Though the reality is that I have never been on an email list that was mostly female membership that wasn't poisoned by sexism. There is inevitably one or two men who have figured out how to participate in the discussion without the entire group wanting their head on a pike and you can't disagree with these men because a zillion women will jump down your throat and it ends up being seriously ugly (yes, I tend to be the woman daring to disagree with such men and having other women act horribly to me).
A more likely explanation is that when I was younger, before my health went to hell, I was fairly charming and likable. So I tended to be the center of attention and I think some people were jealous.
It was also a situation where (oftentimes) I would read the initial email and give my advice on their problem without first reading any of the replies and then my advice would change the direction of discussion because it was so much better than what had already been said. I tended to stand out and there were some people just hell bent on trying to prove that I "didn't know everything" and "wasn't above making mistakes" and "wasn't always right" and this kind of garbage.
Because I tended to stand out, the discussion on the list would end up revolving around everyone lining up to either be "for" or "against" me/my position and then I would hand everyone their head as the least worst answer because patting people on the head for agreeing with me was only going to deepen such problems.
I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to let my comments stand on their own and do what I can to refuse to let it become about me. There is no 100 percent cure for that tendency (of people to make things about the person who said them), but I've learned some best practices.
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