To be shocked that Mn has been branded a “hotbed of transphobia”

[Badmoonsarising]

BY Vice msgazine no less!

broadly.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/a3mn9k/mumsnet-uk-mom-forum-terf-transphobia-feminism

That was in response to an earlier post saying women here are presenting 'extreme views'.

That's an example of why I talk on the FWR boards. You may feel that it represents only a 'tiny group of extremists' - have you read those narratives first hand and seen the names of those putting them forward? And connected those names with the names presenting evidence to government committees, local authority policies, etc?

You're essentially saying that I have no need to worry about this point of view because no one sensible really believes it. You're right. However is it right that this narrative for lesbians should be allowed to stand unchallenged? Particularly when it involves basic facts such as biological sex existing? Have you checked on how many lesbian groups have gone underground having found this isn't quite such a tiny problem?

Transphobia is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. I have lived most of my life as a transsexual woman and I struggle to think of any instance I would define as transphobia.

I do think that might be because, like most old school, I do not demand anyone think anything and if someone misgenders me, though it does not happen other than on social media, I do not consider it a life changing trauma. It is opinion. End of.

Nor am I seeking any more rights. More than happy with being able to get on with my life and the biggest imposition in it right now is having to take time off living to write posts on here or Twitter in reply to some of the misunderstandings that exist today - not a little thanks to the same trans activists seeing transphobia everywhere.

If you live your life needing everyone to validate your fragile identity then you are going to be upset an awful lot and find lots of people who are being 'nasty' by not agreeing with your worldview.

If you just get on with living your life whilst respecting others now that you have transitioned - as supposedly the transition was to let you be who you want to be (which I assume was NOT a trans activist?) then something wonderful happens.

Transophobia largely disappears, because, as I said, it is largely in the eye of the beholder.

If you only debate, respond to and engage with the extremists, then you lose sight of the fact that they represent a tiny minority.

This tiny majority are in the closed rooms, making new laws that mean the rights of women and girls will be worthless.

Already, around the country, sex as a protected characteristic has been written out and replaced with gender identity.

Anyone that refuses to acknowledge that genuine transphobic language and tendencies exist on this forum are probably part of the problem

And these things are usually reported and deleted

Like that thread which i missed as well because it was deleted so quickly

So the system of deleting transphobia works then. Cool.

I agree, it's great it was deleted. It still highlighted the crappy views of some posters on here.

Earlywalker, we have a situation of the development of 'entrenchment' precisely because there is not a discussion and debate going on.

This is why I feel that nodebate has been just so damaging.

This is where leadership from politicians to lead a nuianced debate SHOULD have appeared, but for a variety of political reasons this never emerged. It doesn't help that sexual politics made representation and discussion of this subject become very one sided (for example lesbians not being a leading force within Stonewall or women who have young or school aged children being one of the most unrepresented groups there is politically).

Its also where the media should have been on the ball, and offered proper analysis of what was going on, rather that purely taking an uncritical ideological position. This is largely because opinion column and rent-a-gobs have dominated news media in recent years at the expense of good old fashioned journalism, which is supposed to hold power to account and expose abuses of power.

Instead we got a void into which there was 'no grown ups' to manage the debate and build a better understanding of points of conflict and how compromise could be reached. In this void, threats, intimidation and misinformation have become rife.

As I say this is not unique to current politics, but the trans issue is an area where this has become particularly virlent due to social media and the prolifation of a cross over between gaming and the trans community. Online trolling has been a way of life which has become acceptable in certain circles, and its certainly true of parts of the trans community. I think its also true to an extent on MN but it manifests in a slightly different manner. You have different styles of key board warriors between the two groups. Its another reason why TRAs don't take on the likes of kiwifarms - their styles and target isn't as easy to 'win' against. The similarities to gamergame are startling. (And actually this particular article is playing to that too).

And that again comes back to the inadequency of the traditional media and politicians; as a blanket issue they do not know how to deal with or respond to the nature of social media. They don't know how to support reality and combat fake news. They don't know how to deal with online abuse.

I don't know what the solution is, but certainly I do see it as politicians and the media being far too reactionary and slow to see and deal with the problems of social media and this has had particularly negative consequences for women. Which in turn is leading to a backlash by women to feel they need to stand up for themselves in a way they haven't felt a need to in many years.

I'd personally like a journalist to look at this, rather than babble on about why MN is a hotbed of transphobia because that just displays a staggering lack of knowledge and political understanding.

You’ve taken the views of some TRA to create a faux meaning behind the word ‘transphobia’

Actually that's a fairly mainstream one.

What is transphobic is calling all trans woman ‘men with a fetish’

Check the Stonewall umbrella, people with paraphilias are included there, that's a fact. Women are concerned about it if rights are extended without distinction to anyone under that umbrella. No one on FWR has ever said all TW.

taking the piss out of transgender rememberance days

What you perceive as taking the piss is mostly things like people pointing out that two women a week are murdered in the UK unnoticed.

calling fully transitioned trans woman ‘men’

People have the right to believe biology and facts are important in some situations.

refusing to acknowledge gender dysphoria

Rubbish

painting transwoman as criminals by using false data

Such as the data from the prison service?

calling for forced sterilisation of trans people

WTF?? Where the hell is that thread? Unless it was one of the midnight ones posted by a TRA for screenshots and nuked I have never seen anything even approaching this as a POV.

And all of this has been discussed with you over and over and over again on FWR.

Problem is that an article on that, doesn't make good click bait does it?

What is transphobic is calling all trans woman ‘men with a fetish’

Agree but I’ve not seen that in here. Some are though. We must be able to say that. Stonewall implicitly acknowledge this with their trans umbrella inclusion of cross dressers. I do reserve the right to say what cross dressing is.

Taking the piss out of transgender rememberance days

Not seen anyone taking the piss although given the stats about violence against women you’ll forgive me if I don’t participate in this particular day.

Calling fully transitioned trans woman ‘men’

What do you mean by ‘fully transitioned” ? And even if full surgery has taken place these people are still biologically male and always will be. This is just a scientific fact.

Refusing to acknowledge gender dysphoria

No one has ever refused to acknowledge gender dysphoria. Your problem with this accusation is that gender dysphoria is not a requirement to being trans - see Stonewall umbrella again. The people who are eroding gender dysphoria as a concept are the TRAs.

Painting transwoman as criminals by using false data

What false data?

Calling for forced sterilisation of trans

Not seen this ever although fully transitioning will render a person sterile. If you want to be in women’s spaces then you need at the very least to have surgically transitioned imho but if you don’t (understandably) want to do that then your choice but you are not therefore going to convince me of your urgent need to be treated as a woman.

And being click bait is yet another why MN is being singled out as a hotbed of transphobia rather than kiwifarms.

Kiwi who?

knickknack. We didn’t even compare answers first

You should have seen the hate we got from trans activists when some transsexuals had a letter printed in a national newspaper pointing out that self ID would allow those with a sexual fetish to be legally declared women when at present they are largely gatekept out.

That is not transphobic, but evidently is even when spoken by transsexuals.

In my view it is a statement of fact that woman (and transsexual women) should rightly be concerned about.

Remove those barriers and we are all at risk of being used to validate behaviour that would make most of us uncomfortable.

Feeling that way is not hatred. It is common sense.

It was Posie Parker who called for forced sterilisation of all trans people.
Trans people holding a rememberance day for those affected by violence against the transgender community does not take away from woman’s issues.
There are a lot of false and misused statistics used regularly on mumsnet. I’ve participted on many threads regarding them but I won’t get into it again as it just ends up as ‘why should WE have to provide data’ which is not really the point.
I have seen transwoman called ‘men with a fetish’ regularly on here. Think the last one I can remember was about prison officers. With about 3 people in a row stating they’d rather be searched by a man than a transwoman as atleast they wouldn’t be a man with a fetish.

I have never seen anyone call for the sterilisation of trans people on Mumsnet.

I have seen concerns raised over children being given puberty blockers and subsequent sterility. So, the polar opposite.

There are a lot of false and misused statistics used regularly on mumsnet.

And Stonewall wouldn't know how to present statistics in a meaningful unbiased way if their entire funding depended on it.

The media has got itself into a state whether statistics are rarely critically anaylised too. And you have people like Ben Goldacre and Margaret McCartney, writing books about just how much of a problem this lack of ability to deconstruct the quality of stats really is.

My point is precisely that this lack of the media doing their job has created a void, where you can just make up stats and no one blinks.

Its a bloody travesty and harms us all.

Imagine you walk into a pub. You buy a drink at the bar, and as you stand there you start picking up on the conversations at the tables around you. It starts to dawn on you that almost every table is talking about immigrants.

Mostly they're talking about very genuine concerns surrounding immigrants. How will schools cope? What will happen to the labour market? But some tables are simply ridiculing individual immigrants, or discussing what sort of fucked up childhood makes someone want to come somewhere and make problems in the first place.

Most of them seem like normal people who are genuinely concerned. Others seem like agitators who are stoking their worries. You're sure some of the "facts" being bandied around are untrue - or at least being used misleadingly - but when you cut in you're met with hostility and accused of dismissing their concerns.

Occasionally someone says something outright xenophobic, and the barman tells them it's their last warning... Occasionally one gets thrown out, but there are five more walking in the door who all sit down and join in the same conversations. "Immigrants are this much more likely to commit crimes, they're that much more likely to get benefits, even if they're the good ones they open the door to all sorts of criminals and scroungers, how do we protect ourselves? They don't try and integrate, their culture is so different - their very beliefs - I refuse to pretend black is white just because they think it is. Look, here's a website detailing every crime committed in this country by immigrants. There's something fundamentally wrong with anyone who would want to leave their country, they have no respect for the boundaries of others".

You say to the guy next to you, "hey, isn't this place a bit anti-immigrant?"

"There's no animosity to immigrants here, just British people with real concerns! Anyone who says anything anti-immigrant gets barred. We're allowed to have these conversations, it's a massive issue in this country that nobody outside of here has woken up to! We're persecuted elsewhere, it's outrageous. There's no phobia here, just protecting the boundaries of British people."

This is modern transgenderism.

Lesbians have a duty to have sex with men if they say they are women.

A duty?
That's a fringe view that is not widely accepted by trans people. I think representing that a fringe, controversial belief 'is modern transgenderism' is itself transphobic.

Whats different about that and reality in Brexitland?

We still have an issue with entrenchment, politicians not showing leadership and moderating discussion and instead indulging in polarising future and the media not holding people to account or properly checking stats on this subject.

Despite it being a contenious subject, we have established in that it is legitmate to argue that there is a lack of investiment and training in people from certain backgrounds who lack a decent education for what ever reason, and that its easier to recruit from abroad rather than have decent training schemes (nurses bursies being a good example of where we have fucked up). This doesn't take away from the benefits of immigration either though.

Honestly, black and white thinking IS the problem and encouraging black and white thinking and not engaging in conversations which form consensus and tackle underlying concerns.

I would not say that MN is " a hotbed of transphobia". I don't think the term is very helpful, tbh., and as we see, perfectly reasonable points of view can be labelled as " transphobic".

There are a number of posters on MN who have strong opinions on trans matters, and some can be a tad acerbic, :-) but ( a) free speech is free speech, and (b) occasionally people post or pm and say much the same things, but in a less confrontational way.

There are loads of people on MN, for all sorts of reasons, and so there is no one "characteristic". It is like saying " all Welsh people are like this", or "all Christians are like that".

And so what if MN WAS transphobic, anyway? As long as it is within the rules/ law, come on, come all.

The debate needs to be had. Women have a right to get their concerns out in the open. Representatives of trans orgs have the right to respond. It should be a back and forth with no name calling (TERF) and no need to use false data or overly emotional appeals (stop denying my existence). The facts and free and open debate should be enough.

If someone debating a topic, any topic, makes you angry and violent then you should look to yourself rather than them for the cure.

“If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.” Love this quote by Noam Chomsky.

We should all be free to express ourselves but it doesn’t follow that we can mandate what others believe or stifle their ideas.

I think vice are womenphobic

It still highlighted the crappy views of some posters on here.

This isn't a secret society. Anyone on the planet can post on here.

It is well known that TRAs post totally outrageous things and then screenshot them proving how mean we are.

That's a fringe view that is not widely accepted by trans people. I think representing that a fringe, controversial belief 'is modern transgenderism' is itself transphobic.

It is not only accepted, but men run courses on how to break through that pesky Cotton Ceiling. Pointing out that it is more than a little rapey, is not transphobic.

Calling me transphobic for wanting lesbians not to be hounded for sex by people with penises? Really? Come on!

If you think that, you are no more than a Male Rights Activist yourself.

For your analogy to hold ratrolypoly, the immigrants would need to come from a group that has historically oppressed the British people, and that still held considerable structural power over them today. Without this vital context, no comparison is ever going to be valid.

Thanks, Donkey. Thanks also to Lass whose contributions are always very measured.

As for the comment by Posie, I've read the statement she put on her website about this. Posie has strong views and takes no prisoners. She believes that women are often treated very badly in Islam, and some of what she's said about that has been twisted to suggest she's a racist. Similarly, she made a badly worded throwaway remark about trans men. This is what she says:

I had allowed my temper to get the better of me and tweet an off the cuff comment to a trans activist on the day of the Irish abortion result. The activist was one of many talking about abortion being a cis privilege and exclusionary for transwomen and transmen. "Women who think they're men should be sterilised" I think this was an aggressive, but in context, tweet. As I, obviously, don't support eugenics or forced sterilisation I didn't anticipate it would be used to suggest I held these views. I understand that there are some extreme sensitivities around the suggestion of sterilisation and I had not intended to flare up any of those. I guess I was pretty stupid to think these words would not be taken as read or, worse, even more weight to be put upon them. I believe in a woman's complete autonomy over her reproduction.

I accept what she says here. Others may not, that's their prerogative.