In plain sight - comments by men at adverts

[Mumteedum]

I noticed some time ago on the bin fire that is X, that if the charity Refuge put out a promotional appeal, the comments were just horrific.

I thought that maybe X is just especially bad and didn't look anymore.

I'm on LinkedIn, a so called professional platform. There's a current advert by Scottish Widows about the pension pay gap. The comments are just as horrific.

These are men under their professional profiles making comments like. ..

There is no gap

Women don't work as long or as hard

What about the family court gender gap against men

When did you see a woman repairing a road in winter

It is unbelievable. So depressing.

When the Guardian opened their comments section, male staff were horrified and shocked at the comments under the articles written by women.

The way women are treated differently to men is obvious when two people give the same opinion on a subject. Men will get agreement or discussion and women will get ripped apart.

Misogyny is alive and well and some men take anything to do with women as a threat.

I think this has shocked me (only a bit) because it's so brazen. Men saying it out loud to their professional networks, their bosses, their employees.

I was going to post a screenshot but LinkedIn did a funny message about screenshot being detected so I got cold feet!

I would hate to be growing up in the generations to come, woman and men are just pitting against each other and it’s getting worse and worse, relationships are changing accordingly and marriage is fading out. I dread to think wheee this will end.

It's depressing. I'd quite like to make a hobby out of sending screenshots to their CEO team to see if the companies are really okay with it.

is it both pitting against each other though? Or is it that we are living in a time that men's behaviour has got worse and women no longer need to put up with it?

I think social media gets rich by creating division. Angry= more clicks, so @sandytoesagain you're right in many ways.

But it's dangerous. It's setting us all back and the progress for women and girls is stalling or going backwards.

I say that as in disrespect towards women fuels a disrespect back towards men. I certainly don’t have any respect for men who disrespect women.

Everyone is pitted against everyone. It’s awful to see. And there seems to be no bar anymore. You can say any hateful derogatory thing to anyone freely and will get a lot of backing.

Stop pretending this is a 'both sides' problem. It isn't.

I have to wonder if programmes like adolescence are helping men see the problems or reassuring them that they are not the only ones and the majority feel like them.
I haven’t watched it yet but I’m in two minds about watching it with my son because as much as I want him to see it for what it is, I think if they weren’t that aware of how large it’s escalating it might teach them it’s how most men are now so it’s normal.

A lot of men really don't like women to have an opinion about everything. It seems to me that some men resent that they have to "pretend" that we are people too.

Change your online name to a man's name and make a comment it's eye opening

Someone puts out a tweet saying about family court and their bias towards women

Reply from Brian
What about the men who abandoned their child?
Responses to his reply will range from they don't represent us we are trying to get justice for the men who actually want there children etc etc very respectful

Reply from Christine
What about the men who abandoned their child?
Responses to HER reply
What did you do to make him unwelcome? You alienated him from his own child how many man have you had that your kids are forced to call daddy? Bet you still take his money don't you? Had your hair done lately? Bet you don't work sluts like you should be sterilised etc etc

The difference is startling plus the womans profile will most likely get reported and her comment taken down

I would agree with saying that both sides are pitted against each other, but having see the awful things men will write under their own name to any woman in the public eye, vs what women say about men in general, I'd still say it's men who are pitted against women, it's ingrained in them in a way I can't fathom. The sexually violent things they say don't compare to what women say about men in any way.
I'm not saying all women talking about or to men do it in non abusive ways, absolutely not - there are some vile human beings out there - but I've seen a lot of different online spaces over the years and my jaw is regularly dropped by the hateful things men write.
We have always been pitted against each other by the patriarchy, it's always been men vs women... its just now both sides are able to use their voices with more freedom. Women are able to speak up.

What's that's saying 'After all this time, men should be glad women want equality and not payback?'

I had a man out to look at my cooker recently and I was holding my baby son, he asked if he was my first and I said no I have 2 daughters and he said I bet dh is glad to have a son after 2 girls. He then went on to say how you have to buy everything from scratch with a boy where as you can use boys things for a girl but you couldn’t use girls things for a boy. I thought about this and he’s basically implying you couldn’t insult a boy by making him use girls stuff but it’s ok for a girl to use boy stuff because that’s not humiliating them like the other way around. I’m only talking pink v blue here not putting him in a dress but even the fact that’s unheard of doesn’t have an equivalent because a girl can wear a blue T-shirt and trousers. I had to wear trousers and a tie to school but they’d never have humiliated the boys and made them wear a girls clothes and they wouldn’t have worn it they had to, they’d have been a laughing stock.

Old lady in supermarket, admiring my baby - "What's his name?"
Me - Amy, she's a girl. She's got a big brother, so she's wearing his hand-me-downs.
Old lady - What would have done if you'd had a girl, then a boy?
Me - He'd have worn her hand-me-downs.
Old lady, with big smile - Quite right!!

The vast majority of these hostile comments are from bots with fake profiles.

I don't think they were on LinkedIn? Unless you're saying it's full of fake profiles? These appeared to be actual people with connections and resumes openly saying these things.

It’s that old problem of women’s work just not being valued. And women being invisible.

Men really do believe they do all the work. I’ve had it from kids in year 1 in schools. Looking after kids and teaching doesn’t count, nor does the huge numbers of women working in hospitals and healthcare. They won’t let us have equal access to the trades and then whinge about it.

There has been feminist research in the past using cross-cultural and changes over time to show that it is not what women do that reduces wages, it’s the fact that women are doing it. Fundamentally men are just incapable of seeing women’s work as useful, or women’s time and effort as useful. I am so sick of men at this point.

Well, tbf, the pay gap favours young women nowadays, women genuinely don't work as long as men, and I've never seen a woman repairing a road. Bit sure about bias but I think there may be some feasibility there tbh. 🤣

@LastRoIo I would engage and share some facts and explain the issue but the "🤣" indicates I'd be wasting my time.

Sorry, that was a bit facetious tbf.

I guess I can just see both sides of the coin. Women don't tend to work as many hours but then of course we often do more of the domestic work.

But both sexes moan about their individual bugbears. I see a lot of posters on here complaining about how the man gets to swan into the office and keep his career going whilst they sacrifice theirs.

But for every post like that there's another one like "changed my mind about returning to FT work. DH not happy", which makes me think a lot of men don't like shouldering the full financial responsibility.

But I've defo not seen a female road worker yet!

I think there's never really been a coherent women's equality/women's rights agenda pushed by government through welfare policies. It's been rather piecemeal.

Additionally I think the loss of the manufacturing base in the UK has disrupted a lot of certainties that the previous generations had.

I'd love to know whether its a particularly British thing or whether say Italy, Spain, Scandinavian countries, get these kind of comments. I'm sure it's not exclusive to UK but is it worse here?

It makes me sound a snob but I first and foremost think it's lack of education when people make backwards women-hating comments. Social media gives everyone a voice, not every comment is particularly insightful. There are many dim witted men. And, being rather regressive in saying it, men maybe don't have the same level of emotional awareness as women (there are studies that show they have less capacity here).

However the risk is that you then say well its the mothers not bringing them up then to respect women (a very regressive argument!), permissive parenting and so on.

It's a bit broad brush but I suppose i think overall that widening inequality makes extreme views worse. Patriarchy was always there- post war domestic division of labour, domestic violence. We have had mass education and yet extreme views have got worse.
The trend is not good. Social media could have been a place where people lifted people up, its become a tool of the elite where people pit against people thinking we're participating in any of this whereas in reality Joe Bloggs comments give him an ego boost but do nothing to help the issues.

I'm all for healthy debate but it's quite vile to post knee jerk derogatory comments. I don't think it's representative of a lot of men at all.

Social media companies aren't making any attempts to stop it really and I think that in itself is because they began as new entrepreneurial businesses without embedding any tools or putting enough resources towards it at the start-then they probably felt they would lose users and got carried away with profit regardless. So I do think some of the solution sits there.

Some complaints are valid but they are not men's fault or women's fault. Sorry bit of a ramble!

Well, most European countries are a fair bit more racist than here, so I think there's a fair chance it'd be the same with sexism. Certainly the 'man of the house' patriarch thing seems more pronounced.

Over here it's sometimes actually people mocking a perceived sense of 'over wokeness' for want of a better phrase. Things like schools having to sing "ba ba rainbow sheep" etc.

Women are making massive leaps and bounds in society and some men fucking hate us as they always have and don't want us in their space. Tough fucking shit for them, they had better get used to it.

I've heard misogynistic and sexist comments and attitudes all my life. It was a mainstream attitude on TV in the 1980s. I could recognise a lot of it as a little kid.