AIBU To Point Out Opinions You Don’t See Outside Of Mumsnet …?

[D0ntB1t3]

So I have noticed that according to (a lot of posters on) Mumsnet:

-Transphobia is perfectly acceptable.
-Ageism is the worst/most prevalent type of discrimination going on in the uk today.
-Cheating in a relationship is tantamount to murder.
-Enrolling your children in boarding school means you don’t love them.
-Teaching is always a miserable profession, with no exceptions.

What else have you noticed is a very common MN opinion but not one you hear in real life?

I’m not trying to start an argument on the truth of any of these statements, just curious what others have noticed.

Of course people go to the kitchen in their house while their baby sleeps in the nursery. It's be impossible to move through life otherwise.

We put babies in cars and drive to places - really dangerous but we need to get on with life.

Awful things can happen in the above situations but at least you can forgive yourself - you need to go about life.

Leaving a baby in a hotel room several floors up or anywhere where you cannot see who accesses that room with their own keys, or somewhere that would be very difficult to get back to in a fire, because I really wanted to eat in the nice place downstairs without the baby is not a reason I could forgive myself for.

A different room in your house vs a hotel room are not the same, obviously.

I'll end it here because obviously we just agree to disagree

If there is a fire in your house no one will bar the way and stop you running upstairs to get your children.

In a hotel fire that won’t necessarily be the case.

In your own home you have total control of who enters your child’s room. In a hotel all sorts of people will have access to the door key.

And yes fires are rare and so are child abductions so then it depends how much risk you are willing to take and mileage will vary on this point.

@MidnightPatrolcompletely agree about the pressure on parents. Compared to my 80s childhood it’s so different.

Yes much better than i have explained, thank you

Well the fire could bar me couldn’t it?

People break into peoples homes all the time, you can’t control that 100%

My child is far more at risk from an injury when I take them in the car somewhere.

And my child is statistically more likely to be harmed by someone close to the family but I don’t isolate them from said family & friends.

I think that saying “All trans people are perverted sex offenders who are just on a mission to access female spaces in order to alarm or rape women” is transphobic.

Saying “Yeah, in truth I don’t believe a person can change biological sex, but if someone wants to change their name, take hormones, have surgery and wear a dress it’s entirely their right to do so, and has no impact on me whatsoever” isn’t transphobia.

ETA: It’s usually the former option that we see on Mumsnet.

I did it several times when my kids were babies. Before baby monitors were common, hotels had "listening services", where they listened to your room (on the phone maybe?) and came to find you if your baby cried.

You can see, everyone has video baby monitors now.

A fire is very unlikely and a hotel will have excellent systems for that eventuality.

In a small hotel you can probably get back to your room in a matter of seconds.

If the room was too far away, the monitor didn’t work, I didn’t feel the environment was right… I’d not do it either. But in some scenarios, I think it’s fine.

Life is full of risk and you have to assess your comfort level - this seems statistically far safer to me than many more mundane daily things we do with our children.

As with many things, the responses here are very black and white rather than considering the nuance of it.

Leaving a baby in a hotel room several floors up or anywhere where you cannot see who accesses that room with their own keys, or somewhere that would be very difficult to get back to in a fire, because I really wanted to eat in the nice place downstairs without the baby is not a reason I could forgive myself for

So its less about the risk but the potential guilt if something did happen?

I will say with the ageism thing - I don’t think it’s the most prevalent but I do think it’s something that’s just seen as acceptable. You can make sweeping statements about the young/ old and it’s basically fine. I do think mumsnet misses that it does go both ways. I am 26 and hear all the time that young people are entitled and lazy and all that.

I also think classism is something that’s people really underestimate the prevalence of in this country, and that it’s probably seen as the most acceptable. I am definitely a bit biased, because I have faced a lot of classism despite now being financially pretty well off. I am not saying social class is totally immutable but I know I will always be seen differently to my middle class peers because of how I sound, the words I use, and even kind of the way I look, I can’t change my (objectively a bit chavy) taste because it’s who I am and what I enjoy. I have to accept that there’s always going to be (quiet a lot) of people in my peer group who look down on me and believe I don’t belong/ treat me with suspicion.

I don't think I have ever seen the former opinion on MN, except by people putting up straw men arguments.
In fact generalisations about groups of people like this tend to be deleted on MN anyway.
The debate on FWR is far far more nuanced. I won't attempt to rehash it here, but the summary is you can't change sex so you aren't legally allowed into opposite sex spaces and shouldn't try to group yourself with that opposite sex.

I think this really depends on the type of hotel.

I have done this in small family run hotels - these are really no different to large houses and no one would stop you from going to get your baby in a fire. It isn't really any riskier than at home, with a video monitor and is nothing like what the McCann parents did.

A large hotel with hundreds of guests and several floors no, not even with a video monitor

But the hotel debate reminds me that something I always notice on Mumsnet that is really different to my friends in real life is that on here, it's like the only type of holiday anyone thinks is a real holiday is a huge AI hotel. It's like no one stays in a small hotel or an Airbnb or anything other than an AI resort. IRL, I know hardly anyone who holidays like that - most of my friends go to small boutique hotels or do city breaks with apartments.

Not at all. The fact that I couldn’t forgive myself is simply a reflection that I’d knowingly accepted a risk that was entirely avoidable.

For me, the question isn’t “How likely is it?” It’s “Is the benefit worth even a tiny chance of a catastrophic outcome?”

My kids are older now, but leaving kids in hotel rooms was very much the norm certainly in the early 2000s. We were somewhat seen as odd for not doing this. We used to go to weddings and friends would leave their babies in the hotel room, either with a monitor or with reception staff listening in. My husband and I were not comfortable with this for many reasons eg possibility of fire, knowing that any hotel staff could get into the room. So we didn’t participate. But it was completely normal and accepted then. Hotels listed it as a perk on their websites!

No it isn't.
What you do have is a group of women who believe that women are human beings with human rights of our own that are based in biology and that no man however sincerely they believe they are can ever be a woman.
These beliefs are not transphobic infact they are the majority beliefs of the general public are protected in law and aline with the supreme court rulling. Oh they're also biological facts as no mamal has ever changed sex.
We also recognise the harms of gender ideology and medical transitioning especially of children.

The fact that gender idealogs and useful idiots like to call these facts and beliefs transphobic proves that the word has lost all useful meaning as when a virus is considered transphobic (yes they claimed covid was transphobic because it killed transwomen at the same rate as men instead of the women they claim to be) proves how meaningless the accusation of transphobia has become. When everything is transphobic nothing is

i suppose we all access risk differently. I let my dc go on school trips, walk to school alone etc

Madeline McCann vibes

I know people who did though, when it was perfectly acceptable. They were staying at a holiday camp and left their children in a locked cabin while they went to the social hub bit. There were people patrolling who listened for children crying and notified the parents. Another world. (The kids were fine, btw).

Crazy isnt it! On call the midwife episodes they leave their babies in prams on the streets outside pubs, shops and even their own front doors.

I remember saying "WTF mum?!" (This was her era). And she said it was very normal back then, everyone did it and while babies going missing did happen it really was rare.

how the world evolves!

ETA - not the same as a hotel room obviously! But evolution of risk assesment

I don’t know, I believe no trans person should be discriminated against and should all the rights of someone of their sex (which cannot change), but I think it is absolutely fair and should be accepted that I am fearful (or phobic) of a trans woman (aka a man) in the women’s toilets and what their intentions might be.

It’s not an irrational phobia, it’s one grounded in the reality of a life of experience around men.

I dislike implying that any sort of “anti”- anything attitude is a phobia, like we don’t understand it and fear it because we are illogical and uneducated. I understand perfectly well what the risks are, and have a rational and logic wariness of it.

I've not met anyone in real life who boasts about how often they wash their towels.

I don’t think that’s really comparable to a 360 degree rotating video monitor while you are 50ft away.

Agree with all of this. Also at home I would hear alot of things I would not hear if I were eating food on a restaurant. Something's have to be done for life to go on such as parents sleeping etc but just to go out for dinner leaving a child alone. Just no

Agree about classism, definitely rife in the UK. Just want to add that, where I live (not the UK, incidentally), the ‘chav’ look is very in style right now! I wore an oversized football shirt as a dress to a festival recently, friends wear tracksuits and baseball caps all the time. We’re all ‘middle class’ I suppose, although class is pretty meaningless here, and have very much embraced this look 😎