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.

Define hate.
As a regular poster on the Feminism sex and gender board, I can assure you is the most heavily moderated board on this site and there is no transphobia allowed to stand.

What you do have is women who know our rights and what the laws say rather than what trans activists claim it says and will push back on lies, misrepresentation and faulty logic and false equivalence.

We do generally agree that trans identifying people should be able to dress how they like (in a situationally appropriate way) and date and willing adult that they want and should not be discriminated against. We just don't believe that they have changed sex or belong as part of the opposite sex nor have access to any facilities, spaces, sports or groups for the opposite sex.

Exactly! Our EDI manager at work gets frustrated because everyone thinks her job is about meeting ethnic diversity targets, when actually she's managing the fact that there are now six generations in the workplace all with different cultures and expectations.

The classic post is "some young whippersnapper was appointed to the role I have forty years experience in" etc.

I work for an employer that skews older, and I get a lot of ageist comments, and hear a lot about younger colleagues too.

(Don't get me started on "white people can't experience racism"... That's just another opinion/theory that gets quoted as fact!)

Oh my goodness a measured post on this issue! I don’t mean it’s just unusual for MN, I find it unusual for the world as a whole.

I’m seeing lots of things from trans men at the moment, saying “do you want me in your loos?” And it’s a valid issue. It’s almost like everyone forgot trans men exist.

Toilets (in my eyes) seem to be the easiest part of the debate to solve - just have a row of individual cubicles straight of the main corridor, and make it socially unacceptable for men to leave them a state - but I’d have thought that once I had a son and had to consider the safely of him going in the men’s loos from age 8 (he’s 12 now so we’re past that worry but it’s still not great).

I expect that a lot of people on MN hold measured views, but your not allowed to hold a measured view.

My opinion is that money and infrastructure allows for all manner of solutions befitting everyone's dignity, and we should be pressing the wealth-hoarders to get a share that allows for that.

I know, I would say it’s come into fashion a few times now. My niece saw a picture of me and my brother a couple of years ago and asked me if I still had any of my clothes so she could have them which I thought was really funny. She said it was “very y2k” and it’s literally a pic of me and her dad with our friends in the park drinking Tesco vodka and with a super king on the go 😭. I did give her my old clothes and I will say she looks a lot cooler and she styles them in a way that makes them look a lot better, but it’s very weird seeing my very well behaved posh niece cutting about in the same clothes I was committing petty crimes in 10/15 years ago.

Exactly this. If you told me you did this in real life I’d feel shocked internally and say “oh right, ah ok” but I’d be thinking there’s not a cat in hells chance I’m ever going to do that.

The cubicles that you describe are actually dangerous and harmful for everyone.
There's a wonderful poster called @keeptoiletsinglesex who can explain all the reasons why including the fact that people will die from heart attacks, strokes and seizures because there's no gap between the floor and walls/door to see you and people have been found dead in them having lay for days before they were found.

Men need to be more accepting of gender non-conforming men in their spaces

That it's fine to not invite step children to weddings and leave them out of family photos. I've never known a stepchild in any family get treated like that.

Oh another one, if you don’t have a pension of 50k per year you will have an awful retirement. There is also a lack of understanding about how pension schemes have changed & are far less generous

Whereas the truth is of course found in neither of your deliberately polarised options.

"It has no impact on me whatsoever" is completely disingenuous. Society is a system and relies on collective responsibility.

We should all care about schools, universities, prisons and the other institutions of our society, about accurate reporting, about free speech and about language regardless of whether we have a loved one directly involved (but obviously are likely to care even more if we do).

We should all care about who is allowed to play contact sports with teenage girls and share their single sex changing rooms and sleeping facilities on sports teamor school trips, take women's places in competitive high level sports, use the toilets we used to be able to allow nine or ten year old girls to go into without supervision, and yes we should also all care about rape crisis centers, prisons and accurate reporting and crime statistics.

Every thread…

You can't own shares jointly though, even as a married couple. That's pretty much the only financial thing where couples don't get to decide whether it's joint.

The endless 'reporting' of innocuous comments to HR many of which are just eavesdropped overheard and the mortally offended poster wasn't even part of the conversation.

The suggestion that if a small business struggles financially when an employee is continually on the sick then they are not a viable concern and don't deserve to be in business

That was just an example. The couples we know definitely do not pool all finances with their salaries paid into the same account, as is discussed on MN. That’s not the same as having no joint finances. DH and I have a joint checking account for bills and a joint savings account. There also seems to be an assumption that this setup means arguments about money or that there is less sharing / generosity, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never seen more fucked up financial setups than the countless stories on MN of people (usually women) who get financially abused within a relationship or completely shafted during divorce, all because they allowed themselves to become financially dependent on a man and fooled by the ‘his money is family money’ nonsense. Great if it works out (and I’m sure it does for some couples!), absolutely catastrophic if it doesn’t.

I suspect they're just sad that the pretend transman mother AMA thread got pulled. (although this is a convoluted way of expressing that sadness).

ummmm have you heard of Madeline mcann?

Kind of on a similar riff to the boarding school thing, I’ve gotten weird flack for leaving my kids with GPs often.

At the end of the day yes I am very lucky to have free childcare, but it doesn’t mean we love our kids any less because they’re at their GPs while we go out. It’s not actually free, because I always give them my revolute card loaded with some cash for treats/expenses and 9/10 that’s what pays for the treats, sometimes GPs pay but I would never expect it. I don’t tend to leave them with my mum too often as she raised 6 kids, her days of grafting after them are over as they should be, but my dad has them often. It’s two fold really, firstly my dad is 72 and smokes like a chimney, scrans take aways on a regular basis… I want the kids to have as many good memories with him as possible before his health inevitably fails and his luck runs out. My step mum also enjoys having them, never wanted her own kids but always liked having us as a kids and likes doing the fun stuff then handing them back. Secondly, my kids are obsessed with them. They basically think they’re the coolest people ever and that me and DH are boring. ILs as well. When they find out they’re not going to grandads / nanas / nanny and pops house they’re almost disappointed they have to hang out with their loving mother and doting dad.

I kind of think you can’t win with childcare decisions. Boarding school? Heartless posho. Nursery? Why is someone else raising your kid?! Family childcare? Why are you dumping them on your poor ageing parents?! SAHM? Sponging off a man! One day he will run off with an 18 year old and you’ll be sorry! Can’t win..

The ones I see a lot is that single parents should never date again and spend the next 18 years alone. In real life I don’t know anyone that does that or thinks that. Single parents wanting to date again are often shamed on here for not revolving their entire lives around their kids.

It's more about moving new people in rather than just dating.

Quite, and this common experience is not one of transphobia, yet in certain quarters your even speaking of it will be ascribed to bigotry and all the rest of it.

It should be criminal. Ask the McCann parents. Where do you live that is ok?

Nope, I’ve seen it said about dating. I was told to “concentrate on my kids” or “wait till your youngest is 18” I never once said I would move anyone in because I wouldn’t so no I don’t agree with you. And I’ve seen the attitude on other threads too. Back in the real world all single mums I know date again and have new partners and shock horror some even move them in! On mumsnet you shouldn’t look at another man until your child reaches 18.

Stating that humans cannot change sex is not transphobia.

It is also a widely held opinion outside of mumsnet......what with it being a scientific reality and all.

Why should it be criminal?

I live in the UK

Madeleine McCanns parents did not have a baby monitor, could not see or hear their children, and were several hundred metres away in a different building, and had left windows to the street open.

This is notably different in terms of safety to being in the same building, with a baby monitor, being able to visually see the child etc etc

My opinion is that this sort of goady shite means that the poster is a bit of a twat