Which posters do you assume are men on mumsnet?

[Tiramisutully]

On mumsnet I assume most of the posters are women, and read their posts internally with a woman’s ‘voice’ in mind. But there are some posts where my mind is telling me that the poster HAS to be a bloke.

AIBU to think that those who claim a man pawing a women’s arse in public is just a sign of affection, and those that refer to Rachel Reeves as ‘Rachel from accounts’ are definitely men?

I've never opened the "Rachel from accounts" threads but I've always pictured a very particular type of upper-middle class woman saying it (I've also never encountered the nickname off MN). Internalised misogyny always shows itself when the woman concerned thinks she's punching down at a class of woman beneath her. I say this as someone who has disliked Rachel Reeves for the past 16 years. The insult doesn't even capture what's shit about her - she's incredibly smart, but she's too technocratic and has no actual guiding principles.

The posters who are definitely men are the ones who pop up in your messages after you've posted on a sex-related topic. Brr.

Most of the "you must be a man" accusations make me roll my eyes because it's usually after a woman has dared to say something along the lines of how she's OK that her husband has female friends. Or, as evidenced on this thread, how she supports trans rights.

Well, my job involves looking through lots of informal and formal writing and it is imperfect of course but I haven't been wrong so far.

How much sex is 'enough' is obviously different for everyone. Some people will be satisfied with once a month. Some won't. It's a matter of compromise and compatibility.

But why do you think the posters who think once a week or once a month isn't enough must be men? What, exactly, is unfeminine about having a high sex drive or thinking sex is an important part of a relationship? It's a fundamentally misogynist viewpoint to dismiss women with a higher libido as being somehow masculine, and yet I see it happening on Mumsnet all the time.

Given various circumstances in real life where women have been just as misogynistic as men or defending men's awful behaviour etc I don't think you can really make any assumptions on sex from how someone posts or how sexist they are

I’m not sure about the rest of you but the fact I’m going to be up with my kids in the night has a fairly hefty dent in my libido when I get into bed at night. And 99% of the time kids in the night want their mum not their dad, because they’re used to seeing mum as their comfort due to breastfeeding.

As your sole contribution? As in, just drop it and run? Or do you bother to give the OP the benefit of your alternative perspective as a balance to the percieved 'misandry'?

Posters on here who are entrenched in their hatred of men can't be reasoned with and aren't interested in listening. The ones I have tried to "offer my perspective" to have either called me a handmaiden or as seen on this thread just called me a man!

I don't bother anymore. But I won't stop calling their behaviour out, bad behaviour should be brought to attention and seen by everybody for what it is. That doesn't mean I'm going to waste my precious time fighting them over it. And yes, some points/posters are SO ridiculous they deserve to be laughed at.

I'm tempted to ask you to assess everyone on this thread and then get their responses.

I have the Traitors faithful level of incompetence when it comes to assessing anything about people i can't see, so I think its an awesome skill if you can.

It wasn’t by accident. She lied on her CV.

And it shows.

How do you know? It's an anonymous forum. Even if they answer a direct question, they could be lying and there's no way of knowing.

People might assume I am a man. I married my husband and proposed and all that. Not the other way round

Basically the cha cha has to go, so I roll my sleeves and do what I got to do - this is pretty masculine behaviour lol

But… you must realise that not all women are parents to babies or toddlers?!

Thousands and thousands of women on Mumsnet have kids who aren’t babies and don’t wake them up, or have adult kids, or (as in my case) have no kids at all.

So why would anyone assume that a post from someone who wants sex more than once a month must be a man, rather than the one of the millions of women who aren’t getting up to night-feed a baby?

There is sometimes a particular variety of incomprehension/lack of empathy/quasi-literalism that simply misses the emotional thrust of the original post on a thread; it recalls to me the arguments about male and female communication styles discussed in the old Deborah Tannen book You just Don't Understand. I tend in these circumstances to silently assume the writer is a man.

You proposed to your husband 😲

This was what I was trying to articulate but didn't succeed; I work in an all male team, indeed, there is only one other woman in the company who I don't interact with very much so being immersed in the context of male communication makes you understand it better. I don't work in some kind of macho environment either!

Well of course so I don't do I.

What's the problem with that?!

Who’s talking about babies and toddlers? My 8 year old still gets up at pretty much exactly 2:34am every night and wants me to put them back to bed. I can count on the fingers of two hands the full nights sleep I have had since they were born!

Why do men post here anyway when it is forum specifically for mums?

Probably because it isn't. It's 'by parents for parents'.

I first started reading MN when I was about to become a parent, one who was going to stay at home with the DCs and do the bulk of the actual parenting.

That I am also a man is fairly secondary to that.

I was being sarcastic.

So? Lots of women have kids who sleep. It's not normal to have less than 10 full nights sleep in 8 years. Not having that experience doesn't make the rest of us men!

Some of us have vaginas, kids who sleep and a sex drive!

I don't think men should be allowed to post here. They can start their own dadsnet forum if they want.

I’ve been accused of being a man more than a few times, usually during heated arguments, and when it’s not that, it’s being accused of being AI. I’m not AI, but I do use it to write better because I’m dyslexic. Honestly, I feel a bit flattered if being seen as a man or AI makes it seem like I’m winning an argument, but at the same time, I get angry that simply arguing with someone makes them assume I must be one of those things. It’s a weird mix of emotions.

I have no issue with dads participating in Mumsnet—in fact, I fully support it. There’s a board for them that I hope never disappears, as they need a space to share what’s on their minds too. They’re parents as well, including single dads, divorced dads, widowed dads, and more.

I kind of get it, but I’m not a fan of men coming here pretending to be women.

I also see that the Mumsnet community often seems anti-men, even when members are married and raising sons, with a mum openly holding those views online. It’s interesting how many women here appear to dislike men while having boys at home. Are they raising them to be more like girls, or just hiding that dislike? It makes me wonder if those boys might grow up with issues. I’m even more curious about women who dislike their husbands—maybe these are forced marriages for religious or financial reasons, where the couple didn’t date or really get to know each other beforehand.