Space Invaders ..... You know the sort of person who crashes into a discussion like a bull elephant....

[mathanxiety]

How does it make you feel when you're having a discussion with people you have something in common with, about something you have in common, like giving birth or birth trauma or breastfeeding, or being a mother or daughter or wife or sister, perhaps even being an abused wife or daughter or sister, and someone who does not share the experience, a man with strident opinions, shall we say, and maybe a friend or two he has invited along, plonks himself down among you and pontificates and scolds, and finally the discussion ends up revolving around accusations of man-hating, with advice and commiseration being wilfully misinterpreted as expressions of misandry?

Apologies, very long sentence there. But no apology for the contents.

Dizi - what was the jist of your thread? Shame it was deleted.

It was simply an expression of my frustration, dunno if it's politic to mention it given it was deleted though.

I thought threads could only be deleted by the OP, or if it is obvious trolling (e.g. the "get ur titz out you sexy feminists" one the other week )

Sorry to be thick....but what is DV?

domestic violence, MD.

Dunno, EvilAntsAndMiasmas. I posted a thread and when I came back it was gone, that's all I know. I imagine it's because I singled out a specific poster which is a bit trolly, to be fair, but not on quite the same level as "get ur titz out"

I didn't realise what this thread was about either, I thought it was going to be a "tell me a polite way to discourage the office boor" thread.

Anyway, glad about the banning. And also, while I'm very sorry for the poor women in Relationships who had to endure that tosser, I am also very proud that we scared him out of the Feminism section first. Who wants to join arms and sing We Are Every Woman with me?

dizitesma - unlikelyamazonian started a thread about him a few days ago and it was deleted too - it was just entitled "footlong" but contained what I suppose MN constituted as personal attacks on a poster, so it went.

Very glad this troublemaker has gone - hope he didn't do too much damage to vulnerable posters.

dizietsma your thread went because it named footlong in the title and wasn't in apostive way IYSWIM.

A small suggestion... some discussion sites have a function where posts are rated (often thumbs up / down) and posts with a lot of negative ratings are collapsed, meaning you need to click something to see the contents. Makes it easier to ignore fuckwits. The solution can be itself abused but this is harder since it requires a large number of people to work it. Just an idea.

There's a fine line between obscure and opaque and I certainly managed to trowel on the mystery a bit thick, but I thought it better to have a thread stick than to have it sink without trace.

I've been on discussion sites like that, DC, and I think what can happen is there ends up being no discussion essentially. I think the attractive aspect of MN is that there is so much back and forth, and it's fantastic that so many people manage to behave within the bounds of 'civility' for want of a better word maybe unwritten rules, instinctive respect for the forum itself most people stay within the framework, and I think the mechanisms that exist for bouncing people like FL manage to maintain an atmosphere of wide open discussion while at the same time keeping it a safe place.

Why has he been banned?
I've read threads recently where Bonsoir and Xenia were getting lots of grief, should they be banned?

No, what he was doing had an element of bullying women because they are women and need to be kept in line, and attempting to silence them. He had an attitude of real hostility. Other posters with strident views or views that attract a lot of flak do not have the basic misogyny and domineering je ne sais quoi that he had.

Bonsoir and Xenia don't tend to post on the Relationships threads, attacking vulnerable OPs, either - which is what FL was doing.

And also there's the way he took remarks about men personally, as if they were directed at him in the flesh, which resulted in the diversions and derailings that happened to so many threads he was on. You felt you couldn't say a damn thing about any man for fear of annoying him.

pithy...if you had been on lots of threads with him, it was obvious that he had an agenda and was picking on vulnerable women

he also had stalker tendencies. This is not about me, but his constant picking up of my posts amongst 50 others all saying the exact same thing was starting to look a bit sinister. I stopped posting in Relationships quite so much for this exact same reason

I think he had a "shitlist" of others too, and tried his best (often succeeding) to derail the threads that those people were giving good advice on, regardless of how shitty it might make the OP feel

I can disagree with others such as bonsoir (and yes we do...like polar opposites) without thinking they are deliberately trying to fuck up the OP

Bonsoir and Xenia are IMO incredibly misguided and I have my issues with them, but this was really quite a different situation.

FL really seemed to enjoy picking on extremely vulnerable women, I got a feeling he had serious ishoos of the hating women/middle of a nasty divorce/abuses his partners variety.

It's fine to have opinions and express them, so long as they don't prevent vulnerable women from accessing help and support, and unfortunately FL was. He had a choice about where to post his opinions, he chose inappropriately.

Think it's very indicative that he was unable to hold his own amongst the feminism board, so he went to pick on vulnerable women in relationships. I didn't know that until this thread, makes him a lot more sinister TBH.

Oh, has he gone then??
I quite often felt Footlong had a sound point - and thoroughly enjoyed some of his posts on the Feminism board. That board is intended for lively debate, though, whereas Relationships (while it does get lively) features distressed people in need of empathetic feedback. The fact that Footlong tends to put the word 'empathy' in quotes or italics says enough about his respect for it. It's a shame, imo, because his advice would be better if he were capable of putting himself in another's shoes.

I know someone like this in real life. He's lost nearly all his friends, thanks to his bullying attitude.

just wanted to give us all a big congratulatory pat on the back for getting rid of tinyknob yippee! he was a nasty piece of work and i am very glad he has been banned for the sake of all posters sanity.