Men using Mumsnet

[Moonshine5]

Mumsnet was always a safe space to me, a community of women for women and recently I have noticed an influx of husbands on here.
Can't women have anything just for themselves?I t's getting on my nerves!
(I'm not talking about same sex marriage / partners and I believe in equality).

AINBU Men please seek alternative forms 😊
AIBU Men belong here 🙄

That's funny. I tend to find that men's opinions are absolutely everywhere, front and centre. I find it refreshing to go somewhere that they aren't.

I think it’s a bit naive to consider any online space made up of anonymous users a safe space.

I don’t really have strong feelings either way on men using mumsnet, but I do think it’s one of the meanest sites on the internet so it’s never felt safe to me!

The DIY/Property stuff is very good. I learned a lot from the chat about Solar Panels. It helped us decide that our quote had been too much to be good value.
Law looks good and so do landlord/tenant, and medical threads.
Very knowledgeable people. Thanks to all.
Best Wishes for the New Year

Any grown adult who thinks a public internet forum is a safe space, is dim imo 🤷‍♂️

There have always been people without children on MN. Some who aren’t at the stage where they’re thinking about whether to have them or not, some who don’t want them, some who desperately want them and are having fertility treatments, some who couldn’t have them but wanted to. They found MN and liked it so they stayed. There really aren’t many female dominated sites out there.

The child-free section is new.

I have no problem with men being on Mumsnet and in fact in many ways I think it's a good thing: it exposes them to the realities of women's lives and their opinions and the challenges they face in an unfiltered way. I also think in theory it should be helpful to men who want to learn about parenting.

Nor do I believe Mumsnet is designed to be a "safe space". AIBU is often anything but. It's a debate forum and you have to take the rough with the smooth.

I do find it irritating when a certain type of man tips up as if his arrival on the thread signals the arrival of the cavalry. Such posts are usually signalled by the announcement "Man here". But you can usually ignore this fairly easily.

In reality there is never going to be more than a minority of men on here. Just tolerate them as long as they are not dicks and crack on.

@VanityDiesHard "I'm female and I agree with him TBH. The whole idea of a 'safe space' is pretty ludicrous anyway, and even if it wasn't, women are no 'safer' or less offensive than men."

I wasn't talking about whether or not Mumsnet is a safe space. I was being amused at a man describing women discussing the concept as "trolling". 🤣

Yes because nothing screams 'not at all bothered' like immediately calling someone an odious cunt who shouldn't create because they don't share your view 🤔🙄

Funny to question the intelligence of @LeonieSN93 when you evidently lack the intellect to word any form of reasonable rebuttal, or offer a different way of looking at the matter. (Like other repliers did). Nothing screams dim witted like just yelling CUNT at anyone you disagree with.

We're not missing out on much from being spared your offspring methinks.

I read it differently and thought he was talking specifically about the OP, who basically shit and ran.

I’m surprised at people saying posts on here are about parenting. They’re really not, the majority are about relationships, TV, style, AIBU etc. and aren’t actually about being a parent.

You can't always tell if a poster is male though unless they announce it or something in their post makes it clear that they're male.
I'm pretty sure that there are more male posters than you would think here.

I think the man bashing threads can be quite tedious, as are the transphobia ones.

As someone else pointed out the male equivalent in reverse would be Incels on Reddit bashing women, so all those woman who are very vocal about their man hate should stop and think about that. Hate is never acceptable and says more about the hater than what they are actually hating. Get help.

I hate segregation and love diversity so I have no probs with MN being open to all.

Doesn't bother me in the least, it's an extremely useful forum for everyone - I'm Mum to adult children and find it a fantastic resource for all sorts of things . We should be celebrating Dads who seek to be better parents through resources like this. You'll never be able to police it anyway as it's impossible to tell from email addresses whether someone is a Dad, a Mum, or not a parent at all. It shouldn't matter.

What does bother me is the number of truly unpleasant comments you see which really are unwarranted. Whether those posters are male or female I don't know but suspect the majority of them are not male. No problem with people being told straight, myself included, when it's necessary but it's the downright nasty posts for no reason that get to me more than whether someone is male or female.

The OP hasn't come back though has she?

Instead she's started a clearly contentious topic, dropping in some additional gems around equality and same sex marriage and fucked off

I don't think the posters discussing the topic are trolls but unless the OP is here to engaging in meaningful discussion then their motives do look a bit like they wanted to start a bun fight sit back and watch it take off

And this is a behaviour that's often repeated across the site over the years whether it's about men or people without children so I can understand why any poster who has been around for awhile might question the OPs motives regardless of that posters sex

YABU for thinking a public internet forum is your safe space

YABU for using the term safe space

Safe space. lol.

No website with a public forum is ever going to be a 'safe space' (although of course you can report posts).

Men can be parents and decent people too.

I find most of the men posting on here very polite and articulate.

There's nothing safe about MN. I don't think men are the cause. Just look on AIBU at anytime.

There's no such thing as a safe space online, but yeah, I don't interact with men on here. Even the ones who think we think they don't know that we know they're men. Bad enough in real life.

The vast, vast majority of child free posters aren't here to bitch about children though. They're here to chat about the vast array of other topics discussed on here.

No shit 😂

Jesus get over yourself OP.

Funny thing is I was having a joke with my DH, only yesterday. It was last christmas there was a poster on AIBU that bought a graphics card for her sons computer and it would not work and she felt christmas was ruined last year, on christmas day morning. He spent the entire morning advising her and posting photos on how to get it worked (shocking a man on MN), funnily enough a lot of posters thought it was one of the kindest posts on MN, when she got her sons present working on christmas day.

That alone says get a grip, there are good and bad in every one 😊

Imagine thinking a site where some posters tried to hound black posters off the site when they wanted their own topic...

Or where recently people with ME were told they should have their passports and driving licences removed from them..

Or a poster was asked why she would want to live in social housing when she could instead buy a house and have "nice neighbours"

I mean sure it might be a safe space if you are white, middle class, able bodied, not a dog or cat owner, not a cyclist, drive a car, are in your 30s, have more than 1 child because single children are selfish but less than 3 because otherwise you are destroying the planet, have money but dont talk about it etc etc

But even then just wait a few years and you will get the ageist posts anyway and the diagnosis of dementia once you are over 50

But a man helped someone fix a computer isn't the issue. The OP didn't state that sone men aren't nice, the problem is that they dominate everything and it would be quite nice if there was somewhere they weren't, sometimes.

The fact that there aren't equivalent forums made up mainly of men anywhere shows that there is a benefit and a wish for women dominant spaces.