Times April 2018
'Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts: Transgender activists try to curb free speech on site'
(extract)
“Transgender activists have contacted Mumsnet advertisers and said they will be organising a boycott of their products if they don’t remove their advertising from Mumsnet,” Roberts said.
The website had told the advertisers that it “works hard to keep the discussions civil” and was determined to let them continue.
“What’s worrying to me is the thought-police action around speech and the shutting down of the right to be able to disagree and immediately labelling it as transphobic,” Roberts said.
The threats are the latest move in a campaign by transgender activists to inhibit discussion of potential legal changes that would allow people born male to self-identify as women.
Feminists say the plans threaten women’s rights and protected spaces. Trans activists say that to oppose them is bigotry. They have pressurised dozens of venues into cancelling meetings on the subject.
One meeting that went ahead at the House of Commons led to a complaint to the parliamentary standards commissioner against David Davies, the MP who organised it.
Trans activists bombarded the Commons authorities with demands that the meeting be cancelled with one, Ariel Moss, boasting on Twitter that she “rang them three times today under different voices and phones”.
Sometimes attempts to break up meetings have turned violent. Last week a trans activist, Tara Wolf, was convicted of assaulting a feminist who was attending a rally against the proposals. (continues)
Roberts said no advertiser had yet pulled out. “There is a section of the hardline trans side which thinks that any discussion at all is by definition transphobic, but we’ve explained we’re working very hard to keep it civil,” she said.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mumsnet-founder-justine-roberts-transgender-activists-try-to-curb-free-speech-on-site-z3sr3nf6q?shareToken=b2eb62822dd26aecc0f88653978ed23a
Response from MN members:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3222471-AIBU-to-be-extremely-proud-of-Justine-Roberts-Mumsnet-right-now