to wish this was a woman only forum?

[raspberrychoc]

I know anyone can join and that's fair enough, I'm not actually trying to impose my wish on anyone or the site but it still always annoys me when I am reading thought a thread where a woman is posting for advice from other women and a man pops up saying "speaking as a man" or "from a blokes perspective" I always want to say I'm not interested in what you think right now, there is a whole world of "men's opinions" shoved down our throats from the time we are little girls and all though our lives on every aspect of our bodies, what we do and think. I'd love just one space like this with lots of women without it having men interject and that is before we even get to the men who pitch up looking for permission to have affairs or get their jollies from dubious posts.

Most don’t seem interested in those……funny that.

On the other hand a man's perspective is often interesting. I know we all support women but men's perspective can be quite different.

Reactions are also so starkly different to the same problem depending if the poster is male or female. Generally if it’s a man who is having issues eg with a controlling relationship, the advice is that his partner is in the right, how people would love to hear her side, stop moaning etc. If it’s a woman posting, there’s nothing but agreement, cheering on and support. There are also extreme double standards and contradictions eg the idea that 50/50 custody is awful for kids and is a ploy by greedy dads to get out of paying child support. Yet anyone who is dating a dad who doesn’t have 50/50 is told he’s a deadbeat, awful, doesn’t give a shit about his kids, Disney dad etc. It makes no sense.

I know, I'm probably just trying to justify my reasons for disliking it. I just feel like we're not allowed to have anywhere without men in the real world, and now they're hanging about here. It annoys me beyond belief. There's plenty of other places to go than a parenting forum that's largely inhabited by women.

But my wife used to have sex with me when I was young and nice to be around and now I don't understand why she won't have sex with me after spending the day working, looking after children and doing my laundry... should I have an affair with the single mum at the school gate who said hi to me once?

Really? I know this is often given as a reason but I find there are so many spaces that are inhabited almost exclusively by women (not because men are banned but because only women work there/go there etc) that I don’t get worked up about the odd man on a website full of bots and online trolls.

How do we know who anyone here is anyway?. A poster saying ' man here' could be a mother of 3. The mother of three posting about her mother-in-law could be a man.

As a man (👀🎣) it is a bit of a double edged sword in terms of the announce/don't announce issue.

Unless it's specifically gendered I think it's absolutely weird to announce your sex and it's a common trope for men to do it to add weight to their opinion so even if it's not done with that intention you should know that's how it will come across and avoid doing it. So for 99% of AIBU threads it's fucking pointless. being male has nothing really to do with parking wars or maybe it has everything to do with them.

For threads where the sex of the poster adds content I think it's probably more relevant and actually in the interest of goodfaith to do it because then there's no insinuation of posting under the guise of a woman, it can add context and it shows other posters to ignore you if they simply don't want a male perspective on a certain subject be it trans issues, feminist topics,male on female violence or relationship issues. But even then there's subtler ways of flagging that you're male than starting with as a "man/Male here/from a male POV."

As for wanting a female only space I'd say go and create one then. There absolutely should be room for it in real life and online. But your argument is with mumsnet creators and how they wish to run the space they created rather than posters who have been told by the owners of the space that they are welcome here.

There was one very similar to that the other day. Someone searched his username and he posted on the sex board a lot, including revealing on there that he had one night stands behind his wife’s back. These threads happen fairly often and we tire of them. They can’t even be arsed to name change and try to hide it, or they’re just thick. 🙄

How could that be done though? How would anyone know from a poster's name whether they were female or not, and how could MNHQ possibly check all existing and new posters to find out? They have enough on their plate as it is.

This is an excellent point, he's amazing. Learned so many things.

Or the men that pretend to be women here.

I don’t mind men being on here at all - as long as they don’t pretend to be women for sexual kicks.

I agree. I don't want men's advice generally and especially on relationships. The men on the sex board are just awful. If I wanted advice or the viewpoint of men, I'd ask for it, but I don't. I get it often enough in real life.

If MNHQ can't ban men, maybe just restrict them to certain boards. But certainly keep them off relationships, AIBU and chat. (You don't see many men on the Style board).

Not all of us want somewhere 'without men'. (Except changing rooms and loos and prisons! I'm not a TRA) I find a male perspective useful sometimes, and also women don't all think alike anyway.

How can you restrict people from an online forum?

You can't I don't think. It's a hypothetical moan!

Ah, I get you. I don't find the sex board super helpful anyway, if it isn't perves it's people with no clue.

Yes, because every other MNer is going to PM them and drop their knickers.
FFS love get a grip.

Not sure - Judging by my female lawyer friends I would say that is lawyer style.

But it is a style.

Either way prh47bridge is invaluable in MN

(I once had a series of PMs with him, years ago when we rumbled and reported a persistent troll, so know his first name. He has never changed user names - i have!)

That is true and as I say I'm not trying to impose my view here, merely airing it but I feel that we can get a man's view anywhere online or irl but that it would be nice if this space was women only.

We have the same comment every few weeks or so. The fact remains that this place isn't woman only and never has been, so I don't why people complaining about it.

For me it’s not about gender, it’s about not attacking. And whilst women are more guilty of this, I’ll accept men on here. When women come to the table with balanced views and support, I will change my mind.

It’s the “hairy hands” brigade that annoy me … there is nothing that exists that a man won’t want over - any post on toilet habits, Childrens toileting, posts about “experiences” .. breastfeeding in particular, underwear etc etc you can picture some man behind it having a Tommy Tank.

I absolutely agree op!

I always wonder what's going on for men who see a female space and want to butt in. It feels really entitled.

The "as a man" comments, as if this gives them some sort of expert status, give me the rage!

Given that a huge chunk of the posts and and questions on here are about relationships with men, I think it would be pretty short-sighted to exclude male points of view. I quite often see people (who appear to be other women) replying to posts about relationships very confidently saying things like 'If man does X it means Y' or 'Men just don't think like that' or 'Men only do this if they're having an affair'. And often, it's just nonsense, and helps nobody, including the OP who is being given skewed replies that aren't going to solve her problem or give her balanced feedback.

In a lot of cases, I think it can be quite useful to the OP to have a man saying 'Well, just talking from a bloke's perspective, I'd say that it's totally possible that if a man does X it means Z, not Y' or 'Nah, I do that all the time and I'm not having an affair, so don't assume that's definitely what's going on' or 'I'm a man, OP, and actually I'm with you on this one - this isn't just boys will be boys, he's behaving like a twat' or 'I've been on a few stag weekends and honestly, they haven't been about lapdancing clubs and strippers at all - yeah, the boozing is off the scale and obviously some blokes are into strippers but it's really not universal at all'.

There is also no reason whatsoever why a man wouldn't be able to discuss parenting. Men are parents! There's non-stop complaining about women having to do all the parenting on here, so maybe start accepting that if we want men to parent, we need to bloody accept that their input is equal to ours on the matter?

Obviously, nobody wants some horrid little incel cunt popping up with their misogynistic bullshit and clearly nobody wants a man's advice on women's health or whatever. A man isn't going to be able to give me any useful advice on whether to take HRT or how to make a smear test more comfortable, and those men can absolutely fuck off. But I think it's counter-productive and shortsighted to think that a male perspective on relationships etc can't be useful. There are times on here when I think a man's perspective is exactly what's needed - just like a lot of men's relationship issues would be really bloody benefit from a woman chipping in to say 'You're making a whole lot of assumptions about women here and as a woman, I can promise that what your wife is doing probably doesn't mean what all these men are telling you it means'.