Well, that's us told

So true! I love the way the writer ‘learned about Mumsnet’ and ‘did more research’ — as if browsing a chat forum was investigative journalism! I’m proud to know my coffee-breaks with Mumsnet are actually high-level sociopolitical study.

Genspect tweeted that she attended a parent support group in New york
"Katie listened to & reported several of the parents' experiences & concerns."
You can read quotes in the twitter thread
mobile.twitter.com/genspect/status/1617184266139439104

The writer of this article has published a piece in the New York Times that is getting her called transphobic. Perhaps she's on the Road to Terfdom.

www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/gender-identity-students-parents.html

It is about schools helping children transition and hiding it from parents.

It's a but both sides but it does start to tell Americans what is going on.

I completely agree on the lack of nuance. Things like family support and make a big difference to women’s lives, especially for girls and very young women. A teenage girl from a more affluent family can tick all the boxes for supposed privilege yet in real terms be struggling more than another girl who has a loving family and lots of support but not much money coming in. Having a supportive family nearby makes a massive difference to women trying to juggle work and children, it always has done for less affluent women who could not afford to stop working even with babies, in the time before paid maternity leave.
I went to an all-girls selective private school. In the school there were sisters from a very strict religious sect. There were rules around how often they were allowed to wash their hair, so they usually had that acrid, greasy hair smell. They weren’t allowed to watch any television or listen to music or the radio, which is not a huge tragedy, but meant they were left out of conversations. They were extremely quiet and didn’t mix with other girls, they weren’t allowed to ask any of us to their home.
As above, on paper they were white teenagers in a good school, from a comfortably off family. In real terms their lives were incredibly restricted and some of it was almost cruelty.
Women from all classes experience domestic violence and coercive control, in spite of the lingering image that it is a working class problem. Education and cash cushion lives in general but can make no difference at all if your father/husband/partner won’t let you access it, or stops you from seeing friends, or family.

The parallels are striking. All the pieces of the puzzle are there.

The thing about this movement that's more sinister than any other 'social justice' movement we've seen in the last century is its power to silence dissenters. The threats of violence, doxxing, no platforming, destruction of people's careers, is the like of which I've never witnessed before.

The Duluth wheel identified the power and control dynamics and tactics of male abuse including deliberate smearing, isolation, threats etc in 1980's.
It continues to inform understanding of male violence against women and coercive/narcissistic control.

In response to Rowantrees: I found it interesting to see the pattern of coercive control of and by individuals, deployment of flying monkeys, all the hallmark patterns and cycles of abuse, applied on a macro level to this movement. Being a finer details rather than 'big picture' kind of thinker, I hadn't joined these particular dots. But of course you're right. The parallels are striking. All the pieces of the puzzle are there.

The thing about this movement that's more sinister than any other 'social justice' movement we've seen in the last century is its power to silence dissenters. The threats of violence, doxxing, no platforming, destruction of people's careers, is the like of which I've never witnessed before. It's on a whole different level from laughing at female radicals and calling them 'bra burners'.

It leads me to wonder how history will judge this a decade or so down the line.

I did like that she has already added the trademark sign.... it could go places that name.

I thought she was talking about fwr for a minute

I think we should rebrand

I agree.
This might helpfully clarify that complaints of the monitors concern the 'stroppycunts' board on MN who refuse to capitulate to their demands rather than suggesting it is all female members of the site and/or the business Mumsnet.

I think we should rebrand

I did enjoy the article, love a bit of humour, its my downfall

I don't believe that US women who write and/or publish articles such as this have much of a grasp of European history and politics, nor do I believe they have understood Rosa Luxemborg's work.

Stroppycuntnet would have the benefit of genderist approval, too. We're at cervix'havers just now, it's only a matter of time before they shorten it.

I'm taken aback to learn the magazine is named for Rosa Luxemburg.

Oh, I keep thinking of soap.

How can they say the constituency is under organised when they can't define the constituency? A publication for women, but also for anyone else who fancies a read. The founder of which isn't comfortable saying it's a women's publication. I'm sold. If only they could work out which members of the constituency are doing all the child/elder care, then they might be able to be more specific.

(extract from interview linked above)

Sarah Leonard (co-founder of Lux): "As feminists, we think in terms of solidarity rather than sisterhood, because we don’t necessarily think there’s anything organic about all women coming together. You have to build solidarity with intent and build relationships. We refer often in our editorial note to the Combahee River Collective Statement, and one of the reasons we refer to it constantly is that they were—and remain, for that matter—very serious about building points of solidarity with different groups who they had political goals in common with but were different from.

This magazine is designed to be part of that project. We imagine a particular kind of constituency that’s made up of all of these solidarities that are feminist, abolitionist, queer, and socialist. And to us, that creates an extremely big world, a very big constituency [with] lots of alliances. " (continues)

This is the luxury/champagne socialism of Jess Bradley, Owen Jones, Ash Saaker, Novara Media etc?

For actual feminist solidarity and sisterhood: FiLia podcasts filia.org.uk/podcasts

I'm taken aback to learn the magazine is named for Rosa Luxemburg. I hope that they somehow had the requisite permission from those who care for her legacy because that is otherwise crass.

From a discussion from the collective that runs it:

Women—and I’m going to say women, but I’m always anxious about hammering too hard on women because we have a very queer and expansive definition of our constituency—are an under-organized constituency. You see that in the fact that this country has an absolute childcare and eldercare crisis. Basically, all of that work is done by women. Everybody knows this as a crisis, and it’s not a priority anywhere.

www.thenation.com/article/politics/qa-sarah-leonard-marian-jones/

Well intentioned and able to grasp some issues but women talking on Mumsnet is what perturbs them.

I did think this too Datun.

I felt she needed an invite to come and have a look!

She says she'd join StroppyCuntNet.

Sounds fairly interchangeable with FWR. And certainly AIBU!

Suzanne Moore had written a response to the article.

suzannemoore.substack.com/p/i-got-all-radicalised-without-going

My only issue with it is that she didn’t qualify that it is not only ‘mums’ on Mumsnet. Obviously, when you start reading the threads there are women with or without children and men as well.

Still her point is, the author really has no idea about British women and their political values.

Bless. What a complete misinterpretation of the role American homophobia, and relative tolerance of homosexuality in the UK, and the relation of these things to the trans/GC divide.

Agreed!

It suddenly occurs to me that it didn't get used as much as it should. EG we have a closed Christian community. Think Amish level closed. The girls and women in there have no chance. No frame of reference as to what is 'normal'. No access to any kind of media to read or see what support is available. They're white (as far as I have seen), Christian, and I don't think there is poverty.

This is so reminiscent of the recent MN guest post about (effectively) closed Jewish communities and forced marriage:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/4186416-Guest-Post-Mumsnet-was-the-first-safe-place-I-had-to-realise-my-own-agency-now-I-am-campaigning-to-end-forced-marriage

Bog standard misogyny.

Women come in 2D cardboard cutout types.

No more to them, no less. A mum on MN is like this. Full stop. A subsection of various types of mum. Yummy mummy. Career mummy. Mumsy mummy. Young mum. Single mum. Etc etc etc

This view of girls and women as types is across society and through our whole lives

Men who meet the default (heterosexual etc) get to be people.

It's infuriating. Especially that so many women buy into it as well. And tbf play up to it a fair bit.