threads like this), write articles, write to MPs with a view to lobbying for change. In France you can travel quite a distance without seeing a scantily clad women or girl posing on a billboard, let alone one in a provocative pose - find out how women in France achieved it. Lots of things can be done.

SmileEachDay · 01/12/2019 21:24

I’ve never, ever seen posters on the FWR boards saying there is nothing we can do about porn!!

birdsdestiny · 01/12/2019 22:09

Absolutely its fwr that has made me open my eyes with regard to porn.

HandsOffMyRights · 01/12/2019 22:17

Same here Birds

birdsdestiny · 01/12/2019 22:21

Sounds weird the way I phrased it Grin
Lass is a massive miss on fwr, she was so clear on prostitution and porn.

BertrandRussell · 01/12/2019 22:31

I have never heard anyone on FWR saying “but what can we do?” About porn. I have heard people saying we shouldn’t do anything because it’s all fine and lovely and empowerfulling, and others saying that we really need to do something before the tidal wave fatally damages our children’s future relationships. But never “what can we do?”

OP posts:
Thehagonthehill · 01/12/2019 23:40

One of the problems with transphobia is that off the feminist board everyone thinks that there is opposition to transwomen.No one has problems with ,for want of a better discription,old style transwomen who came into women's toilets occasionally but ,probably valuing their own and women's privacy didn't impinge on other areas such as changing rooms.
This is what most older people think of as trans so don't get why there is transphobia without realising what trans now encompasses.
Now trans includes any one who say they are women(irrespective of their presentation),transvestites(thank you stonewall) and a lot of transing teens that we worry about and children,that scares us.
This is not to say that some of these are genuine people and I'm sorry for the parent with teens going through this and people with body disphoria who take posts personally (unsurprisingly).
As an older woman I don't much care about mixed gender toilets I don't use them and neither does my teen because we don't like paddling through piss.
But I do mind the porn and having to discuss porn and sex with my daughter to check that she understands that it involves mutual consent and should be pleasurable for both parties,saying no to anything you don't want on both sides is OK.
She doesn't like discussing trans issues as she has friends who are transing and is protective of them but us beginning to see trends that undermine them but thankfully whatever she is she is happy not to mess with her body,it works,it houses who she is and sometimes she agrees with me that as bodies go she could have done worse.
She is a feminist but doesn't do it with a name.

Blakes77 · 02/12/2019 00:01

It isn't "feminist" to tell other women how to think.
See I think a lot of women think "feminist" means being nice to other women and saying "you go girl" no matter what they think.
To me feminism is a reaction against a system that has seen females as a whole be held back and put upon. I'm against that. I think the two sexes are different but equally important. If you say stuff that supports men getting what they want at the expense of women I'm going to tell you that you are wrong, and why. So yes, I have no qualms telling another woman what to think. It's called argument. Feminism doesn't nessecarily mean being nice.

DirtyWindow · 02/12/2019 10:26

I have no qualms telling another woman what to think. It's called argument.

I'd rather have a discussion than an argument. Unfortunately many (not all) of the posters on FWR aren't interested in discussing issues with anyone who hold a different view to them.

BertrandRussell · 02/12/2019 10:49

“Unfortunately many (not all) of the posters on FWR aren't interested in discussing issues with anyone who hold a different view to them.“
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that they aren’t prepared to change their minds? I’m happy to discuss- but I am not going to tell someone I think they are right if I don’t unless they can bring something spectacularly new to the discussion. I have been forming my opinions over a lot of years, and by reading and listening and living-it would be surprising if a single poster on Mumsnet would bring me to a different point of view.

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 02/12/2019 10:52

And if I think something is damaging to women I am going to say so. I can’t imagine anything, for example, that could make me think that liberal feminist views on porn and prostitution are anything but catastrophic for women. And I have listened and read a lot, so I do know the arguments.

OP posts:
SenecaFalls · 02/12/2019 11:01

I'd rather have a discussion than an argument.

If people have differing views, it's an argument. And there is nothing wrong with that.

JacobReesClunge · 02/12/2019 12:05

See I think a lot of women think "feminist" means being nice to other women and saying "you go girl" no matter what they think.

Yes, I've often thought that. See also, feminism is about choice.

DioneTheDiabolist · 02/12/2019 12:11

I have no qualms telling another woman what to think. It's called argument.
Telling people what to think is not an argument. Telling women what to think is MN FWR Feminism, not real feminism.

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