I am a member of ‘Blokes Advice’ and it’s only a minority ruining it for everyone

THE secret Australian Facebook group Blokes Advice has come under fire this week. But it is not all what it seems, says this group member.

Posts like this in the group are not on at all.

OPINION

I ADMIT I enjoy pictures of scantily-clad women and crude memes as much as the next guy, but graphic descriptions of rape, revenge porn and violence against women is where I draw the line.

I am, of course, referring to the “secret” Facebook group Blokes Advice for which I am member — or at least I will be until I am removed for writing this article.

After starting in Queensland in May, the group now has more than 200,000 members from across the country.

I was added by a mate during an afternoon on the beers, when he told me I would thoroughly enjoy the wonderful world known as Blokes Advice.

The group does have some outrageously hilarious content, so to some extent he was correct.

After all, I was raised in a generation idolising Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass movement, so just try to convince me watching the antics of drunk lads or tradies using contact cement to heal wounds isn’t hilarious.

Boys will be boys is one of the truest idioms in existence and I make no apologies for being highly irresponsible and boisterous.

However, this is far from a plea of ignorance.

Everyone that knows me personally is well aware my humour is borderline from time to time, but this doesn’t mean I don’t know when something is totally unacceptable.

Advice on how to force a woman into having anal sex and invitations to bombard women with porn are prime examples of this.

Writer Clementine Ford came under fire after she shared some of the images on her Facebook page in the hope of exposing the men involved in the page’s most vile posts.

My biggest grievances with the group are the d**kheads using the platform for some sort of vigilante justice.

A common occurrence in the group is when a member of Blokes Advice will name and shame someone, before asking the legions of men in the group to inbox them with hate.

Sadly, large numbers of sheep in the group will comply — even posting screenshots of the abusive message they have sent in the comments section of the thread.

I have witnessed this happen to members who have invited girls into the group — heaven forbid — or for blokes wanting to get back at their ex-missus after a nasty breakup.

Honestly, I expect abuse will likely come my way for writing this article and I welcome it because it will prove my point earlier that the men acting like this are absolute d**kheads.

And those members endorsing rape, revenge porn and violence against women are a whole other breed above these lads, which requires a larger string of profanities not appropriate for a mainstream news outlet.

However, I don’t want this seething disapproval to be confused.

Unlike other critics of the page, I don’t want to see it removed from the internet forever with all members to be burnt at the stake.

While everyone is quick to point out the minority of members who are sad excuses for men, the group also does provide an outlet for blokes to bond with each other.

That’s more like it... this is what the majority of the posts are like in the group.

The majority of the posts made in the group are just males doing what we do best — sharing pictures of cars, barbecues, man cave setups and home bars.

In fact, in the past day alone there have been posts of fathers-to-be asking advice on what to expect from other members of the group and others showcasing their beards.

There has also been a man standing in front of the fish he caught with a post that said he was “sick of seeing slayed women”, before asking the guys to send pictures of their fishing hauls.

These posts are by and large what dominate the group, yet they are not what is highlighted in the media reports.

Of course I would like to see the knuckleheads causing trouble removed from the group, but I think it’s just a case of accepting the good and the bad of a page, which at its very core encourages blokes to do what blokes do.

It’s these Aussie blokes sharing positive and funny posts that have kept me in the group and I even feel some of the outrage over other posts is political correctness gone mad.

That said, I still stand by my earlier point that the site does have some problematic members.

If this article is enough to get me removed from the group and bombarded with hate mail, it’s probably for the best.

These narrow-minded wankers that think you have to be a misogynistic keyboard warrior to be a “bloke” in this modern day world, need to wake up to themselves.

Continue the conversation on Twitter @mattydunn11