Vanishing posts on the Jess Phillips thread

Why not just let women ask the questions they want to ask? I understand the need to stop repeated questions, but if they were different, but on the same theme, they should have been allowed to stand. This is so annoying.

MNHQ swooped in after a tiny amount of questions concerning the rights and safety of women and accusations of ‘shouting’ and ‘haranguing’ were bandied about by them.

It's much easier to dismiss our concerns if we can be painted as angry harridans. Women's anger is rarely taken seriously; we're ignored or told to 'be nice'. But our anger is legitimate, proportionate and valid. If you're not angry about the impact of badly-thought-out (and I use the word 'thought' in its loosest sense) policy and erosion of safeguarding, then you're either not paying attention or you don't care about women and children. Yes, we're angry and so we fucking should be. If dozens of people are all asking similar questions or different questions around the same topic, it's an indication that this is important to lots of people, not something to be airily dismissed with a handwave about nobody on the doorstep ever asking about it. Most people on the doorstep don't even know about half of these issues precisely because of #nodebate and shutting women down when we try to shed light on the subject. As I've said elsewhere in relation to Lang's ban and safeguarding, who does it benefit when that happens?

Try listening to why so many women are concerned about this instead of dismissing it as 'haranguing'. Oh, you can't, because too many of the women with something important to say and ask have already been silenced and deleted, without even a marker to acknowledge they tried.

Deleted for wrongthink.

I can't wait to see Jess Phillips stating elsewhere that "even on mumsnet there were only a handful of people who cared enough to comment"

That is how it works.

1984 was not supposed to be an operating manual.

I asked a question about when the GRA consultation would be published (thanks Pencil) - mine was zapped without any deletion notice and I was emailed with a banning warning if I were to keep repeating questions.

There wasn't another GRA question on the web chat asking about when the findings would be published through. It was the only one and it was wiped within half hour of my posting it.

I'd like my voice added to this thread please MNHQ.

Pencils excellent post.

Do we know why Lang has been banned? Gutted about this.

how do you know if your post is a duplicate if the other posts have been deleted?

There were 4 or 5 posts left up so you'd just read them and not post about that

Pencils - spot on post.

MNHQ clearly stated after the first few questions that they would be deleting any further questions on gender ID. If they put a deletion notice up every time, it would interrupt the flow of the web chat and I think you have to respect that for most people it’s not the only issue they are interested in.

And how do you know if your post is a duplicate if the other posts have been deleted? Especially if you think your angle is different and not a duplicate?

And to have the threat of deletion mentioned?

Reform of the GRA has been Jess's pet cause since she was part of the Trans Equality Inquiry in 2015-6. What became apparent during that webchat was that she didn't know how the GRA works now, before any reforms. I was really shocked how misinformed she was. I'm not even talking about differences of opinion - she was actually, factually wrong.

Of course she could and should have read the legislation for herself before backing any position on reform but we could have cleared up these simple factual errors years ago if we had only been allowed to have the discussion.

This is where shutting down debate gets us.

It was very kind of Empress to arrange for her question to be swapped for Tinsel's. Given Jess's comments over recent days it was very important that she be asked to clarify her views on the spousal exit clause. But I wanted Empress's question to be asked too. They were very different questions.

The way this webchat was moderated - the total disappearing of posts - is sinister as fuck. It's the level of censorship you'd expect on a website somewhere like China. Not only is it unfair on MNers, it's unfair on webchat guests to be shielded not only from questions, but from the evidence that questions were asked in the first place.

It's an astonishing level of interference and manipulation.

Permanent by the sounds of it Jux

Bring back Lang !

Lang's been banned?????? FFS. Permanent or temporary?

And politicians are just not capable of robust debate are they?

It’s a false representation of the issues that concern existing users of the site.
Everyone else is free to post their question. The politician doing the Webchat is perfectly capable of reading through all the questions and choosing what they want to answer.
MNHQ swooped in after a tiny amount of questions concerning the rights and safety of women and accusations of ‘shouting’ and ‘haranguing’ were bandied about by them. Belittling, then erasing. Not a good look for a site that courts people in the public eye to engage with women.

Ok - but these deletions are being counted as ‘strikes’ which is pretty unfair, especially if posters post their question or response on the hoof (as many of us do) and deletion emails aren’t sent out (which they haven’t always been). Very easy way to get yourself excommunicated...

MNHQ clearly stated after the first few questions that they would be deleting any further questions on gender ID. If they put a deletion notice up every time, it would interrupt the flow of the web chat and I think you have to respect that for most people it’s not the only issue they are interested in.

@AnchorDownDeepBreath I do agree there should be a deletion message rather than just completely disregarding people

MNHQ made it very clear they were removing posts on certain topics and the reasons why. There's no point only focusing on one issue in a leadership debate.

I don't agree with this angle at all, but it's MNs site and they can do what they want - but in the interests of clarity and fairness, deleted posts should always leave a message stating something has been deleted.

Between this and the promoter who removed comments about sanitary protection for trans people, it seems MNHQ is vanishing comments on specific topics only, which doesn't seem right.

It's not just the posts that have disappeared

They've vanished Lang too

I know, OldCrone, but it's MNHQ making the arbitrary decision about lumping all the questions together and making them disappear as if they never existed.
They are misrepresenting a large group of members as troublesome and bothering webchat politicians with versions of the same issue.
I'd prefer if they left all the questions up, but they don't want to. A loose summary of what subject they consider deleted questions to fall under is a better summary than nothing at all.

Not so much gender-critical but biology believers. But yes, the question was asked and the got enough rope.

Any followup questions or comments were a waste of time (it would be like Greta trying to explain climate change to Donald - which I do hope she does as Davos).

MNHQ made it very clear they were removing posts on certain topics and the reasons why. There's no point only focusing on one issue in a leadership debate.