Should Men be allowed in a Women's Forum?

[bcipam]

oh AMEN! i hate all the chest pounding that goes on in the co-ed forums!!!!! give me a break.....

Cali if you recall - alot of that chest pounding you speak of - comes from women!!!

I don't think the art of boasting is limited to women. I'm fairly active on another forum and I have to say even though coed - it's monopolized by 3 maybe 4 women. The guys are secondary. On another forum, where folks are more civilized everyone has a voice. OK some threads - like "should I convert my 1962 whatever to a singlespeed, and what tools do I need to do that" may get more guy input than gal but that's more becasue the guys are just more interested. We women also have our topics and occasionally some poor guy pipes up.

Dianyla said it - anyone can read these post, the posts are not off limit to the general public. We have no secret code cause we are women to get in. If you are sensitive about some of the discussions you probably should not participate cause none of us knows who lurks about.

[roadfix]

I'm a guy and I've been here for several months now. When I visit TE I usually limit myself to visiting and posting mainly in the maintenance and California subforums where my interest lies. I visit other cycling forums as well.....this one just happens to be specifically geared towards women.

[bcipam]

well there you go - who knows, maybe half of the TE crew has a Y chromosone - we just don't know.

Thanks Road for being honest.

[Aint Doody]

And what have the nice men here hurt? C'mon, y'all--get over it.

[donnambr]

Like a true Gemini, my opinions on this are conflicted and certainly not consistent. I am a regular BF participant also, perhaps more often there than here. That's because I love to argue the minutiae of traffic/safety issues. I admit I'm a bit strange/nerdy, so I would never think that would be a popular activity here. That said, there is something so welcoming and accepting about TE, that I keep coming back. Perhaps it's because while I enjoy having both women and men friends, I do love that mostly-girl-only time.

The other reason relates to what caligurl touched upon. Not to sound too much like a college textbook, but some of the "institutional sexism/misogyny" on that other list is way over the top for me - and I suspect that I have a somewhat higher tolerance for it than caligurl. (not meant to be offensive in any way, cg, we all have our limits) I think it prevents many women from participating, and the ones that do are often so thick-skinned, they are rather intolerant of women who are not. I don't think that's right, there many women who aren't particularly outspoken/assertive, and those of us who are can get downright exhausted holding our own constantly. So, I fully support the women-only rule of the women's forum there. It seems like any discussion of a women's health or clothing issue there turns into a thread to post pornographic images of women. There's also the more subtle issue of opinions posted by females from a female-specific perspective being totally dumped on. It even happens with the advocacy & safety topics - crazy! What century are we living in again? I think there are guys on BF who would be great additions to a mostly women discussion, but how to distinguish? You can't on a forum that large, so I think the best policy is to ban all men. Sad, but practical.

So, back to TE. Strangely enough, I am not in favor of limiting participation to women. The badly-behaving men either get bored fast, we women make quick work of them and they leave, or Susan (I presume) makes them leave. Of the men who stay, I have never read a post from them that I found offensive, even if I do not agree with what they are saying. I think Lisa's cat analogy is spot-on in this case: the guys are cautious and tread lightly. I can live with that. My cat certainly approves.