Dealing with inflammatory posts re Trans on MN

I also think it's reasonable to point out that we are being held to a far higher standard of discourse than others involved in this debate.

Not fair. Not feminist.

And as every parent tells every child at some point, life's not fair.

Yes we are being held to higher standards, it is, as it has always been, no change there then.

So we can descend to the level of others and risk getting banned or step up and argue in a way that will enable the message to be discussed, and spread. The tide is turning, so the debate will get more nasty. When more gender critical articles appear and the debate shifts, it will get a lot worse. MN will be held to a higher standard.

It's not like there aren't posters who can't win the argument. We have the tools, the skills, the posters and the arguments so why shoot ourselves in the foot ( feet?) because we want the right to be rude?

This in general is an excellent point:

I still think that ( and this is relevant to the thread title) if you want to win you have to be political. Being right doesn't get you any points in politics. Being persuasive does. Being charming does. Being accessible does. You can be right and still lose.

This might seem counter intuitive to those who have been aware of the issues here for a long time and shouting louder and louder to get a response. And I am not suggesting stopping shouting to be heard.

But as more people in politics are listening now, we should be thinking about how we sound to them. How might lobbyists have painted us? How do we get across that we have reasonable, considered, valid points that need to be heard? That we are reasonable people, that it is possible to be pro trans and concerned with women's rights. Etc.

I've had a good trans friend since the 1980s - sigh, that's longer than most TRAs have even been alive. I'm probably a candidate for Logan's Run or something!

Decades of supporting a friend has not meant sacrificing women's rights, services or spaces, or destroying safeguarding protocols for children. Until the last couple of years. It's not me that's changed.

You know that, long-term posters and readers will be aware of the difference between people like your friend and extreme TRAs. And know which you are talking about.

But newer posters and lurkers won't and may easily assume the comments about TRAs are meant universally.

OK. Again, I agree. Sex not gender based provision, protection of female only spaces. Yep. I'm on board.
I still think that ( and this is relevant to the thread title) if you want to win you have to be political. Being right doesn't get you any points in politics. Being persuasive does. Being charming does. Being accessible does. You can be right and still lose.
This forum is a very valuable resource at the moment; if it sets an example of reasoned debate and factual information that's simply going to make it more likely to be able to continue.
Yeah, maybe women are held to a higher standard. Whatever. Set the standard of discourse, don't get dragged down into the mud (or bogged down in Twitter fights).
You won't convert every woman into a radical feminist but you will get the attention of the right people.
I'm saying this because as pp have said FWR is currently a lot more public than just any old Internet chat room.

Yes lot's of us do. I do.

I've had a good trans friend since the 1980s - sigh, that's longer than most TRAs have even been alive. I'm probably a candidate for Logan's Run or something!

Decades of supporting a friend has not meant sacrificing women's rights, services or spaces, or destroying safeguarding protocols for children. Until the last couple of years. It's not me that's changed.

LangCleg, the pp who discussed the use of TERF in user names didn't ask people to stop using the term, she just explained that to her as an occasional lurker that the fact many regular contributors have TERF as part of their username comes across as aggressive. There's nothing wrong with expressing that view.

..but lots of people will have a transsexual colleague or family member who bears no resemblance to these lunatics and won't recognise some of the nightmarish situations that get referenced on here as being possibilities.

Yes lot's of us do. I do.

Its about the right to retain single sex. Which is hard when the government is about to legally obliterate sex. Female will mean male and female legally.

There are arguments on here and strong or stroppy opinions expressed, of course. But to characterise this as peculiar to FWR is just nonsense. And to put higher standards on FWR because we are women who must mind other people all the time? Not fair. Not feminist.

This.

No we're lovely

Teehee! Honestly though, the first thing I really noticed while I was lurking was the endless repetition of threads as women would come and say This can't possibly be true, can it? Please explain! and regulars would painstakingly and patiently lay it out in careful detail. Nobody was told they were stupid. Nobody was told they were lazy or to educate themselves by reading yesterday's thread or the day before's thread or the day before that's thread.

There are arguments on here and strong or stroppy opinions expressed, of course. But to characterise this as peculiar to FWR is just nonsense. And to put higher standards on FWR because we are women who must mind other people all the time? Not fair. Not feminist.

I'm just aware that the groups who could perhaps benefit most from a GC perspective have been told we're all evil old witches who wish their death. So I have a lot of patience for nervous people going agh, they're all called terf, maybe it's true?

I don't think we should drop the in-jokes but I'm happy to keep explaining them til the cows come home

No we're lovely

Well, the telling not so much perhaps. But asking what the avatars are all about and what people intend by them, why not?

Exactly. Asking is very different.

But that's not what's happened on this thread, is it? We're being asked to not have in-jokes, not have shared vocab - like all other online communities do - because outsiders might not like them.

I think part of the problem is that some here are so familiar with the arguments and have rehashed them so many times it's hard to remember that others are new to it and having to decode. Especially in a context where there is so much misinformation about.

This is very true. But one of the things that stands out about FWR is that people asking good faith questions are treated very well with a large number of posters never complaining about having answered the same question dozens of times before. People don't get told to educate themselves here, do they?

would anyone think it wise or reasonable to go onto a UKIP forum and tell members with Cross of St George avatars to lose them because outsiders use that to accuse them of racism?

Well, the telling not so much perhaps. But asking what the avatars are all about and what people intend by them, why not?

I think part of the problem is that some here are so familiar with the arguments and have rehashed them so many times it's hard to remember that others are new to it and having to decode. Especially in a context where there is so much misinformation about.

Yes agree Langcleg. I had been mulling over similar thoughts.

God this moves fast!

Just to continue my post above...

... would anyone think it wise or reasonable to go onto a UKIP forum and tell members with Cross of St George avatars to lose them because outsiders use that to accuse them of racism? Or onto a trans board and tell members with anime usernames or avatars to lose them because outsiders use that to brand them as creepy pervs?

I wouldn't do either of those things. I suspect most people wouldn't. But it does seem acceptable to do this to communities of women and criticise them for humour/reclamation of the slur "TERF".

The thing is mouth I have been on these threads a few months now, and was lurking a while before that, so I do know the arguments, and on the whole I agree with you I think-I want sex based provision for women, I don't want self Id, I'm very worried about the effect Mermaids etc can have on children.
So I am very much in favour of MN being a place where women (and men, as this will affect their female loved ones) can discuss the calm and rational reasons why the things I mentioned are important (which loads of you are doing, and thank you for doing it!)
Quoting horrific things nutters say in Twitter may be counter productive. Sadly there will always be angry men saying horrible things about women on the Internet. Some days I think that's what the Internet was invented for. ..but lots of people will have a transsexual colleague or family member who bears no resemblance to these lunatics and won't recognise some of the nightmarish situations that get referenced on here as being possibilities.
I'm totally on the side of protecting women's and girls rights, and I want to do so in the real world, with support from real politicians and policy makers. I find the acronyms and slanging matches really pointless and don't care if some random twitterbot calls me a terf, or a nazi. In fact I wouldn't even know as I can't stay far enough away from Twitter!

yes it does make me laugh how certain TRAs are baying about the nasty mumsnetters (like we are some sort of homegenous group with identical opinions anyway!), wheras it is us that are constantly insulted with offensive terms like "cis" and "TERF"and every post constantly called "vile", "hateful", "toxic" and "phobic". I think the problem is they've overcooked it as those words have been bandied about so willy nilly (pardon the pun!) now, even when anyone can see that the threads here are reasonable and highly policed, both by MN and by ourselves, that they've lost quite a bit of power and any bit of meaning that they might have once had. I mean transphobic is and always was just silly.

Many of the new posters tend to stick around for a while (come for the drama, stay for the facts )

I love this! And Tru, the fact that your username was referred to as aggressive is a powerful irony that will not be lost.

Its no longer just an online community though... this board has been signposted as the (only?) place where open discussion is possible. It is being deliberately targeted by some TRAs as a consequence.
Many people who have started to ask questions or are aware that perhaps there are questions to ask are coming here... its an opportunity which really needs to be seized

I think most women do actually, so I agree with Tru that the term "trans" to cover the whole shebang is actually really confusing and unhelpful

Part of the report from the Equality committee recommended:

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwomeq/390/390.pdf

"Each of us is at birth assigned a sex (male or female), based on our physical characteristics. Most people’s gender identity (the gender with which they associate themselves) and gender presentation (how they outwardly show their gender) will not differ from that typically associated with their assigned sex. Trans people, however, have a
gender identity which differs from that of their (assigned) birth sex. Trans identities take a wide diversity of forms"

And then there's this:

"The current process of applying for a GRC was described to us as “bureaucratic”,“expensive” and “humiliating”. Witnesses told us that it required the collection and submission of substantial quantities of evidence of a type which ought to have no bearingon the granting of gender recognition"

I would love to know who they spoke to in the trans community - and if they heard any dissenting opinions from transsexuals?

Seemingly not - because apparently transsexual is an outdated term

"A major criticism was that, as regards trans equality, the Act is couched in terms
that are seen as outdated and confusing, with its references to “gender reassignment” and “transsexual” persons.
90
93. And there is a consequent, apparently widespread, misapprehension that the Act only provides protection to those trans people whose transition involves medical “gender-reassignment” treatment.91 (Likewise, “transsexual”, being primarily a medical
categorisation, can be seen as referring specifically to someone who intends to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone such a medical intervention.)

It's an interesting point about usernames, and one I've been thinking about a lot for the past week or so. I changed mine back in maybe January (? can't remember exactly) but it was when the word TERF seemed to be appearing much more frequently and being flung around at anyone raising the most reasonable questions.

It seemed to me an astonishing and ridiculous overreaction - a joke. That was the spirit in which I, and a lot of people at the same time, took it as a username. It conjures up an image that is SO FAR removed from the person I am that it was (to me) obviously ironic.

BUT. I realise that no one online knows who I am in real life, what I do, what I look like, what I stand for. And since I took the name, the climate has changed. It's ceased, sadly, to seem ridiculous when this term is thrown about. The similarity between the accusation of TERF today, and 'witch' in the seventeenth century has been made by many, and it's scarily apt. Although it seems to be a very precise descriptor, it is flung indiscriminately and without evidence, to discredit and demean, and to silence women's voices. It is used to widen that 'us and them' narrative and stifle reasonable, respectful debate. I am emphatically NOT trans-exclusionary, but the original irony has been lost.

As I said, I've been thinking about it a lot recently. And I will now change my username back to my previous (flippant, alcohol-based) one. Thanks for raising the point playdohnut (Salutes to all the other terf-usernames out there. This is just my take.)

Why not reclaim it? Because, coming in from the "outside" it is not clear whether those using Terf in their usernames are are reclaiming it or endorsing it - it is coming across that they actually are trans-exclusionary to the casual lurker.

By the same token, you are asking a community of women to stop all the things that bind on- and offline communities - the in jokes, the shared vocab, the common understandings. Because outsiders, many of whom are men, should be able to control their interactions if those shared bindings do not exhibit enough female socialisation and put people outside the community first.

This is unfair.

I am relatively new to the FWR board - much less than a year of posting. I was aware of the reputation of this section of Mumsnet before I posted. I read the threads for several weeks before joining in. I'd got a sense of the shared vocab and what was humour and what wasn't. I had some idea of the positions held by the board generally and by particular prominent posters. Thus I was able to join, start posting, and add my own opinions to the board without disrupting it. Some members agree with what I say and some don't. This is normal etiquette online.

This board is the same as any other board concentrating on one area of life. It has an overall flavour within which is a range of views. FWR has a gender critical flavour with a range of views going from very mild to very radical.

Some outsiders may well consider it transphobic as they would consider any gender critical opinion or community transphobic. Others may consider it enlightening and interesting and agree with what is said. I've seen more supportive testimonies about FWR from "normals" who are on neither side of the inflamed trans debate than I have negative ones.

Some of the "insider talk" may go over the heads of both sets of outsider but that is the case with any online community. It is unfair to hold feminists to standards not expected of other groups.

I mean!