FWR proposals - discriminatory?

Thanks ChristinaXYZ I totally understand the need to be careful. I’ll have a read 👍

"Given the ruling yesterday, Mumsnetshouldbe saying 'our users have the right to talk about these issues'. "

This proposal is simply an opportunity to report, challenge and censor those who wish to discuss women's rights from a biological perspective rather than a self ID perspective.

I strongly disagree.

Do not split the board.

I find I am spending increasingly more time on Ovarit and spinster to be honest.

I did a search on spinster for mumsnet to find other mumsnetters to follow as many will have mentioned mumsnet in posts or bios. I post more on ovarit and mainly lurk and like on spinster.

Hmmm,a group of people being told they are actually just a subset who should be hidden away. What does that remind me of?

Members of Ovarit also have codes once they reach a certain level but they may be wary of sharing them with complete strangers on the internet…

Posts being moved from a general board to a specialist board is one thing but it’s quite different from what MNHQ are proposing.

But that is how an outsider would view the sex/gender subforum. "Oh it's just moving it to the specialist board".

I do agree with the rest of your post btw. I think the idea is awful - I just think it would silly to suggest that it would lead to an actionable discrimination claim.

Thanks Christina what are the options if we not on Twitter?

If you are not already a member some may like the discussion site Ovarit. You need a code to join but you can get one by DMing Ovarit on twitter.

ovarit.com/

twitter.com/WomenAreOvarit

Pro and anti Brexit views are almost certainly protected by the Equality Act but posts on those topics still get moved from eg AIBU to the Brexit board.

Posts being moved from a general board to a specialist board is one thing but it’s quite different from what MNHQ are proposing.

Detriment and chilling effect could be suffered if a newbie (or any woman) posts a thread related to sex based rights in the main feminism chat and then has their thread removed to a sex and gender board.

It absolutely sends the message that their views are niche or unwanted or unpalatable rather than being the bones of feminisms as another pp said.

And the idea of policing individual posts, (and what, deleting them entirely?) which are ‘too related to sex and gender issues’ and thus not ‘on topic’ is nothing other than the most sinister censorship.

I think splitting the board is a terrible idea but it wouldn't be an Equality Act breach.

Pro and anti Brexit views are almost certainly protected by the Equality Act but posts on those topics still get moved from eg AIBU to the Brexit board.

I'll just leave the site if they split it though 🤷‍♀️

Gender ideology is what feminists have been fighting since the days of Mary Wollstonecraft and its current resurgence is the biggest threat to women in years. All other issues on this board go back to this because gender ideology is at the root of all sexism and misogyny. If we cannot name the problem, if we cannot state the truth, if we cannot state who is a man and who is a woman then we are deprived of the language to describe our conditions and enact women's rights.

Currently we are fighting:

1. Women being defined as a sexist stereotype.

2. Children who reject sexist stereotypes being medically altered.

3. Children who are gay or lesbian being medically altered.

4. Lesbians being punished if they refuse to have sex with men.

5. Language and statistics being altered to tell lies and obfuscate relevant sex-based data.

6. Women being disempowered to exclude predators from their most vulnerable spaces.

7. Women being disempowered to exclude MRAs from their political organising.

8. Women being disempowered from having any space that isn't male-centred and male-dominated, e.g. sports.

9. Any attempt to speak about the above being shut down with aggressive and totalitarian tactics.

I can't think of a single issue on this board that isn't linked to biology, gender ideology and the existence of women in male-dominated space, particularly as the gender fans tend also to be fans of porn, prostitution, surrogacy and all the other things that keep us down. Creating another topic just feels like an attempt to stop us making the connections.

I think it should be left as it is as our biological sex is central to everything we experience as women. However, if posters are thinking about the Equality Act I don’t imagine the Act would apply here.

I think this would be a grave mis-step on the part of Mumsnet -- we are seeing more and more light being shed on the GC issue by the mainstream media, in political and legal arenas and elsewhere.
The tide seems to be turning as awareness of all the implications grows.

It's no time to bury our heads in the sand and separate the GC viewpoint and discussion from other feminist issues, there are simply too many crossover points.
Equal pay and employment or promotion issues? Tick. Safety and VAWG? Tick. Blurring the lines of the patriarchy? Big tick.

What a load of pointless drama.

Concealing it will render it invisible (look at the number of times FWR makes 'Trending' and disappears for unclear reasons). And people will carry on wondering why women didn't speak up about these important contemporary issues. And preference falsification will continue to be a meaningful phenomenon that is tantamount to gaslighting wider society as to what is happening and the erosion of the human rights of women and those of us who have a sexual orientation and not a gender orientation.

(Quoting the book summary below.)

www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies, Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.

A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.

In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.

It’s impossible to discuss women’s rights without discussions of the impact of biological sex and gender stereotypes on women specifically and society in general. I fail to understand the logic in this suggested reorganisation; I read Justine’s comments on the thread discussing this idea and, from reading her comments, I feel that MNHQ is creating a cul-de-sac for discussions of sex and gender as a downgrading or a punishment or a way to ensure FWR is liberal feminism only - no second wave, no radfems, no Marxist feminism with its pesky emphasis on the existence of material reality.

If FWR is such a highly-trafficked board (it was certainly the reason I came to MN to see what was going on and FWR was the reason I created an account to follow discussions and now that I’ve been here a while I read quite a few other boards too) why do MNHQ want to silo it off and probably make it harder to use a?

Not to mention many of us come here because this is one of the few places we can discuss the threats to our sex based rights and definitions, and gender identity ideologues come here for precisely the same reason so surely this new board will be where all the activity will be...

Surely the activity will follow the topic?

As others said the reality of binary sex and the science based definition of a woman as an adult human female are fundamental to women’s rights. Women’s rights are necessarily based our biological differences to men and the way our bodies are specific to our reproductive role in the human species.

I see it as moving the gender critical posts to a beautifully signposted area for the benefit of those who relentlessly monitor and report posts because they don't like women talking about these issues.

Given that any post on AIBU which is seen to be discussing 'trans issues' is predictably told to get back to the FWR board, it's hardly difficult to predict that any post which touches on sex or gender (even in the most vague way) will be told to get to the 'Sex and Gender' board or reported as being on the wrong board. It's going to stifle conversation, cause confusion and provide a target for misogynistic monitors.

Given the ruling yesterday, Mumsnet should be saying 'our users have the right to talk about these issues'. I really don't know why this isn't happening.