As you have probably guessed by now I am a big fan of a certain band and a certain singer… and through being a fan I have met some wonderful people and made some life-long friends. Some of these friends are friends in the real world, some are on-line friends I have ‘met’ on forums and Facebook pages, and here on WordPress.
Now one of the Facebook pages that I follow has a name which might loosely indicate that it is a page mainly for women, but to my mind that did not in any way say that men should not enjoy it, read the posts, make comments… it nowhere said ‘NO MEN TO READ THIS, NO MEN TO JOIN THIS GROUP’ and why should it? Considering the sort of band it is and the character of the singer who we admire and enjoy, why should we not want to share our thoughts, photos and silliness? Many men wouldn’t be interested anyway, but what is the harm in those who are? They only want to share the fun.
If you extended this, would it mean that men shouldn’t listen to ‘Women’s Hour’ or buy women’s magazines, or be interested in hair and fashion and make-up? I didn’t use the title of this blog lightly; some of my best friends are men, in fact my very closest friend is a man. If you extrapolated this in a wider sense, what other groups would be banned from sharing something they enjoy? What would be next on this Facebook page? Who else wouldn’t be able to ‘join’ the group? People under thirty because most of the group are over thirty? People who don’t live in the USA because most of the group do live in the USA?
It is nonsense… if they don’t want men in the group, if they want to exclude men because of their gender… then say so loud and clear and I will leave the group because it’s not the sort of place I want to be.
Lois Elsden 