Why a lot of women don't come on the feminism threads...

[Scarletohello]

So I posted this question earlier, why don't more women come on these threads ( considering how many women are on MN)

The replies saddened me. Are we doing something wrong? I remember a thread some time ago asking how many women lurk on the feminism threads but never post. I was shocked by how many women read these threads but didn't feel able to join in. I don't think feminism has to be particularly intellectual and I would like to be able to educate more women about feminism, how it affects women in many different areas of their lives, offer support and talk about what we as women can do about it.

Please have a read of this thread and tell me what your thoughts are. I want us to be as inclusive as possible as it affects us all...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2222959-To-be-a-bit-dismayed-if-4-million-women-visit-this-site-why-are-there-so-few-posts-on-the-feminism-threads

Bella I live in a conservative place where people say weird shit like that all the time. I used to challenge it but made myself unpopular so now I just smile and nod and come on here in the evenings for a bit of sanity.

Like anyone, I feel annoyed or upset when my very real experiences are dismissed or minimised.

That annoyance is compounded by suggestions that I have actually no 'right' to feel that way because I am oversensitive or banging on about the past.

I have tended to steer clear of the feminism boards, not simply because of that very unpleasant experience but because my perception over the years has been that the 'feminism' discussed meant nothing to me or my life, too much intellectual masturbation and naval gazing.

It made me impatient. I think I covered a lot of that ground in the thread about sex and disability. Speaking as a disabled women, again I felt shocked by the level of hostility from self identified feminists, some of whom were saying that disabled people were not entitled to any form of sexual expression if that meant paying prostitutes. And that any disabled person who wanted to enter into a contractual relationship to secure sex was part of human trafficking.

The volume dial very quickly seems to go up to 11.

I don't think there is a solution, I wasn't asked for one and I can't think of one to offer. The best thing is probably for me to stay away. I find too many of my buttons get pushed.

I've just looked this up, as it stuck in my mind. It was the last few pages of the transphobia thread in July.

Spero, sorry to butt in but I was posting on FWR during those times and I think it became clear on the final car crash threads about splitting the boards that there was a fundamental problem with the way in which posters were being treated. No one who was part of it minimises the damage that was done. It was a poison as Justine said at the time, that required to be lanced.

But you've been told that most of those posters have moved on, we can't apologise on their behalf.

Current posters have said they would actively welcome you, that they enjoy your posts and your activism. They don't have the same mentality to hunt you down and persecute you just because they disagree with you. FWR can only benefit from more and varied voices. If it really isn't for you then fair enough but please know that it's a very different place than it was during previous periods.

I am not an academic. Nor am I stupid. I might well have spoken down to people. I apologise unreservedly if I have, or you feel I have spoken down to you. I shall be more circumspect and nice in future.

Thanks Blistory - I think the problem was that fresh off the Dittany thing came the sex and the disabled thing and then some hideous transphobic car crash... and I have become oversensitive.

Perhaps I should go back to quietly lurking for a while and see if I can become desensitivised...

I agree Buffy

It is complicated. Too complicated for me at present.

I fell extremely foul of the 'old' FWR, Spero. I'd say it's absolutely true that it's changed for the better.

I do feel you've been 'dismissed' on this thread, though. You shouldn't have been. I hope recent posts have set your mind at rest, at least somewhat.

I also feel that those of us who aren't steeped in Butler, Dines &co & co, have been somewhat gently dismissed as well. That said, it's a very long time since I started a thread in FWR or worked my arse off to keep it real. It's just easier to address women's issues on other boards: my hands are up.

Feminism is a hard thing to live with in 2014. Either you spend a lot of time (like me) reacting to the way that the world still seems, underneath everything else, very anti-woman. Or, if you don't look underneath the surface equality, it seems irrelevant and people like me seem boring or a bit deranged.

Buffy that is interesting. And probably hits the nail on the head for my problem. I see a lot of inequality and suffering that relates to being poor, or being disabled. Hence why I identify as a humanist and find myself actually getting quite enraged by some feminist debate when the person complaining about some anti woman atrocity actually occupies a relatively privileged and safe part of society.

I remember the disability and right to a sex life threads. I think even if you got similar responses today they would be more respectful of your life and circumstances but I can see why it was an emotive time for you and understand your reluctance.

Thanks Garlic, I do appreciate that things have changed for the better.

But the answer as to why more women don't want to post on the feminism boards isn't hard to find - and it isn't always something that can be dismissed as 'their problem'.

Feminism is a hard thing to live with in 2014.

OK, I'll say it! You're overthinking, Buffy. Stop trying to live 'with' feminism, and put that effort into living it. You've got so much to contribute - and, I'll say this because I'm older & bigger than you - so many little personal glitches to clear up.

In therapy, there's a constant alertness to patients intellectualising their issues instead of facing them. Intellectual approaches to those are encouraged for wider context and for perspective shifts, but never as a distraction from the problems in the room.
Just a thought ... possibly an unwelcome one, but hey.

"I did therapy once. I intellectualised it. "

Colour me shocked, Buffy...

"I did therapy once. I intellectualised it."

Colour me shocked, Buffy...

Ignore my other comment, Buffy. Having a very tiny little crush on you, I've probably remembered more passing details than I should have, and it would be both pathetic & irrelevant to start raising them now

Now I'm all alone here (hahaaar! The Pragmatic Feminist strikes at midnight!!) I'll have another go at this 'brainyspeak' problem. I've just seen this amongst the posts I gave up reading in transphobia thread 4:

A valorisation of the "common sense" / easy to understand / "plain speech" prose style can itself sometimes be a rhetorical way of dismissing anything that isn't immediately intuitive to the layperson. It's also a very Anglocentric and masculine tradition.

Right. So here we have a nice, clean example of academic defensive snobbery. The big assumption here is that plain language degrades subtle thought. I call bollocks - in Anglo-Saxon and, yes, I'm biased because I was an early Plain English campaigner/translator. The English language is one of the world's most versatile: having grown through selective linguistic adoption from our various invaders, it offers exceptionally useful arrays of verbal concepts.

To value plain speech is, indeed, Anglocentric. Our language's facility of expression is envied by those whose languages must borrow from ours, stick five words together to describe a concept, or fiddle around with long-winded metaphors to get a thought across. As to plain English being masculine - no, it isn't! It's just English.

If you're discussing something that isn't immediately intuitive to the layperson, in language that's inaccessible to the layperson, you've chosen to exclude 'laypeople' from your discussion.

When you fully understand an idea or theory, it's not hard to explain it in everyday English. In order to do so in 'teaching' mode, you have to go back to first principles and it takes longer; sometimes a lot longer. The real question is whether you want to do this, at the given moment. There's nothing wrong with choosing not to. There is, however, a great deal wrong with choosing not to and then criticising your listeners for not understanding or engaging - and a whole world of wrong in assuming that your ideas are so delicate, they can't even be expressed in everyday English.
The first is arrogant; the second elitist; both are exclusionary.

Again - it's lovely to read so many enthusiastically clever women exchanging ideas! It's significantly less lovely when those women treat differently-educated women as inferior, too dumb to bother with, or irrelevant. Clearly this does happen, as so many Mumsnetters repeatedly make the same complaint.

I'm not trying to tell you (brainboxes) what to do. I'm rejecting the assumption that feminism must be done in an educationally exclusive manner, or that it's too complicated for everyday women to understand (!!)
As I've said, I find it much easier to raise women's issues on other boards. I will continue to do so, and will still pop in here if I think I can add something.
This is just my last blast on the anti-elitist front ... for now, hahaaar

garlic

did I get it right that you are against "management speech"?

if yes, I'm with you.
I'm not English and although I'm frequently complimented on having an excellent command of the English language, I have to admit that I'm often flummoxed & overwhelmed by complex and unnecessary terminology. (see what I did there? )

it can get boring. I'd rather just play Scrabble.

Management-speak has been demonstrated to potentially impede both downstream and upstream communication flows to a high-factor significance level, yes, Zing.

gotcha

Hahahaha!

I wish I had read that 20 years ago.

This is a fascinating thread and I'm really grateful to all those who have contributed as I have tried to understand why I so rarely post in FWR.

I walked away fom the whole section for a while after Dittany and several cheerleaders laid into me on a couple of occasions. I'm trying to figure out why I still hesitate and rarely post.
This thread is really helpful in clarifying my thought.

I think one of the most significant differences between the way society views men and women is that any one woman seems to represent all women while men just represent themselves. So, if a woman screws up, it's because women can't hack it, if a man screws up, it's because that individual man screwed up.

The same goes for feminism on Mumsnet. "This poster is a feminist. I didn't like something she said, so I won't identify as a feminist" To reject the whole movement because you don't like one small aspect of it seems to be to be an odd thing to do. To reject a whole section of Mumsnet because of the behaviour of one poster who hasn't been around for 5 years seems a huge shame, and I don't think people would do the same for any other subject. There are, for example, both Christians and atheists on here who behave like aresholes. I don't think anyone says "I wll no longer be a Christian/ atheist because of that person"