Thoughts on MNHQ's response to the Spartacus thread

That's another great post Hairy.

Just over a year ago I was one of the people reading MN and rolling my eyes at 'yet another tedious trans thread' and thinking that none of it affected me. Then I read a Trans thread that changed my opinion. The tone was bullying and aggressive. It came across very entitled and it was clear that MN has a very tough job managing this issue.
I was shocked by the tone of the thread and it led me to exploring the issues more closely. I still don't fully understand everything, I still can't argue my points very well but I strongly believe that this does affect all women and girls. And we can't allow ourselves to be silenced.

I empathise with different sectors of society. But I'm not going to stand by and let other oppressed groups and their hard of thinking apologists shit all over my rights as a woman, as you'd like me to do and you do, Fruitcider. And that goes for cologne and Rotherham as much as for the trans agenda.

I really want to believe that MNHQ have come to the realisation that transactivism is a huge threat to women's rights and that is why they resolve to allow this space to remain one of the only spaces to permit debate.
I really want to believe that they are playing along with TA pressure by just the bare minimum to avoid getting sued, or shut down.
I really want to believe that their heart isn't in their repeated insistence that we should not 'misgender' because they already know that people who don't acknowledge gender as real cannot in fact make correct OR incorrect gender references.
I really wish that the whole 'let's please tread carefully" official MNHQ stance is purely strategic, pragmatic, and sticks in their craw as much as it does all of us who STILL have to make concessions to transactivism that betray our beliefs, our right to speak the truth and our integrity.
Every time I even use the phrase 'transWOMAN', or 'she' for a male, I feel frustration that I am adding to the drip drip normalisation of a movement that will harm me for it.

If MNHQ could give me any confidence, the virtual equivalent of a subtle nod of solidarity, that they were playing the long game and will not take a stance betraying women's rights ultimately.

I just don't quite know whether in this issue they see themselves and us as women with a common goal to fight for women's rights, or whether commercial success will take precedence and subsume integrity.

I think perhaps I'd prefer for the Captains to go down with the sinking ship rather than sell us all out. If Mumsnet cannot play its part in turning the tide of women's rights being eroded - and to hell with the consequences, perhaps it would be better it didn't continue at all.

I agree with everything in your last post Plenty.

I have shedloads of empathy with transpeople.
Lets not mix that up with hard won women's rights.

I have empathy for trans people - and for men, come to that. Doesn't mean transwomen or men belong in female-only spaces, sports categories, scholarships ... I've noticed very little empathy for women coming from transactivists who believe they are women, though.

Empathy is only half the story. Critical thinking is needed too, if we are not to be so open minded our brains fall out and we just give away all our rights and protections which we have fought hard for, and which we still need because women are still discriminated against and still at risk of harm on the basis of our sex.

Critical thinking and empathy - both are spectacularly missing from the transactivist agenda.

And yet you don't remember Nina?

I'm peculiar.

But you know the radfem in real life who set it up.

Bull.shit.

Fruit, could you be more specific please? I don't see how labelling people and lumping them together (as RadFems, for example) shows empathy towards people as individuals. I have read many brilliant posts expressing empathy on these threads, and many by people saying they are not radical feminists but women cannot become men.

Facts do not change because one feels empathy for someone in distress - it is in their nature, the pesky little blighters.

fruit cider weirdly I don't remember anyone called fruit ciderI know the feminist group that branched off though, a close friend of yours??? Doubt it

Well, yes, my real name quite clearly is not fruit cider. I am certainly friends with the person that set up the original feminist group, then was swiftly added into the second feminist group. That is when I came to realise that RadFems for most part are trans exclusive, and as an intersectional feminist it does not fit my world view as I try and empathise with different groups of society and see how it affects different races, genders, ethnic groups, cultures, religions etc. Trans exclusive feminism appears to miss this.

Prawnofthepatriarchy - But I'd remind them that so very many of us here love and support this site. We have fun on it, we chat, but more importantly we trust it, many of us have trusted it in very dark times. Some of us lurk - quite a few de-lurked on the Spartacus thread. We want it to continue being a beacon of light. Please, MNHQ, hold firm. Do not let us down by allowing the TAs to silence us. This issue matters so much to parents and children, and it is the biggest threat to women's rights in a 100 years.

This ^

MNHQ - it would be brilliant if MN could be part of the solution

This too ^

I think pronouns come up a lot because of the deletion policy.

It seems to me that we can generally (and of course respectfully) discuss what we like as long as we don't 'misgender' anyone (although the deletion of the autogynaephilia posts was ... interesting). I don't blame MNHQ for approaching moderation from this angle, it must be a nightmare on these threads!

So 'misgendering' is a useful proxy for deciding whether someone is being respectful or not. I imagine there are a team of mods responding to reports at MNHQ, who I'm sure are time-stressed, and it shouldn't be expected of them to have read widely and have understood all the nuances of this debate. Of course they're going to need clear and simple guidelines, as do we all.

The trouble is, this makes pronouns an obstacle we have to negotiate all the time in order to be able to say what we mean. If we use a person's preferred pronouns, this can lead to nonsensical, self-contradictory statements which erase what's actually happening. If we tie ourselves in grammatical knots to avoid 'misgendering' while still saying what we mean, it makes it very difficult to write and to read and understand. If we name reality as we see it, we are deleted.

I will continue to use people's preferred pronouns whenever I can, which is the vast majority of the time, when it doesn't matter.

On the few occasions when it does matter, I will name reality as I see it. I will not commit to not mentioning a person's sex or using the appropriate sex-based pronouns. This is independent of whether they have been a 'headline-grabbing case'.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/2722081-I-am-still-Spartacus

Thought I'd start I am Still Spartacus.

Bit late to the party, and need to catch up on this thread, but wanted to get my thoughts down on the MNHQ 'response', which I feel is wholly inadequate.

Firstly, I take issue with the phrase 'sex-at-birth pronouns'. The temporal modifier 'at birth' implies that one can have a different sex at some point after birth. This is simply not the case. MNHQ, you state that it is 'use of sex-at-birth pronouns to provoke, inflame or belittle' which will be against the rules. How is this to be judged? Taking my favourite example, Danielle Muscato, if I assert that DM is a man and refer to him as he, simply in order to express the scientific, biological and immutable fact that DM is a man, my intent will be to simply use language correctly. Another poster may claim that my insistence on doing this, and refusal to use DM's stated preferred pronouns is to inflame and provoke. They may feel belittled my my (correct) use of language and may view my refusal to change my use of language despite repeated requests to do so as an attack. How are you to interpret this? Is my intention, which is to use language accurately, to hold sway? Or is it the feelings of others who read my words which are to be held to be more important?

You are requesting that I lie and say that DM is a woman and that I like her beard in order to spare the feelings of those who may read my posts. Could you please tell me what else you would like me to lie about in order to spare the hypothetical feelings of hypothetical people? If there is nothing else, why does this subject have such special status that reality must be denied? Why is this truth unspeakable?

I take issue with your assumption that the parents of people who are transitioning will be on board with their child's transition. A cursory trawl though the internet will indicate that this is not the case and parents may be deeply concerned by their child's transition, yet feel powerless to speak up. How should language use be policed in order to spare their feelings?

I also ask why the feelings of women who assert that sex is an objective biological reality that cannot be altered are to take second place. I experience hurt, feelings of being belittled, mocked and attacked by having you insist that I call DM, Alex Drummond, Paris Lees and all the rest of them 'she'. To refer to them as 'she' acknowledges and reaffirms their claim on womanhood and thus diminishes my own. Why are my feelings unimportant to you? Why, yet again, do I need to privilege the feelings of TA above my own?

I do not understand why you seek to prioritise the feelings of parents of those who are transitioning. Why have you ignored the feelings of parents, including adolescent lesbians who are particularly at risk in this world of TA.

You seem to imply that 'extreme headline grabbing cases' would be excluded from this policy, such that we would not have to say 'a woman committed rape with her penis'. This simply will not do. You cannot have a policy regarding pronoun use based on whether the actions of the individual in question are acceptable or not. That is nonsensical. Either MTT are women and should be called 'she' no matter how bad the things they do are, nor they are not women and should not be called 'she' despite the fact of them being 'nice and well-behaved'. You may have misunderstood certainly my objection to the statement 'a woman committed rape with her penis'. My objection has nothing to do with the abhorrence of the crime (I am perfectly happy to state that Rosemary West and Moira Hindley are women - because they are), rather that such a statement is nonsensical. A woman does not have a penis, whether is it to rape, or urinate with.

You have ignored many issues that have been raised on these threads. Your position is simply reifying a nonsense. You need to decide: are MTT women or not?

I remain Spartacus wholeheartedly. I will use pronouns correctly.

Prawn is definitely correct.

When the TA's give links to their 'research' it's usually a whacky study using only 10 or less subjects. They also refuse to define terms, which in science we call Operational Definitions.

Because the transmovement is based around stereotypes and circular definitions it's a house of cards.

The only thing that has ever made sense is the descriptive stuff about autogynephilia. I've seen many posts on other boards where men hang out that fit autogynephilia to a T. If you want to see some autogynephilic posts, go to nofap forums and you'll see several men on there talking about how aroused they get fantasizing that they're female. You'll see all 4 subtypes of AGP.

Reddit is also a place to go where men openly describe what can only be AGP.

Finally, the few posters who show up to yell 'TERF' are just doing themselves a disservice. Nobody can take you seriously when you do that.

Prawn I just wanted to say I have really liked so many of your very thoughtful posts on these threads. Thank you.

I don't think the response says anything new. I think it's a missed opportunity for this debate to be the start of something - something where logic triumphs over trend. I was excited! Now rather deflated. I was reminded of the Sam Cooke song A Change is Gonna Come:
"It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
Then I go to my brother
And I say brother help me please
But he winds up knocking me
Back down on my knees"

I still don't understand how/why this has become such a huge issue here (UK/Europe) when a lot of the madness seems to stem from US fundamentalism?

because it filters through. Policy over there can help shape policy over here.

I wouldn't be surprised if some donors work both the UK and US to get favourable laws in much the same way the have done in the past with medications, products and even trade deals.

OMG children have twirled in their mummy's heels since, well, since heels have been invented! How can this kind of important child's play be interpreted as them having even remotely transexual tendencies?

I am really quite angry about this.
My heart goes out to those who are transexual - it cannot be an easy life.
But being under the impression that one 'helps' or 'supports' a trouble child/teenager by allowing/encouraging intervention that are potentially irreversible is just plain nuts.

nonhypothetical, your and your daughter's story is so powerful. I'm sorry you've been put through that. I don't know how else to put it without sounding like a nob, so here, please have some un-mumsnetty viper-y flowers

Prawn we have been through a lot in the last 4 years. Your points about homophobia are spot on. My daughter a lesbian. At school she got more support being a transboy than she did being a lesbian. The shift in people's behaviour was chilling really. As a lesbian she got abuse and one teacher even tried to blame her for being open about her sexuality (wrong on so many levels). Being trans gave her a protected status.

I don't know if Mermaids is sponsoring Mumsnet, but they do have a lot of power and are constantly lobbying for their beliefs on how trans children should be treated to become the gold standard. So it would not surprise me if they have at least contacted MNHQ.

The reason it's travelled so quickly from America is, I think, the Internet. We're one big global village now and access to information is instant, that's why it's important all views on transgender should be allowed to be debated without fear.

prawn, good post. I have been chewing over the similarities between false memory, satanic panic and transing children for a couple of weeks now. So many echoes...the people involved are (mostly) coming from a good place, a place of wanting to centre and believe children, but actually ultimately harming them. Chilling. Because now, of course, we look back and say "what the hell was everyone thinking?!".

Is there any child who hasn't done something 'non-gender conforming? I'd be more worried about those TBH.

Both my sons did various gender non-conforming things, including twirling naked round the kitchen while wearing sparkly heels and a pink boa (age 4, not 24 grin). Never crossed my mind that this was weird. It isn't.

Yes..DS (2) has an obsession with his sisters shoes right now. More particularly any ones with heels (vvv low) and sparkles. Now, He can have his own sparkly heeled shoes if he wants them, that doesn't bother me, but at the moment I don't think he is steady enough to walk in them without potentially damaging his ankle if he falls. To some I would be denying his the 'experience' of 'being a little girl'

We let him chose his own shoes within reason and he ALWAYS goes for 'lad' style trainers or boots. However the obsession with sparkly ones continues behind closed doors. Heh, sound so sinister eh

I see NO link between dressing up as a kid and being trans. I really don't and if this is a major issue in it all then thats a little sad as really..there are no clothes that either sex couldn't wear if they wanted to. Yes they may get funny looks from strangers but the more people just be themselves and wear whatever the fuck they want instead of deciding that wearing dresses means you actually are a woman...the sooner the stigma disappears. THIS would be progression.

Both my sons did various gender non-conforming things, including twirling naked round the kitchen while wearing sparkly heels and a pink boa (age 4, not 24 ). Never crossed my mind that this was weird. It isn't.

Most medics really aren't scientists. They will have some excellent science A levels, and their discipline relies heavily on science but that does not mean that they are scientists. Some are, others aren't.

I don't envy anyone working in this field. I can see why 'first do no harm' may lead some to the puberty blockers, because for some transsexuals, developing a male or female physique may be harmful. But as it seems that puberty blockers also affect mental maturation, it doesn't provide the simple breathing space for the child to grow up in quite the way that presumably is intended.

I still don't understand how/why this has become such a huge issue here (UK/Europe) when a lot of the madness seems to stem from US fundamentalism?

There was a horrific thread not that long ago about young girls first sexual experiences. A shocking number/percentage had anal sex as a first experience because it was seen as a. not leading to pregnancy and b. not 'really' being sex as it was preserving the all important virginity. FFS.
It's the 21st century, not that that is obvious by the way some people's belief systems work.