Any chance of a review of the FWR moderation rules in light of Maya Forstater's success in court please?

Yes it would be great to be able to post in FWR. I have been waiting patiently until no longer am required to think about posting with those in mind who hate MN yet constantly watching and policing site instead I can ask the those who want opinions or advice from which is women. Having to do mental gymnastics & dance around using cryptic code is not a skill I have. I don’t expect MN to cater around my autism but as a woman & a mother I fail to understand why you cater more to haters that your users.

The phase who is the parent here comes to mind.

I just don’t buy this logic overall, not when it’s espoused by MNHQ. We are supposed to believe that, instead of figuring out how to advertise and tap in to the 10 million unique users with the views we all hold, instead advertising companies are rejecting access to 10 million unique users because of the views we all hold - legally protected views - to appease a small percentage of Twitter users, the numbers of which are smaller?

Hmm... I see it as people are able to by law to hold the views they have.
I mean, there's no such thing as thought police.
You're entitled by law to hold the views you may or may not have.
When it comes to publishing them on line to a public audience though, it gets more complicated and starts to cross a line.

nicegerbil never forget the lurkers. You cannot know how many women, and men, read FWR but never or rarely post. That has an effect. Right away or some time later.

FWR would not be targeted if it were not influential.

Plus MN know it drives traffic otherwise it would have been out years ago.

What tangible loss is there from not being able to say certain words? have you suddenly switched sides nicegerbil?

Human rights don’t have to be monetised or restricted to loss of life or limb to be recognised do they? The essence of this has surely always been to be able to state and discuss objective facts in everyday plain language in order to defend women’s sex based rights as enshrined in international law. The loss is of free and factual expression and of uncensored communication. That is huge.

Gender ideologists always aimed to rely on fait accompli to underpin their legal strategy. Alongside institutional capture, one aspect is to be able to say that people say or don’t say “XYZ” in everyday speech. We must not give away words and censor ourselves. Appeasement never works.

Justine’s reaction is bizarre and disappointing.

As mentioned by others MN should feel vindicated by Maya's win especially as Maya has a long time connection to MN not just from her recent case but her co founding of Let Toys Be Toys a decade ago that I believe started life on MN.

I can't really fathom their reaction.

Mumsnet is now more censorious of women with protected gender critical beliefs than either Facebook or Twitter. I am active on both those platforms and I speak largely as I please (within the law). I have stopped posting here because I can't. It's an absolute nonsense to say they've held a space above and beyond what others have and what space they did hold has become increasingly narrow.

I think MN have it harder as they try to host discussion from both "sides."
Places like Twitter, there is no conversation as if you ever tweet something and someone doesn't like what they're hearing, they can get trigger happy with the block button.
Not so much here (which I think is a good thing) I do think if you're wanting a discussion both sides need to be heard whatever the subject and I think that's what MN goes beyond with, as not a lot of places do that anymore.

The Forstater judgement was a gift to MN. It would have allowed them to defend themselves from accusations of transphobia, and from pressure to censor GC views, by pointing to their legal obligations to treat them as protected beliefs. Instead, they have chosen to do the opposite. And what really rankles is Justine's patronising and rude response, effectively blaming FWR posters for the fact that we are targeted.

The tactics are so ham-fisted too. They keep publicly capitulating, which reinforces the pressure from TRAs.

'nicegerbil - Mumsnet is now more censorious of women with protected gender critical beliefs than either Facebook or Twitter'

Seriously? Than Twitter?!

Ok feels to me that there's something else going on here.

Getting the conversation shut down entirely would be a great result wouldn't it.

Are advertising companies really that stupid? Surely there are people who work at the companies who look at the numbers and see how it should be handled. Are advertising companies like the Labour Party now, in thinking Twitter success equals real life success?

And why aren’t all advertising companies pulling out? Clearly there are companies who see the inherent worth in this place and continue.

You’d be bonkers, as an advertising company or another company to give up this source of product - us, the users - just because people like Mimmymum post on Twitter that the place is “transphobic”.

Either these companies are utterly stupid, or we don’t get the full story from MNHQ and it’s not entirely as it is presented.

MN is a service provider and they are required to abide by the EA and not discriminate against their service users, as well as their employees.

This.

nicegerbil - Mumsnet is now more censorious of women with protected gender critical beliefs than either Facebook or Twitter. I am active on both those platforms and I speak largely as I please (within the law). I have stopped posting here because I can't. It's an absolute nonsense to say they've held a space above and beyond what others have and what space they did hold has become increasingly narrow.

MNHQ could say they will no longer accept talk threads on trans issues at all. That would not be discriminatory as neither "side" would be affected in a way the other was not.

What it cannot do under EqA is treat holders of one protected belief differently to others. If it does and this unequal treatment is disadvantageous, that is unlawful conduct. It really is as simple as that.

Discrimination needs a tangible loss though surely.

What tangible loss is there from not being able to say certain words?

Are you all taking this up with the guardian, Twitter etc? Or just MN? If the latter, aren't you engaging in demanding more from a female led predominantly female space than male ones?

If MN pull the plug because they think fuck this is that a good result for you?

One is a statement of a scientifically illiterate belief, and the other is a scientifically, and 99% of the time legally, accurate 'belief', and yet the former is allowed and the latter not.

MN is a service provider and they are required to abide by the EA and not discriminate against their service users, as well as their employees.

The guardian is free to delete 'all sorts of posts left right and centre' as long as they do so indiscriminately. If they moderate comments more harshly from particular groups who have a protected characteristic then that would be unlawful discrimination.

The obvious answer to this bizarre threat is that they stop hosting this conversation and ban all the posters on the topic

That would be direct discrimination though.

A lot of us, including me, are angry with MN's response to the OP's request.

Some of us are also pointing out legal risks to a platform we very much care about and want to survive long into the future. That's not an attack.

A post saying ‘i am cis’ or ‘cis women are...’ is allowed to stand

@Quaggars nope, not recent.

Ah OK, must have been a very recent addition if they're now allowing it, as I've definitely seen posts where it's been banned recently.

If a poster is persistently called cis then MNHQ will delete

The request was polite, fair and appropriate and I hope MN agrees to the change.

Cis is not banned. I've challenged the use of it myself and was told very specifically that it isn't a banned word as it is (as I said previously) 'useful for the trans community). Cis is used constantly on here despite many women finding it offensive.

Language is allowed which 'GC' users find offensive as it is 'useful for the trans community'

On here?
I find that doubtful, as they ban words and phrases on both sides, the word beginning with C springs to mind

@Waitwhat23 - beautiful post. Spot on.

I don't get all the attacking the mods either from "GC'' posters - it must be incredibly hard to try and make a space where both women and trans people can speak.

The current moderation on the FWR board is heavily weighted to benefit those who believe 'transwomen are women' in a determined effort by MNHQ to address the constant accusations that it is a transphobic website. Language is allowed which 'GC' users find offensive as it is 'useful for the trans community'. There are special, unclear rules (unique to the FWR board) which aren't specifically stated. Malicious reporting (which is gleefully recounted on other social media such as Twitter) is allowed and seemingly condoned (one now banned user somehow persuaded MNHQ that she was not 'here for the screenshots' despite evidence showing exactly that).

Now that there has been a ruling that we can state biological facts without fear of discrimination, making it a hell of a lot easier to discuss these issues, we're told that actually, any discussion relating to these issues will be shunted off onto a separate board (making it a very easy target for bad faith posters, while at the same time limiting the amount of interaction from women unaware of the issues).

The original post simply asked if the unique moderation rules used on the FWR board be reconsidered given the new situation. Somehow, this has morphed into the posters on FWR being told that they must be 'disappointed' that there is an expectation for civil debate.

I'd really love to know the footfall that Mumsnet get for the FWR board, specifically regular users rather than the 'ploppers' who appear to tell us off and then disappear forever. I'm guessing that the advertisers don't get any gains from them.