Any women members left?

Jerry,

Not just mansplaining but there is a general you are doing it wrong sentiment around here. Maybe I’m reading it wrong but it feels so negative sometimes rather than helpful.

however jerry, I very much appreciate your assistance. Please take that in the heartfelt honest way it was intended.

Thank you for the welcome!

I appreciate the comment MTN

What seems like harmless juvenile humor to me isn’t interpreted by others the same way.  It’s so difficult to know how others interpret what I’m saying. I assume it’s the same for everyone else.

Maybe it’s that writing a line or two of text on the internet is open to different interpretations.  You really need to have two way communication face to face to understand people.

It’s harder to see mansplaining if you haven’t experienced

So easy for men to mansplain without realizing they’re doing it

I saw a piece on TV of a black man and a white man bicycling across the country.  At one point a police car was following them for a while.

Afterwards, the black man said that it made him fearful.  Too many cases like that resulted in the police hassling (or worse) the black man for no good reason.

The white man said he hardly noticed it.  No experience of being hassled by the police.

I think the white man appreciated the problem more after this experience and talking about it.

Over where I live, I see a lot of women backpacking. My guess is on the range of 30-50%. They are almost always young, in their 20s and 30s. A substantial percentage of them are traveling ultralight. I’d wager to say that at least half of them have HMG packs.

I think it’s just the demographic here. Younger people gravitate to other forums… Facebook, Instagram, etc. I suspect that a lot of them join women-only groups because some backpacking and hiking forums have become quite toxic. Ironically, BPL is probably one of the least-toxic forums out there, probably because it’s less of a free-for-all and more of a community. But forums have become clunky and outdated, although I have found them to be far more useful that nearly all other venues.