This Brick person. Has the world (and specifically this bit of it) gone completely barking mad?

[ReactionaryFish]

So some silly attention-seeker writes some daft article which endorses a whole load of unpleasant misogynist attitudes about valuing women purely on the basis of their looks.
And MN responds to this by .... about 30 000 threads endorsing precisely the same attitudes by attacking this woman for her looks.
Not very bright, is it?

If people are being incredibly smug and arrogant over anything that they put out in the public domain then they can expect to get taken down a peg or two. The fact that is was over her looks is irrelevant really.

You have been manipulated, ReactionaryFish. You started this thread.

As I've said repeatedly, my criticisms have been directed at the behaviour. Saying that someone has behaved in a stupid way is not the same thing as calling the person stupid. Again, I know I don't need to point this out, because it's obvious - you are simply determined to distort what I have said because you don't like my views. The better course might be to not read them any longer, if they cause you such discomfort, rather than continuing to misrepresent them.

It's not obvious to me.

Stupid is as stupid does.

RF, Your word count on this is probably a lot higher than most people's.

I'd have to be going some to match the output of some of the posters on here over the last few days, LR. As I've said, the article itself doesn't interest me; what interests me is the fact that the response here and elsewhere has implicitly endorsed the set of values the article embodies.
I guess we've seen people manipulated en masse into irrational behaviour many times before, but it's never an enjoyable thing to watch, is it?

What I hated about the piece wasn't that she thought she was beautiful (all power to her) but that she went on and on about women being hate-filled and jealous. She targeted women and ignored all the men making negative comments. She was reinforcing in all the little misogynists minds that women are indeed evil to each other when it is simply NOT true!! Almost all the women in my life have been lovely to me and other women. It is the men who have tried to bully me. I'm annoyed at her for doing misogynists' work and attacking women with such a generalisation. She'd never say those things about Chinese people, gay people, disabled people whatever. Yet it seems it is ok to be horrible about women.

But MN is thousands and thousands of people, all different sorts of people.

Your opening post and subsequent ones say shouldn't "MN" have reacted better, as if it is a single entity. But it's not. It is lots and lots of individuals. So saying "MN" should have reacted better is something I don't understand. Your point surely is that you don't like the reaction of some of the women on MN who have posted on this topic. Which is of course quite reasonable.

milobean that is a great post

Thanks SQ. :) You know, I was up last night feeding my little son at different times during the night, and I was reading through some of the blogs and articles people have written about the Daily Mail that were linked to on here, and how people have had entire stories changed and rewritten to fit in with the Mail's misogynist, racist, homophobic agenda. I was shocked, but not shocked too. So I am not really ANGRY with this woman as I don't know for sure how much of the article was really her, but I do know that I would never ever in a jillion years give men who hate women any opportunity to look at me and hold me up as some kind of stupid evidence that women are jealous, vitriolic, spiteful...And she did that!! She played into their hands and then had the nerve to go on This Morning and say she was a woman's woman!!

Well said miloben.

FYI op MN is not a borg-like entity in which we all think of and act as one, it's made up of individuals, plus it's really not shocking that people have responded to this deliberately obnoxious polemic with strong opinions.

That's a good point miloben, I wouldn't be surprised if it's been edited to make her seem as obnoxious as possible.

Thanks Flippinada! ;) (You all have such great names, by the way. I named myself after my two dogs..) The articles in the mail portrayed her as quite ridiculous, but on This Morning I thought she seemed a lot more cautious and measured. One thing I noticed was that her body language around the male presenters was different (more positive) to that around the women, so of course she will get a different reaction.

Her piece was so obviously commissioned (and changed) to provoke women (and men). The Mail is one horrible paper!!

LOL at someone aggressively declaring that their posts are not aggressive.

[bugrin]

There speaks someone who has a subliminal expectation of being taken more seriously than the average woman. [bubiscuit]

If you think my tone is aggressive, Basil, you've lead blessedly sheltered life. or maybe you just need to buy a dictionary.
No problem with strong opinions, flipinnada - strong opinions which betray the fact that you have actually bought into the crazy values set out in the piece you're claiming to criticise probably warrant some examination before you spew them out, though.

Flippinada has only posted twice, and in a very neutral manner.

She's not "spewing" anything.

Telling basil to buy a dictionary. That's not PARD now, is it.

I wasn't saying she was. It was a general remark about those who have been spewing their strong opinions on this topic over the last few days.
I have no idea what "PARD" means, but I would tentatively respond that making unwarranted accusations of aggression isn't really cricket either.

RF maybe you should examine your thoughts, in line with the many posts on this thread, rather than suggesting others do that.

There are a lot of people who have suggested that the mail is the best place to direct ire, I think that is true.

I don't think you are going to get a lot of support in criticising MN "en masse", in the way that you have been doing in your posts. It is simplistic to believe that a bunch of posts represent all women on MN, and rather uninteresting to talk about how stupid women are (precis, that) rather than why this article caused the kerfuffle it did.

It's just very funny to see some bloke come on here and do the lordly mansplaining bit, telling women how to respond to misogyny.

No matter how hard you try, some of you just can't disguise your deep voices, can you?

And you have no idea why you come across as aggressive.

If you were a woman, you'd get it.

But you're not, so doubtless you'll stick around and lecture me some more about why your mansplaining is not mansplaining.

I beg to disagree, OP. You directed a sentence at flippinada and wrote, 'you spew...'

"No problem with strong opinions, flipinnada - strong opinions which betray the fact that you have actually bought into the crazy values set out in the piece you're claiming to criticise probably warrant some examination before you spew them out, though."

Um... Yes I think you were.

The above quote comes across as rather aggressive.

If a lot of people feel that your posts come across as aggressive, then maybe that is something worth thinking about?

I've been accused of many things on here, but never being a man! How funny. I think you probably have to be relying fairly heavily on gender stereotypes yourself to come to that conclusion about a person you can't see, don't you?
Sardine your keenness to misrepresent my posts seems to survive any attempt on my part to explain myself. I'm just going to give up I think, but you knock yourself out. you're clearly getting something out of it.

I'm just reading what you have written, RF. I am not the only one who is uncomfortable with the content and tone of your posts. I do think there is a conversation to be had about this but I think that calling "MN" to account for what its posters writes and using that to generalise about women is a bit off.

There is something a bit off about RF's posts. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if RF is a man.