@ButterflyOil
For some reason, I didn’t realise that you had replied to my post!
I think that we’ve hit the nail on the head! It’s great that men feel able to have a voice, if they state that they are a man. But I suspect, as you rightly point out, that men are posting, pretending to be women! And that undermines the whole point behind Mumsnet as being a place for women to come and get advice.
I do however still believe that there are a lot of women who have internalised misogyny simply by virtue of the fact that this is how much of society is framed. Men (and boys) are able to still call women awful names such as tart, whore, C—t, and very few women call them out. In coeducational schools, some boys still, in some circumstances, act in very verbally aggressive ways towards the girls, with the excuse boys will be boys, given to excuse the boys in question from taking personal responsibility.
When children witness unequal gender roles at home, this leaves unconscious imprints in them, which they then carry into educational and social settings.
We are not able to say women are equal to men when they are paid less, still do the bulk of the work at home, even if it’s just cooking and doing life admin because they have cleaners (usually women), still responsible for childcare (even if childminders or at nursery’s), still responsible for school catering and cleaning, the bulk of lollipop people are still female, there is a disparity in professional settings such as the armed forces and the police, with the majority being male, nurses are still predominantly female and so the list goes on!
I’m sure lots of posters will be along to tell me that I’m wrong, but although I’ve seen many changes in my life (including VCR’s, colour photographs being more available, the loss, which I’m still mourning of the Polaroid camera, etc., etc.,), I still don’t consider that equal opportunities has really caused equality in people’s minds! And that is where the battle is, to get people believing and actually wanting to make females equal to males!