AIBU to think MN enables obsessive hygiene

[Cheeselog]

And wonder what we can do to stop it?

When I was a teenager and suffering from an eating disorder I sought out ‘pro-ana’ material on Tumblr, which has rightfully been banned on many sites as it essentially encourages people to give in to their disorder instead of challenging it.

I can’t help but feel the regular threads where people declare if you don’t wash your hands/ shower/ change your sheets/ change your clothes/ deep clean your toilet every 15 minutes or whatever then you are GRIM are the equivalent for people with hygiene-focused OCD (and other threads do the same for health anxiety) - these threads validate and normalise obsessive behaviours.

IMO this content is just as bad for individuals as my pro-ED content was. How can we stop this and make MN a safer environment for people who are suffering from or susceptible to these illnesses?

I am joking.

But I am serious when I say that it is not my job to consider your MH when posting such a simple thing as " I shower daily". Jeez.

Ah, I just read the other thread. You absolutely should wash your hands more frequently than just after the toilet and before eating. If you don't, you're spreading germs.

That's not to say you should do it every five minutes, obviously.

I don't think there's really a problem with a simple statement like 'I shower daily'. The problem is more when people say things like 'I shower daily, why wouldn't you? Anything less is gross'. Which introduces judgment, emotion and competition into it. And usually ableism too.

If people can be triggered by mentions of daily showers, why can't I be triggered by mentions of sink baths? or washing pits and bits once a week? Who is the trigger police?

Alternatively we could all not click on posts that upset us.

This is what the OP is talking about. It’s not up for you to shame her hygiene practices in this way.

good grief

we are grown assed adults. If we are swayed to change our shower routine by an anonymous poster negatively questioning them their shower routine…. That poster has bigger issues to address.

i think best to assume that most mumsnetters are not delicate leafs in the wind who are forced in to daily cleaning because of reading a thread when their standards were judged as a bit pants

Disability aside, a daily shower is a fairly basic level of hygiene. I think judgement is expressed because people genuinely do wonder why, if you’re an adult and don’t have a disability preventing you from doing so, you wouldn’t wash on a daily basis? That’s not being competitive or OTT.

Ah, but the entire conversation on that thread happened because she was questioning and shaming the hygiene practices of others, including the OP.

She doth not practice what she preaches. It’s rank hypocrisy.

I don't 'refuse' to wash my hands. This is my point about judgmental language. I don't give it any headspace, because I don't constantly worry about germs - doing so isn't healthy. There being a range of hygiene standards isn't the problem, the way we talk about it is.

ah it's a thread about a thread. No wonder I can't understand it. Look people will judge you on an internet forum and it is going to be quite hard for you to stop that, given people are calling other people cunts on here.

It is, however, my prerogative to give my opinion on an open forum 🤷🏻‍♀️

Regardless, it isn't shaming to point out the fact that more frequent hand washing reduces the spread of germs.

Hygiene is something human DO judge either on, though. Its not just on Internet forums, it’s every time you leave your house. Poor hygiene standards flags up an issue of some sort.

There is a basic societal expectation that a functioning adult brushes their teeth, washes their bodies, wears clean clothes, doesn’t inflict poor hygiene on their fellow humans and washes their hands after using the toilet or before handling food to prevent infection.

I have an adult child with a learning disability. Teaching him how to do these basic things has been a huge part of teaching him life skills and helping him to engage in the wider world.

I find it so weird when people think they’re being somehow more relaxed, less uptight, healthier somehow (?!) by disregarding hygiene basics. I do judge.

If it helps, I think a lot of the "competitive scabbiness" is exaggerated and put on for show.

I think there's a bit of a "one-downmanship" compulsion in our culture which makes people feel like they should try to come across as more scruffy, low-rent and low-maintenance in order to appear more virtuous, down-to-earth, relatable or charming.

It's not. I did recently respond to a handwashing thread, but this isn't about that thread - other posters have clearly misunderstood what I'm trying to get at here by bringing it up. I don't care what people's habits are and I don't care if people judge me. This thread is about the way we discuss hygiene on here more generally. I was recently having a discussion about a family member with OCD who has intrusive thoughts about knives, and worries about there being hidden knives everywhere which might hurt people so they compulsively check them. My family does not enable them in this behaviour or validate it as a normal behaviour, we challenge the thinking and anxiety behind it instead. I was thinking that the way hygiene on here is discussed validates people who compulsively clean/wash and wondered whether we could improve MN culture to stop that from being the case.

I think there's probably a massive range of views on MN but discussions on hygiene tend to form into two sides quite quickly.

Personally I'm dismayed by women being brainwashed into an aspiration to be the best domestic goddess/housewife excessively cleaning and washing everything. It's so depressing. As someone who's been a full time working mother I know my choices aren't other people's but I really couldn't have achieved what I have - either at work or as a mother - if I'd spent my life constantly cleaning and washing. I only know two people who really cared about this stuff and both had OCD and lived very constrained lives.

Ah fair, I admit I didn’t read the other thread 😳

@Cheeselog you're saying this isn't about the other thread but one of your earlier posts says this thread was triggered by that one.

Nobody cares about how many times you do or don't wash your hands.

No worries! No reason why you’d be across all eleventy million threads happening at any point in time. 😊

Using hyperbole such as "every 15 minutes" makes it less easy to take the discussion seriously.

Instead of hugely exaggerating, why not use actual examples?

It was triggered by that one inasmuch as that one happened yesterday so I was thinking about it, but equally it's about the dozens of these threads I've read over the years. This thread wasn't to discuss my or anyone else's hygiene habits.

Wouldn't that make it actually a TAAT and pulled? I genuinely think there is an important discussion to be had about the role MN plays in its posters' mental health and I don't want to risk deletion.

This thread wasn't to discuss my or anyone else's hygiene habits

But it can't be separated. In asking 'how we can avoid people with OCD being triggered by talk of excessive washing/cleaning' you have to define what is 'excessive'. As you've seen, people define it in vastly different ways.

The thing which jumps out at me is people's fastidiousness about sex on Mumsnet. There's a certain faction on here which makes me wonder how people ever got to a place of conceiving children, eg:

Sex should be forbidden if there's even a theoretical risk of children hearing
Various protective devices (plastic sheets/towels) to be put on top of beds before embarking on any sexual activity
Sheets to immediately be removed and laundered and beds stripped after coitus

I am genuinely shocked that so many people seem to regard sex as a fundamentally dirty and shameful activity only to be engaged in in very controlled settings.

Don’t read these threads?

How can we stop this and make MN a safer environment for people who are suffering from or susceptible to these illnesses?

We can't unless you don't value freedom of speech?

People post a lot of shit on the internet about what they apparently do/don't do, and as adults it's up to us to realise that and avoid if necessary.