Atlantic has an article about "anti-trans feminism" and of course Mumsnet is mentioned

Wasn’t one of the people the writer interviewed Lavery? Maybe the intention at the start changed after that interview.

Well, we did get a few new male perspective posters yesterday. Sadly, one of the most chatty males had absolutely nothing new in their view poin, but at least they were civil and not out to just ‘shame the nasty women’ and maybe they will stick around.

Ha, just thought the same Merry!

It’s unfortunate as the writer is a tech specialist and there’s a good ^tech^ story in there, they just totally miss it and turn it into a personal rant. I skim read it and it made the Ovarit developer sound vile - the emails show that is not the case at all. And as Janice Turner pointed out on Twitter, they haven’t bothered to describe the issues at hand in any meaningful way at all. The reference to t*s throughout (and in the headline!) is appalling, but it’s written to play to a particular gallery and it’s good it has been falling apart under scrutiny. The Atlantic should be ashamed.

I wonder if the writer contacted anyone at mumsnet HQ?

The hook for the article seems to be extremists flee Reddit and set up alternative websites, but from a journalistic point of view it looks as though they failed to interview anyone with extremist views who had set up a website, so just tried to work with what they had.

When you look at the email exchange it reads a bit like a Trump supporter trying to explain how Biden is a socialist who will make the US like Venezuela by interviewing Keir Starmer.

Hi Marcy!

Looking forward to Helen's response :)

Love it!

Hello! You from LSA?

Crush the trolls!

It reads like a far less sophisticated Titania Mcgrath parody article, combined with the plans to write a One Direction book proudly in the Twitter bio.

Waiving back to you!

But anyway. Thanks to Kaitlyn, some people are going to discover that the African American community is not a monolith and that, in fact, some black women are feminists/womanists. If awareness of that spreads, it's going to be inconvenient.

Agreed. The TRAs use the argument 'if you exclude transwomen from using spaces it's like excluding black women from those spaces'. They are trying to portray gender critical feminists as racist.

To me, that argument is the racist one. Women's spaces are for women and girls, i.e human females. All human females. The fact that TRAs seem to be conflating black women and girls with human male-bodied people is shockingly offensive, surely. Skin colour has no bearing on whether one is a human female. Being biologically male does.

Anyway, good to see LSA standing up to this nonsense.

A disappointing lack of discussion about Keira Bell on that LSA site.

Last time I checked there was disappointingly little discussion on the saidit gender critical site as well. The case didn't get much coverage in the US and Americans probably don't see it affecting them. I think the Keira Bell case will have a bearing over there. Obviously the US isn't bound by UK precedent but our legal system has a good reputation worldwide and common law countries do use relevant rulings from other similar jurisdictions to support their cases and judgments.

However, if you don't know that, Keira Bell might seem irrelevant and unimportant, especially given the lack of coverage.

Unless I'm looking at the wrong boards (link below). A disappointing lack of discussion about Keira Bell on that LSA site. One or two brave UK souls seem to have tried to raise it in a couple of topics, with some great comments by them, but not much engagement from the sisters across the pond on such a momentous court judgement.

But many Americans probably think all English women look, act and talk like Emma Thompson or Kate Winslet anyway and so we've all Karen-ed our way back to our country cottages to put our feet up, so...dunno

www.lipstickalley.com/forums/the-lsa-womanist-feminist-forum.446/

The women on LSA rock! They are preparing for a TRA attack and reminding everyone they won't put up with any bs

"They will make a little noise here and there ..but they will bite off more than they can chew trying that here ..trust.."

Oh it will. It is inevitable that people will look, and nose at the drama. Just like we go and read twitter when someone mentions a dust-up!

That's why normally they don't mention LSA, they don't mention the fruit orchards, and they don't mention datalounge. They namedrop the forum that can be most easily demonised as privileged transphobes. That's us- mostly white (because UK is mostly white) mothers. Or as they say now 'Karens'.

It's a parenting forum, so we are assumed to be all heterosexual, therefore outside the LGBT community and therefore transphobic. Everyone 'knows' from their own years parents just don't get it so we can be written off.

You can only hope it will send curious readers googling the "radical" feminist forums to see how scary we are(n't). That's how I got here in the first place.

Actually, I think our gal Kaitlyn has screwed up here. There are some gender warriors who are going to be raging at her for going off-message.

It absolutely sucks for LSA to get singled out like this because they're going to get flooded with trolls (hope they're polishing the banhammer) but the gender warriors are normally very keen to paint concerned women as predominately white, middle-class, middle-aged/out-of-touch conservative British women. We're allegedly funded by the far-right and allegedly all are anti-gay rights. Britain is T**F Island, and the worst place in the world for anyone trans to live. (The UK- where gender reassignment has been a legally protected characteristic since 2010 and not a single trans person was murdered last year.) Wherever possible, gender-critical feminism is being painted as a peculiarly British prejudice.

At the same time as doing this, gender warriors have been doing what I would call co-opting BLM. The focus in the popular consciousness is "black lives matter" which, men being the default human, is interpreted as black men's lives matter, with a second strand, black trans lives matter. Breonna Taylor and other women are getting forgotten though. They're women, right?

I think that every murdered black transwoman matters. Any rate of murder above zero is too many. But more black women will have been murdered in America this year than transwomen, and no-one calls that an 'epidemic'. It's like that every year, just like women are murdered here; only this year, it will have been worse, because lockdown has locked women of every race in with abusers.

But anyway. Thanks to Kaitlyn, some people are going to discover that the African American community is not a monolith and that, in fact, some black women are feminists/womanists. If awareness of that spreads, it's going to be inconvenient.

I just can’t see how it’s anything more than medicalising people who don’t fit gender stereotypes. It’s a society problem that the person experiences as the (absolutely real!) pain of not ‘fitting’.

For some people it’s about physical sex. They are dysphoric about their physical sex characteristics. They may not care much about clothes or ‘things’ but they want to be seen as the sex they feel they are.

Having said that, adults who feel they need to medically transition because they can’t change society and after getting psychological help feel it is the best chance of their happiness, I 100% support

No. That’s wrong. They are gender non conforming people and that isn’t a good enough reason to undergo medical transition. Wanting to ‘dress like a man’ or wear ‘skirts and lipstick’ are not good reasons to medically transition. Psychiatrists try and screen those people out. At least they used to.

''Look I'm v aware of the phenomenon of people in small, mutually reinforcing groups radicalising each other - but if your idea of a dangerously extreme belief is "humans have a sex and can't change it", you might be the out-of-touch one''

twitter.com/sarahditum/status/1336364058694578183

Oh but also stupid and easy to manipulate, forgot that bit. Just awful really.

There is a bloke doing a lot of “TERFs are scum”, type trolling on the Atlantic FB page. Out of interest I had a look at his page.

Because nothing says social justice warrior like misogyny.

Women, mums even, transgressing and not fulfilling their duty to be kind. So unnatural, so wicked.

Funny who they've gateposted at, hmm?

As was discussed a few weeks ago, there is a pastoral acreage located in the antipodes, with a mixed male and female membership. Probably more male than female.

Kaitlyn didn't mention that forum, did she? She went after the mothers (politics and philosophy? On a parenting forum? The horrors) and the black women. They don't have a handy label like we do as a parenting forum, so she tried to cut them down to size as a 'beauty' forum. Again, the implication is that existing members of MN or LSA are being manipulated (our silly little heads were only there for the nappies/make-up tips!) by infiltrators from reddit.