A feminist view on the hack

[PuntasticUsername]

I was just reading the fb comments (yes I know, someday I'll learn) below the ITV News article about the hack and the swatting shite, which was fronted by a photo of MNJustine.

There was precisely one sympathetic remark - from a woman. Otherwise, men are suggesting that getting hacked is our own fault for being a website that is all about slagging off men; women say we're all boring and up ourselves anyway ("airy fairy women with personality disorders"); and most-liked of all is a man's comment saying "Christ, [Justine] looks just like how I'd imagine the typical wet blanket mumsnet user to look".

People really do hate women for having the nerve to get together and have opinions about things, don't they?

I dont see why people get so bent out of shape over FWR boards. I sometimes think maybe its because it jogs peoples conscious too much how much we both men and women are complicit in this mans world.

Bigots are mostly inadequate people. White men who are sexists, racists and homophobes (or all three at once) are always failures. They see women, ethnic minorities and gay people having successful careers, lots of sex, wealth and fame and instead of realising that this is what happens in a reasonably equal world (even though straight white boys still, as a class, get most of everything), start screaming about the straight white male now being the oppressed victim class. Because they can't cope with the fact that they themselves are failures. They yearn for the days when they could feel superior to [insert sexist/racist/homophobic perjorative of your choice], have power over them, be legally regarded as superior to those 'other' people.
Unfortunately, they fail to grasp the fact that even in a world where the default human being is Straight Boy Whitey and they are members of the most privileged race/gender/sexuality in any given situation....
They would still be fucking losers because they ARE losers.

Whirlpool I think they started a thread sometime to see if people on here all had children, and (although it was quite probably a group of them posting to each other in circles) have decided that that thread 'shows' there are not as many parent's on here as people without kids... I very much doubt it has any basis in factual or real terms.

Perhaps it helps some of them to think that we are actually all lesbians who can't attract a mate? Fair pickings or something. Seems to be their mentality.

It's a bit hard to dox anjem Chowdry when his home address and employment status are already known and swatting is equally difficult when he's under consistent observation.

But yes, people who blame others for their disappointing lives are losers.

magimedi - the media coverage I've seen has all led with "founder of MN" rather than "IK's wife". And to be fair, in this occasion the activity has spilled over into JR's private life so does directly impact her husband. Though it would be preferable to be phrased eg "who is married to IK"

Something I've noticed being said often in the many threads about the attacks, and it's often in dismissal to what mnhq have said, "my dh works in IT and he says its this/it's not this" ive seen "my dh works in IT, pm for advice on passwords" when MNHQ have already given good advice on passwords. I've read a poster claim her dh is the top man in the (leading) company he works for, and how he knows how to fix mumsnet so they should contact him.

I dunno, it's just sounds a bit like dismissing all the very good advice from MNers and MNHQ because their DH thinks otherwise, so he must be right and people should listen. I might be overthinking.

I've seen and felt mixed reactions to the attacks online, it's shown some women how valuable MN is to them, and the voice and connections it offers them. They don't want that place taking away and It seems to have got people questioning why some people want it gone.

One the other hand, I've seen how the internet also gives men who don't like women very much a voice too, and they seem to be using that voice a lot. I also wonder how many of the men who abuse and harass women online are not angry lonely bitter men or teenagers in a basement, but husbands, fathers, brothers, what we think of as "normal" men, who wouldn't say what they say online to a woman irl.

Sorry if I've repeated other posters, today's posts have only just loaded.

It could be a man or men doing this but it could also be a woman/group of women doing it and deliberately pretending to be male to try and discredit men and gain more supporters to the feminist cause. Has there been any arrests yet?

it could also be a woman/group of women doing it and deliberately pretending to be male to try and discredit men and gain more supporters to the feminist cause.

Do you mean the shadowy Feminazi? They stole my ice cream too.

It could be a man or men doing this but it could also be a woman/group of women doing it and deliberately pretending to be male to try and discredit men and gain more supporters to the feminist cause. Has there been any arrests yet?

a feminist conspiracy to discredit men hahaha. Everything's the fault of feminists right? Bloody hell.

You're all wrong. It's not men. It's not women. It's the lizard people, ask David Icke, he knows.

" I've read a poster claim her dh is the top man in the (leading) company he works for, and how he knows how to fix mumsnet so they should contact him."

Have you really read that? because it sounds very slightly like something I posted, but different.

1. he's not my dh, he's my dp
2. I said he would phone the number on the dadsec twitter feed (but he is away and I've not mentioned any of this to him, he wouldn't be very interested)
3. I said he works for the market leader in this type of attack - he does, testing and installing firewalls is what he does day-in, day-out
4. I certainly didn't say he was 'the top man' - he isn't, he's a pretty ordinary level consultant
5. I didn't say he knew how to fix MN, nor that they should contact him. I did however say MN may well be speaking to his company, which they may well do. I myself work as a contractor (not IT) at various companies, changing all the time, and have not yet worked for one that didn't use software from the co my dp works for.

It just sounds so similar to what I said, but not quite there........I would find it a bit unlikely that anyone else said anything as similar....

But I certainly didn't say it because I feel men know better than women about this sort of thing nor that the MNHQ advice wasn't good enough. I said it because we were talking about the phone number and I thought dp would probably phone it if he were here. The thing about where he works was an aside.

I know plenty of women who work in IT so there's no way I would suggest men know better.

I post on The Motley Fool, which years ago was one of the first social media/message board sites, but has a financial bias. It has declined since the advent of mse, fb, MN etc, so is no longer what it was. But it is still there.

There are hundreds of boards, many financial, but some social, some just trivial nonsense. There were two boards specifically for women - one was 'investing for women' (barely used) and one was 'the powder room'.

It was an excellent example of what is being discussed here about how men don't like women having a bit of space of their own. The men were always complaining that we had our own space. There were constant threads on the moderator board about it. TMF opened a new board just for men called 'the locker room', but apparently this wasn't good enough. Men were never 'banned' from posting in TPR but if they posted goady stuff they often got deleted and they then all got het up saying they were being 'silenced' or 'banned'. Pretty funny really since women posting on the financial boards often got a very hard time and that the 'jokers corner' board was always full of sexist 'jokes' and when you reported them and they got removed then you got another thread about how the mods were biased etc etc.

Gradually all the women just left them to it. I know barely any regular female posters there now (I still post, mostly on he financial, legal or general board) and we actually set up our own place on fb to chat and all met each other in RL and now have socials etc. I suppose that makes us all man hating lesbians or something. There are over 60 of us. I think some are married.

Saskia, Interesting that the men don't really want to just chat amongst themselves in the Locker Room - they just don't want women to chat amongst themselves at all. Very reminiscent of the FWR section here.

I've noticed the same thing on one of our local fb groups. A post about women-only sessions at a gym attracted a number of comments from men along the lines of it being discrimination, shocking, blatant sexism, SO unfair, you women would moan endlessly if there were any man-only things, why oh why etc etc etc.

But the posts about a men's 10k race and the Man Shed (where they hold regular evening get togethers for men only), haven't attracted a single comment. Not from men who are as worried about the sexism as they were when it was a women's thing, nor from women giving a single flying fuck if these events are set up and run by men and for men.

Weird, huh?

outtogetyou it wasn't you, :) there wasn't any mention of the dh phoning the telephone number on the post I saw, or the dh being away. The one I read said they had spoke to the dh about it. It does sound similar but I honestly did see a post, saying what I said. I'll try to find it again, I don't even remember the name of the poster because I never look at them, but I'll have a look.

The poster I was talking about will have just wanted to help, and that's good, I'd just noticed a lot of "my dh says it's this" "my dh says have you tried this" "my dh works in tech and knew this would happen" and I know that individually people haven't thought "the man knows best" I was wondering if on a bigger scale, it's a subconscious thing? I'm wording myself badly and I'm most likely wrong. I didn't mean to offend anyone and I apologise if I did.

outtogetyou my sister wanted to start a women darts team, she got a load of crap about being sexist and how it's unfair, the same comments had never been thrown to the existing men only club that had been running for years. Men having their own team totally fine, women wanting their own, sexist. My sister tried explaining that if her team was mixed then it's makes more places for men, (who can currently join the existing club) and less for women (who don't have any options atm).

It could be a man or men doing this but it could also be a woman/group of women doing it and deliberately pretending to be male to try and discredit men and gain more supporters to the feminist cause. Has there been any arrests yet?"

What's "the feminist cause"?

What's "the feminist cause"?

It's the relationships board making women think it's ok to leave husbands on spurious grounds such as abuse.

LoveandMonsters That wasn't me, it was outtogetyou :) I was too busy being flippant to make such a sensible post.

But being sensible - I used to run a small newsletter and mailing about DIY for women. I set it up because I discovered women often felt 'talked over' by men on the general DIY forums. It amazed me how many men felt the need to insist they were allowed to join too, and were quite aggrieved when I said no. It seemed as though 40 or so women talking about a 'manly' subject without their input was unbearalbe.

What's "the feminist cause"?

Quite possibly in the minds of some the Ashley Madison hack. The mainstream media did a good job of presenting that one as a gender neutral hack but the group made it clear the point of the spear was focused very much on men. The Mumsnet hack could well be some form of warped pay back to balance the score.

I sincerely doubt it, DadWasHere. The hackers claiming responsibility are 8-channer types who say they did it because MN is anti-father (that old chestnut)- their threads have been found, I've read them.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/mumsnet-hacker-speaks-out-we-6285082

And yes, my earlier post was for outtogetyou

Disregarder - what odds are you offering on the hack being a feminist plot to undermine men? I'm not really into betting but might fancy a flutter on it not being so!

(I nc due to Hackergate btw, because I had used the same username I use on a couple of other sites, not sure I like this one so may change it again soon. It's a song, btw, not a threat!)

Dp says of 'Women's Hour' - "when is men's hour then?".

Our local pub set up a women's group - just a monthly meal for women, set up by a woman, not by the pub. Within a few weeks there was also a men's group. I can't join the women's one as I work away and am never there on the nights they meet, but dp could join the men's one....but hasn't (it's called Grumpy Old Men or something).

I think it just is the case that there are more men in IT. I work in HR (where there are more women....until you get to Director level, then it is all men, who knows where they suddenly appear from) and have worked for two IT companies and been HR support for a number of IT departments, they simply are more often men.

Sadly I heard on R4 (not on Women's Hour) the other day that girls are leaving tech subjects in droves and even fewer are now entering the IT type professions than ever before. I'm not sure what we are doing so wrong to make this be the case.

I suspect the hack is more about 'look, big site, lots of people, lots of publicity' than about it being women or about men feeling women are (ahem) out to get them. But I'd definitely lay money on it being men doing it.