Thread 3: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

I have serious concerns about politicians and cops misusing their access to information and power over others to continue to abuse, or cover abuse

this misuse of MN data similarly concerns me

we know that abusers can and do exchange images, information, locations and money to facilitate others also abusing already groomed and abused children

given the numbers of women on MN likely to be already vulnerable due to past or current abuse including those who may have had to leave jobs, change rl names, relocate etc trying to escape abusers

this data scrape, continued opacity as to who had access to it and the potential for it to be used to identify and locate women who have posted on MN is fucking terrifying

I swear every damn ‘joke’ or piece of fiction ever is slowly coming true:

t-shirts with ‘lesbian trapped in a man’s body’, monty pythons ‘struggle against reality’ simpsons pres trump plus all the sci-fi films keanu, will smith etc etc

do I need to climb onto the roof & strip to my boxers?

or diy a faraday cage?

I hoped for flying skateboards and holodecks not this dystopian dumpster fire…

Eden did indeed go ahead and presented as no one tells AIFL what to do (!) but we’re not allowed to know what they said. You know, that principle of research of not sharing your method/findings/conclusions with your data sources.

Well as we know from many TRA campaigns they have always been allowed to do this, and believed and requoted.

But you would like to think a university might have other standards.

Can you imagine if a female student had presented unveriviable "data" to support her thesis that TRAs are anti woman.

We would never here the end of accusations about twisted terfism mascarading as research. Added to which the untold personal damage to the most persecuted people in the world.

Perhaps Eden Palmer’s next pronouns will be Road to Hell/Good Intentions?

😶

I’d add that pretty much every British uni is captured. The drive to win EDI awards and allowing small groups of self interested people drive the inclusion agenda means preferred pronouns in email signatures and gender neutral toilets are rife.

So as an institution, Aston may well believe they’re the ‘good guys’ in this discussion and MN / MNFWR are the baddies needing to be outed just like all the other bad guys AIFL seek to out.

I can’t recall whether the student presented at conference or not, but they/them definitely seems to be avoiding doing anything with online tickets available!

Eden did indeed go ahead and presented as no one tells AIFL what to do (!) but we’re not allowed to know what they said. You know, that principle of research of not sharing your method/findings/conclusions with your data sources.

When they'd be able to flog 'we have the technology to be able to dox criminals and dissidents across the internet, wherever they may be and whatever they may post - look at how we identified these horrid, old women from talking about their rapes, sexual assaults, fertility issues, providing support for domestic violence, their political leanings, their children's schools, the weather and the abortions they've had'?

Governments will pay a fuckton of money for that technology. Apart from the outright political interest, there will also be a 'moral values' interest - just think how useful it would be in some countries to be able to identify the gay and trans people living there from using the Aston University DoxxGPT.

Aston university has the eyes on the prize - a bunch of grumpy women is nothing compared to the income and renown for providing the technology for a State to be able to eliminate all those pesky LGBTQIA++ people, to ensure that a political system is never, ever challenged, that their questions, opinions and thoughts are spotted and linked so that they can be arrested before they've corrupted the minds of the population.

They're facilitating the creation of systems that will become instrumental in ensuring that the Edens of other countries are found and hunted down before they ever get to university.

And the Chinese, it seems. Their money seems to keep the whole show on the road.

I don’t know the VC chap but when I started using his name as a MN username (making it clear I wasn’t the actual VC of Aston University) MN sent me a nice, chatty email saying they understood why I’d chosen it but could I please pick another username while the lawyers are duelling.

Personally I imagine that he’s simply gotten on a big high horse of ‘Rules for commercial enterprises don’t apply to universities’ but I’d imagine that’s a silly assumption to make now that universities are essentially run like businesses and work hand in hand with massive corporations.

Most people I work with care very much about the university's reputation, but they're probably totally oblivious to this. I can't imagine anyone associated with AIFL is keen to draw attention to it, & I bet the majority of Aston staff have never even heard of AIFL (or if they have, they'll only have a vague idea of what it does, & won't know anything about specific projects). I'm only aware of this because I read Mumsnet. No one at work has mentioned it.

As ive said before, I do think the VC cares about the university's reputation, but since I've never actually spoken to him, anything I said about why he's approached the situation in the way he has would just be guesswork. It's not what I would have done in his position, but since the vast majority of VCs are men, it's unlikely I will ever be in his position.

I'm curious why Aston don't seem to care about their reputation.

Do they not grasp that mothers have children, and those children are their future potential students?

I'd be interested to hear why they don't seem to grasp how damaging this whole episode has likely been to their brand.

I didn't realise that either.

MN are pursuing a legal case against Aston - which is why we don’t have many updates - it may turn out to be far bigger than some sadsack’s crap PhD as data scraping websites for large language models is a bit of a thorny issue all over the western world at the moment.

Many, many thanks.

I must have missed a chunk of posts.

Glad MNHQ (but sorry they need to) are pursuing this legally.

Fingers crossed for the outcome, and I hope a much wider discussion by others about how the unregulated virtual world, isn't always the nice escape from IRL consequences.

Aston said yes to deleting the OG data scrape from their onsite computers but no to halting the ridiculous PhD that has already concluded we are all transphobes before it’s even begun. They/them has amended the name out of the title so that instead of naming MN it’s now ‘A British Parenting Forum’.

MN are pursuing a legal case against Aston @IwantToRetire - which is why we don’t have many updates - it may turn out to be far bigger than some sadsack’s crap PhD as data scraping websites for large language models is a bit of a thorny issue all over the western world at the moment.

I can’t recall whether the student presented at conference or not, but they/them definitely seems to be avoiding doing anything with online tickets available!

Sorry to ask, but I seem to have lost the plot on this issue, and have failed to educate myself in following this 3rd thread.

Can someone who has the time and understanding do a summary.

I can remember as far back as MNHQ challenging the university, and some vague assurances given to them. But no over all, or wider impact achieved.

And I thought the student concerned had dropped or been dropped from discussing her work. But now it seems she went ahead? If so was in published, ie is it available for others outside of Aston?

In other words did Aston effectively okay what she was doing, and if so is MNHQ happy with that?

Adding that that presentation went right ahead but we are not privy to the ‘analysis’ that found FWR transphobic. @JustineMumsnet did you ask / were given a copy of Eden’s presentation at the conference that blithely labelled us all transphobic?

And to answer your final question, Ormally, yes - 100%. There's no excuse for academics not doing that. The issues are absolutely obvious. There's no excuse for that seemingly not happening.

I name-changed after my previous post, as I wanted to say more about various things at work, without linking it to Aston.

I share the anger & frustration, & as someone who has worked their arse off for Aston & its students, I'm gutted (but not susprised) to see womens legitimate conversations framed in this way.

I thought the VC would handle this differently. I dont think he gives a shit about women, but he cares very much about the university's reputation. My best guess would be that he thinks we're "only mums" so our words, & our feelings about how they're used are irrelevant/trivial.

I also thought AIFL would handle this differently. The issues with research integrity & ethics should have been absolutely clear, & I would have expected this to have presented a barrier to the student's progression.

Im sad to say it, but it's kind of on-brand for 2024 Aston. The lack of rigour & total "who gives a fuck" approach to women is about right.

I'm nervous of saying anything that could out me. I'm not afraid to stand up for what Aston should be (& used to be), but some of us are working on something & I don't want to draw too much attention to myself ahead of publishing that.

@MaggieCalvert I'm interested in whether your views have changed from the initial post you made around page 2. This isn't 'just' a case of views on women where it's different on the ground, as there are some real diamonds that are credits to the workplace, etc. This puts women's debate alongside criminal or harmful stuff.

Perhaps deviant behaviour gatherings, abusive letters sources, grooming fora and so on also have large percentages of the sites where posts discuss eating disorders, adoption, fertility treatment, other family members, minors, debt, violence from partners, relatives or even near-adult children. Moreover, that the use of language and content on the harmless threads is seen as fair game to inform and track down the parts where the more depraved things are set down. How can the above (who are collateral of people's posts over many years and under many user policies to which users had to consent, and not with Aston but with the forum they thought they were consenting to - a long time before AI or scraping were ever in the frame) be the sandboxes, literally, of researchers? Should ethical academics, allegedly interested in the welfare of young people, have really dug deep on these points, if (as you see) even a bunch of internet randoms are capable of it?

AstonVillans kindly linked to Justine's announcement about that in the quoted post. Aston deleted the sandbox but not the PhD data.

I don’t remember exactly but I think the PhD was the second more recent dataset and Aston did not agree to delete it.

I like it!

Looking back on this thread @JustineMumsnet said

“Consequently we have asked Aston University to immediately cease and desist all scraping activities, to immediately destroy both datasets and to provide a written assurance that they will refrain from any further unauthorised access or use of our content.”

if the datasets were to be destroyed how has Eden still managed “…analysis of linguistic transphobia on a British parenting forum, 2010-2023.”?

Genuine question as I’ve no idea if deleting the datasets could have happened after the analysis was completed.

Well…. I haven’t checked the Site Stuff thread for a while but are MNHQ ok with apparently letting transphobia stand on their site or are we to assume Nicci and Eden are talking about Netmums?

https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/persons/nicci-macleod

PhD Supervision
Current:

Karolina Placzynta: Hate speech in moderated social media contexts: patterns, parallels, and intersections

Eden Palmer. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on a British parenting forum, 2010-2023.

Jenna Elliott. A corpus assisted critical discourse analysis of the manifestos of mass shooters in the U.S.A.

Julija Danu. Stability of authorship markers across discourse types and links to personality traits.