Men posting on ladies only interest groups

[Dahliasandpansies]

I like trail running and am a member of a Facebook group which specifies 'ladies only'. Along comes a man, does a post about talking about wearing make-up whilst running. And everyone just goes along with it – tips, preferences etc. Why this continual insertion into our spaces? I wanted to post this but my Facebook page bio refers to my profession and company.

It's been going on for so long with the same modus operandi that I wonder if it isn't the same group of men in quite a few of these female only fb groups. Specifically searching for anything created with this intent.

If women were invading lodge meetings, men only golf days and tournaments, make poker shindigs, the whole phenomenon would have been crushed before it went anywhere.

Women? The transmaidens invite the men in.

I wish all these well meaning women knew they were assisting a fetish.

Transmaidens - yes that sums it up. The ‘pick me’ women who will be perfectly normal until a man walks in. Idiots.

I think people, both men and transmaidens, deliberately target the groups which say they are women only.

It validates them to feel they are being accepted as women and makes them feel more female specifically because it's a female-only space that they wouldn't be allowed to enter if they were a male.

Therefore, since they have been allowed to enter this space reserved for females, this serves as their evidence that they are female and definitely not male.

They don't care if it's female socialisation and Stonewall grooming that's making women feel they must pretend - all they care about is that it's happening and it feeds their own desire to be treated that way.

They will often refer to their membership of their "women's running group" in other contexts to (1) gain access to further women-only spaces by shaming other gatekeepers into being as inclusive as their running group and (2) convincing other people to perceive them as a woman even though they're obviously not by evidencing that other people (the single-sex women's running group, where biology obviously matters) have managed to overcome their prejudices and view them as female, so you should too, emperor's new clothes-style.

It's like anything in life - getting a job in a new career, being accepted by a new social circle when you move to a new area, etc - once you've got your foot in the door, it opens plenty of other doors for you. You just need someone to show some goodwill and vouch for you in the first place, and then after that, the world is your oyster.

You’ll find some answers in the video shared in this the OP of this thread @Dahliasandpansies

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4854601-helen-joyce-with-megyn-kelly-i-could-never-imagine-such-depravity

But basically anything set up exclusively for women will attract a certain kind of man for particular reasons.

I've felt like this several times in different equivalent situations but then I do this...

1. Count the number of supportive commenters. Not the number of comments because it'll be the same few people making multiple supportive responses.

1. If whichever social media allows, look up the number of people the original TW/TRA post was read by.

1. Remember that nearly all the remainder are, like you, silently thinking "ew wtf" but not speaking up. Like you.

1. For goodness' sake, stop saying things like "omg why are all these women transmaidens" or some other misogynistic crap. Because the vast majority are just like you, grossed out but not saying anything.

Ps I know you haven't actually said that about the so called "transmaidens". That was others on this thread I'm dort of berating I suppose.

Also, I'm not blaming you for not speaking up. Just reminding you that others aren't speaking up for similar reasons

I agree others will be thinking the same as you but scared to speak up. Isn’t it ridiculous that so many of us feel unable to question a male invading a females space.

Could you contact whoever runs the group and ask them to specifics if it is a single sex group or not? If so they should be dealing with it.

Next he’ll be asking for tips on how to deal with his period. Weirdo 😡You need to speak up.

I'm on a fashion/clothes FB group that has three men on it. They post the most photos, and yes, lots of (transmaidens) women telling them they look amazing.

I'm in another similar group that has managed to avoid this, there must be some sort of vetting beforehand.

Men are the most competitive.
Have to be the strongest, the fastest.
The best at everything.
And now seemingly the best "women".

In the dim and distant past in the leftist movement it was the men who did all the running. You could call these the alphas, the boots first strikers, the smoke filled back rooms organisers. The supreme Marxist philosophers and anarchists.

Sure women could have their little side projects, their emancipation, their abortion and contraception. Just as long as they made the tea and sandwiches, and bandaged up the casualties at Orgreave etc.

For every one Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams, there were a hundred Tony Benns and Harold Wilsons and Bob Crows etc.

As the socialist movement then hit final defeat as the Berlin Wall fell, it coopted into capitalism, to fight the new "class" war, the intersectional one. Now it's a fight for labels, for BLM and for trans.

However now the alpha men have become the beta men. Those men who were never respected back in the day down the pubs and union meetings and anarchist back alleys and bedsits and back rooms.

Now the beta men hold sway, they are the ones donning masks and umbrellas and TWAW placards. And the ones invading your spaces.

The men on the left back in the day didn't give a shit about women's rights as they tried to take the boss class down. And they don't give a shit now as the betas have become the face and spirit of the new left movement.

Now instead of picking a fight with the bosses, they're picking a fight with the established groups holding back the new victims of the class battle, the trans.

And who's now the equivalent of the boss class who need to be pulled down for the new class liberation? Do I really need to say?

Right now, the betas get waved thru by the new intersectional warfare gatekeepers, including more women than you could ever imagine.

This is as fucked up as fucked up can be.

Thanks so much. I've emailed the admin to let her know how much I love the group and is their a policy on this. Membership is about 30,000, but 270 people have still posted. They're not even in their bloody run kit!

Same on a wild swimming group I follow with lots of 'you go girl' from handmaidens. Infuriating

The men win twice over. They get to practice bullying in plain sight with the support of so many transmaidens. Could they ever have imagined this outcome?

And they also get their rocks off knowing they live in the heads of so many women whom they know they've pretty much ruined so many experiences for, either unhappily still engaging, or unhappily pulling out.

The only downside for them would be if every woman pulled out, so all that would be left would be them.

I guarantee there'd be no fun for the new women if all these clubs ended up with only new women in them.

Guess what? The clubs would all cease.

Like a scorched earth policy.

I'm in a women only Facebook group in Edinburgh, it's mostly general chat but because it is very specifically women only there are sometimes posts about quite personal things that I believe the posters feel confident in posting because it's a closed and women only group. However there are at least two trans women (one might be NB I'm not 100% sure but they are ab infamous Edinburgh university student) in it. They lurk and rarely post anything at all - seems quite different to the experience in many other groups. I'm not sure why.

The only downside for them would be if every woman pulled out, so all that would be left would be them.

You mean like what happened to this thread when a man arrived to educate us all?

Can you not see the irony of a man (albeit a GC one) coming in so heavy-handed on a thread started by a woman about men invading women's spaces?

I know you mean well and want to help, but I'm guessing that as a man, you haven't spent too much time in women's single sex spaces yourself.

Quoting women's posts as if you are specifically intending to engage with their points and then continuing to post your own thoughts that only very tangentially relate to what the women said is exactly the kind of thing that transwomen do in women-only spaces. It's all about them and the women are merely props for their validation and to provide an audience and a reflection of their self-perception.

I wouldn't expect you to be aware of this, as there's no reason you would know what goes on in women-only spaces or how the dynamic changes when a man enters. But I think now is as good a time as any to mention it, given the subject of the thread.

RealityFan, just to add, I nearly didn't say anything as I know you contribute to many of the same threads as I do, and I really value MN and the community here (including your input, most of the time!).

So I had to think twice about whether it was worth risking losing a community I value so highly to say what I really think and potentially upset people, or whether it's best to just let the man do his thing and stay silent, even if it's jarring, in order to keep the peace and so I don't lose out on the community altogether.

This choice felt exactly the same to me as the times transwomen have elbowed their way into women's groups I previously cherished. And it makes sense that it would feel the same to anyone who believes that transwomen are men, because it is the same.

So, I'm defacto being compared to, or am directly equivalent, the the male interloper in this trail running group. Not the intention.

If MN really wants to become a female only forum, no argument from me, and I'll sling my hook. If I'm being criticised for heavy handed monopolising, I don't think I agree (if I did, I wouldn't do it).

Seems like a situation someone like me can't escape being tarred with a particular negative.

I didn't know the commenter above was a man but I do dislike the notion that women ought to withdraw from things that men have invaded - sacrifice their own membership of whatever it is. Like when people say female athletes ought to withdraw from competitions if they let men into them. And the idea is that's how the competition will end. Er, no. Why should women give up their livelihoods or hobbies or whatever just because men invade them. Maybe they should be stopped by the organisers. Or, in the case of sports, spectators should stop attending. Why is everything the female victims' responsibility to fix? What rubbish

My comment was totally ironic. Of course not. I'm saying at this rate, theoretically women pulling out leaves these groups only populated by the new women. And that these misogynists would hate that.

I’m happy to report that on a women’s golf group on FB a bloke started offering advice to female golfers.

Clearly he didn’t get the gushing responses he wanted and/ or was told to piss off. He posted a woe-is-me flouncing message and left. 😀

It’s quite difficult enough for women to be involved in sport without men butting in.

Alright, I didn't realise your comment was ironic. Because I've heard many people (men and women) say that female athletes ought to resign in protest. It's all very well to say. But it's putting the responsibility of fixing the problem onto the victims of the problem, to their immediate detriment.

I realise that wasn't your intention, which is why I thought you might be receptive to my pointing out how it can come across to people who haven't been socialised as male and how our perspectives on this might differ.

If I thought you were some sort of troll (playing a weird long-con), I would have just ignored your posts, but since I get the impression you are genuinely interested in helping women and are angry about the situations we face too, I thought it was worth mentioning as it seems to me that, never having been a woman, you couldn't possibly appreciate the female perspective on men in women's spaces, for obvious reasons. In my opinion, your comments on this thread understandably demonstrate a lack of awareness of the nuances of the female perspective, and a lack of awareness of how similar your manner is to transwomen's behaviour when they come into female spaces, which is especially ironic given that your point often centres around the fact that you know how transwomen think because they're male.

I'm not saying sling your hook at all, more like "read the room". You know what it's like to be a man, yes, and of course there are many contexts where that can be an extremely helpful perspective. But you don't know first-hand what it's like to be a woman whose valued single-sex spaces are being invaded by men.

So when women are lamenting about losing their spaces, it might just be worth considering whether that's a thread that really needs a man's opinion (even if it is to say how selfish and insensitive some men can be) or whether, given the issue being discussed, it might be more helpful and supportive to step back and allow women some breathing space to discuss the issue without men offering yet another male perspective...on a thread discussing how annoying it is that women can't have anything without men inserting themselves into it.

Obviously post where you like and say what you like, but my personal opinion is that it would probably be more helpful to women to have some space where women's perspectives can be centred on MN without having an angry man come on to tell us we're all screwed.

There are plenty of other threads that focus on the political/strategic side of things where your perspective as a man is very helpful. It's just that a man wading into this particular issue tends to exacerbate the problem for the female posters involved as, regardless of intention, it's still a man wading into a women's space (the women's space I'm referring to being a discussion about men in women's spaces specifically, not the whole of FWR or MN).

So even if you're on this thread to say how awful and selfish it is for men to come into women's spaces, it's worth keeping in mind what you're doing as you condemn others for it. I know you don't want to be tarred with the same brush as transwomen, but as you consistently point out, you are all men, and you do share many traits that can be detrimental to women.