To want to know more about Amazon UK and it's defunding or otherwise of Mumsnet?

[12boo]

I saw (via twitter) that a spokesperson for audible has made some unpleasant remarks about MN users and they have pulled their MN advertising after complaints from "trans activists" that MN is a hive of "transphobic bigots" so I have cancelled my audible subscription because I find MN enormously supportive and I don't want to support a company that vows so readily to the "born in the wrong body- men are women if they say so" cult.
No clear response has come from Amazon itself in this matter. Does anyone know what their position is? TIa

a large number of other people will read those exact same posts and consider them to be transphobic, and they aren't going to change their minds

This, like definitions of transgender, is a subjective judgement, so naturally it is not altered by logic or argument; people rarely do change their minds about something they have decided for subjective reasons.

"Transphobia is in the eye of the beholder: get it out with Optrex", to misquote Spike Milligan.

De Beauvoir quite famously argued that there is no such thing as sex, only gender
Ooh can I get a prize for knowing that ^^ would be trotted out. It's used by every MRA/TRA who is pretending to be a feminist and it's hilarious because it proves they have never read De Beauvoir. As I refuse to believe anyone who has read Simone could misread it so badly as to come to that conclusion about her 'women being made' statement.
I'd love an MRA/TRA bingo card to add to the entertain of these threads.

You guys will just nod along to any old stupidity anyone says as long as it affirms the conclusion you like hearing.

De Beauvoir only uses the work ‘sexe’ there is no differentiation between sex and gender in her work, unsurprising as the concept of gender doesn’t emerge until the 1960s and de Beauvoir was writing in 1949. Her argument is, rather famously, that woman is not born, she is made.It is revolutionary because it was made at a time of an unquestioning belief in the biological prédétermination of the differences of the two sexes (stemming from Aristotle’s admiration for man’s ability to produce sperm, and passing onto the Catholic Church dogma via Acquinas and St Augustine). Man expresses his agency through romance, work and through going out in the world to create, while woman is enslaved by the repetitive and tedious routines involved in childcare and keeping house. Her argument is a rejection of biological essentialism and a rejection of any value in the cultural construct of woman as mother and home maker.

Gilligan’s claim is the exact opposite. She has an essentialist account of the male/female divide. Men are rational and appeal to an ethic of justice, women are emotional and appeal to an ethic of care. There is no common ground here and the difference is biologically determined. Culturally what women are good at is denigrated because of the cultural superiority of men’s unique abilities. So here the claim is that we should recognize and value women for their unique emotional and caring abilities as mothers and home makers.

In the US opposition to trans rights is led by Evangelical Christians who base their view on the sharp and mutually exclusive biological distinction between men and women. This view has been widely contested by US feminists (see Judith Jarvis Thompson for example) but adopted, hook, line and sinker, by British feminists (see Kathleen Lennon for example).

It’s really depressing when people are willfully and gleefully ignorant.

If sex is a construct, why does COVID differentiate ?

Covid is transphobic.

Simone de Beauvoir has been dead for m,ore than thirty years, and might perhaps not be entirely au fait with what has been happening in 2019 and 2020. Just a minor suggestion....

Just look at the feminism board, full of transpobic comments and full of hate.. Full of righteous people who have no respect for others views, they are known for their anger, its needs alot more policing

Known by whom for their anger?

Could you link to the transphobic posts and those posts full of hate?

Absolutely agree with Empress' post. Majority of people know nothing about TRAs and when they do hear about them and their position on various issues their consistent response imo is that it's illogical, unbelievable and clearly riddled with inconsistencies. They cannot believe anyone could seriously buy into it.

Known by whom for their anger?

I'm assuming the poster meant reputation in general.
As in it's got a transphobic reputation.
Which you can't dispute, whichever "side" you fall on.

As in it's got a transphobic reputation.

According to some people on twitter yeah. If you asked the general public what they'd heard about MN, they'd probably say penis beaker. Or that we're vipers and really, really mean to people.

But what counts as transphobia? I've been told that it's transphobic to say that men can't become women (but not transphobic to say that humans can't change sex ). Unfortunately I got no further clarification from that poster about what they meant.

I suppose it could be argued that MN is transphobic because there are times that even on MN people are 'allowed' to misgender a trans-identified person. I mean, it's only really used for convicted rapists but I can see how people could be offended by calling a transwoman 'he' even if they did rape women in women's prisons with their penis - surely Karen White is as much of a woman as any other transwoman.

Simone de Beauvoir has been dead for m,ore than thirty years, and might perhaps not be entirely au fait with what has been happening in 2019 and 2020. Just a minor suggestion

Indeed. I'm sure she would have been delighted to hear that her ideas about male power have been used in such a way to justify providing men with even more power. 🤔

Oh. Ok thanks for all the responses.
It's just frustrating to not have a response from amazon and to see women talking about women's rights and children's safety (re: puberty blockers etc) being tarred en masse as bigots. That's not been my observation or experience and I found it troubling that the audible spokeswoman automatically used a misogynistic term to describe women who exercise critical thinking
I'll have to pursue it a bit harder I spose hey ho

I think if the row was bigger And more people knew about it, they’d be more up in arms and Amazon might swerve. As long as it’s a niche thing. It will probably be just me choosing not to buy my mum a kindle for lockdown. (Was genuinely considering it.)

Well thankfully more prominent people seem to be asking questions
What you getting her instead?

What's the FWR board?
I've ne ER thought of mn as transphobic although there are some really horrible narrow minded judgey people on here.
I remember a thread which was about Jessica yaniv and waxing and I fully agreed that she was manipulative and deliberately provocative.
It's very difficult to have a public opinion about it because you are seen as transphobic if you voice any concerns about some men misusing trans rights to abuse and suppress women and children.

Feminism and women's rights topic.

People keep asking for examples, but I have not seen any of transphobia as such on Mumsnet. What I have seen is considerable hostility to TransRightsActivists (TRAs), and it is entirely justified. This is a hostile group. They have taken it upon themselves to deny half the population of the planet the most fundamental right of all, the right to exist as a people, together with all the other rights and privileges that depend on that.
I should declare my interest: I am not a woman, nor do I have body dysmorphia, although like most, certainly on Mumsnet, I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for their lot. It is a cruel disorder. At the same time, I am a rational person, combined with a horror of totalitarian thought. The TRAs have chosen as their weapon of choice a barely disguised form of Newspeak (does no one read Orwell anymore?), and the more gullible (or cowardly) of organisations seem to be have fallen for it.
However, as any Iroquois will tell you, you can’t just say you are Iroquois and then move onto the reservation. You have to be born Iroquois. You can’t just learn the dances and demand to be let in; only the Iroquois can decide if you can move in.
Identity is a vital ingredient of the human psyche, something you would think the TRAs would know rather than attack. Acceptance of ‘trans’ people must be because of who they are, not at the cost of others’ most fundamental rights.

I am going to have a stab at "how this feels" to me.

In the 1970s a lot of football fans were young men who behaved very violently and nastily, having fights with each other and vandalising towns where matches were on. I disliked that sort of person. At the same time, my brother and my uncle, neither of whom vandalised anything or hit anyone, were both football fans. From this I learnt that just because two people have the same label applied to them, that does not make them the same as each other.

Some trans people are thoroughly pleasant, interesting, intelligent, and not a pita, and I am happy to have them in my house. They do not make any demands about my sexuality, and have the grace not to go on continually about theirs (is there a more boring subject than someone else's sex-life, at a barbecue?); they are people I cheerfully call "friend". Others are noisy, aggressive and unpleasant (as the football hooligans were) and have #nodebate as their watchword, and I avoid them if I can; they are people that on the whole I would say are my enemy because of the way they seem to regard me.

What I don't understand is why everyone with a particular gender inclination or sexual orientation should be expected to be like every other person of the same gender inclination or sexual orientation. We know that all women don't think the same as each other; I am not particularly like Margaret Thatcher, nor do I aspire to be the same as Kim Kardashian. So why must all transwomen get shoved (usually by other transwomen) into the same pigeonhole and expected (always by transactivists) to feel and believe the same things, want the same things, aspire to be the same, hate the same other people?

I’ve no idea about Audible, but Amazon Prime still has ads on Mumsnet.

I went on Active Threads, and spotted an Amazon Prime advert just above this thread.

That's good news thanks for that info Minor

Thanks for letting me know op I was going to cancel my audible account but now I'll be keeping it.

Interestingly (for me, although I hadn't realised it before), I was definitely in the folds of the TRA movement. Not an Activist as such, but very much surrounded by them. I came on Mumsnet only because the TRAs target Mumsnet and I had only actually heard of Mumsnet as it's such a famous target of the TRA movement.

Mumsnet opened my eyes and I'll be forever grateful for it because it allowed me to start working on past experiences which had hampered my happiness.

If there are so many 'transphobes' on here it'll be in part a defensive mechanism because of the baiting that goes on by the TRAs. Also the main goal of the TR movement is to silence women's voices. The movement has been swallowed up by MRAs and genuine trans women (who number very few actually) are shouting to get heard above this noise. And so many women buy into it. It's sad.

As a moderate voice can I Please unequivocally state that

I don’t agree with children being persuaded by sinister agencies to have Assignment surgery before they are ready
I am disgusted that lesbians feel they are being bullied by TRA
I think it’s appalling that Men are using This as an excuse to get into women’s prisons
And I think that this is a moderately new field and should be approached with extreme caution

But at the same time
I dislike how all trans get ‘bracketed‘ by a small minority on here
The language here very much puts all trans into the same bracket
So a Confused 12 Year old child who might want to sleep in a Different tent is viewed the same as a sexual predator or as a nasty Troll TRA

That’s the issue for me . Such intelligent people in many ways . But their anger is overdoing an ability to be reasonable and to take a step back

_ Not every trans person is bad

• Not every trans person wants to rape women (in fact I am sure the vast majority don’t)

If a women doesn’t get offended that a trans person is pissing next to her , or washing their hands next To her that’s OK . That doesn’t make them a bad feminist

The overriding negative language and basically assuming evil intent from every single trans person is exactly why MN is getting suck a bad rep here

Ironically If MN does go down , it’s the women at risk who will get hurt the most
As we all know this website is a
Life saver for vulnerable women

@Thisisworsethananticpated i agree with a lot of this but not all. I dont think transwomen want to rape women, but I do think allowing male bodied people in female spaces provides an opportunity for men who do want to rape, perve etc.

I understand why people get angry. Misogyny is the only legally acceptable hate crime (if you look at the protected characteristics).