Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent thinks Mumsnet is shallow and self-interested... what do you think?

[JustineMumsnet]

From today's Independent:

Look at the immensely powerful Mumsnet website and some other copycat ones and there is barely any mention of (or fundraising for) the famines in East Africa where mothers push dry breasts into the limp mouths of babies as they die. Jeremy Clarkson wrote an abominable column last week on these starving children. Where is the famous Mumsnet battalion to slap him down? Not much about domestic violence either, or any serious take on the policies of the Coalition government which are leading to unprecedented numbers of female redundancies. They are low-paid and therefore, I suppose, not part of the cosy circle, a Starbucks for the right kind of mummies. But if you want to know about skiing with babies, its all there, plus very efficient guilt cleaning for working ladies and buckets of advice for SAHMs (stay-at-home mums).

You can see the whole article here

Agree with Speedy and Edith, Africa is NOT one homegenous entity. I also agree that corruption is rife in British politics( just ask Rupert Murdoch). If Africa is a mess, then so is Europe.

Are these sites "Immensley powerful" as Yasmin says?

I realise they do get mentioned across the media on occassions.

She has an opinion and uses a newspaper to air her views.

So what?

She has no power and very little influence. She is not even a particularly good journalist.

why are we responsible for sensoring Clarkson,dealing with world famine and policing dv fgs. Not that we dont debate these topics but what does she want us to do about it all,last time i looked i was anormal woman not a bloody politician or tv execitive,why doesnt she write some informative pieces on these issues instaed of moaning about mn?

Ok, what everybody else said about MN being broad church and the debate on East Africa/DV/politics being there if you look, but why the snide swipe at stay at home mums?

I thought feminism had empowered us to make our life choices and raise our children however our ethics and circumstances dictate. For many of us, the decision to stay at home is decided by finances, and by that I don't mean that my banker husband is funding a lifestyle where I sit endlessly around in cafes discussing Tarquin's last bowel movement, more that it doesn't make financial sense at the moment for me to put my child into childcare to go back to a job that I enjoyed. ('Coz it's 'low-paid' innit - which apparently puts me outside of the mumsnet 'cosy circle').

Why shouldn't I look for advice on mumsnet? The clue being in the name. Or should I just take my SAHM spongebrain off to Starbucks and leave the internet to the big girls saving the world one unfocussed, ill-researched piece of journalism at a time.

Also, the Jeremy Clarkson article. Wasn't it an attempt to raise awareness of conditions in Uganda? Isn't that what we're being attacked for not doing?

'To me, it seems to imply that only the middle class can be a) on-line and b) educated. Which is wrong.'

Clearly given I am here with my WC council estate raised sink school educated arse, along with my degree and MA - in - progress.

I''m still WC< I just am.

There's a two-pronged snide swipe at "working ladies" and SAHMs, though. Feminism has empowered us to make our life choices, but YAB doesn't like any of them, seemingly.

What other job could you make so many errors and still get paid for it?

True herdof

but at least you lot exist, I am in neither group

Well, obviously. If you existed then we'd be discussing serious issues on Mumsnet, which we clearly aren't because YAB says so. So you can't exist. In fact, not sure why I'm addressing this post to you...

I think I must be a figment of your imagination.

Maybe YAB is aware of some very important services to help with that?

SanctiMoanyArse - precisely :)

It's not possible to "assume" someone's class based on literacy, earnings and education.

And that's before you get into the debate about whether anyone should even bother to do so and what possible relevance it is!

There is no widely agreed single definition of class in the UK. However, like it or not, literacy, earnings and education are key factors in discussing class. Whether you want to discuss it or not is entirely up to you.

What I actually said was: - "The whole middle class thing.... well, MN does feel very middle class to me. Before anyone gets irate - let's remember, online forums need you to be (a) online, and (b) literate enough to type clearly. The most deprived and excluded mothers in UK society don't tend to have internet access at home, nor can they all type and express themselves like a graduate. So you won't find them here discussing their problems."

I did not say, or 'imply', anything as utterly, utterly, UTTERLY stupid as "only the middle class can be a) on-line and b) educated."

Dear God.

I also did not say anything remotely like 'gosh, if you are here, you can't POSSIBLY be working class', or 'jeez, ain't these working class people just uneducated idiots??' And so on.

NunOnTheRun Thank you for the link to the article by Clarkson. I thought it was well written in a non hand wringing manner and just the right side of irreverent. It made me want to know more about it, a trick that the sanctimonious Bonio could never do. This one phrase sticks out: "In a two-hour walk I didn't see a single girl under the age of 18.
"They don't survive," said our guide".

SpeedyGonzales, what a great post. To answer your question, yes, I reckon we are fucked. We have a government that doesn't care about the ordinary man or woman, they only care for what can earn a buck, which is why our beloved NHS is being sold behind our backs. In 10 years time we'll be in the same state as the US, seeing as we seem to be adopting their financial policy of rewarding the rich and penalising the poor and middle class.

No fruit you didn't. And MN is wiely perceived as middle class. Doesn't mean that's right, though (the perception of MN). Generally I tend to refer to myself as transition class- no way we will ever make MC in terms of income / home ownership etc for all sorts of complex reasons, but the boys are at very MC old schools, and absolutely see themselves as MC kids.

And indeed to be fair I am much more eduated than most of the WC kids I grew up with, outside my immediate family. As is DH, and the person who started that on each side was a woman with a class fixation (my Nan and Dh's mum) who would have killed to be MC for what tehy perceived as the social connotations. Get teh eduation- love a bit of university, me- but not the social bit.

Sorry - just have to put the "foreigner" card in here:

I've never seen the notion of class as ingrained, bolted-down and obvious as I have in the U.K. You're so obsessed with it that you even try to avoid being lumped in as "middle-class" - because it's become a bit of a dirty word, specially amongst the middle classes.
Coming from Scandinavia I found it confusing at first, then sad, then infuriating.

The most disturbing development on Mumsnet that I see, though, isn't a class issue as such. It's the eternal pram/cot/education/NCT/food/breastfeeding high horse/snobbery that sometimes rears its ugly head.
If I said that I'm having a pillow for my newborn, who will be napping in her pram in the back garden all year round (she's due in November), I bet there would be a few shrieks of indignation.
If I said this on a Danish forum, no one would bat an eyelid.

We all have to have pacapods, we all have to have Stokke cots, we all have to spend gazillions on our babies - but where is the "I'm buying all my big items second hand, and clothes are limited to £5/item as I can't see the point in buying £20 jumpers from jojomamanbebe that they'll outgrow in 2 months AND my family is sewing blankets and quilts from old curtains for me" thread?

Not on mumsnet, because it doesn't cater for those people.
What it does provide is a community, women supporting women and a forum to vent the frustrations of life.
What we need to be more aware of is the horrible materialism that can invade those discussions - let's support each other to have sustainable, reasonable attitudes to life quality that isn't based on what we can afford to shroud our children in.

Caliphora I agree with you about the 'British Class obsession'. It is very deeply ingrained and seems to underpin most social interactions in this country. I was quite shocked when I first moved here, when I realised just how pervasive it is.

However, I don't agree with your second point, that MN does not cater for people (like me) who choose not to spend huge amounts of money on designer clothes for my new babies (and who couldn't afford to anyway). There are plenty like me on here.

MBJ Well, I'm one of those people, actually, but I don't come here for that, I come here for the community instead.
I may just have been ignorant and not looked around everywhere - feel free to point me in thread directions! :o

I'm don't really venture onto the 'What are you buying' threads (for baby or in Styke and Beauty) , cause they just don't interest me. But I've often been pointed in the direction of eBay for clothes bundles and toys bundles when asking about these types if things.

Caliphora, maybe you've not been around here long, but I have seen threads about the merits of buying second hand. And don't forget there's a 'For Sale' section on MN for members to sell their old stuff.

And what on earth is a pacapod?!

Speedy I'll be more vigilant and open my MN eyes...

Pacapods are glorified £50 nursing bags - aaaaall the rage on the pregnancy forums.

There are shedloads of "I'm buying all my big items second hand, and clothes are limited to £5/item as I can't see the point in buying £20 jumpers from jojomamanbebe that they'll outgrow in 2 months AND my family is sewing blankets and quilts from old curtains for me" threads. They generally crop up when people are double-checking that this is a reasonable thing to do because their MIL is acting as though it's tantamount to child abuse, though, because if you're getting everything second-hand you don't really need to start threads asking about where to buy things. You could start one just for the sake of sharing with everyone that you are buying things second hand, but that would be a bit smug and wankerish. Still, every time a "AIBU to buy everything second hand" thread crops up dozens of posters chime in and agree that obviously you buy things second hand if you can and in fact they hand-crochet everything out of recycled cardboard.

HerdOfTinyElephants Wheatgrass! Alfalfa! Corduroy! And obviously, it's tunisian crochet.
And we're sending our kids to Steiner/Montessori/(insert alternative private education here).
Pants - even that turns into snobbery, eh?

We just can't win.

Y A-B U