Thoughts on MNHQ's response to the Spartacus thread

"this entire thread has been fixated on MTT, which tells me the whole argument is based on prejudicism against MTT without looking at both MTT and FTT."

Actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of FTT on MN, mostly in the context of girls and young women who have started identifying as male (a phenomenon which has rocketed over the last few years). There is a lot of (I think understandable) concern that some girls and women who start the transition process may regret it when it's too late to go back.

So, is this stand based on avoiding legal action ?

I think that, in part, yes. I think another aspect is not wanting to bring the wrath of transactivists on to the site.

Really, it comes down to appeasing a small, vocal group of men who want to oppress and marginalise women.

I still don't know what the original Spartacus thread is about.
Would anyone please care to link or PM me a link please? Thank you
I feel like I'm Schrodinger's cat as at this point I don't know if I'm Spartacus or not.

Fruit - I'm sorry but you are the one having a problem with the English language.

Sect doesn't mean "any group". That word is section, as in "a section of society".

Sect is actually not a bad word to use for the culture of dogma, suspension of disbelief, disregard for scientific truth & physical reality, and flat out threats of violence to deserters and non-believers. But as I said, you probably used it because you were confused about its meaning.

I've no wish to offend you, Ego, but neither group are women. No amount of surgery and hormones can create a change of sex.

Personally I do respect the level of commitment shown by transsexuals, and feel sympathy for the extreme feelings that would have to motivate such steps. I, again personally, may feel less anxious about male transsexuals in women's spaces, as long as they are sexually attracted to men, but that still doesn't mean I believe they should usurp women in sports, work or women-only meetings.

Transsexuals have their own struggles. There is very little overlap with the struggles of women.

FruitCider
However the train of thought on trans people is trans exclusionary

What exactly are trans people being excluded from?

this entire thread has been fixated on MTT, which tells me the whole argument is based on prejudicism against MTT without looking at both MTT and FTT.

Most of the problems that exist between feminists and trans are down to MTT, and generally transgender ideology itself does not support women. FTT don't cause the problems that MTT do, I'd suggest because there's not the combination of misogyny, autogynephilia and male entitlement that exists within the MTT community.

Every right that has ever been achieved by women has started with the simple, brutal and truthful statement that women are oppressed by men.

I think it's a bit fucking rich MNHQ, with your right to personhood, a right to vote, a right to be educated, a right to enter the public sphere, a right to open a bank account, a right to wander around this country unchaperoned, a right to start a business of your own to pull up the right-on drawbridge behind you and dissolve into a puddle of identity politics.

Will mumsnet become like this? Where we can't talk about post birth bleeding, leaking nipples, abortion, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, vulvas, vaginas, PCOS, endometriosis, IBS that is really affected by our oestrogen levels rising and falling, pre menstural migraines all because it might be triggering to a MtF trans person

I hope not.

Yy what about the lurkers with prolapses and birth injuries who have to read "they're just jealous of your shiny new vagina". I'll bet paper money there are more lurkers like that than parents of trans!!

Will mumsnet become like this? Where we can't talk about post birth bleeding, leaking nipples, abortion, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, vulvas, vaginas, PCOS, endometriosis, IBS that is really affected by our oestrogen levels rising and falling, pre menstural migraines all because it might be triggering to a MtF trans person?

The irony is that there are likely to be far more lurkers looking for support from MN for issues such as these, than those looking for support with transitioning of their children, or themselves.

And yet who is MNHQ worried about offending? Most women, or a teeny weeny number of men who might feel offended that they are somehow being excluded?

But transwomen are not women. They are gender non-conforming men

There are transsexuals who have body dysphoria - something which has been discussed on the other thread in detail

There are transgender people who are gender non-conforming.

Both fall under the word 'transwomen' - but they are different groups. I sometimes think that's forgotten.

Transsexuals do not necessarily have to conform to gender expectations - but that has been discussed in a lot of detail and in a reasonably decent tone on the other current threads.

Equality is not about treating everyone equally. It's about recognising that people are different and therefore have different needs. Women and transwomen are different. It's called diversity.

Are we not allowed to discuss prostate cancer as a male issue anymore? Are discussions about that shut down by mtt or ftt? Because some people have a 'female prostate'? It's all directed at women and it's not acceptable.

The statement that there are ciswomen and transwomen only has meaning if you believe that both are a subset of woman. But transwomen are not women. They are gender non-conforming men.

This is why the word "cis" is so offensive to, it seems, to nearly all posters. We do not accept that equivalence.

Radical feminism means radical as in "getting to the root of". It doesn't mean "extremist" or "nutty as a fruitloop". And gender critical roughly means "accepting of the idea that gender is a socially constructed, socially enforced set of beliefs about appropriate social roles arbitrarily attached to people of one sex or the other." It is therefore quite possible to be a liberal feminist and be gender critical, or indeed (as one regular poster on here is) not a feminist at all and be gender critical.

And by all means call me TERF. Free speech works both ways. Though be warned that since the word TERF is only ever used by a certain sort of virtue-signalling numpty or by the sort of unhinged blogger who typically adds "should die in a fire" to the end of the sentence, it may not incline me to take your arguments seriously. That is if you can formulate any actual arguments, rather than resorting to the usual polemic of "you're going to be on the wrong side of history."

Being gender critical is not the same as discriminating against trans people. Objecting to the hate speech and violent threats of TRAs is not discriminating against trans people. As Buffy pointed out so eloquently in another thread, gender critical thinking can't occupy the same ground as transgender thinking in that the two fundamentally disagree on the central concept but that doesn't mean that by disbelieving the concept of internal gender identity you are discriminating against trans people. The accusation of transphobia and hatred is being used over and over to shut down important conversations. TRAs online are using horrendously offensive insults and threats; of course this is met with anger. It doesn't mean we all hate trans people, but we can hate the extremist ideology that espouses a penis can be female and thus a lesbian declining sexual contact with it is a transphobe who must receive death threats. Objecting to that is not the same as discriminating against trans people. And when people dismiss all of the threads full of passionate debate by stating that they are 'shocked by the hatred for trans people' - those people are quite deliberately missing the point and trying to silence legitimate concerns and worries.

This is a debate with strong feelings and it will be impossible to avoid all offence on either side. We are all treading a fine line which sometimes some of us will overstep. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be having the conversation at all.

fruit, I have pointed out before, if someone starts a "I believe in gender and the lady brain and all you TERFs are wrong" thread in support of the TRAs, I will not hijack it.
Yet no such thread exists. I wonder why.

KimmySchmidtsSmile

It's isn't all about ego, even though her name would suggest otherwise. You say she's transgender. I didn't know that nor do I find it important it has no bearing on how I behave towArds you.

What does get my goat is all this rattle throwing out of the pram just because we, women, are standing up for women's right. On a women's discussion board. How dare We!

Oh and kimmy. If you demand answers, complain about not being allowed to debate a post and then banning debate on your own post you are being a special snowflake. It doesn't matter if you want to be called he or she.

No "figuring" needed.

Don't feel yourself obliged not to use it on my account. I'd rather you showed your true colours. It's quite clear what kind of person would want to use that term.

The posts on this thread and the others are by and large not saying we shouldn't employ trans people or that trans people should not be utterly free to live their lives as they want to. What the majority of posts are saying is that trans people should be free to live how they want but that they are not the opposite sex and where there are safe spaces or positive discrimination in favour of that opposite sex then the trans person probably should not be entitled to access it.

This is particularly relevant in the case of women and trans women because women experience sexist oppression and violence, experience workplace prejudice and so on. Say you have a large company who has identifies that they have issues with the make up of their board - too many white able bodied men - and decide they need to actively encourage and support women and ethnic minorities within their organisation to rebalance and be more inclusive. Now. One of the board declares themselves to be a woman. Has the proportion of women on the board increased? Has the company become better at nurturing the talents of the women in their ranks? No.

Rachel Dolezal was pilloried for identifying as a black woman. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen threads on mumsnet claiming x y or z is cultural appropriation and white people shouldn't do it, up to and including wearing braids, because as a class white people oppress other cultures. So why is it OK for a male to appropriate my oppressed sex and take the opportunities and safe spaces that women have fought for.

Gender is biologically rooted bullshit imo, but women experience sexism because of our biology too. Trans people undoubtedly experience prejudice but it is not the same prejudice as women.

Gender critical is a pseudonym for a particular type of radical feminist. One that rhymes smurf, which apparently I'm not allowed to use as its derogatory. Go figure.

Very well put ....Applauds cexuwaleozbu

And I'll say it again, Fruitcider. Stop trying to (disingenuously) marginalise perfectly sensible and common opinions. Not all people who oppose some of the things which are the reason for all these threads consider themselves radical feminists. It's extremely arrogant to label them as such if that is the only opinion they share with radical feminists. "Gender critical" is a perfectly reasonable description of these views. But I can see why it suits you to ignore that.

That's horrifying twatbadging - thank you for sharing.

but what we'd ask you to think about is the impact on the parent who's not an activist, and likely isn't even posting, but whose adult child is transitioning, or who is doing so themselves. Would they feel belittled, mocked or attacked? Would they think Mumsnet was not for them? If so, we're going to have to remove it. It's a fudge, but it's the best we can do at this stage.

This is pathetic. Sorry.

What we'd ask you MNHQ to think about is the impact on the parent who's not an activist, and likely isn't even posting, but who is trying to raise daughters and sons without sexism. Who don't want their daughters and sons to be asked to accept, whilst at an impressionable age, that women behave and dress in THIS way and men behave and dress in THAT way so if you want to behave and dress in THIS way YOU MUST BE A WOMAN. That is bullshit.

Who don't want their sons to think that if they like ballet or a skirt they have to be a girl and can't be a boy. That is bullshit.

Who don't want their daughters to have to accept, whilst they are too young to have the confidence to object or remove themselves from the situation, but may be too old to be always with a parent while shopping, swimming etc, sharing communal changing spaces with adult people who have XY chromosomes and a penis and other attitudes of male biology. That is bullshit.

Who don't want their daughters (if they are lesbian) to be insulted, accused and excluded from resources and spaces that are supposed to support them, for not accepting the notion that some penises are female and they should be OK with sexual encounters with a penis. That is bullshit.

We are regularly feeling belittled, mocked and attacked by the TRA agenda that is shutting down women's rights to be women. Your response reproduced in the opening post of this thread is starting to make us think that Mumsnet is not for us. That is bullshit.

People have the right to wear what they like, behave in ways that are traditionally seen as "masculine" or "feminine" regardless of their biological sex. We can be supportive to anyone who needs support in these things whether relating to their own identity or that of their child. It is not OK to add to this a requirement that we must redefine OURSELVES in order to not cause someone else offense or upset.