What is with all the thread zapping?

I think there have been considerable compromises made on this board by many posters.
On other parts of MN exchanges seem to be more robust when contentious comments are made.
Many posters are going to a lot of effort to ensure their sentences are acceptable.
The misgendering /mispronouning is going to become increasingly difficult though, particularly when reports are made not by the individual who is involved with the exchange on the thread but on behalf of someone else by someone else who is watching threads in order to police them. Also, it will be incredibly difficult for many people (for all sorts of reasons) to introduce new pronoun usage.

MN said they were committed to free speech & produced new rules ,

"To try to create a more civil and mutually respectful conversation"

The guidance concludes:
'Mumsnet has thrived on being a place where people can find intelligent and differing opinions and enter into civilised discussion. This is an issue which has tested our ability to discuss it to the absolute limit and it’s no surprise to me that there are very few sites or publications where it’s still possible to do so. But we fundamentally believe that with a bit of an effort all round then we can allow all voices to be heard and, hopefully, even move towards some form of acceptable and constructive compromise."

totally and they have defined what they think that is and some people think it dies not apply to them and decide to just post what they want then complain when it is taken down at least people don't seem to be banned as much these days.

Mumsnet supports civilised and respectful speech Bespin . There is nuance in that intention.

again just to point out this is not speakers corner while this forum supports freedom of speech that does not nessesary mean they are going to give it too you it's a private forum after all and is here to make a profit for its owners and pay its staff. it will do what it thinks is the best thing to maximise that and if that means take away a threads then it will do it.

but then decided I'd said something that implied the person was a man.

This is, in my view, particularly problematic. It's one thing to insist we make an effort to use a person's preferred pronouns. But there are times when it's crucial to the debate that we draw attention to male violent behaviour - for example when a trans woman is accused or convicted of rape, or has publicly used misogynistic threats. In such cases it has to be legitimate to question the extent to which an individual's gender reassignment should be accepted. I'm sure there are other examples.

Agree with R0wan re: pronouns - there are an absolute heap of possibilities so it’s increasingly impossible to comply with rules.

I’ve taken to using full name and then abbreviating to initials. It doesn’t read as very friendly though - I guess that’s the problem with lots of ‘correct’ speak? The more formal the rules, the less welcoming the environment created by those rules?

Sometimes I really want to temper a tense situation with a joke, it daren’t, in case it’s misconstrued. This leaves me looking like a far more terse and strict person than I actually am - and presumably does the same to many others?

This is likely bad for the debate overall (both off and on Mumsnet), as we are losing our human-ness.

The panorama thread did have one post that was problematic (not malicious, just gossipy and you wouldn’t want to publish any proof that may or may not be available on a parenting website ) so it could probably have just been pruned?

But it was a real-time thread responding to the live broadcast, so I guess that makes modding particularly challenging?

The word "goady" is often used in places where it seems to be convenient.

THere was a situation recently where a poster had looked up Edward Lord (following newspaper article etc), in Wiki.

Edward Lord's now preferred pronouns were not recorded there and so a MN poster unintentionally mispronouned / misgendered Lord.

Edward Lord may prefer to be referred to as 'they/them' but reading their history and seeing their photograph etc is a person to be sanctioned for believing they are male and using he/him?

Similarly, if quoting an article, to what extent must the person quoting do due dilligence before posting, & what exactly is due dilligence? It becomes an increasingly impossible requirement as transitions takes place at specific times- there is no current uptodate database of individual's genders or preferred pronouns and even if there were, it wouldn't likely be searchable by a 'deadname' for obvious reasons.

Playing forward the possibilities forward demonstrates the issues.

The Panorama thread was a prefect example, as was the thread about “ “ travellers “ invading a poster’s town.

The cop out seems to be always “not in the spirit “ !

I agree that MNHQ are far to quick on the zap the thread button at the moment.

It seems to relate to who's complained and on what grounds. I had a post deleted and they said I'd misgendered someone. When I pointed out in reply that I certainly had not (I'd used the person's initials throughout), they accepted this, but then decided I'd said something that implied the person was a man.

You can be deleted for the inference a complainer draws from a comment, it seems.

I don't understand why a 'misgendering' issue in the OP can't be edited, especially when a thread has run on for some time.

(Im not talking specifically about a recent thread)

If the misgendering is deliberately intended to cause offence / goad or not in good faith etc then that's something very different.

This was the reason given for the deleted thread that I started following Lisa Muggeridge's Twitter suspension. It was confused further by a suggestion that the issue was I had linked to an article which had misgendering in it (I don't know which).

Given that increasing numbers of people are identifying as non-binary as well as other genders & with a high number of possible pronouns, Im not sure where this will lead to in terms of the ability to discuss.

There have been threads recently where MN have been happy to edit titles when asked.

BettyDuMonde

Thank you ! I would if I could remember what I said. ADHD and dyslexia makes writing impulsive thoughts (that I get easily distracted from) down quite challenging.

All I remember is that it made a sort of sense to me when it was flowing out, but the details have buggered off now other things are crowding my head. My baby is 18 today. I am celebrating managing to bring him up to adulthood in one piece (and very good at housework and cooking ! Doing my bit for future womankind!!) and having an existential crisis about impending empty nest syndrome and not being able to tell what to do anymore.

Head can't decide which one it should concentrate on so there's a really confusing thought party going on up there. If stuff does come back in dribs and drabs once things settle down upstairs I'd certainly welcome the opportunity to mull over them and other ideas again.

cesira

You made some excellent posts on one of the disapparated threads - I hope you will reuse the content, either in another thread or a blog post somewhere? Too good to just lose.

I agree, but a public space where we can speak without fear of censorship.
I will never call someone by a gender that they are not and that means I cannot freely discuss such important issues on here.

Thing is, we also need public space to talk about all this so that others will read and take part...

Where are places that we can talk about all of this? Do they exist?

The op had recently nc but what I saw was ime identifiable even from a quick search which showed a few recent posts. My concern was for the op in this instance

Oh right. I was just at the 'oh my Goddess is this for real' stage when it got zapped - I can't even remember the poster's name - so I do take your point.