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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be very worried by MN's puritanical campaigning?

98 replies

1984looms · 22/05/2014 13:37

I have just been reading the Scudamore thread and find it so worrying that MNHQ and some Mumsnetters are effectively stoking up a campaign against us having any sort of a private life. It is ironic, given that MN relies on anonymity, that there is no thought given to the consequences of demanding that people's private thoughts and comments be policed in the same way as our public behaviour. Can posters really see no problem at all with demanding that a person's private comments are hauled into the open and subjected to public humiliation? The logic of what is being argued here is that Mumsnetters could not be anonymous and even more, should be held to account by their employers for comments they make on the site. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Read this to see where this kind of mindless, sheeplike campaigning will take us. www.spiked-online.com/freespeechnow/fsn_article/policing-private-speech-the-new-inquisition
Mumsnet is becoming a significant cheerleader for a terrifying 1984 culture.

OP posts:
ChelsyHandy · 23/05/2014 09:46

Youre being ridiculous OP. I know someone who was sacked for gross misconduct for using their work computer to send personal emails outwith work time. In fact, lots of people have been. And that's without the sexually offensive comments, which in Belgium would now be a criminal offence. He isn't paid to send sexist emails on work computers. Nothing to stop.him doing that in his personal life of course.

And managing business is all about good governance and ethics now. That's what is seen as promoting a good business culture and low risk investment. Most big corporations try to subscribe to this and the jobs for the boys culture, as demonstrated amply also by Paul Flowers in the CoOp scandal, is old fashioned and an embarrassment for the sport and the FA.

BarbarianMum · 23/05/2014 09:51

^^This.

And to pick up on an earlier post of yours OP, I don't think known racists should be tolerated in the police force either.

1984looms · 23/05/2014 10:26

Too many people here want to have it both ways - they argue that this is simply a technical question of enforcing the rules of the workplace while at the same time thinking that they, as members of the general public, should be able to dictate how an employer should interpret or enforce those rules against their own employee, presumably because what was said here was so 'terrible' (which suggests an extremely privileged, sheltered existence).

The logic of what is being argued is that we should root out people with 'inappropriate' underlying attitudes. But how do we know what these attitudes are, unless they are caught out, like Scudamore? What if they are never articulated or overheard? Should we entrap people? Perform screening?

Can people really not imagine that a person can hold apparently contradictory views - for example, is a devoted lover of a disabled partner, working for a disability charity, but sometimes sharing a 'black humour' joke with their partner or colleagues about disability or other forms of disability? I can well imagine this scenario - unless you think all people with a disability are all angels.

Should women who share 'blonde jokes' with other women in an office face the sack? What if she shares a joke with a client, say in a hairdressers? What if she shares a joke about how dumb men are?

At the end of the day, if we, as adult women are to deal with the world as it really is, we cannot simply continually call on others to change it for us. We have to make serious judgements about what REALLY matters, what will really improve things for women AND men, forget the easy, symbolic, twitter-mob 'campaigning' which just reinforces the idea that women are weak, vulnerable and a pain in the ass to have around and in the process hands over many hard-won principles of liberty to faceless regulations, employers or the police.

OP posts:
Callani · 23/05/2014 11:05

Freedom of speech means that you cannot be politically or legally censored for what you say. It does not mean that people cannot choose to take offense at what you say, or that companies cannot choose to disassociate themselves from you when you spew vitriolic bile.

BarbarianMum · 23/05/2014 11:16

Your argument is illogical.

At the end of the day, challenging unacceptable attitudes when we encounter them -on this forum, in the work place, or the pub or the home - is how the world gets changed. When people get together to challenge such attitudes the world changes a little faster.

One is entitled to hold prejudiced views without challenge only when they stay in the privacy of one's own head. Once you speak them, act on them or email them you can expect to be challenged by those they offend.

PartialFancy · 23/05/2014 11:17

1984, your posts are ludicrous.

We should "deal with the world as it really is", not try to change things that are wrong?

Lucky for you the suffragettes didn't take that attitude.

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 23/05/2014 11:17

1984
Casual sexism REALLY matters because it perpetuates stereotypes and myths about women that have a damaging knock on effect. Challenging casual sexism is about dealing with the world as it really is and saying it is not good enough. I work in a well paid, high pressure job, yet according to Scudamore's logic I am too irrational to do my job (especially as I have more than one child). This isn't about "black humour" this is about someone writing off half the population as being not as capable as he thinks he is.

Think about the next woman going for an interview with the Premier League knowing that the senior managment consider her irrational.

I am genuinely surprised you can't understand the difference.

1984looms · 23/05/2014 11:25

Yes, I agree, Callani, and as you rightly say, whether or not we take offence is a question of choice. I disagree with, and am angered by, lots of views, but I can honestly say I have never found anything 'offensive'. That is because I value freedom of speech and freedom of thought as a fundamental human freedom and see myself as robust. I also think it is healthy for ALL people to learn see themselves as robust.

Our current culture which has little regard for freedom of speech encourages people to see themselves as vulnerable, not robust. It is difficult, therefore to argue that such vulnerably people can fully participate in public life. Hence the demand to control public life, and its intersection with private life, to the most extraordinarily intrusive degree.

Just because someone decides to take offence, does not entitle them to have that speech restricted. They are, of course, free to challenge it or remove themselves from hearing it.

Companies are, of course, free (to a certain extent) to sack people who they think are WHOLLY incompatible with the company's purpose. But this is a decision to be negotiated between the employee and the employer and will be a pragmatic decision. Personally, I would side with the employee in such situations, given that most of us have no choice but to earn a living by taking a job. This should not mean that we have to completely transform who we are and forego our private identities.

OP posts:
1984looms · 23/05/2014 11:33

Because we should not take those few emailed comments as the total measure of the man.

Because there is far less 'casual sexism' in the world than ever before - this has not happened because of censorship, rules and regulations, but because women have proved such views to be ludicrous.

Because the suffragettes were arguing that women were fit, and robust enough, to take their rightful place in the public world. They would turn in their graves at the way women are currently being portrayed as delicate flowers who swoon at vulgar language.

OP posts:
PartialFancy · 23/05/2014 11:37

BTW, if a Twitter or MN campaign really is "weak", "symbolic", etc, what are you afraid of?

I suspect you know perfectly well that the opposite is true, and would like everyone to shut up - because you're afraid they might actually effect change.

I notice your "advice" to PA was of the same nature. Without paging back to read, IIRC you said she should have:

  1. not told anyone else how he behaved, even though it may be in the public interest given his job;
  2. told him it was OK for him to say these things, as long as he didn't do so in front of her because she was personally too weak to take it. And claimed she would have gained respect for this.Hmm Hardly.

You could hardly make your actual agenda clearer if you stood up and yelled WOMEN! SHUT UP AND DON'T ROCK THE BOAT!

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 23/05/2014 11:40

1984
women are currently being portrayed as delicate flowers who swoon at vulgar language.

Its not about the vulgar language - that is completely trivialising the issue and you know it. You only have to look at this site to know women are perfectly capable of coping with and using robust language. Its about the fact that he was using that language about a class of people - stereotyping them and reducing them so a set of sexual body parts.

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 23/05/2014 11:43

Partial
Completely agree with your agenda comment.

1984looms · 23/05/2014 12:03

I don't want people to shut up, I want people to be FREE to speak out (or have a laugh with their mates even if other people don't like it) without facing an online hate mob or having their jobs threatened. I would also like MORE women and men to speak out about what really bothers them, without being stigmatised as 'sexist', 'misogynist', 'woman-hating' as I have been on this thread. Notice that I have not flounced, I have continued to engage with the arguments put to me. There is nothing wrong with forming a negative opinion of Scudamore, but we should modify this by recognising that a) we should not have really been party to his conversation b) these few comments cannot possibly give us a full reflection of the man and c) it is really none of our business how his employer chooses to deal with him.

OP posts:
ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 23/05/2014 12:15

He wasn't speaking out about what bothered him was he.

1984looms · 23/05/2014 12:16

Anyway, this has been interesting and informative, if extremely depressing. Your views will provide useful material for the development of further arguments in favour of freedom of speech, freedom of laughter, freedom of thought, freedom to be a bit of a prick amongst mates, freedom of being a vulgar woman/man in private, freedom of letting people make mistakes without devastating consequences landing on their heads and the freedom for women to get out there into the big, bad (but much better than it used to be) world to be as ballsy as they like without other people presuming they are inherently vulnerable shrinking violets in need of big daddy/big mummy forming a bubble of niceness around them.

OP posts:
MrsCakesPremonition · 23/05/2014 12:25

It's like sitting on a train, calling a mate on your mobile, reeling off a scree of misogynistic rubbish and then being surprised that the other people in the carriage have heard you and taken offence. You might of thought that the phone conversation was private but, because of the way you chose to conduct it, it became public.

slug · 23/05/2014 12:29

It's amazing how many of 1984's statements turn up in this article

AndyWarholsBanana · 23/05/2014 12:47

So the next time my severely disabled niece gets called a retard or a mother at a playground tells my sister that her DD shouldn't be there because her appearance frightens other children, the reason my sister gets upset is because she isn't robust enough?

DenzelWashington · 23/05/2014 12:55

a) we should not have really been party to his conversation b) these few comments cannot possibly give us a full reflection of the man and c) it is really none of our business how his employer chooses to deal with him.

a): arguable. On balance I think disclosing it was acceptable. There is room for a range of opinions on whether blowing the whistle was merited/necessary/reasonable;

b): disagree. Repeated sexist comments and enjoyment of the sexist comments of others paint a pretty clear picture. The very fact that statements are unguarded can be a better indication that they show a person's real attitudes than more considered statements;

c) : agree, in part. I don't particularly like the way people lobby for a specific outcome, not just in this case, but in many cases where something 'goes viral' and is all over Twitter, etc. Equally though, people are free to comment and discuss it as much as they want.

Sicaq · 23/05/2014 13:45

I know this isn't a helpful contribution but I'm finding 1984looms' posts to be excellent lunchtime comedy Grin I'm reading them in the voice of a 1980's Ben Elton impersonating an angry teenager.

isabellavine · 23/05/2014 13:51

OP, the problem is your ridiculously oversimple conceptualisation of the division between public and private.

Sexist and racist views aren't private, but a way of viewing the social. They certainly become public once expressed, whatever the context. Ideas have agency in the world in all kinds of complex ways. The comments in this case are so flagrantly demeaning and offensive that it is impossible to believe that the attitudes that they express do not bleed into this man's relationships with women and with gender issues.

JonesRipley · 23/05/2014 19:24

Op

What really bothers me is men in positions such as his calling women gash.

Your argument is a bullies' manifesto.

CaptChaos · 24/05/2014 17:46

a) we should not have really been party to his conversation b) these few comments cannot possibly give us a full reflection of the man and c) it is really none of our business how his employer chooses to deal with him.

a) Disagree, if he didn't want the conversation in the public domain, then he shouldn't have cc'd his PA into the emails, as soon as he did, it wasn't private, so tough.

b) I think the repeated sexism probably is indicative of his actual persona, plus he cc'd his PA in, which suggests he's none to bright either.

c) Disagree, if he worked for Acme Private Company and wasn't in a position where he is the public face of a sport and is supposedly all for women playing in that sport.

This has nothing to do with puritanical campaigning and everything to do with not having incontinent sexist idiots running the Premier league.

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