What brought you here?

[CyclingSam]

I have Rachel McKinnon to thank, with a strong assist by Magdalen Berns.

There are some baffling posters, not just on AIBU. But most people are luvverly and very clever and very funny.

Haha I feel like I may have derailed the thread with my snowflakiness! Or maybe feminists are generally made of sterner stuff 😂.
The other thing that got me here is that there are very few opportunities in life - well, my life anyway - to discuss stuff that matters, and I appreciate an intellectual discussion. I'm a nerd and I can never get over how people waft through life without a deep thought in their brains.
I used to feel infuriated by the apathy around the environment, but am shocked to find that I'm even more furious about the apathy around genderism. And the intellectual vacuousness and general thoughtless stupidity.
I have seen many posts mention this, but it's very difficult to have been 'left wing' or 'a hippy' or 'green' and find that the people you thought were your tribe are absolute blithering idiots. And more than that, actually more hypocritical than the 'right-wing' who are at least honest about their venality and hatred of women.
So also I found MN when I was an outcast!

Some of us are just so old that we've stopped letting it get to us. There came a time when I just didn't care any more about eejits disagreeing with me.

@soupycustard embrace your snowflakeness. It gives me an excuse to hug something

But I do agree, when I was cast out (with some of the excellent people who posted upthread) it was lovely that MN took us in.

@soupycustard excellent use of the phrase “blithering idiots” 😁

I know how you feel. It's destabilising to realise people whose world view you identified with and whose opinions you trusted (I'm looking at you Guardian columnists) don't appear to have any awareness of what's happening to women's rights at all.

On the both the topics of groupthink and the rudeness of mumsnet, you can really see how the madness of groupthink and crowd mentality plays out in the wild piles on on mumsnet. Some poor OP will post an AIBU which would probably be a pretty innocuous point if discussed in real life but they'll then start getting a few disagreeing replies, and then a bit more and then suddenly it's a vicious group bash of the OP as people jump on the bandwagon fuelled up by everyone else's previous jabs. I have to admit sometimes I get caught up in it and then have to stop myself and think 'Hold on, why the fuck do I care that poor Aunt Mary is only invited as an evening guest to the wedding and not the actual service'

People also make wild assumptions, don’t read the full thread, don’t read what the Op has actually said, and don’t make any allowances for other shit that may be going on in the background that we know nothing about. But hey, I tend to read the first page, roll my eyes and back away again. That’s not the best of MN. This section, and others like Elderly Parents and the book pages, are where sanity reigns.

The thing I love about MN and this topic - and I identify with what you’ve said about the environment @soupycustard - is that we talk about FACTS. In so many areas of life, people don’t like to look at facts, because they make them uncomfortable and mean they’d have to change their minds and then their behaviour. Such is human nature.

I always find the comment that MN is rude really out of touch and a remark from people who have little experience of other social media.

It's remarkably civil compared to other websites I've used. I came here in part because of that.

I agree. No-one has called me a cunt on FWR.

So far.

I can't remember exactly what we were called on the old place but it likened us to the less salubrious contents of a cesspit. Cesspits were definitely mentioned. This place (not just FWR) was so pleasant by comparison - there was a level of schoolboy spite and a habit of nasty pile-ons and name calling there that I don't miss.

Snowypeaks. You cunt. In the nicest possible way.

(I thought I'd get in there before someone else. Sorry).

The site owner calling us shitstains was definitely a lowlight.

👍😄

I think that was the day I left. I saw that we were called 'shit stains on the site' and thought 'Fuck this, I'm off'. Deleted my bookmark and never went back.

A couple of things brought me here. First, my DD. She had just had her first baby and was on MN. She was talking to me about what was going on with the "Trans thing", and I had not been properly aware of the details. Almost everything was under the radar then and very very rarely in the news. DD was basically saying to me that adults should have choices about how they live their lives within reason, but we should live in a society where they do not feel the need to alter their healthy bodies. I agreed and lurked on MN.

Around this time I was out with friends and my friend's partner asked me in a provoking manner "so I suppose you love Jordan Peterson?" because I am Canadian living elsewhere. I replied, "Certainly not!" and then realised that because I left Canada shortly before JP became well known I didn't really know anything about him. I just knew other 'right thinking' people disapproved of him.

Because l went away and educated myself (ahem) I found out about Bill C 16 which had just been proposed in Canada, and the threat to freedom of expression. Also witnessed the actions of the strong lobby groups promoting Gender Ideology in Canada. JP and Meghan Murphy spoke at the Senate Committee during the consultation but in 2017 the Bill became law.

So I have been on MN from 2015 ish, lurking for the first two years. Then many name changes. This one I adopted after re-lurking for a long time. The crazy lady calling a baby a fascist at the Brighton LWS brought me out of hiding because I was there that day, it was utterly wild, and she was wearing the same Lucy & Yak dungarees that I own, even the same colour. Posters on MN were dissing her dungs as childish and while I was appalled at her actions I had to support the noble dung! They are great for gardening, people. Just saying.

Do they have useful pockets? My regular (very ancient) gardening dungarees are fine until I go to the loo, the chest pocket goes upside down, and everything in it (odd bulbs, seed pods, secateurs) ends up on the ground.

That is an issue. I have developed the habit of removing my clippers and phone pre-loo after a number of tumbling out incidents. More tiresome is winter dungaree wearing when I have a fleece and a cardigan to remove before I can even get the straps down, with my post-menopausal bladder screaming "hurry up!"

But hey, no risk of builder's bum. Sturdy construction. If you have the type with the hammer loop you can use that for clippers (used to, don't now).

I probably had long ago. They were bought for archaeology type digging (proper workwear, better quality, lower VAT) but now get used for gardening and have absorbed so much mulched grass that they have turned from their original (faded) navy to an odd blackish-green. They don't get worn to parties. Useful garments though, won't deny it.

DSDs and the Rio 2016 800m women's final.

A friend gently teased out my thinking and helped me see that being kind only works in one direction. I'm so grateful to her. She put me onto Mumsnet, and I have learnt such a lot through lurking and seeing arguments played out. [My dear friend - if you are reading this, next lunch is on me xx]

The main thing that brought me to understanding the lie that is gender ideology was my friend telling me about self-ID. I thought, as I often do, about the tragic Soham murders. How can it possibly be that we have forgotten that part of the reason Ian Huntley slipped through the (then) CRB net was that he changed his name? How can we not see that this dreadful man would probably think nothing of self-ID? Those poor, poor girls; how can we have moved on, how can we forget them so quickly?

Then other thoughts, other peaking occurred. My friend told me about ERC and Wadhwa. My father sexually abused me as a child, just twice: on the second occasion, I headbutted him so hard that the world span and I saw stars. But so did he. He didn't try that again on me. I don't know about anyone else but have my suspicions, and now he's dead. If a man can do that to his daughter - well, there's no stopping him is there? Identifying is as nothing, isn't it? The GP was hopeless. My friend held me and cried with me at my outrage that I cannot talk to our local crisis centre about this.

Other internet peaking. Reading testimony from a man identifying himself as a woman. Watching people that I know in real life fawn over him - stunning, brave, I understand so much now - in his M&S-stylee twinsets. Seeing him grow in confidence. Seeing him start writing porn about girls the same age as my own daughter. So stunning, so brave. Me: so sick, so glad that someone - a man - had the confidence to call him out when I didn't.

Other internet peaking. A former male friend undergoing "transition" surgery. Him and his trans buddies making lewd jokes about a chew toy, making out it's a sex toy. Me - kindly, gently - explaining that chew toys are used by lots of children and adults with SEND such as those with non-verbal autism. They carry on laughing, making jokes. Where is the kindness? How can they not be embarrassed? The former friend charts his surgery journey. I think: dilation is for midwives, this is grotesque.

Other peaking. My sporting hobby means the world to me. I am not the fastest and I will never go the furthest, but I do keep going and it brings me joy. My governing body haven't yet awarded a woman's prize to a man. But I know how outraged I would be if that happened.

That was long. Wild ride. Madness. Thanks @CyclingSam , I needed to write that down. I'm so sorry for your wife, that sounds like a dreadful experience for her.

She was having an intimate exam with two nurses when he barged into the room and got an eyeful. (He's active on Twitter. She recognised him.) One of the nurses quickly pushed him out; my wife got the distinct impression that hadn't been the first time.

Sigh! My post-menopausal bladder doesn't give warnings like that!

I see it's exactly a year since my wife's extremely unpleasant encounter.

The morning of Judgment Day I was out food shopping. I told her to text me with the news; I could have checked myself, but wanted to hear it from her. So it came to pass that around 10 am in a SE market town a man could be seen dancing a jig in a Waitrose parking lot.

Oh to have been in at the Supreme Court in close proximity to some of the women I hold in such esteem! Weather permitting I'm planning on going to Let Women Speak next week at Reformers' Tree, and would love to meet any other Mumsnetters also making the trip.