I am going to second the anti-female thing on this blog. I enjoy this blog, but there are a lot of close minded people here.
Example: here is a quote from another post today. It was discussing the value of diamond rings for weddings.
"I find that women generally need to this sort of thing though, for their own security and status in society."
That's pretty terrible, and should be treated as such. Nevertheless, generalizing it to the whole community is taking it a bit too far, I feel. Especially when it came about because a new mod moved a topic when someone asked, didn't realize it was an issue, and moved it back and apologized for it, and stated he didn't mean anything by it.
I feel that as a whole, women on the MMM forum are treated as issues or barriers to FI. Like "I'd have so much money if it wasn't for the wife, amirite?!" It's absolutely marginalizing. Perhaps that is a better way to express my feeling than saying there's a non-female friendly vibe, but I don't think saying there's a non-female friendly vibe is over the top.
There are threads like that, yes. There are also threads where women go on and complain about their husbands having secret credit card debt, not sticking to the budget they agreed on, refusing to cancel the TV due to sports, etc.
I don't feel like that's anyone marginalizing the other gender in general, just ranting and blowing off some steam due to frustration with their significant other, regardless of gender.
There are also threads where people talk about and appreciate their significant other and their efforts, regardless of gender. As I said about five months ago, in the
Most Mustachian Thing You Have Ever Done thread: "Marrying someone even more Mustachian than me."
So again, I feel like generalizing that to the whole forum based on a few threads is a bit over the top, especially due to the fact that there are threads complaining about - and praising - both genders.
I may just interpret it differently than you though.
given that a moderator decided I was being negative and should be ashamed of myself for voicing my opinion.
Nowhere did I say you should be ashamed of yourself. You absolutely should not be ashamed of yourself for voicing an opinion.
I said it was a shame that you decided to take the moving of the post in such a negative way. Something being "a shame" is not the same as saying someone should be "ashamed." (I just double checked to make sure autocorrect didn't change my "what a shame" to "ashamed." Nope. Not sure how you got that.)
Also, FWIW, I was speaking as a person, not a moderator. I try to do fancy bolding and such when I speak as a moderator (sometimes I do forget though. I apologize. I am a person, not just a moderator).
I agree that the threads that blame women are unfortunate. As are the ones that blame men. Or anyone else, for that matter. I actually feel this board is fairly enlightened on the topic, though to be fair I don't read every thread, and the ones like diamond wedding ring ones go completely off my radar unless someone clicks "report post." It's not something that interests me. Had someone reported the post quoted above, I'd have gone on and put on my mod hat and told them not to be a jerk, which they were being.
As I said in the "Forum Tone" thread a few weeks back, it's up to users to be positive and report things that they feel cross the line. Apparently no one did, with that instance. What a shame*.
(*Note: no one, save perhaps the poster who said the quote, should feel ashamed.)
There ARE times when misogynistic comments are made.
This happened in a thread three days ago. Someone reported it, and I made a comment regarding marty's comment, asking people to ignore it, and making it clear that sort of comment was not okay.
I'm not sure how much more can be done if posts aren't reported, a new moderator isn't given the benefit of the doubt, and people just want to argue.
/shrug
Again, I see it as a shame.