To stop using Mumsnet for a while because of the constant negative comments about men?

[listsandbudgets]

I've just posted a thread about my missing (now turned up) friend. So many posters assuming that her DP was violent, controlling etc. etc.

Someone else posted about their DP getting a letter from child maintenance about a child he'd never met - again people slagging him of for "sowing his oats" implying he'd been violent and god knows what.

That's just 2 examples. There are some horrible men out there of course there are but it makes me so sad to see this constant underlying misandry here on mumsnet. Men our are sons, brothers, partners and fathers and the very vast majority of them are decent people - flawed perhaps, made some mistakes perhaps but that does not make them violent controlling etc. etc. it makes them human.

Please stop it mumsnet. Certainly attribute blame where it's genuinely due but stop making these awful assumptions it's unhelpful and nasty.

Signing off will be back in a few weeks to see whether or not things have improved - doubt it sadly

He’s not “my man” thank you. I think women deserve to be called twats when they act like twats, and I can’t be doing with this thinly veiled assumption that women are never poorly behaved. We’ve seen it on this very thread - exaggeration and PA dogs at people who’ve come on and disagreed with a small few. Grow up

But this thread isn’t about male violence it’s about the narrative of men on MN. Just because you’ve decided you wanted the narrative to change it doesn’t mean it has

I think BalletCat is a woman

This thread is not about male violence. saying “oh but there’s some posts about it” doesn’t mean only women can pop on and post. Make your own thread about male violence if you want that to be the subject (I suspect people don’t, that they’d rather crash this thread)

MN's problem isn't man-hating, it's the way it uniquely makes man-hating sound socially conservative. I'm all for smashing the patriarchy, interrogating what masculinity means and holding men to account (and I try to do these things irl) but on MN man-hating boils down to an incredibly reductive "men be like this, women be like that" essentialism, with a hefty dose of moronic evolutionary psychology that I'm more used to seeing in incel/MRA circles. The chronic loathing of sex and sexuality adds to the conservative feeling too. It's very easy to get other women on your side if you call male desire grim, but scratch the surface and every time those posters also think women who want sex are grim, and in fact they just think sex itself is grim and just an unfortunate procreational necessity.

If you didn’t realise then the supposed misandry isn’t impacting you at all is it. Despite being on MN you didn’t notice these many posters that people are claiming are misandrist?

While you completely missed that many women don’t trust men to behave decently, did you also miss the massive issue with women being harmed in huge amounts by men?

Because so many men hate women and are a danger to women.

If so many men hate women, why would you be surprised that some women feel that most men aren’t decent.

Men as a group are a real risk to women safety. And yet, according to some, there’s many misandrists about but it has had zero impact on you and you didn’t notice. What does that tell you? Is misandry a real problem?

One of the reasons a lot of women don’t think most men aren’t decent isn’t because we believe most are causing the harm. But many of the ones not causing the harm seem to completely ignore the issue. Because they don’t think it impacts them. That’s not decent behaviour.

For someone who accused other posters taking ownership of this thread and about what can and can’t be posted, you’re doing a good job telling posters what they can discuss.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss why women feel upset, wary or even angry at men without discuss the real problems men bring them.

I agree with this. Very little constructive action happens on MN, and even women who decide to change their names in marriage on this thread (perhaps because they love their husband and they just want to observe traditions, a valid point, and they may even get plenty back in what he can give) are bowing down apparently. I think some MNers go into marriages absolutely hating their OHs!

My year 7 DD is having problems with groups of friends after starting secondary. It’s all very much a fight for main character energy as she calls it, and if anyone doesn’t tow the line or agree with the main characters, if they don’t use the same kind of language or want to do the same things, there’s sneering, belittling and openly comments like “Oh my GOD as if you’ve just said that!”. Kinda reminds me of this thread and a lot of MN threads. And MNers don’t have the excuse of being only 11yo

I’m not telling anyone what they can and can’t discuss (chronic exaggerations and twisting seem to be a theme on this thread!). Where did I say that? Please show me.

Again: this thread isn’t about “real problems men bring with them”. It’s free and easy to start your own thread, why don’t you? Is it because you’d rather redirect a thread that you don’t agree with?

There was a thread a while ago suggesting a curfew for men after 10pm or something, and it just encapsulated everything wrong with the way this site tries to tackle the patriarchy. What on earth was the point of such an inane, unworkable thought experiment with a million holes in it? What use was that to understanding, solving or eradicating male violence?

And yes it's generally a running joke that on MN everyone hates their husband.

There are threads about male violence. I’ve participated in them in the past. They usually do get gatecrashed by the usual ‘not my Nigel’ suspects but I can’t control where they can post anymore than you can control where I post. Funny that.

Interestingly I only made that single comment about male violence. The rest of my post and the one above was about the ‘double standards’, ‘women being horrible about men’ type comments and posts in line with the OP, which you’ve completely ignored and instead tried to push me off the thread to discuss a small part of my much larger post. Why would that be?

Why does mumsnet need to be constructive? Why can't we have one outlet for things we can't voice on the rest of the internet? Why must women be expecting to problem solve at all times? Why must we surpress our thoughts and be sensitive all the time?
(There's the feminism boards for those interested in smashing the patriarchy)

I wish I could stop using life for a while so I didn't have to hear about the constant way so many (not all) men wield their nasty, aggressive masculinity to hurt women and girls.

It’s like one of those stupid ideas politicians come up with because it would work in an ideal world! As if dangerous men are so law abiding! And given most violence happens in a domestic setting being at home more would be MORE dangerous for women! But as long as leftie middle class MNers can posture the most about how very cross they are with men, crosser than you, who cares about workable solutions!

And I say that as a woman with an amazing husband, dad, brothers and friends.

Unfortunately the toxic minority are sufficient to cause so much hurt and damage.

I also think the use of emotive language gets silly. People saying “the vast majority of men are awful” sound rather dim IMO. They have not met every man. Nor do the statistics say this. The stats about rape, DV, etc are WAY too high but don’t show anywhere NEAR the “vast majority” - vast majority is around 90%+ and it’s ludicrous to suggest that’s the case.

And BTW I’m coming from a point of being a CSA survivor, the man being the perpetrator and his wife standing by him in full knowledge of what he did. I DO have skin in the game and I still don’t roll with the “I hate men” narrative.

Agree

If memory serves me correct there was a case in a hotel in Spain in recent years where a young woman was gang taped in a room and the perps were inviting random men to join in. Some said no but did fuck all to raise the alarm.

So a random group of men who either participated because they could or did fuck all. These are someone's husband. Sons. Brothers. Dads.

Not All Men does some serious lifting here.

The vast majority of men are complicit in their complacency.

Sorry for awful typo a moment ago - should read gang raped

Again - you haven’t met all men and you have no data to back this up. If that’s what you think then fine, as illogical and unsupported as it is, but why present it as fact?

Umm hang on, what?!

One instance of extreme shocking behaviour by a French men being used to show that men are horrible is justified, but one example to show how mners demonize men and that's put down.

Are you saying that getting multiple men to rape your wife is the example of male bad behaviour and women telling a man to wind his neck in when women are having a discussion is the example of female bad behaviour?! And those are the same?? Are you insane?

And why do women tend to stand by the men in this situation?

Why do men? Because society is conditioned to centre the man. To assume they are decent and couldn’t possibly have done the things they are being accused of. Because they APPEAR to be decent.

Facts are we don’t really know anyone. Many families members are blind sided when it turns out a family member is an abuser. They assumed the man was decent.

There’s a reason we have an issue with people not believing women and children when they report sexual abuse. And it’s not because women built the society we live in and that it favours women.

If most men were standing up for women don't you think we would have noticed by now? silence is loud as they say.

I don’t think anyone is making ‘thinly veiled assumptions that women are never poorly behaved’. Quite a stretch. In fact one of my earlier posts does say that I’ve met some horrific women during my career. Women are just sick and tired that we can’t discuss men being problematic - as a sex class as a whole back up by lived experiences and stupid things like statistics - without posters like you shouting them down, the ‘women are bad too’ brigade and NAMALT, despite no one actually saying it’s ALL men.

Ha ‘grow up’. Take your own advice.

I think you missed that posters point entirely