Distinguishing between the two "Feminist" forums

And yet, we have had posters who were part of the group who actively supported the split confirm that they wanted it specifically to keep Sex and Gender discussions off the other board fairly recently. To put all Sex and Gender discussions together and get them moved there if they were started off the board.

Is there two different splits being conflated into one?

I remember the discussions at the time the Sex and Gender board was started, and I agree with Errol. It may have been the intention of creating a 'chat' board vs discussion board previously. But the Sex and Gender board discussion, if I remember correctly, was only about corralling the sex and gender discussions.

I don't think the threads made at the.time would support that narrative.

I was told I wasn't to post on the 'Chat' board, for example. It was supposed to shut some of us up.

Your recollection of the history is at considerable variance with mine.🤷‍♀️

when the board was created, mumsnet was still often the first place women were coming across real heavy hitting discussions around Feminism, and sometimes even feminism as more than a nebulous concept, and newbies wanted somewhere to chat/dip a toe in the water, understand it as a whole concept, without tripping over the more established, educated and well versed feminists who used MN as a discussion forum for more advanced stuff who didn't want to discuss the 'fluff' and kept telling the newbies to go read/research stuff and come back.

The original idea of the 'chat' board was somewhere more light weight where feminism as a whole could be discussed without the more complex discussions around Sex/Gender/Trans.

It was never about stuffing anyone in a corner/out of sight, despite the persistence over that point from certain posters.

It doesn't help that MN recently added 'intersectional feminism' to the header of the Sex & Gender board. And there's a contingent that argues that 'trans inclusion' (by which they mean inclusion of transwomen - i.e. men) is intersectional feminism; rather than it being the intersction of being female and [whatever the intersecting factor is].

And names too numerous to mention

If we're going down that route, thanks to Monroe Bergdorf!

In a weird way, also to the Women’s Equality Party, because I think a lot of MNers peaked during one epic thread about the WEP’s explicit support of violent men being allowed to serve their sentences in women’s prisons.

And Man Friday, and A Woman's Place.

Special shout out to Transgender Trend!

Ah, I remember leafletting and chatting to people on the streets about the proposed changes to the GRA. And indeed, most people had no idea what we were talking about…

@EmpressaurusKitty of course, all the amazing women and organisations too such as LWS, Sex Matters etc

Before Glinner and JKR there was Fair Play for Women, doing the very first leafleting campaign in red T-shirts back around 2017. Although back then nobody had much idea what we were talking about.

On the other hand, if the boards are joined back together, I believe that we shall have to defend the joining back again in the future. Maybe I am feeling defeatist.

Surely we should go back to one board….? There’s the SC ruling but also the ruling the GC beliefs are protected (Maya Forstater). On what basis can MN argue the two boards should be separate? It’s pandering to something not supported in law.

I believe that our wonderful Terf Island is thanks largely to a combination of:
MN
Glinner
JKR

I think the reasons for the split are now historical and everything has moved on. I think there is a good case for going back to one FWR board. I forget to look at the Chat board and when I do there isn't much there.

It was more like that they wanted a new board if they never wanted to hear anything about wide leg jeans even though everything else S&B was still being discussed on the original one alongside WLJs .

I just had a look. The 'chat' board had five posts yesterday. Not threads, posts. Two of those from one poster.

One of those threads was about Nicola Packer, created by the OP because they hadn't seen a thread about it. Only of course there was at least one thread, on the 'sex and gender' board.

This happens quite often, too. People assume that one or the other board is the only feminism board. So discussion gets split over two boards and diluted/repeated.

I’m shocked that all of this happened.

It also comes down to a group of people’s personal inability to scroll past a thread that they don’t want to participate in. And they wish to then have MN personally curated for their preferences.

While trying to convince others that they are kind and tolerant.

Kind of. The claim was that some people only wanted to talk about bootcut jeans. And that anybody that often talked about wide leg jeans weren't allowed to even visit the bootcut jeans board. It quickly became apparent that the bootcut jeans board had few visitors, not much to say.

Yes. That is it in a nutshell.

So all of this was akin to there being a Style and Beauty board and some posters saying they didn’t want to read posts about wide leg jeans even though that was a hot topic as it was in the news, important and relevant to a lot of posters so MN made a whole new board that people had to use if they wanted to talk about wide leg jeans?

“it just meant one board was effectively unused because no one needs a special board to go “u do u, hun”

😁