Oh look, it's those guidelines making no sense whatsoever again!

Obviously we'd hope you won't need to receive any more anyway

If that's verbatim... well... I cannot think of a "civil" description of the tone! I didn't even take one like that when I was bollocking my kids!

Lawks-a-fucking-lordy.

For example, longstanding poster Orchid wrote "poor you" then she was banned.

Even the biscuit Emoji is deemed offensive

Thank you @MNHQ for sending me a detailed response regarding deletions and strikes.
I appreciate you getting back to me and talking through various posts.

I'm trying not to appear churlish by taking a detailed private response and dissecting it publicly, BUT, I did wince a bit about the tone and language used in the MN response: 'not in the spirit of the site' and 'that is never going to end well'.

I've been on here for 14 years and go on AIBU a fair bit, where there is lots that could be deemed not in the spirit of the site - but what is the spirit of the site?

The line about strikes Obviously we'd hope you won't need to receive any more anyway is unfortunately not my decision to make. I can't predict what is a interpreted as a misdemeanour on FWR.

Here's @glinner's latest - for your perusal, @MNHQ. As we all know, glinner has been in the firing line of the TRAs too.

unherd.com/2019/11/dont-give-in-to-the-transbullies/

He speaks the truth. We know it, you know it.

Everyone on this thread knows that feminist Mumsnetters are being sold a pup here. We can see that we are being held to a higher account than the rest of Mumsnet - we know that these guidelines, these deletions, these strikes, are UNFAIR and UNEQUAL - we know this because we can read. We can read the posts on other boards, and we can read the posts that are sanctioned here, and we can see the unfairness.

We know that racism and disablism and ageism etc is not treated in the same way as the so-called-transphobia. And we know it's because the TRAs are bullying you, and targeting your advertisers in a way that advocates for other minorities simply do not do.

Here's a few excerpts:

^Don’t give in to the bullying trans activists
They'll come for you at the slightest perceived transgression. But you're not a bigot. Be calm. Stand firm.^

It could be anything. A throwaway line in a press release, or a casting decision, or a packaging design that somehow made it through the focus groups. A charge of transphobia forms in an instant out of nothing, and then follows you around like a loyal, smelly dog.

It’s been a little over a year since I decided to enter into the heated debate around currently fashionable gender ideology and the same activists who smeared the former tennis player Martina Navratilova and the singer Marc Almond as transphobic have thrown everything they could at me too. And yet I have not changed my position one iota from what it was when I began.

I can summarise my position thus: women exist. They are not just an idea or a feeling. They have the right to assembly, the right to organise, the right to demand private and safe spaces free of men

Amen to that.

I’m really annoyed reading through this thread. It’s the blatant lying from HQ that it’s really starting to annoy me. The condescending way they talk to their users and basically saying what we are seeing and feeling isn’t true or doesn’t matter is shocking. I can actually say things on Twitter surprisingly, that would get deleted here, it’s ridiculous. Why are they putting men above their female users? It’s gross.

I have taken to using @MumsnetHQ whenever I comment on a thread I think should be seen and considered in regard to the guidelines.

The term for a pregnant female is now 'carrier', very derogatory when you consider its actual meaning and also dangerous from a medical care standpoint but heaven forbid we use actual biological terms that in no way mean to offend, remove rights, dignity or jepordise medical care.

I wonder if Justine and the moderation team ever read the transwidows thread, and consider that it is a guaranteed fact that some - not all - of those raising their voices to quell ours will be the type of person who can deliberately put their partners through what those brave, quite frankly fucking wonderful women have been put through. Is that the kind of person anyone would want to appease at the expense of women trying to stand up for their rapidly-eroding rights?

I was going to say this but I felt it would be a bit ungrateful for me to do so, given MN give the trans widows a bit of extra leeway as to how we talk about our ex's, but I'm glad somebody else has said it.

I'd put money on it being not just the type of person described in the trans widows threads but maybe being exactly some of the people described.

Also- and I've said this before- it's an extra level of mind fuck when trans widows have to pussy foot around with the words we are allowed to use to describe other people who we can see are just like our ex's.

Regarding coercive control - it isn’t easy to hear you’re engaging in abusive behaviour, but I think most of us would want to know if we were, or even if we looked like we were. ‘Accusing’ isn’t what posters are doing that I’ve seen; they’re pointing out a lot of the mod team might not be aware of the behaviours that underpin it and may not recognise it in others, ie when we get malicious reporting and thread-policing.

I don’t think anyone has chucked ‘you’re just like my abusive ex’ at the moderators; it’s an invitation to learn (or prove us wrong), not an accusation.

As ever it is good to know, even if bit by bit, some more terms that cannot be used. I am seriously considering writing an unofficial autism-accessible version of the guidelines and updating it as more information becomes apparent - as posters (and not just autistic ones) keep saying it’s very difficult to keep track of what is/isn’t a strikeable offence. I have 0 strikes so far, guessing since I don’t post very much and mainly by luck as I thought ‘peak trans’ was fine.

I post infrequently in FWR as far more eloquent and educated posters than I am have usually already articulated what I want to say - posters like Talking, Michelleoftheresistance, BarbaraStrozzi, Lang et alia. I want to add my voice to the chorus here pointing out that there is nothing civil, fair or transparent about the way FWR is moderated, or the ridiculous linguistic contortions we have to perform to avoid having our knuckles rapped for posting scientific facts. Dear goddess, how have we come to this?

And I'm sorry but Justine's post is really a whole load of nothing. There is no acknowledgement that we have a point, there is no desire to bring clarity to the moderation rules or - better yet - to move them to being on a par with the rest of the site. No acceptance that like it or not, the mods are acting as agents for coercive control by being unable or unwilling to spot blatant gaming of the reporting function.

I wonder if Justine and the moderation team ever read the transwidows thread, and consider that it is a guaranteed fact that some - not all - of those raising their voices to quell ours will be the type of person who can deliberately put their partners through what those brave, quite frankly fucking wonderful women have been put through. Is that the kind of person anyone would want to appease at the expense of women trying to stand up for their rapidly-eroding rights?

From my pov, as a long-term user of MN (joined 2005, but lurked for 3 or so years before that, so very very early), not prolific poster on FWR but avid reader here, I would find it a lot easier if you were to mod as suggested by 2BthatUnnoticed.

Talking's post is fantastic, and sums up my unease. I'm planning to share it with my daughters, both of whom have already experienced too much violence and unreasonable comments before they're even half way through their teenage years.

I lurk, mostly. Please, wise ladies, keep posting. Because I lurk, read, and talk in the real world. Talking, and taking this subject into the sunlight demonstrates whether there is substance to the arguments or not.

(I have had to modify my words here. Anyone who knows me in rl would laugh their socks off, because that doesn't sound like the usual me)

Fair point.

I forgot that we now live in 1984 a world where definitions are fluid and ever-changing and full of hidden meaning!

Good - lucky that none of the posters we're talking about here ever says anything like that, eh?

As I said upthread though, this could be taken to mean that expressing the need for single sex spaces is challenging people’s right to ‘express their trans identity’ so I think we need clarification on this.

Posters who simply believe that trans people are weird, or shouldn’t be allowed to express their trans identity, just aren’t welcome on Mumsnet.

Good - lucky that none of the posters we're talking about here ever says anything like that, eh?

I'm interested in the language MN uses when responding to posters.

Upthread a poster mentions being called "uncivil" for using inverted commas around tw. I've also read about users being scolded for being unkind or that MN may not be the best platform for them etc. The usual comments women might get for standing up for our rights.

A couple of weeks ago I reported a post that used the phrase twaw in bold capitals. I figured that if I had written the opposite, it would be deleted.

I thought that I would be taken more seriously by using the same tone and language of others, by saying that the post was "triggering" and "bigoted" that it implied women do not exist, that women's rights are human rights and that the post was womanphobic.

MN said they would look into this and were sympathetic and that if there was anything they could do in the meantime, to let them know.

Nothing came of it (unsurprisingly) but it made me wonder if certain posters, using certain phrases and language are treated with kid gloves for risk of hurty feelings or MN being branded phobic.

Yes, I would have received a stock response similar to those who complain that a post has upset them, but how does MN decide what's mean and what's nice? As a woman, such phrases do hurt me. The distortion of biological fact hurts me, the inference that I am uncivil for not wanting my rights or safety violated, hurts me. But who decides what is hurtful? What measurement is used and how is fairness applied?

So often women speaking biological fact and not playing a victim card, will receive responses about being uncivil and implications that we are mean and nasty.

I wonder what response Orchid received? I was the first person to reply to the child poster on that thread and I knew something was amiss. I saw Orchid's post after mine. Why was it removed MN?

It's odd that on other parts of mumsnet you can have posts directly targeting an individual saying all kinds of things about them, and they are allowed to stand.

So, you can be 'uncivil' about an individual person, but you cant be factual about a trans person.

Protected Characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity.

Do you apply the moderation rules equally across these protected characteristics, @MNHQ ?

*yourself

You do ourself bad with unequal guidelines for protected characteristics, MNHQ. You know this, don't you? All those months ago, you acquiesced to the twitterstorm. You should never have done that.

Hear hear, NotBadCOnsdering and everyone else on this thread.

Why do the feminists get strikes, but not those posting stuff that breaches guidelines on AIBU or anywhere else?

Could we have a bit of EQUALITY please? God knows, we won't get it anywhere else, but on a site called Mumsnet I think we're entitled to expect it.

If you think we’ve made a mistake and not mailed you, let us know as we can check this out.

But how would you know? As far as I’m aware I’ve never had a strike. But I’ve had deletions. If I check the email account regularly and there’s nothing so say a deletion I’ve had is a strike how do I know if it’s meant to be? I’ve gone back to threads and seen messages deleted but had no email, some of which have been for quoting which I understand but others that haven’t. We’re they an unrecognised and non-notified strike?

I think there needs to be
a) a consideration of why this sub-board needs a three strike policy compared to everywhere else and
b) a clean slate wiped for all users with strikes until it's clear the strike notification policy is working consistently

will not* be satisfied