Why is Mumsnet so GC?

I had always thought I was moderately cynical about politics, but the past few years have been very tough. To completely lose faith not just in individual parties but the whole systems behind them ... this ideology is corrosive and damaging in so many ways. It's undermined groups, trust, democratic processes. But then, that means that they were vulnerable to being damaged/undermined. If the police can be convinced to arrest women for making jokes about violent sex offenders, they have been convinced of absurdities and we know what follows.

So safeguarding on all levels needs to be made more robust, and checks and balances need to be implemented. It seems far too easy for bad actors to have gamed the system.

"I got called a Tory by a youngish person I work with, for mentioning that there's a difference between sex and the invented construct that is gender."

That's interesting. I think that might be a 'tell' that you are dealing with a TRA in training rather than a common garden youngster. Many (most?) youngsters who are 'fighting the good fight' believe that the problem is that 'boomers' don't understand the difference between sex and gender.

I think that many youngsters are motivated by worthy ideas about social justice and wanting the world to be a fairer place. They are hyper sensitive to ideas about what 'isn't safe', which includes uncomfortable truths. I think they know that GC views aren't incorrect, but go out of their way to avoid discussions that bring this to light because they buy into the idea that such discussions are harmful to a marginalised group and therefore unjust.

As we often point out on Mumsnet, the perception of fragility creates or reinforces fragility. TRAs shouting about suicide and murder rates and using labels such as 'the most vulnerable', facilitate young people to hold on to the 'no debate' for social justice reasons hanging in there- despite that it damages those they supposedly want to protect.

However, the TikTok algorithms are against them now. Sadly, the videos that take apart the batshit arguments also ridicule gender non conformity. This aligns with the Andrew Tate stuff and is appealing to boys in particular. Girls have enough exposure to curated appearances that are hyper gendered and pornified. So I am not comforted by the move!

Is there something different about the owners of MN, that made it harder for TRAs to sabotage it in the way that they sabotaged other platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia?

OTOH they did manage to sabotage real life as well. Which does tell us something about who 'owns' real life.

Because you can say what you really think on here. And most people with a bit of common sense GC, even if they don't label themselves as such.

I got called a Tory by a youngish person I work with, for mentioning that there's a difference between sex and the invented construct that is gender.

It makes me despair of the world when seemingly intelligent individuals can't see through the bullshit.

Yes, the SNP were the 'tartan tories' about five minutes ago. The rest is all branding and hot air.

And actually, thinking about it more, I think I fell for the myth, heavily peddled by the Scottish Government, that Scotland was more progressive and 'right thinking' than anywhere else. The idea of Scotland as some sort of left wing utopia. It's not. It never has been.

I'd say with the freedom MN let you have with speech, it's a good sample of what the population are really thinking.

People tend to not say these things so openly IRL as the consequences could be bad. Workplaces have gone mad with race/gender/mental health policies and therefore poses threat to livelihoods if you say something that doesn't align. It'll all pass though.

For me anyway it has resulted in the total loss of confidence in many institutions which I used to trust in a (probably naive) sort of 'they sometimes make mistakes but at their heart, they have the best interests of the people at heart' way.

The Police, the Scottish Government, the SNP, some Scottish Women's organisations...the list goes on. I simply don't trust them any more. The rot is too deep.

Well said. This must be a main focus. There have been so many fronts women are having to battle leaving children almost abandoned to those who seek to exploit and use them for their own political ends.
The new DfE guidelines make a start in reintroducing safeguarding and reality to schools - but it's only a start. Getting all the queer theory organisations out of schools and all other youth organisations is critical.

I don't see it as being GC more as standing up for rights of women. The two are not the same

It should be perfectly possible to be a feminist, or a radical feminist, and support trans rights in terms of naming the mixture of misogyny and homophobia that forms violent attacks and discrimination against men who are challenging their gender prison and living a different way. And without a doubt the trans rights movement really can challenge some areas of sexism that we can do without.

What radical feminism can't do imo is go along with claims that a woman's body is not definable by being female. Or that male sexuality can be rebranded as female sexuality just because it's a turn-on for the man involved.

Maybe I spend more time on literotica than the average MN user (maybe not, who knows). It's very interesting reading in trying to understand what is being thought about sexually by people saying they are trans*, male and female.

*Accepting that I can't know any facts about any of the writers.

This. Our children are at the vanguard of all of this, being bombarded with dangerous and confusing messaging. As parents we see the impact it's having first hand and that makes us braver to hold the line and say "enough is enough, the Emperor has got no clothes". When my kids, and your kids, are at real risk of harm, we are not going to stand back and "be kind".

You'd be surprised how many 'weird men' do seem to find themselves here though.

For an online community, MN seems to have an unusual number of normal people. Other spaces ime tend to be dominated by weird men who never leave their bedrooms and mentally ill young women (under 25) who suck up to whatever the community expects of them. Neither group is likely to be drawn to Mumsnet.

The term 'radical feminism' was already tainted by transphobia and long considered nigh-unsalvageable prior to 20 years ago. It was one of the most crushing disappointments to come of age to - discovering the raging bigotry espoused by so many brilliant authors and activists who otherwise spoke such sense.

You might reflect on whether you've been Denton-ed.

Thoughtful conversation between Glinner and Genevieve Gluck. At this point, Gluck says that it was women and lesbians who prevented the progress of PIE and NAMBLA last time. So, for similar organisations and boundary-eliminating ideologies to progress again, it was essential to team with others to undermine and discredit women and lesbians. It seems they've succeeded.

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I see belief in TWAW as akin to religion. It runs contrary to scientific evidence but people actively choose to adopt the mantra as the truth and then evangelise about it to others.

Deep down they know it's a fabrication and so they just repeat the line, abuse those that don't and stay away from tricky questions under the guise of 'kindness'.

MN is a place where women feel able to be honest and speak up. And where we don't accept bullshit as some kind of replacement for critical thinking.

Marxism: Marx was firstly and foremostly a political economist concerned with the consequences of the organisation of production, and distribution of wealth and power that falls from that. It's analysis of material relations. Whilst you can explore the implications of those material and social relationships of production for aspects of social life and culture, including different forms of oppression, for Marxists, this would always be analysis of the relationship between social phenomena and underlying economic structure, specifically class structure.

Completely agree that the US has infinitely stronger protections for freedom of speech, and transparency generally, than Europe.

Most Europeans don’t understand how broad the First Amendment’s scope is.

Quote fail, that was a response to SamW98.

Same. Preference falsification and a chilling effect have worked very well.

Beyond feminism, its bloody terrifying that within a few years it's become so difficult and risky to state basic truths - 'there are two sexes and you can't change sex' - that women have been arrested, sacked and physically attacked for holding those views.

Now we have those basic views protected as a belief thanks to Maya Forstater we can begin to reassert reality.

But the problem for me is how easily and quickly society was hoodwinked by madness. It suggests weaknesses in our politics society and legislation. Whatever anyone's views on feminism, that should be taken notice of.

Thank you for making it really clear, appreciate it

Such an interesting thread!

I wanted to add to the discussion of intersectional feminism and radical feminism that they don't have to be mutually exclusive, though they can be treated that way, too.

Radical feminism is based on the idea of going to the 'roots' of women's oppression, and those roots are seen in sex: The desire by others (mostly men, but also wider groups such as families which are led by men) to control female bodies in order to control reproduction and the access to those bodies for heterosexual intercourse which men desire. The means used for achieving and maintaining this control include gendered roles, norms and stereotypes which have traditionally been based on laws, religious beliefs etc.

Intersectional feminism, is in its earliest (and, in my opinion, the most correct) form is about the importance of analysing how sexism and misogyny affect women differently based on how other forms of oppression also affect them.

It's the intersectional aspect between two or more forms of oppression which can affect how different women experience sexism and misogyny and how it might affect their lives differently. Class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age are some of other types of possible oppression bases which need to be considered in the same context as sex-based oppression.

These two approaches are quite compatible, in my view.

This is not so much the case in some more recent interpretations of intersectionality which dispense with the sex-based oppression axis altogether. Once you do that, your feminism cannot be radical feminism.

In fact, I think it has stopped being feminism altogether, though those who prioritise gender identity over sex disagree.

Ideologies get modified all the time, that's why those that are around for any length of time tend to have many different schools or denominations or other divisions. There are already various types of Marxism where it's applied to characteristics other than class.

The US has no legal concept of hate speech. I absolutely stand by my comment that we have robust freedom of speech under our First Amendment. I will not be arrested for saying "men are not women" or "I hate Donald Trump."

The treatment of Black slaves and the 1/3 rights of citizenry to Native Americans has nothing to do with hate speech laws (which again, we have never had). I think you're confused. Freedom of speech is not the same concept of the right of citizenship.

20 years ago or even 40 years ago radical feminism was not tainted by transphobia.

1970s Women's Liberationists and what followed from that up until the male inspired 3rd Wave Feminism was depicted as "man hating".

So an interesting slip as recognising that WLMers and Radical Feminists were a direct challenge to male entitlement has now been rebranded as transphobia.

I (and others of course) have always said that the TRA agenda would never have got as far as it has, if it hadn't given misogynists a "lgitimate" platform for MRAs to berate uppity women about as another sign of their / our shortcomings.

Just to point out that 20 years ago, long time radical feminists never thought that the total fallacy that you could change sex would become a major part of social norms. 40 years ago there were some trans sexuals but were more likely to be from Scandinavia and a few in academia.

At that time Radical feminists were still recovering from the back lash against Women's Liberation and the complete swerve that media sponsored 3rd Wave Feminism made away from the radical roots of Women's Liberation.