@Bumblefuddle
For me, the bravery is in her saying anything at all and to such an active group of protesters at that.
She could have just banned the whole topic, deleted it, or said it's a no-go area now on Mumsnet. Instead she's pre-empted their next move and told them to bring it on - and for a "sizable minority" at that.
Maybe she knew nothing she did would be good enough and Mumsnet would just be marked target no matter what. Or she knew that closing one section was a death-knell anyway or something. Ot the active users involved are a core demographic of Mumsnet.
Whatever the reasons, the company must have spent time researching the options on something that's becoming part of their brand (whether they like it or not) and this must have been the best one.
Whatever happens next, for a person to say loudly 'we're being bullied and won't give in' is very brave.
The smear campaign against her will be in action ASAP, possibly harder than we've seen it before; there'll be tweets, phone calls, possibly protests around the workplace, nasty bullying tactics, pressure like other groups have had, and it'll affect her friends and family too. There are some big funders behind this stuff too. They won't want people having an inadvertent leader in the form of Mumsnet setting a precedent for this stuff.
So no matter what happens here on in on Mumsnet, and which boards end up surviving, I'm still impressed.