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

I'm sure we will all alter our behaviour ready for your return in a few weeks.. 🙄 If you don't like this forum op don't use it, try reddit or something which may be more to your liking

Have been to all these places. Stand by my comment.

The hysterical behaviour here is quite unique.

Poor men. I hope we haven’t given them hurty feelings. It must be awful.
We women must keep quiet about our wide experience of shitty male behaviour from immaturity and laziness right up to rape and murder.
We must remember to #be kind.

About a decade ago, I left a female-dominated forum for much the same reason. There were lots of older (wiser, I see now) women discussing the trauma they had faced at the hands of men, and how this had informed their views about, for eg, whether dads should be allowed to stay overnight on maternity wards. I was appalled at what I called their "misandry". My husband wasn't like the men they were talking about, I protested. He was a Good Man. Surely it was the feminist position to be optimistic about men's capacity to be allies; and to champion the Good Men?!

Fast-forward a decade and I am so embarrassed about my flouncing act. I have well and truly seen what even so-called Good Men are capable of. My husband turned out to be a Dominique Pélicot-type (not quite as bad, but same ball park). And with that revelation, I also saw how other men, whom I'd seen as benign before, closed ranks and supported him.

Now I see clearly how women are socialised to put men on a pedestal, to forgive so much, so invest all of our hopes and sense of self-worth in them. And how the reality is so very far from that. So many men live terrible secret lives. And now I see that women (and the law) do best if we work on the basis of the worst that men are capable of - whereas, instead, we're encouraged to constantly give them the benefit of the doubt.

If I could say anything to myself ten years ago, I'd have encouraged Young Me to have listened to those women's experiences and wisdom, and stored them up, and not to have invested so much in the falsely positive image of men which we're brought up to believe.

Quite a few "ism"s and "ist"s are rife here.

I don't think many posters are concerned with the morality of their views, they just hate certain groups of people and want to find like minded bigots.

But, but… do you never read the news?!

So true. I left my ExH because he refused to take the bins out.

obviously, there was a lot going on to get to that point. But it was the straw the broke the camels back.

it reflected his complete lack of respect towards me. There was a massive backstory which I won’t get into.

on reflection I wish I’d LTB at similar micro aggressions before we married. I’d felt they were too petty to walk away from the relationship but they told me exactly who he was.

As soon as someone starts ranting and spewing bile about menz I don't feel very receptive to anything they say. A shame as they might well have sound points to make if they weren't dripping with venom.

Oh really?! More sexist than, say… the actual world 🙄🙄

I don't know. I don't feel obliged, as a woman, to speak up about shitty women.

I have to disagree; I had a post once about my DH and him watching football. He’s 100% one of the good men in the world but the amount of women that told me to divorce him was crazy. It spiralled out of control that he must be abusing me which wasn’t the case.

Yet when I was suffering from post natal depression (didn’t realise it at the time) and asked if I was being unreasonable to expect my mum to help me a little bit, I was told I had made my bed and people shouldn’t expect any help with children and it made me feel awful and I cried for days not knowing what to do or how to feel better.

I think YABU. Purely because the actions of a minority of men (who are often never held accountable) sadly colour the day to day lives of the majority of women.

It was a bit of a leap to suggest that your friends DP was abusive. However, the attitude of women on mumsnet simply reflects the reality faced by many.

Society needs to change before Mumsnet can change.

so you read the threads here?

and don’t go anywhere else in real life of the internet?

You said it’s the most sexist place you have ever been.

unless you mean it’s the place where men’s sexism against women is talked about most and displays men’s sexism more than anywhere else?

When men don’t take fair responsibility for the children, when men abuse their partners, when men treat their partners like they are there to facilitate their lives, pick up after them, look after the children, cook for everyone etc. That’s misogyny. That’s men thinking they are entitled to treat their female partners in shitty ways that’s misogyny.

You, surely, haven’t missed those threads have you?

It’s a forum. The Op can not read it. She can not ask for people’s opinions. And once she has asked. People will give it their honest opinions. I am sure the husband doesn’t actually give a shit so don’t know why you are referring to him as the poor husband. But also the Op can choose to trust her husband, assuming she does, and not take people’s opinions on board. She is a grown woman. If she didn’t want strangers, wide and varied, opinions she wouldn’t have asked for them.

You’ve crept up quite a lot on various threads arguing against women who don’t want men in their sports and spaces.

Language used to demean women such as ‘hysterical’ (men are never described as hysterical), ‘frothing’, ‘bigots’ but fail to articulate exactly why this is bigoted, despite it being put to you many, many times exactly why it’s men and what the problem is.

Maybe more suited to Reddit?

You misunderstand.

Huge swathes of men are awful to women because they’re women - no other reason. It’s because they can. Because of the power imbalance.

Individual women might be awful in various ways. But there is no massive, global, historical trend for women to oppress men because they’re men. For a start, they can’t.

I’m happy for you that you don’t know this. But also surprised, if you’re an adult woman.

I don't think that is a fair comparison. I meant in relation to the disproportionate male on female violence for example that every 5 days in Uk its estimated a woman is killed by her partner and 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their life time etc.

https://refuge.org.uk/what-is-domestic-abuse/the-facts/

Could you link to your football thread please @Letitgoe ?

🤣

I used to think the vast majority of men were decent people, I wish they'd stop proving me wrong. XH who I thought was one of the good guys turned out to be an abuser, his best friend who I thought was a good guy casually mentioned being violent towards his ex the last time I saw him and how it was all her fault. Three friends ex husbands I thought was a good guys, all abusive. I only know one marriage breakdown that wasn't abuse related and 6 that involved abuse, 7 if you include my own, 11 if you include my grandparents (1 married twice) and parents marriage. There is one marriage breakdown where it appears the woman is the nasty unreasonable one, screaming at her kids dad in public in front of her kids. I don't know them well enough to tell if it's her or him or both of them though. My brother isn't a good guy either. Both my grandfathers were abusive and scary men. I'm not even sure the vast majority of women are decent people anymore, but I do know many good women and hardly any good men.

This 100%. I know so many “good men” who would never hurt a woman or espouse misogynist rhetoric, but then hear their friends/colleagues/acquaintances say some pretty awful things and not call them out for it because it hasn’t personally impacted them. Whenever I see a news story about male violence against women - from Sarah Everard to gisele pelicot - I see lots of posts from women but nothing from the men I know. Why are they not outraged?! “Not every man” - true, but enough men for it to be pretty scary

Hysterical.

There's a woman-hating word.

Obviously never been over to twitter then. They start actual riots over there. But sure, we're the hysterical ones.

When I see someone using words like 'chanting' or 'hysterical', pretending that posters are noisy and needing to be tone policed, and using faux analysis to put forward culture war talking points, I have to wonder if they're a bot, a paid agent, or just have time to waste. Mobilising pity and outrage in the ultimate service of division and subjugation. Hoping nobody here is any good with spotting damned lies or understanding statistics. The culture war playbook.

Your statement is categorically incorrect.
Misogny exists. It’s provable.

The use of misogynistic terms doesn’t help your case. It screams ‘internalised misogyny’.

I have boys and I hope I can raise them to be good men, unfortunately their dad has an influence on them and is part of their DNA and they get to hear all his nasty opinions when he has them, so it's not just up to me.