In thinking we don't actually need Men to diminish, bully, abuse and curtail our rights as women when we seem capable of doing it between ourselves.

[MitsubishiWarrioress]

To be honest, I am fairly subdued on Mumsnet and avoid AIBU. My life philosophy gets me through pretty well without a great deal of confrontation and I mostly achieve what I need and want with major organisations, banks etc with this attitude.

The cheer to fight on MN, (which IS in my opinion, a slice of life, and not just words on a screen (an excuse which seems to be used increasingly to make offensive and inflammatory comments)), seems to be cried almost daily.

The thick vein of Misandry overwhelms and alarms me, and it concerns me that we are raising boys with such negative opinions of their own sex that it is almost inevitable that bad behaviour and treatment of women will follow because, they have such low expectations of themselves within society.

This argument is often used to excuse women making bad choices, and yet is not applicable to men in a lot of instances.

I think there should be far less focus on the feminism aspect of equality and a drive to aspire to greater humanity.

I was bullied consistantly through school, by girls 95% of the time, and I do not hold that this was primarily as a result of male pressure.
The truth is, that some women are not very nice, just as with some men.

I have witnessed posters making quiet comments about something they have done for their men, but avoiding the general site because of the flaming they will get.

So that is 'choice' is it?

Apologising for admitting they are happy with their lot because they will be accused of 'smugness'. I have lost the count of how many times such a post will prompt the [vom] response.

I have nothing against debate, 'cheery' banter, and the passion with which differences of opinions are often aired, but sometimes the vitriolic attacks on fellow women is perhaps just as indicative of the undermining of our own sex as many of the issues in society. Because I presume not many posters have men standing over their shoulders telling them what to type.

I despair. I really do.

Mitsubishi, could you please give me an example of how boys emotional needs are not being met in school? I'm intrigued by this! This gets bandied about a lot, but i'm still uncertain as to what it means.
Does it follow from what you are saying then that girls emtotional needs are being met, and what are the differences?

I am new to MN so haven't had much experience with the "bitchy" postings so most of my experience is women IRL.

I worry about my son because:

various reports on schools have shown that teaching is now so geared towards girls...coursework rather than practical etc (although I also enjoyed practical science lessons) and statistics show girls are steaming ahead while the boys flounder (I know this is a sweeping statement as some boys are doing very well).

The media portray boys as either hoodie wearing, drug/alochol taking, sluts or downtrodden, thick and subserviant. Neither role gives ds something to aspire to...I'm glad he has strong male role models IRL.

I worry about my daughter because:

There seems to be this flip femenist culture that all womens behaviour is "okay because we are women, we want to do it and we can!"

I don't uderstand why young girls think poncing about in barely there clothes, getting so drunk you vomit/fall asleep outside/sleep with random guy cos your too drunk to make achoice etc is being a femenist.

I don't think the intention of femenism was to make women behave like they don't need morals, ethics or common sense.

I want both my children to have choices, equality and freedom to learn and grow as human beings.

Curry -- not to me I know, but my boy is in a very touchy feely school, great pastorally but he wants to win things and try to get top marks in tests and just stop talking about how he feels all the time. It's as though they are looking for emotional needs to meet that he doesn't actually have and he's finding it a bit tedious. Maybe that's not what's meant.

But then, here we are again at nature/nurture differences between boys and girls.

Good post ben10

I only have boys but ran a rainbow group so spent a lot of time with girls of a similar age fopr a while.

There's certainly stuff out there showing many boys learn diffeent ly- theya re also at a higher risk of many possiblyl most SEN, and those are often not picked up until quite late- junior school being common.

IME it's impossible in a classroom setting to tell teh difference between a boy who needs to run and be active and a child who needs investigation into SEN; certainly ds2 fell into that gap for a long time and I secretly suspect that if theyw ere active (20 minutes at lunch and 10 at break) then his wriggling / attention would blossom.

There are people out there writinga bout boys benefitting from active lessons- eg treasure hunts with questions etc. I suspect many girls would benefit from this too (am a pragmatic learner myself) but certainly none of it gores on in our school, its all sit down / stay still / complaints that there are too many boys in my class so no wonder I can't keep up (have heard that as an excuse several times)

Thanks for the explanation prob.

I think i understand where you're coming from but a lttle confused in some respects because it almost seems that you are saying that boys, or at least your ds doesnt have any emotional needs,- or at least the ones that he is deemed to have by by virtue of the fact that he is a child in a school system that is increasingly geared towards developing children's emtional intelligence, as well their acedemic intelligence.

The thing is though, i know many girls who are like your son, and many boys who are quite touchy feely and the opposite of what is considered a rough and tumble boy.
I'm thinking of one
boy in particular (my bf ds1) who gets bullied because he is, or sounds to be the opposite of your ds. He is musical, sensitive, gets upset easily and hates sports.
That's why i was wondering what was meant by emotional needs of boys not been met. I'm afraid i'm still not very clear, but appreciate you telling me about your ds.

I am so sorry to hear about your ds. I hate bullies. I was bullied. Poor thing. I hope things get better for him.

I think I mean competition is an emotional need, visible achievement is an emotional need. There are different kinds of emotional needs, and not every needs to talk the talk. (My ds is actually quite able to talk about his feelings because we always have, so he doesn't think he needs to "learn" about it.)

I guess what it comes down to is: no child has the same needs. Vibes again to your son. He will be a great success when older and be able to employ them to clean his car.

but

Thanks prob, but it is my friend ds who i was referring to.
I have dd's,
i feel for her though,- and him!

It seems to be a few different ideas that are being sort of mashed together here.

The first point - not all women on this site a feminists? Many specifically say they are not. I don't feel that the people who are bitchy (and I don't think there are that many actually) are the ones who identify themselves as feminists.

I have not been on any talkboards where the majority of posters are male - is there no bitchiness on there? Is it all calm reasoned debate? I bet it isn't. Different people have different personalities and I do not agree that arguing and bitching is the preserve of women by any stretch.

The one thing that I would say is that I have flounced from MN 3 times, and 2 of them were due to male posters being deeply nasty. Given that there are only about 10 men on here, I don't know if that means anything or not. Maybe it just means something about me.

The schools thing I don't know about, my children are too young.

"I think there should be far less focus on the feminism aspect of equality and a drive to aspire to greater humanity."

When you get group A saying things should change because they're not equal to group B, group B will always get worried that group A want more. It's better to say that groups A and B should have the same rights, chances and protection as each other. Being pro anything could be seen as being anti the opposite.

I've not given examples of groups here because it would cause arguments.

But if you want equality, and then look at for example salaries, and find that women are paid less than men for doing the same job, does that mean you should not say out loud that women are being paid less than men in case that scares men?

If you only ever talk about equality, then how can you tackle specific actual problems for either sex?

ben10isgr8 - a great post. Totally agree with what you said about boys. I have two DSs and worry about those issues you pointed out a lot and more so as they approach teenage years.

I have also wanted to say what you said about girls for a long time but knew I would get flamed:

"There seems to be this flip femenist culture that all womens behaviour is "okay because we are women, we want to do it and we can!"

I often see that exact attitude being displayed on MN and in RL. I sometimes want to say to women/girls "FGS, if you want men to respect you then show some respect for yourself and for them. Then uncompromisingly demand the same in return from men."

ImSoNotTelling - I go on a lot of talk boards with only/mainly men there. They do have a really very noticeably different feel. Not as personal and bitchy IMHO but quite a bit more preening and posturing. I am surprised you were upset by 2 men on MN. There are so few of us here and am genuinely sorry if one of them was me.

MW

I get what you're saying exactly. This is my first post on AIBU and I usually post on the Relationships board - where I'm afraid I think there is often a terrible blindspot about female behaviour.

I stay away from some threads now because they become a ridiculous battle of wills, rather than an attempt to help a poster in distress.

To sum up what MB is saying, if a woman posts about her H's infidelity, amongst hundreds of compassionate posts, there will be several vilifying her H, criticising her for disliking the OW, painting the OW as a victim of an unscrupulous man, berating her for choosing badly, querying why she hadn't kept her man satisfied, accusing her of being daft for ignoring the signs....and on it goes.

If a woman posts about her infidelity, amongst the hundreds of compassionate posts, there will be several vilifying her H for "forcing" this choice on her, ignoring the hurt she might be causing to another woman, criticising her sexual morals, colluding with victim-like behaviour (I got swept away) and on it goes....

These polarised views about men and women often result in men being treated with utter contempt for their human failings - and women being forgiven rather too easily for theirs.

I often reverse the gender in such posts and will frequently re-write some of the posts from a male perspective, knowing that if a man posted the same things about a woman, he would be slaughtered.

I profoundly agree that it is better to concentrate on humanity - and acknowledge that men and women have feelings and are equally capable of loving and hurtful behaviour.

Some good posts on here, Abetadad and whenwilli particularly liked yours

DH goes on a few boards that are mainly male and I have tyo sayy the feel is different, lots of joshing but very little bitchiness or real nastiness. When we had to speak to someoone about some language they used which we found offensive (not being Mary Whitehouse, referring to Mongs etc) then whereas on MN I would personally have expected to have at least a 50% chance of a flaming, we received a personal apology and a request for info on what it meant.

I think splittinmg things down into womens issues etc is often counter productive- lots of groups face bigotry, I want all people to have equality. But nobody can fight every fight so we have to pick them- I am vocal on carers rights and those of disabled people, things that affect us. I'd much prefer to be fighting for a sense of human equality though because by focusing I have to ignore every otehr aspect of equality despite it bothering me- racism, religion, gender- lots of brnaches of all one topic.

Very gestalt, I know

Agree with what you say Clarissimo about leaning styles, I don't think all boys suit one kind of learning any more than all girls do. Practical learning, or even just more variety in ways of learning would probably help everyone. What I think is possibly the case is that girls, being generally slightly more mature than boys of the same age at primary level, are better at "making the best of it" and ploughing on with the learning regardless of whether it's "meeting their needs". I knew plenty of girls for example who weren't good at reading etc but did a lot more arty stuff and behaved well in class. I always suggest starting boys at school a year later than girls - what do you think?

I think what is missed in many cases (touched on some posts above) is that boys, not girls, are actually the delicate flowers in terms of likelihood of SEN including Aspergers, dyslexia and so on. I know a LOT of men who underachieved badly at school because their specific "needs" in terms of extra support weren't picked up on.

Probably bollocks, IMO, that boys "naturally" need more running around time than girls. Girls are just brought up to value qualities of being "good" and sitting still.

I dujnno, i think that evolutionary wise boys may well need mroe running about; the fact that girls and boys are absolutely created equal doesn't change the fact that thousands of years of evolutionary direction cannot be changed in a century of equality

However, i think a great many kids fit into a middle ground- quieter boys and more active girls so individual assessment is what they need

The ASpergers thing is interesting: 1/4 people dx'd atm is female but increasingly we are learning that female traits are covering up the symptoms so it is not being picked up, there's a similar thing going on in the black community although I have not read up on why (except that bit of research is American and there's a poverty link evident there).

I'd be up fort a better mix all round tbh: and it might help with the obesity issue as well, where we teach children to sit still, like reading, art is good... oh why do wehave fat kids? Balance, as ever, is key

Mitsubishi

I worry for you if this silly site makes you despair!!! really, get your priorities right

what makes me despair is poverty, developing world issues, womens rights in ther middle east, child abuse, I could go on....

Not a load of bored women who love a bit of a ruck on AIBU!!!! and I am one of those women

I think even if you support the whole "caveman ways are in our genes" thing, as I understand it hunting & gathering (male & female activities respectively, allegedly) required everyone to be very fit and on their feet all day. Just ask a modern-day veg-picker. Evolution did not adapt anyone to sit in a classroom, or to read - how could it have? Women and men have evolved together as people, so I find it mystifying that girls' genes are somehow supposed to make them more able to behave and learn well at school, whereas boys genes apparently haven't moved on at all in the same timescale.

Both sexes have evolved to learn, it's learning that keeps us from eating those poisonous berries/jumping in the fire/stroking that rabid dog.

Especially since boys have been in formal education for literally thousands of years longer than girls have!

I wonder whether the OP was mainly referring to the Porn thread which ran for about a fortnight?

I think that the AIBU threads where you find the most unpleasant behaviour often tend to end well (albeit twenty pages later) as they tend to produce a positive practical outcome ("You need help" "OKayyyyy ...I know") or get taken over by the in-jokers who appear out of nowhere and manage to diffuse the situation so as to kill the thread in an ever so gentle manner.

However, I have noticed that a few people approach AIBU in the same way as a yob dragging himself around the pubs after a football match with the sole aim of getting into a scrap. This is really most unfortunate and does MN no justice at all.

I recall a recent thread about a lady thrown out of a shop for BF. It suddenly got taken over by a bunch of crazy pro-choice types whose passive aggression did little to draw attention away from their awful inability to argue intelligently and stand back from the situation. They were asking a poster repeatedly to reveal personal details about their real life associations, whilst simultaneously stating that they did not even want to reveal what their feeding choices had been (not that they had been asked). It was an absolute farce. There was one poster who could not write or debate to save her life who kept pulling all sorts of rabbits out of the hat during the thread - 'my cousins has just died', two days later, 'my kids aren't well', 1 week later 'I've got learning difficulties'. Finally 'My ds is the only person in the country with this allergy' - Well, don't you think that was bloody relevant enough to understand why on earth you were spitting venom all week? It was absolute insanity, i'm telling you! This aint poker.

Talking of poker, who on earth expected Victoria Coren to suddenly 'appear' on MN as a poster. I don't think she deserved all the apologies and complements for doing her own PR. Made me wonder whether I should start a thread about David Tennant to see if he did the same.

Elephants

as UI understand social genes etc, females supposedly evolved to have better communication skills becuase of tehir group work so could theoretically (and all this is theory, of course it is) cope better with the demands of the classroom, whereas males survived who were excellent hunters and warriors, skilled at running / strength rather than communication and social skills.
I have only read up on this wrt to ASD though, its one of the thories about for why females with ASD present differently to males.

It would compliment teh male-skills female-skills thing though, not in entirety- if only, how simple would that be- but as a component.

And wrt to boys being in formal ed- some- my own father's generation was the first ones ever to actually attend school due to being poor and agriculturally raised, trust me the kids attending school thousands of years ago were definitely not the average ones- my dad started work at 5 and thatc ame before school as far as his famnily (typical of my home area) were concerned

But hunters work in groups too - for the most part. Especially when they're working without guns, you need people to flush out prey, corner an animal like a boar or a deer so someone can shoot it/stab it.

I don't know about all this evopsych stuff. Surely if evolution was perfect, biological things that make birth difficult for women would have gone now, what with the childbirth being probably the biggest historical killer of women.

Totally agree WRT most people not being educated til recently, have the same thing in my own family history. BUT you can bet your bottom dollar that where education was available at all, it would be the boys who were given it first in every society.

Don't you think though, that whether for boys or girls, there are still emotional needs in achievement and competition, which are being downplayed. They are as much emotional needs as any other. Both boys and girls may be denied them.

I don't understand this thread really.

Whenwillifeelnormal: I go on infidelity threads all the time and I see blame heaped upon women either way. Women cheat - they shouldn't do it. Men cheat - the nasty OW shouldn't let him do it.

This reflects RL where as we all know it's the woman who gets the blame in cases of infidelity.

Not to mention the vile double standards towards sexual morality that still pervade today even amongst young people, ie girls who enjoy sex or sleep around are sluts. There is no equivalent term for boys or men who do the same.

I do think evohiostory si a apart of it, but it is only a theory- one explanation. It can offer useful insights though IMO and the ones currently seen as best guess as to how SN work are relevant here.

And yes I agree boys would ahve got it first when it was available but if we're on teh evolutionary track (whcih that bit was supposed to disprove) then not recently enough to have an effect; education was vastly different tehn as well, my XP had a Grandfather who had been Head at one of the oldest schools in the country and his stories made for interesting reading and that was only a few generations!

I am nto saying that evo is all of it, quite clearly it isn't, but I do think it seems to play a partt. Current thinking in ASD (am doing an MA so pretty up to datye) is that communication skills in girls mask the ASD and whn combined with innate nburturing skills mean it presents differently- whetehr thats evo or some other origin who knkows but the general effect is the same.