(Just) Out of interest (and with a tad of hesitation, but hey! let's go for it - it's not just any old forum), Sam, do you get aggravated by people seeming to ignore your posts and interacting with other forum members? They are both (probably - they were the last time I rode with them) 'big boys'; let them bicker.
I wasn't going to dignify this with a response, but on the off-chance you are seriously interested in why I do this, it being relevant, and not jumping in to a thread on increasing women's participation in audax to have a pop at me for what you consider is me being judgemental (which, you know, pot kettle etc):
See upthread about how bad actors left alone to continue being bad actors affect the nature of the space.
In case you didn't read that, here it is:
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=119307.msg2627245#msg2627245Yes, this is a thread not a bar. It's a thread specifically about overcoming women's lack of interest in participating or reluctance to participate in an activity that is dominated by male cyclists. It's a thread started by a man questioning the motivation for running a women-only audax in response to someone organising a women-only event. We have discussed a whole bunch of reasons why women might not want to participate. Having men bickering about the validity of those reasons sours the space and makes it less constructive. If left to get on with it without challenge, it suggests we tacitly accept that this sort of behaviour is fine, and we accept men questioning the validity of our experiences.
We do not.
Failure to respond to genuine discussion in favour of personally attacking another poster suggests a complete lack of interest in the topic. In other words, it's just another example of women trying to have a conversation about the barriers they face to participation being derailed by whiny man babies who can't accept this is not for them and they shouldn't join in if they don't like it.
Bad money drives out good.
It's an important concept, because we know that women experience male behaviour differently. There's a concept called
the missing stair. In a social group, someone's behaviour is off-putting, but everyone just kind of learns to deal with it because otherwise, "He's a good guy, you know? He's just a bit handsy."
Before you pounce, I am not equating sexist behaviour in cycling to sexual assault (although I've had some physical contact experiences in bike shops that I would rather have not). What I'm saying is that there are behaviours that men might not notice, or they do notice but don't think it's that bad, which women find incredibly off-putting, even in some cases to the point of not turning up at all. And it's not just individuals:
Everyone who says "I don't like it either, but that's the way things are," and makes no move to question the way things are, is jumping over a missing stair somewhere.
I'm old and cranky, and have put up with this bullshit for far too long, so I will happily call out missing stairs, sexist bullshit, and men trying to derail the conversation by homing in on one specific behaviour out of an entire list of unacceptable behaviours and arguing that it doesn't exist. I will do this for the benefit of women reading, who may have thoughts and wish to participate, but don't want to deal with men telling them they are making it up.
Perhaps it is neither trolling nor a subset of sexist behaviour. Would you similarly be unable to decide if the the two of them self-identified as women?
Your argument is predicated on the assumption that this thread would be derailed by women bickering over whether the issues raised are valid or not.
Do you find that telling little girls that a behaviour you deplore is neither big nor clever? Do you think our two fellow forum members aspire to this 'edgelord' status?
How about just share your excellent views on topic and leave others to err (in your judgement)?
Do you feel your 'big boy' chums need you to defend them? It's a rhetorical question.
If you, or anyone else reading this thread, find that you don't care enough to comment constructively on ways to encourage women to participate, and women's experiences of sexist bullshit leave you unmoved, but you just
have to have a go at individual posters or call into question women's experiences of their lives, maybe think about why that is.
And then don't.
Sam