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See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

Why do you allow blatant sexism to go unchecked?

30 replies

MissingHaversham · 09/02/2012 12:52

I've read the explanation in the dv thread, but don't really understand the reasoning. Racism is not a personal attack either, but is deleted anyway.

This is the best place I know online, but this policy of allowing hateful posts about women and not tackling the obvious MRA trolls is starting to leave a bad taste. I know you don't comment, SS and all that, but whatever you are doing doesn't seem to be working. The MRA trolls don't even try to pretend they're not anymore because they've realised there are no sanctions.

The feminism board was absolutely battered by this, and individual posters were driven away, but nothing was done. Now it's the relationships board that's in the firing line and, again, it seems nothing will be done.

It seems really inconsistent to run campaigns like the don't sexualise our girls one, and yet allow blatant and aggressive sexism to flourish unchecked on your boards.

Perhaps if you would explain this beyond the personal attack/offence dichotomy, which doesn't stand up anyway, it might help. As it stands, it does feel as though you've rather moved on from behaving as though your community matters to you.

OP posts:
MNHQ
HelenMumsnet · 09/02/2012 14:14

@MissingHaversham

Helen, thanks for your response. One thing I don't understand though is that even when the MRA trolls have announced their plans on their own site/s, i.e. closing down the feminism board, driving named posters away, they were able to go about it anyway. Links were provided, it was pretty obvious stuff.

Yes, that's true. And, trust us, many of those who joined a while back with that purpose clearly in mind or whom we could link clearly back to those published plans were banned. Lots of them. And rebanned when they came back.

It's certainly possible that they may have come back again. Or that there may be new ones of their ilk who have joined. Please don't think we're not looking, checking and acting, where appropriate, when you flag up possible 'contenders'.

StrandedBear · 09/02/2012 13:47

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
MissingHaversham · 09/02/2012 13:32

Bean, that posters first post was "I knew the madradfems would show up with their 2 women a week number. The irony is that fems have the power to stop this.... yet they won't. like they want women to take one for the team" I think that's both an attack and sexist.

Helen, thanks for your response. One thing I don't understand though is that even when the MRA trolls have announced their plans on their own site/s, i.e. closing down the feminism board, driving named posters away, they were able to go about it anyway. Links were provided, it was pretty obvious stuff.

I do get that this is trickier than personal attacks, but believe that it's just as important, if not more so. MN might be famously sharp edged, but this stuff engenders a hostile atmosphere, which is something entirely different.

OP posts:
BeanAboutTown · 09/02/2012 13:17

Which posts on the DV thread (this one?) do you think are sexist?

The one that seems to have caused the biggest reaction is this one:

'Not to sound like an MRA but if you asked all this men why they killed their partner/ex-partner, you could bet many reasons would involve false dv allegations, unfair divorce asset splits and child custody disputes'

Which is wanky, but it's not saying that women 'deserve' DV or other kinds of brutality. It's saying, incorrectly IMO, that a certain dynamic in the access/separation system feeds into brutality.

It's not the same as saying 'black people deserve racist violence' (which would obviously be deleted); it's the same as saying 'if you asked white racists why they carry out violent attacks, you could bet many of the reasons would involve positive discrimination, minority families getting privileged access to state housing etc' - which would be similarly incorrect, but also not deletable.

MNHQ
HelenMumsnet · 09/02/2012 13:14

Hello.

Gosh, we're sorry you feel this way.

And nothing could be further from the truth: our community is central to all that matters to us.

OK, first off, we're assuming you did report these hateful posts to us?

We haven't had any reports from that DV thread since yesterday morning, I believe, but we'll go and take another look now.

Secondly, please don't think that we take thread derailing/trolling any less seriously than personal attacks. We don't.

It's just that personal attacks are (relatively) simply to deal with, once they're reported.

Reports of suspected trollery/derailment take longer to deal with, as we have to investigate and build up a picture of posting history.

As you know, and as we say in our Talk Guidelines, we tend to err on the side of caution and prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until we're pretty sure we can prove otherwise. We acknowledge that this can be pretty frustrating/uncomfortable at times but, the more you report to us, the more quickly, generally speaking, we can get ourselves in the picture.

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