To dislike it when men post on mumsnet?

[N225NNW]

I find it annoying. Why can’t they use their own men’s websites? Of which there are many!

*Note I put a thread up like this last night. Then went to bed. When I woke up this morning, it had been deleted by MN. Not sure what went on there..

Some posters say women who defend men are all those things. Some posters say women who criticise men are bitter, jealous, unattractive, humourless, pearl clutching, controlling misandrists who either can't find or can't keep a man themselves, so want to spoil things for everyone else. So the judgment is far from a one way street. But as long as we know the truth about ourselves, it's water off a ducks back.

As long as there are many, many more words in the language designed to insult women than men - and there are - I think it's clear what the overall issue is.

This is a public forum. Anyone can post. All the men I’ve ever known or been involved with, are ok people.

Others may have experienced different things.

Either way, a public forum can’t be policed.🤷‍♀️

This is a public forum. Anyone can post.

It's great that people feel supported and a sense of community (personally I find it more vicious than supportive but perhaps that's the AIBU type threads I tend to read). Some of the cancer threads are more caring, and the allotment thread has entertained me for weeks.

But a forum is to share views by definition so it serves its purpose whether those views are male, female, young, old, a parent or childfree, or any other category. At the end of the day, it's just a forum as is Tattle, Reddit and numerous other sites.

@5128gap

That's very true

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👍

I can't applaud you enough.

Can you link to those lists please?

I love your pretence that it's not completely self evident to any English speaker and you aren't totally familiar with words such as slut, slag, whore, harridan, strumpet, bitch, hag, crone, cougar, floozie, chit, termagant, harpy, Karen, frump and so on. Yes, there are male gendered insults like dick, arsehole, fuckboy and cocklodger, but you know fine well that a) there are nowhere near as many b) they are not sexualised anywhere near as often as female ones and c) while a woman is a slag or slut, a man could easily be a stud or a lad. I can't, offhand, think of any word used to describe a sexually active woman as a positive, although I'm sure you'll be frantically Googling now.

And I love your pretence not to know that many female counterparts to male terms have devolved to have sexual elements like mistress and courtesan.

But since you ask so very nicely, I'll honour your disingenuous question and link you, as just the first hits I got, from Wikipedia. 26 pages for male gendered insults and 53 pages for female... and even a quick look will show you a pretty marked difference in tone between them. Please don't pretend you can't see that either.

As a quick addition, I also saw a number of pages dedicated to answering the question of why there are so many more gendered insults for women than men, so I think it's very fair to say that most people already know...

Thank you for the links. My question was a genuine one.

No it wasn't, but it's OK. It's no bad thing to show just how easily provable it is.

You can speak up for issues affecting men without pretending that you never ever knew about such basic, well-worn, everyday misogyny. In fact I don't know why more men and pro-men posters don't do that on here. You'd think male mental health, male suicide and so on would be far more important than coming to Mumsnet to complain that a SA survivor or a single mother of children with a totally absent father hasn't got the greatest view of men as a sex class.

As an old fashioned cunty sort of woman, I must say that I find one of the greatest insults to women today is the statement by Keir Starmer that some women have penises. And that those penisy women can and will share changing rooms with little girls and women. And if women don’t make room for penisy women, we’re Very Bad People. Never mind if those penisy women might be Bad People themselves.

Seriously? I'm back to being politically homeless

Agree with every word. I will continue to love my Dad, my boyfriend, my 3 sons, my male friends. Whilst believing that some people are terrible, it doesn't matter what sex/ sexual orientation/ gender they identify with (and before anyone starts no I don't believe you can biologically change sex).
Whilst also witnessing first hand the detrimental impact on male mental health stemming from the modern trend of demonising them. Suicide is the biggest killer of young men, and reading posts like this makes it very clear why, I want no part of that

And interestingly enough, the insult of choice on the opposing side is "terf"...a term that turns feminism into an insult and is levelled pretty much exclusively at women, even when men also agree that sex is real, immutable and sometimes matters. And which doesn't even make sense since the original radical feminists also believed that sex was totally immaterial, which is precisely why they had to develop a term that described a radical feminist who didn't agree on that particular point.

If you care about male suicide at all, please don't spread this sort of dangerous misinformation. Men take their own lives typically due to undiagnosed or poorly treated MH problems, alcohol/substance abuse, financial pressure and loneliness. Nowhere in any report or data on this subject is there the merest suggestion that a cause of these tragic deaths is the 'demonisation' of men by women. So if you have any care at all about this issue, other than using it as a stick to beat women with, then you'll stop making up reasons and educate yourself on the real ones. And perhaps maybe even do something to increase support.

Thanks for this intelligent and well reasoned post. I read "I will continue to love my Dad, my boyfriend, my 3 sons, my male friends" (take that!) as if that thwarted all the evil posters whose MO is to make women stop loving male friends and family and I couldn't be dealing with any more of it. Jfc.

It's worth noting that a common theme in male gendered insults is that the man is somehow womanish, the worst thing to be. If we didn't have so much misogyny, men might not feel so unable to show vulnerability and therefore be driven to the worst possible outcome.

Actually, there was a recent thread on the Garrick club on Mumsnet, and there as a wide range of views on whether the Guardian campaign was justified and nuanced discussion. Likewise many other threads on similar issues as well as threads on motherhood versus career, what "equality" actually means etc etc. You and the other man who posted the same obviously didn't read those threads. Which is fine. But its weird when (some def not all) men have no interest in reading what women write (you don't have to) but still want to come onto those threads and TELL women what they all think, tell them WHY they think it and tell them why its wrong.
Its like this thread - the OP asked if she was unreasonable to dislike men posting. She has said several times she doesn't think men should be banned from posting, But still many many posts appear telling her why she is wrong to think men should be banned from mumsnet.

Its actually fine on threads like this. But sometimes there are threads e.g. where a woman has experienced something horrifically traumatising, and asks if its normal/unreasonable to fear men or sometimes feel angry. Talking about her feelings not a statement about all men. And it will be swarmed by men saying "you can't say all men are like that", "you can't generalise", "this is misandry" "women do bad things to", "my wife...." etc etc.

I used to think it was deliberate. Now I genuinely think in some cases its an inability to read what a woman is writing/hear what they are saying without overlaying their own opinions over the top.

And you have every right to explain to me on a public forum what women really think and why I am in fact wrong to think it. But I am allowed to laugh at it, and other posters are allowed to dislike it and - shock horror - talk about it on here.

For the record NAMALT. Many posters on here are great and I am sure there are very helpful male posters who I don't even know are men. Now feel free to explain to me what I really meant in the above post and why its wrong.

@Jenepeuxpasdiscuteravecdesstupides Sorry - I meant to tag another (male) poster who was saying women want access to women's spaces and quote you as a dissenting opinion on that if that makes sense. Not saying you are one of those men! (or indeed a man at all)

I don't care. It is a public forum.
If it there was to be some sort of gender policing so people could comment, then it would be harder to sign up and post. As it is, even a forum that claims to be "by parents for parents" has a childfree board, and countless others that have fuck all to do with being a woman or having kids.

Well - yes, but men and women tend to co-exist together to a much greater extent. Someone who is, e.g. anti-semetic is highly unlikely to give birth to a Jewish baby. Someone who is anti-immigrant is unlikely to have immigrant parents (actually scratch that example in my country they usually do). So its a bit different. Also, prefacing comments with a "I know many lovely men" is a way to stop people popping up to say "Not all Men" by saying it first. But it rarely works, plus people can then say "that's just what a misandrist WOULD say to cover up the fact they're a misandrist". So how do we communicate online with other women in a way that doesn't offend you?

No, not a man! Had the hot flushes to prove it!

😀

Yeah, the way I read your post with the "we" was as a woman, I phrased my post really badly but didn't want to edit it without looking like I was dishonestly changing the meaning IYSWIM. There's always loads of disagreement about "men's spaces" amongst women. That was why I quoted you.

@NonPlayerCharacter ,

‘I love your pretence that it's not completely self evident to any English speaker and you aren't totally familiar with words such as slut, slag, whore, harridan, strumpet, bitch, hag, crone, cougar, floozie, chit, termagant, harpy, Karen, frump and so on.’

This did make me laugh a bit! The outraged tone, as if even someone with basic education would be familiar with ‘termagant’ (I remember learning that one in O level English), ‘chit’, ‘harridan’ or ‘strumpet’. A lot of your list are archaic, and would be known only by those who study or watch Shakespeare today.

All that means is that we can see that the patriarchy dominated hundreds of years ago.

I wonder how the comparison would look if we only looked at words coined in the last 50 years. I suspect, but don’t know, that it would be far more even.