Thoughts on MNHQ's response to the Spartacus thread

I'm going to c&p what I posted on the bullshit thread regarding hypothetical parents of trans kids:

There are so many places, both online and offline, where parents of trans children who affirm trans ideology can easily go. There are virtually none, except 4thwavenow, where parents of trans children who are sceptical about making their child a long-term medical patient, potentially with healthy tissue irreversibly amputated and all the psychological damage that that entails, can go for sensible, critical debate on this issue. We are seeing ever more detransitioners popping up all over the western world - kids who were sold transition as a magic bullet for all their ills, and who quickly discovered that it is often not the panacea it is evangelised to be.

MNHQ , I would counter that you have a responsibility to include differing views on this subject not in spite of these parents, but specifically for their benefit. You include the pros and cons of various controversial methods such CIO and co-sleeping - why not do the same for transition? We understand that you are under pressure to conform to the orthodoxy as we all are, but if you really are by parents, for parents, you must understand that that means approaching such crucial subjects with bluntly critical reasoning, not blind submission to whatever happens to be today's cause celebre.

The MN discussions are important as they a) highlight the danger of gender self identification and how wide reaching it is and b) give women the solidarity they need to fight it.

My peak trans moment came from that God awful ALW ( amazing leftie women) a Facebook group of. 20000 who joined post the tories getting elected. I was completely unaware that just anyone could say they're a woman and most others would go along with it, that the thing (vagina, breasts actually being female) meant nothing to transactivists and that they really hate us for it ( even though it doesn't exist.). I was shocked to learn that women, special kool Aid drinking head so far leaning in understanding they could barely stand competitively accepting women, were happy to put the needs of transwomen before women, that it was bigoted to say you didn't want to piss or change next to s transwoman, that your your young daughter would fear a transwoman in their space.... A very verbally aggressive transwoman came into the space, ALW, and told hilarious jokes about tying up women (ha ha girls) to radiators and letting them die in a basement, when challenged she had to tell me that she was more woman than me, more nurturing, more feminine...
An admin messaged me to tell me the transwomans "male voice" that she could hear in her posts were triggering as she had been a victim of sustained violence herself. However the same admin, in public, also toed the line of transwomen are women....

And now MN has decided that it cannot whole heartedly support women who are bucking against this new age of male privilege in its new guise, transactivism. It's no mistake that MRA and trans activist language is the same. No coincidence. Same men, different clothes.

If one doesn't believe gender is anything beyond a social construct, designed to oppress women by putting us into boxes, why must gender be treated with such reverence?

I don't believe in god/God/gods/Gods either - I'm allowed to be an atheist.

YY Blistory. In particular, I agree with: "Many posters seem to be pushing MNHQ to come down in favour of one side once and for all - I don't think that's a fair expectation."

We don't expect MN to come out in favour for or against the anti-vaxxers, or the posters who think controlled crying is harmful, even if there is strong evidence one way or the other. But we do expect them to moderate the debate if it turns personal and offensive, and I don't see why their attitude to the trans issue should be any different.

I'm not bothered by being called cis either (I realise I'm in a minority, and I do understand why other people care) - I'd much rather argue about the issues that seriously affect other people's lives, e.g. the pressure on non-gender conforming teens to identify as the other sex. People who don't know much about the issues are much more likely to be persuaded by concrete examples.

Great post blistory. MNHQ are in an incredibly precarious position and having to tread a very careful line. The consequences for them of being publicly labelled an institutionally transphobic organisation would be catastrophic. There are already people on Twitter asking mn's advertisers to withdraw their business.

Don't imagine, by the way, that the charge of being institutionally transphobic would need to be substantiated, or that Mn would be given a fair hearing.

I agree with almost everything said on these and other threads but asking Mn to shoulder the entire burden of actively promoting an anti-trans activist stance is not just unrealistic, it could be the end of Mumsnet. There isn't a single political party, charity or commercial organisation prepared to take this stance at the moment. If my mortgage or salary were at stake I wouldn't publicly take it either.

We can say a great deal more about gender critical stances on Mn than we can on any other network or site without getting closed down. I'd rather cooperate with mnhq' pretty reasonable pleas for compromise and continue to have this space where we can talk about this stuff.

Blistory, yes, I can see that. For me, reclaiming the language is vital - I can't make the argument otherwise. Good idea re MPs - not sure mine has heard enough from me this year.....

So what if they delete a post ? Challenge them on it and if they were wrong, they're usually quite good about reinstating and apologising on the thread. If they disagree, they disagree. I don't censor my posts so they don't get deleted. I censor them so I don't hurt people. Most of the time.

For me, I'm done arguing about the deletions and the definitions. It's time for me to start to push back where and when it matters. It's about ensuring that I have these discussions with my friends and family, colleagues, networking groups, it's about talking to my MP and MSP and forcing them to acknowledge that women are being harmed and it's going to get worse.

I couldn't care less about being called cis - it belongs in the same I couldn't give a shit category as my authentic self, being on the right side of history, deadnaming and transmisogynistic whatever the fuck. Having angry theoretical discussions about language has value but I'm pretty sure everyone on MN has done these discussions to death and it's gotten us the sum total of nowhere while the MRAs and transactivists have made huge inroads into changing social perception.

I don't respect special pronouns [either], if you want to call yourself "they", don't expect me to go along with it

I'm Posacus.

That certainly looks like someone banned for refusing to misgender a hypothetical future person to me.......

Ha, x post fret!

Had to search back, but found the screenshot of posies email...

That cupcake article was scary. The idea that a cake looking like part of a woman's body is too exclusionary to be part of an womanfest event - it's like being through the looking glass.

I'm just gonna bold that......

...to be called cis, or to call oneself cis ... means to agree with gender that females are weak, stupid, passive, hysterical, a fuckhole, a breeder, a skivvy ... [It] is a capitulation to misogyny and patriarchy, it is a betrayal of self and of your sex, it is masochistic, it upholds your oppression, and above all, it's unnecessary

This is the email to Posie Parker

I have permission to share it.

Blistory - I agree that personal attacks on another poster should be deleted. I don't think a statement of scientific fact is a personal attack. I understand that those statements may be upsetting to some people, and I regret that (and am phrasing my posts in as pompous and dry a way as possible to avoid it ), but no-one has explained why this issue is any different from discussions about god or vaccination. And MNHQ have not provided an assurance that they won't delete posts that state biological facts and reason critically on the basis of those facts. That, to me, is chilling. I agree with vesuvia - language is not neutral. And with Dworkin. And am still Spartacus.

Dwork I don't refer to myself as cis. But then I don't refer to MTT as men either!

I will keep saying this until I am blue in the face, so I hope someone from MN HQ might read this - cis is offensive because it means that we agree with what gender says about us. So to be called cis, or to call oneself cis (and for those of you who do, you are not going to win any special kind of reward or relief from oppression from men by demeaning yourself), means to agree with gender that females are , weak, stupid, passive, hysterical, a fuckhole, a breeder, a skivvy, etc. To be called cis or call oneself cis is a capitulation to misogyny and patriarchy, it is a betrayal of self and of your sex, it is masochistic, it upholds your oppression, and above all, it's unnecessary - over 50% of the human population do not need to be defined by what they are not in comparison to less than half a percent of the human population (trans)!

Has popcorn and getting comfy in my seat

I'm not so sure that it's such an awful response from MNHQ.

MNHQ have been allowing discussions on transgender issues and how they impact on women for a number of years now and have been pretty consistent that personal attacks on an individual poster will always be deleted no matter who is on the right side of science.

Many posters seem to be pushing MNHQ to come down in favour of one side once and for all - I don't think that's a fair expectation. This forum already stands alone in it's support of these discussions and willingness to engage with members. That's quite telling. It's also quite chilling.

There is nowhere else to have these discussions online without being shut down, harrassed, doxxed, silenced, threatened. We underestimate the power that MN has in influencing it's members and lurkers and that it in turn affords us a degree of power on this issue. It gives us a voice. I've watched and participated as this issue has moved from the fringes of FWR to mainstream Chat and AIBU and in doing so, women's voices have been heard. Women have been allowed to explore and understand the threats that some of us believe are very real and present and they have been allowed to do so in an environment where the trade off is simply that we are respectful of each other in our discussions.

Closed facebook groups don't bring these issues into the open, they don't lead a path to mainstream politicans, they don't influence advertisers and they certainly don't open the debate to women who don't want to see this discussion hidden away.

We need to be realistic about the very vocal minority group of transactivists and we need to understand how they are influencing social media and young minds. This isn't just about twitter and facebook but about money and power. Do you know how much money a certain transwoman billionaire pumps into ensuring that transgender issues stay front and centre ? Do you know how active one of the top earning CEOs in the US is in promoting trans issues ? Do you have any idea how scared companies are of being called transphobic ? Or the extent to which transwomen have been thrown to the wolves by the transgender activists ?

There's a whole other discussion about the culture of social media and individualism that's worth having but we'd be foolish to think that this is a grass roots campaign being led from the bottom. It's very much being driven by those rich white men at the top who have no more sense of womanhood than Kermit the frog does. They don't care about transwomen any more than they care about women.

MNHQ's position in actively supporting discussion on trans issues is more precarious than some of us realise. I don't want to lose that voice and the opportunity it affords us all. If the trade off is toning down the way in which I talk to another poster, so be it.

Although restrictions on mis-gendering may avoid upsetting a few transgender people and transgender supporters on MN, calling a transwoman she has other consequences. I think it is important that consequences for women are not brushed under the carpet. Expecting women to deny biology to avoid mis-gendering a trans person is something that is exploited by other people, people with power, who harm women and girls politically, socially, physically and mentally.

If you were to ask me "how can women be harmed by referring to one or two MN transwomen as she or her?", I'd reply "restrictions on mis-gendering are not immune to the law of unintended consequences. Imposing limits on mis-gendering supports (a) the concept of gender identity - that being a woman is a feeling not a biological reality, (b) the belief that human sex can be changed after birth and (c) the belief that trans people change sex. These ideas are harmful to women."

Biology does not support the belief that humans can change sex.

Only a shrinking minority of trans people even have surgery and none of them actually change sex. (The idea that transwoman must equal transsexual has been outdated for years, but the media does its best to keep this old-fashioned view alive).

Many MNers will follow MNHQ's mis-gendering Talk guideline only because it's the nice, respectful and polite thing to do, not because the poster believes that transwomen are female. This guideline adherence may well help MNHQ to make MN more trans-friendly but it also supports the ever-more-popular anti-scientific and anti-woman belief that transwomen are women (which is often extended to transwomen are female).

Some transwomen do not care that the feminine pronouns are used out of politeness rather than agreement; some transwomen insist that it is a transwoman's right. I think some transwomen want to be addressed as she or her as validation and as supposed proof of womanhood or femaleness. This is then used in an anti-woman trans-reinforcing mantra of "if people refer to me as her and she, how can I not be a woman and female?"

So, MNHQ, when you make your decisions about the details of your Talk guideline on mis-gendering, I hope you will find a good balance between being nice to a few transwomen, staying on the legal side of UK laws, and protecting the rights of half of all humans.

I think I might start wearing sheela na gig printed t-shirts over that cupcake thing

I've just read that link about the vagina-cup-cake-gate and this bit

'Yes, the female body and anatomy needs to be de-stigmatised, but even more so does the anatomy of trans people. This could potentially be done with educational events discussing the diversity of genitalia, which would be far more relevant and welcoming.'

just blows my mind. The versatility of genitalia. I really have no words.

How exactly does one de-stigmatise female anatomy while doing exactly that by insisting no visual representation of said female anatomy should be allowed at a feminist event???

MNHQ, I have just read your response again.

I am confused about what you think gender is - and this is fundamental to the arguments on the Spartacus thread (eg female=xx, men cannot become women, cis is derogatory because it relies on stereotypes).

What does "sex-at-birth" mean? If you mean people can change sex (and you would need to explain what that involves) then why misgendering - why not mis-sexing (for want of a better word)?

In a debate about sex and gender, it is vital to make a distinction between the two, consistently and rationally (IMO the terms are often muddled in everyday discourse and perhaps that has led to some of the problems we are facing).

Is that what happens? I just googled the term and the top hit was a link in a medical dictionary:
medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/autogynephilia which says it 'provides a theory of transexual motivation'. Does anyone think this post should be deleted or I should be banned? If so, go ahead and report it, I'll take one for the Spartacus team.

The vagina cupcake thing makes me think of wearing one of these everytime I go out.

I'm going to buy the kit.