to hate the "all men are bastards, all women are victims" attitude that there seems to be on heere?

[wannaBe]

Have seen so many instances where this seems to be the case.

Threads where someone's dp is fighting for access to his children and where she has been told that his ex obviously must have good reason for withholding access. thus implying that the mother is always right and that bitch women who withhold access deliberately don't exist.

Threads where a man has been on the verge of an affair and his wife has been supported and the man is automatically branded a selfish twat, and yet there have been threads from women who have been on the verge of an affair and they have been given sympathy and support.

And today two threads, one where a man was violent towards his partner in a one-off incident (even though the partner was a selfish cow) and people are calling for his balls and telling her to leave him, and another where the woman is the one who has been physically violent and still it is the man who is painted as the wrongdoer and she is getting sympathy.

Just seems to be one rule for men and one for women.

I agree, particularly re withholding access, seems to be a revenge weapon sometimes

I agree totally

I think men can get a very raw deal on here and in life sometimes

I always read the posts and in my mind switch the genders, it gives you a different look and ideas

I was shocked about the lady always going out today and people branding him controlling and to leave him, I can't believe people think like that

yanbu

Nope - those threads drive me mad.

I think it's easy to read one side of the story and jump to conclusions. It can be useful to get another perspective on an issue but we're only hearing one pov.

I try not to get involved in threads like that as everyone tends to start repeating what everyone else is saying after a page or two (usually leave them) so after a few posts like that, it can be a bit repetitive.

yanbu - I have given up posting opposing points of view as any support for men invariably seems to result in me being called names

I've not noticed people doing that on here.

i havent seen that attitude on here, everyone has different opinions, there is a very varied mix of posters and not everyone is going to agree, i for one, would never tell someone to leave their dp/dh but i will say if i think they should not ne putting up with bad behaviour.

whats up wannabe id someone disagree with you?

YANBU

I think you are over-reacting tbh - there are lots of times when people don't automatically side with the woman; they give her some straight talk and tell her how good her DH/DP is being and she should be more understanding of him.

But there are a lot of cases where the woman is in a bad situation and the man is being a bastard.

Sometimes we get threads from men where he is being victimised and I haven't noticed that they get too much different advice when it is a sensible (and real!) post.

Some will always demonise men but I hope most of us look at the situation more objectively than that. Of course, some posters are a bit sneaky and start off with only a proportion of the info so it looks initially like they are in the right but as more info comes out you realise that actually, their partner was being perfectly reasonable under the full circs!

yabu

This is mainly a women's website isn't it, and I think it's natural to offer support to to other women having problems as we have often been in their shoes ourselves.

There's enough woman-hating shit out there (telly, films, media, internet forums) where women get a bashing no matter what they do.

If this site is pro-women then I say, great. That's the main reason why I abandoned my old forum (channel 4 news - actually a hotbed of daily mail readers!) and came here.

That's not to say that men don't get a voice or a fair hearing - I think that most posters here are pretty reasonable and certainly on AIBU nobody holds back on criticising an OP.

I agree Wannabe. Am trying to resist urge to post on relationship threads full stop now. Too frustrating.

I'd also add that it is classic forum etiquette to be positive and friendly to anybody who claims that somebody else is being unreasonable to them.

On this site, it's mostly women who ask for advice.

I have seen loads of AIBUs where the exact same situation asked by two opposing people in an argument would both be met with 'Poor you, you sound really nice, the other one is a bitch/ idiot whatever'.

If men themselves were on here they'd also benefit from this - it's all in the way problems are presented.

Anyway i think the thread you are talking about (violent dp v's selfish op) the majority of the posters were telling her that her dp had every right to be angry and she was selfish, so you cannot use that example and say we are all men haters

YANBU I think. the step parent threads are a good example of how biased mners can be towards women without actually knowing the details.
My dp's ex shouldn't be allowed raise a dog, not to mind children and yet numerous times I have had to go into detail about her because the default setting is 'mother good, father, lying, deserting bastard' and often my view is dismissed as bitter second wife. There is an unwillingness to accept that most men are decent, I think.
However I think that unfortunately this might be as a result of the fact that lots of mners have actually had a rough deal and bad luck with men so it is in a way natural to have a slightly distorted view.

I do have to say though that if you feel scared by your partner then you need to sort it out. I don't think that anyone, female or male should be physically or emotionally scared of their partner.

no vt I haven't had a disagreement with anyone. It's just something that has struck me over the years of being on here and which I have commented on in the past, but sometimes things reiterate the fact to me and I just find it somewhat unfair is all.

Today it was brought home to me by two instances - firstly the violence threads, the one where a poster's dp had been violent to her in a one off incident, and while there is definitely no justification for that the situation wasn't quite that black and white and it was a first, yet there were calls for the op to leave her dp - that's all fine and people have their opinions. However shortly after that I read a thread from someone else who is the violent one, but her violence is provoked by her partner's verbal abuse, and again it is the woman who has been made the victim, with the implication that her violence is somehow justified by the partner's verbal abuce. So in both instances the women were the victims, even though they were on opposite sides of the situation.

Also today I thought about asking advice for someone whose xp is withholding access to his child. But I would not have felt comfortable doing so because he is a man. And having looked at threads I found some where people had asked very similar advice and have been basically jumped on and told that the xp must have good reason for withholding access. When in actual fact it is not uncommon for women to use their children as pawns against their ex's.

Thanks for the selfish cow comment I admitted I was being selfish in the post, you don't need to start being nasty about it.

you are right, Wannabe. Men are generally very unfairly treated and thought of on here. No 1 crime appears to be believing they are alien creatures with no human emotions. I think it may be because most people on here are woman, a lot of whom have had relationship problems.

I didnt see the second thread you are talking about, but this is a site with women, and women are telling us the experiences they are having in relationships, so we only get one side of the story and obviously that is going to be bias towards the woman, usless we ask every poster to get her dp/dh on here and give his version of events too

I think YABU to say that there is a "all men are bastards, all women are victims" on here

should say - attitude on here

One other thing....!

On the threads where people call men bastards and tell the woman to leave, they generally do so in the spirit of saying, look, all men are NOT like this, and you can do better!

There is a cracking thread on relationships right now that says just that: most men are kind, loving and decent so do not fall into the trap of thinking that they're all gits and that you can't meet somebody nicer.

That is not man hating, that's man supporting.

vt it wasn't the thread that made me think of it - after all people have their own individual views of any kind of violence and therefore it stands to reason that some people would think that this might be the start of something and others who thought otherwise. But it was the contrast with the other thread, where there is also violence, but because it is the woman being violent she is being treated differently.

If a man posted on here that he hit his wife he would be absolutely villified and rightly so. And yet a woman can post that she hits her husband (or has done so in the past) and people still make the man out to be in the wrong.

Is it any wonder that men who are victims of domestic violence (and men are also victims of dv) don't feel that they can speak out?

I think it has more to do with the fact that, while there are selfish, nasty women who abuse their partners (I did once date a man who had been the victim of sustained domestic violence from a female partner - He was a bit annoying, I will admit, but she really was appalling: I had independent confirmation of this at the time), there are far, far more men who abuse their female partners, simply because it's only fairly recently that it's been seen as unacceptable or wrong for men to treat women as property they can knock about, own and control. So quite a lot of men at some level think they are entitled to be the boss/owner of their female partners. Even a percentage of otherwise nice men can sometimes behave in ways that show they really, deep down, think that possession of a penis makes them the more important one in the relationship.

This is not to say that all men are bastards: many, many men are perfectly nice, non-abusive human beings, and most of us sometimes behave thoughtlessly or selfishly or say mean things when crossed. But, you know, sexism exists, even though things are much better for Western women than they have ever been before - a longstanding legacy of unpleasant attitudes will take a long time to go away.

mz, I once started a thread in relationships saying that my dh was lovely and urging others to post about their lovely dh's. I was jumped on and told that posting positive things about a man was insensitive to those who have had bad experiences.

I have been on similar but opposite threads though, were the poster has started a thread saying 'arent women great' and has been jumped on by posters saying 'no they are not my dp/dh is equally as great'