Serious issues with L&D Forum

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Personally I support a women only forum, because I think women still experience pressure and being silenced in mixed spaces; society has not yet progressed to a point where a woman speak without what she says being heard through a filter of gendered expectations that have their roots in the still-quite-prevalent assumptions that stem from the earlier male dominated culture and institutions. Men often seem not to realise the impact and reality of gendered presumptions about how women should be, live and express themselves, and the influence of these old inherited and enculturated ideas often seems to operate at a subconscious level, and men are not yet taught to be aware of it. I am not blaming men for this; it's simply where culture is at, at this point in time. Women have made great steps toward equality though there are still residues which function as pressures to inhibit equality of self-expression.

The particular value for women of a women-only space is that women feel less pressured to conform to these old stereotypical ideas of how women should think, perceive and (particularly) express themselves.

I know many men still find this hard to understand, partly because they have no direct experience of the kind of silencing, talking over, ridicule, discrimination and judgment that women in our culture have always experienced, and the impacts of the conservative social and cultural assumptions of paternalism and patriarchal ideas of gendered behaviour are not yet fully behind us at this point in the history of Western culture.

I want women to feel safe on WP and I don't think that is always the case, there is more latent (and sometimes blatant) intimidation than we like to acknowledge as it is an uncomfortable issue for both sexes.

There's no such thing as a "safe place" on a public forum. Period. The women's forum can't be anything more than a place where the topic is on woman-specific issues. If you want a private area you need to message each other, or set up a chat group on some other place, like Skype for instance.

Personally, I've been trying to avoid L&D for the very reasons that Alex cited.

It's just a few bitter members that cause the problems for everyone else. Dealing directly with those members should alleviate the problem. Is there a way to ban individual members from individual fora? If so, then this tactic could also be applied to those members who trash and troll the Women's Forum too.

Perhaps access to certain forums could be scaled according to number of posts, or granted/denied by consensus of the moderators.

For example, GAD would be reserved as the default forum that is open to everybody.

L&D, PP&R, and WF would be reserved for the "Elite" members, as long as they contribute something other than misandry, misogyny, and bitter rants about how they blame the opposite sex for ignoring them.

Everything else would be reserved for those who have passed their probationary period of X-number of posts.

Personally I fail to see any problems on L&D forum. Really.

I think we should use this thread for what it was intended for and not as an opportunity to vent or fulfil other agendas.

I honestly think most of the problems in L&D can be fixed with stricter moderation tools. Unfortunately those do not seem to be available....seriously Alex, even basic and free forums offer these tools!! Is it a case of money? I'm sure we could all pitch in. What is the obstacle here exactly?

Until a more advanced set of forum tools and heck different forum type comes in I think it's safe to say the only other alternative to alleviating problems here is stricter moderation and more rules. In short - thanks to the minority who are ruining it for everyone else.