When I was growing up, my dad often asked "What's in the fridge?" My mother always got aggravated about that and would tell him he could look in the fridge as well as she could.
I grew up and was a full-time wife and mom for a long time. I always knew what was in the fridge. My husband and sons would ask me "What's in the fridge?" It looked like crappy gendered behavior.
I got divorced and got a corporate job and got my sons to take over "the women's work." Once I stopped doing all the grocery shopping and cooking and my son took it over, I began asking him "What's in the fridge?"
As a general rule of thumb, people usually aren't giving an intentionally bad faith reading. They are just talking about how it looks to them from their position in life.
Humans tend to suffer tunnel vision, in some sense. It can be very challenging to get outside ourselves and take on a broader perspective. This is compounded by the fact that most people are raised with either a shame model or guilt model, so they are quick to feel accused, even if that's not what's happening.
I have collegues who use the name of this forum as nickname for stupid in causual discussion "I read it on <name>" is their expression for "stupid". They never read it, don't have kids. They "just know" it is bad.
Trust me, what I am referring to is bad faith reading. Reactions completely disproportionate to content, very apparently hostile reactions from people who did not read it, looking for reasons to mock. Reading attention seeking (or external validation) in literally everything. Treating mild disagreement between members as something horrible (no insults or personal attacks, literally just disagreement).
Side note: I never start these discussions, for some reason people actively used that as conversation starters. Along with dumb supposed funny remarks about women. I know how to stop it now, but it was puzzling and frustrating and shocking after I came back to work. Why are you conversation starting by insulting people like me?
The most apparent public hostility was when said forum was looking for programmer. The Facebook thread under it had people who were neither programmers nor moms talking about supposed super crazy women there. Like "take this job and you will be working for oversensitive anti vaccines crazies". Meanwhile actual forums were like any other and prevalent sentiment was not anti-vacine at all. It wasn't even big topic, trading used baby cloth, craft, cooking and child raising issues were dominant topics.
And meanwhile ani vaccine male collegues gets no pushback whatsoever nor is ever used as example of anti vacine person. Does not fit profile I guess.
I grew up and was a full-time wife and mom for a long time. I always knew what was in the fridge. My husband and sons would ask me "What's in the fridge?" It looked like crappy gendered behavior.
I got divorced and got a corporate job and got my sons to take over "the women's work." Once I stopped doing all the grocery shopping and cooking and my son took it over, I began asking him "What's in the fridge?"
As a general rule of thumb, people usually aren't giving an intentionally bad faith reading. They are just talking about how it looks to them from their position in life.
Humans tend to suffer tunnel vision, in some sense. It can be very challenging to get outside ourselves and take on a broader perspective. This is compounded by the fact that most people are raised with either a shame model or guilt model, so they are quick to feel accused, even if that's not what's happening.