Mumsnet Grass Account

The twitter account is bonkers. I read through all the posts, and bar one, possibly 2, saw no evidence of transphobia. I think they need to look up the meaning of it.

This is the problem - there is no commonly agreed meaning. Some would say it's transphobic to say you don't believe a man can be a woman, that research should be one into issues of medical ethics etc. But critical thinking, research, being able to state different beliefs and name reality are important and need to be retained.

TRAs are very keen that only they can define transphobia. And then it is used to mean anything that doesn't suit their agenda. So today it was leaflets pointing out biological women are at an unfair disadvantage in sport.

Mumsnet (and society) can't be run on not saying things TRAs define as transphobic, because that becomes a way of censoring anything women say that relates to the differences between biological males and biological females. Which is the BASIS of feminism, and of women's protections in society and law.

And that becomes effectively censorship of feminist thought and discussion of women's sex based rights.

Talk guidelines (and law and society) need to make sure that doesn't happen. If TRAs or gender ideologists write them it's pretty much guaranteed it will.

@MNHQ

Frankly I’m more concerned that someone has the time and energy to take on the role of Thought Police.

Let’s just change the name to Transnet, take down the feminist boards and commit to never talking about anything as unwomanly as our reproductive systems so as to ensure we are not taintent with terfness.

I also think that removing all past posts due to new guidelines is a very, very slippery slope to go down.

I would hope MN treat that arrogant, entitled little demand with the respect it deserves. I.e. none.

@MNHQ are any gender critical women involved in agreeing and feeding into the guidelines?

I am worried that if they are not the guidelines may end up being designed (accidentally or otherwise) as being a form of effective censorship of feminist discussion.

Of course trans people must be respected. But everyone must be able to state their beliefs within the rules - otherwise this is not so much about equality and respect, but becomes a set of 'blasphemy rules' for the many, many people who do not believe a man can become a woman because he says he feels like it (or at all)

I also think that removing all past posts due to new guidelines is a very, very slippery slope to go down.

The twitter account is bonkers. I read through all the posts, and bar one, possibly 2, saw no evidence of transphobia. I think they need to look up the meaning of it.

@MNHQ give an inch and they will take a mile, your guidelines are fine as they are, and allow for tone, nuance etc.

We have to be able to say that they are male.

@MNHQ we need to retain the ability to identify and discuss the category of biological women as distinct from all other categories when posting. Whatever the new guidelines are it has to include this, or it takes away the ability to discuss women's sex based rights in any meaningful way. Having the basic language to discuss women as a sex class is NOT transphobic.

We also need language to discuss the biological differences between men and women. Without this we cannot discuss safeguarding issues for example or women's experience if sex-based violence or assault, or women's right to consent to whether or not they undress with someone with a penis. The basic ability to do that is not transphobic.

Oh my goodness Assigned

I keep being reminded of W B Yeats poem "The Cloths of Heaven", which ends

"I have spread my dreams under your feet:
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"

A group of activists who have no hesitation in chucking the vilest insults at those they randomly accuse of being TERFS while pretending they are the most delicate of creatures themselves.

But, I think their Twitter reporting is very helpful in informing the wider public about their agenda.

A request to rewrite history

Massive, massive alarm bells should be ringing here for everybody.

A request to rewrite history. On a feminist board of a website for mums. To replace facts with fiction. To remove the language to describe the distinct category of biological woman.

Not in any way sinister, chilling or unreasonable at all then.

They will demand you comb through everything.

They’ve already asked for all historic posts to be checked, which is clue to the reasonableness levels.

The more I read the more I beg @MNHQ to NOT draw up intricate guidelines on what is and is not OK.

Keep it really simple. Your current guidelines on racist/religious hatred type posts? Just add ‘and transphobic’ on. Do NOT get bogged down in lists of what is and is not ok because they will pick at it. They will use ‘gish galloping’ techniques en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

They will demand you comb through everything.

And what do we tell women on the relationships board who are dealing with unreasonable, narcissistic monsters? Grey rock and disengage. Simple short guidelines, remove the Twitter reporting and just deal with transphobic posts as you do with any other post that’s hateful

Good luck with it. And please, please get a coercive control expert in to MNHQ for training. Your eyes will be opened.

'Mumsnet can't win here'

That's why they need to take a principled stance and give up on acquiescing to TA's. Twitter reporting was a huge mistake and I think MNHQ should just face down the criticism they will get on Twitter from TA's and stop taking reports from outside the MN site, citing potential issues with the linking of Twitter and MN accounts which has already happened and makes those women less safe. I think they should keep guidelines simple, and in-keeping with the law as many others have said, upholding free speech. And they shouldn't take a position on gender politics, which is what they are doing by deleting posts for sex based pronouns but not for cisgendering (both of which should remain/be treated the same way) - I've said this before - but even Twitter doesn't do that.

@mnhq

They tried it with Twitter. That account didn't last 12 hours because Twitter took no shit from them. Hth

Just had a look at one of those threads

Oh look, @MumsnetTowers #mumsnet is trying its hand at victim-blaming. It's all trans ppl fault that #Mumsnet hosts #transphobia because apparently it's up to trans ppl to police their site for them

And here we have @MumsnetTowers #mumsnet trying to shift the blame for the content on their site that is openly claiming that the fight by trans ppl for rights and equality is a fight for paedolphilia ONTO trans ppl, telling us WE have to police the site and report everything:

MNHQ really can't win here

I didn't even know about it until now. But really, one could hold the same view as the person/s running the MN Transphobia account and still see what type of bed MN were making for themselves with that one. It's just so obviously going to cause them masses of trouble!

Oof MN, you set up a way for people to report posts they don't like on twitter? Blimey I could have told you that was going to go tits up. I hope you have a dozen new moderators!

To be fair many people pointed this out at the time.

Would take a bet that the Housekeeping boards will be left alone though

Have just had a read of the Twitter account. I quite enjoyed seeing all the articulate arguments being reposted somewhere more public. Bravo!

Oof MN, you set up a way for people to report posts they don't like on twitter? Blimey I could have told you that was going to go tits up. I hope you have a dozen new moderators!

Wow, that tweet Ereshkigal!
We did warn MNHQ though, didn't we?

Interesting where it goes from there. Two options, keep capitulating until it gets rebranded as Tnet... or ignore. The latter will probably end in DDOS attack and hack. My advice women, protect yourselves, identifying data, messages, etc. Do it now, be prepared.

James Kirkup expressed admiration for both Mumsnet and Justine Roberts, "
Justine Roberts is great. Roberts is the founder of Mumsnet who has this week come out fighting for free speech and sensible political discussion, both of which are at risk in the debate about gender laws."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/if-mumsnet-can-stand-up-for-free-speech-why-cant-mps/
(extract)
"Why Mumsnet? Because a website previously best known for chat about childcare, biscuits and something called a penis beaker has developed an important role in an important political debate.

As I and others have noted before, it can be hard to talk about the politics and policy of gender and sex if you aren’t prepared to simply repeat, without question, a certain orthodoxy (some tenets of the faith: “transwomen are women”; self-defined gender trumps biological sex; some women have penises.) Because when you question that orthodoxy, some people call you names and maybe even threaten to do bad things to you. Especially if you’re a woman. Hence lots of women who do indeed question that orthodoxy find it hard or frightening to raise their concerns openly. Instead, they talk via Mumsnet, where the “Feminist Chat” forum is heaving with women (and yes, some men) discussing reform of the Gender Recognition Act, single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act, the safeguarding policy of Guiding UK and other issues that arise when you let men take the right to be treated as women on the grounds that they say they feel like they’re female. I’ve learned an awful lot by following such conversations.

The prominence of that forum has been growing in recent months and some people don’t seem to like that"

Catherine Bennett wrote:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/29/violent-misogyny-not-confined-to-internet-incels

"Photographs of one vitrine, featuring a red bespattered T-shirt reading: “I punch terfs!” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists/women who disagree with me), may have struck a chord with anyone following the current UK debate about the government’s self-ID proposals. To date, threats, from one side, which echo, inescapably, some of those in the pro-Rodger playbook (“die in a fire terf scum”) have yet to generate comparably widespread concern, even after a woman was punched. Her assailant had earlier expressed the wish to “fuck up some terfs”.

For many prominent women, the violence threatened by Rodger fans must sound especially familiar. Caroline Criado-Perez, to whom we owe the new statue of Millicent Fawcett, is just one brilliant woman to have been rewarded, on Twitter, with sexualised menaces (”choke you with my dick” etc), which attracted nowhere near the appalled interest that now surrounds “incels”, as we should surely agree not to call these men, and not only because it implies that involuntary celibacy represents a special condition. It’s often called, for instance, “being single” and is what dating websites were invented for.

To agree to use the lads’ pet terminology, is, moreover, to suggest that something distinguishes them from legions of other threatening men expressing a similar wish to control, punish or just silence women and, critically, in similar language. Such as, to non-compliant sexual targets, “choke on my dick”. A glance at Twitter confirms how generously such abuse has been accommodated, even as the repetitive insults and threats indicate gendered hostility to women in general.

If sexism does not explain how rapidly the language employed against dissenting women (including some trans women) in the UK self-ID debate, degenerated, in some quarters, into generic-sounding obscenities (eg, to unco-operative lesbians, “choke on my ladydick”), perhaps it’s because social media has for so long facilitated the delusion that hate speech, as applied to women, is simply part of the landscape.

Jesus Christ - I've just looked at the 'transphobia' and what the fuck are they talking about?

Are we all, on a parenting site, seriously supposed to pretend that males and females don't exist??

Honestly. I'm living out of the UK at the moment, in a place where there's rather more on people's minds than fucking around with gender, but if this insanity continues, I might just have to make that permanent!