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MNHQ

MNHQ here: Femicide Census - want to know what you could do to help?

11 replies

RowanMumsnet · 21/02/2020 13:51

Hello

Lots of you have been discussing the Femicide Census this week - the data for 2018 has just been released and has been getting some coverage in the media.

We asked Nia, the charity that supports the Femicide Census, what MNHQ could do to help support their work - and they sent us this email. Of course we at MNHQ will be happy to do what we can, so expect to see more about this from us, but for now it felt as though the most useful thing we could do would be to pass this on directly to you - so here goes:

"In terms of supporting our work – it is often just really helpful to have people talking about the issue, referring to the femicide census, retweeting etc – it’s about keeping the issue at the forefront of people’s minds and in particular using language that situates the blame clearly with the perpetrators and recognises it as part of the wider pattern of sex based inequality and discrimination.

As we said in our press release endless excuses and rationales are afforded to perpetrators – he had mental health issues, he was depressed, he was upset at the relationship ending, he had lost his job, he had been declared bankrupt, he was being investigated by the police, he couldn’t cope any more, he found it too distressing to see his wife/mother/child suffer yet all too often if you question it you find he had a history of controlling or abusive behaviour .

All these conditions apply to the millions of women who do not control, abuse, belittle or kill people. Even where the man kills his child somehow it’s her fault. We always scrutinise women’s behaviour and their conformity to some stereotyped, fossilised code of behaviour expected of women and benefitting men and blame her if she is not conforming to that fantasy. So anything your users can do to challenge such misrepresentations or misplaced emphasis or unreasonable rationales would be very helpful.

We also sometimes support relevant strategic litigation and in partnership with other women’s organisations we may attend Court hearings or raise a demo outside the court or similar. We know this makes a difference to the woman whose case it is – it shows her solidarity and we think it may also help build gravitas and credibility for the media and the judiciary so we sometimes tweet demos and welcome women coming along to that. We also undertake other activism – so we are usually present at Million Women Rise March or Reclaim the Night March and again we encourage such visible activism as part of a wider women’s movement.

Of course the other thing is that we always need donations so if women want to do fundraising activities, runs, swims, silences, cakebakes or whatever and raise money for us – we are delighted. We are not big enough to have a dedicated fundraiser role or a team supporting people in the way we would like but we can always provide information, logos, leaflets, links to relevant information about us or about the issue and we’ll support as much as we can – we retweet fundraisers who are doing activities for us and encourage it as much as possible.

Also women’s various workplaces or communities sometimes are looking for a charity to support or their workplace may match funds raised or encourage staff to do fundraising activities so it may be that there are other ways to multiply fundraising reach. Similarly if women are involved in organising or attending conferences and events where there may be demand for a speaker – within limited capacity and with enough notice - we may be able to come out and talk about our work or the femicide census or violence against women. The place to contact us for these sorts of things is [email protected] and we of course on Twitter - @nia_endingvawg

Thank you for all your support"

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MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 24/02/2020 12:09

Hello

Thanks for your thoughts - we know Nia will be really happy to have your support on this. Anyone who's doing any fundraising for them and would like us to boost it from our Twitter account, feel free to email us on [email protected] - we can keep your MN name out of it in any public social posts.

We wanted to address the comments about our mod policy - but we're pretty desperate for this thread to NOT turn into another long debate about our moderation, or indeed about the debate around sex, gender and self-ID, because we think that would be a significant injustice to the topic of the OP.

As you'll (hopefully) know our aim in moderating this incredibly fraught area is to encourage civility, particularly when individual people are being discussed, which is why we're minded to ask MNers to use preferred pronouns particularly for individuals (and also why we're minded to delete 'cis' when the women concerned object to it, a decision for which we have taken an enormous amount of criticism and heat).

That said, if someone has been convicted of violent/sexual offences then our first priority will always be to stand with the victims and - where relevant - the use of pronouns would take a back seat to that so far as our mod team is concerned.

It's definitely not our intention to stop MNers talking about the reality of male violence against women and the differences in biology, physical strength, power and socialisation that can contribute to it.

As we said above we really really don't want this thread of all threads to lose the focus on the OP - if you'd like to discuss moderating issues further we'd really appreciate it if you could start a separate thread in Site Stuff and we will be happy to talk to you about it there.

Thanks
MNHQ

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 09:12

@JellySlice

Why do we have to wait for a woman to be hurt before we can name the reality of her endangerment?

One of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation in a separate thread is because we're interested in hearing some concrete examples of this. We don't think there's anything in our rules or the way we moderate that prevents users talking concretely about women's endangerment - I think I did it pretty directly in my second post on this thread (not saying this in a self-congratulatory way, we just think it's not true that it's not possible to do it).

So some concrete examples of how users think they're prevented from doing this would genuinely be useful - maybe there are misunderstandings about our approach, maybe there are things we need to think about. Our position (contrary to some users on FWR, we know) is that taking an approach based in civility does not prevent our users from discussing the male/female power dynamic and disparities in power and control.

So some concrete examples and a discussion might genuinely be useful, it's just not helping Nia to have it on this thread - not least because all the MNers who are bored to tears by this debate (and there are lots of them) will be hiding this thread as we speak, and we think that's a major injustice to Nia, whatever you think of our moderation approach...

BTW we will be having Karen Ingala Smith on for a webchat next week so there will be a chance to talk directly to her about all of these issues

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 10:17

@Binterested

Do you really want us to name names MNHQ? I’m thinking of a prominent TW - not convicted of any crime afaik - but with a documented history of exposing their male genitalia at work and elsewhere. I want to say this person is a man. Under your rules I can’t.

Hmm. I don't know who this person is and (see stuff about defamation below) it's probably easier to have this discussion if you don't name them.

If they haven't been convicted of a crime, then naming any individual and saying they are guilty of a criminal act is potentially defamatory. This has nothing to do with anyone's gender identity - it's just a matter of defamation law. So treading carefully around serious accusations about individuals really isn't to do with sex or gender - it applies to everyone.

If a person was merrily 'fessing up to indecently exposing themselves at work and in other public situations and it was plainly a matter of public record that they did so, we wouldn't be minded to take down MN posts pointing that out. There'd be no problem either in saying that they were exposing their penis/scrotum. And tbh it's not likely we'd be falling over ourselves to worry about which pronoun was used, or posts saying that this person is male/a man, given that this would be a post laying out undisputed information about someone indecently exposing themselves (ie a sexual crime).

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 12:23

@Binterested

The existence or otherwise of a criminal offence which, for MNHQ is the trigger to allow us to speak truthfully, doesn’t make any difference to the facts of the matter: that it was male patten behaviour and male genitalia.

But we are talking about a case in which nothing has been proved? So there are no established 'facts' here, there are only allegations.

The reason we're so insistent on things that we think encourage civility is that this is a bitter argument in which two groups of people feel genuinely frightened about possible infringements of their freedoms, and policy decisions that make them feel less safe.

We have taken the decision to allow these conversations to take place - which, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, most platforms do not, and is a decision that has had real costs for us.

Given that that's our decision, we have a responsibility to set guidelines that prioritise civility and thoughtfulness as much as possible. It does sometimes mean that some posters can't post exactly what they want in the exactly the way they want to. But we don't think anyone can reasonably accuse Mumsnet of brushing male violence against women under the carpet; we've probably hosted more conversations about it and given more prominence to relevant campaigns than any other UK site (and we're proud of that).

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 13:28

@Binterested

That’s a different point Rowan. We cannot make unsubstantiated claims about anyone. That is obvious.

This is situations where a man has behaved in a typically male way - it’s not criminal (or there has been no conviction). but it does damage women and girls by creating a hostile environment for them. These environments facilitate violence against women and girls. Ultimately the words ‘her penis’ contribute to this environment of hostility because it attempts to hide the truth.

OK - we are probably butting up against the limitations of talking about a theoretical case here; one of the reasons we don't issue long lengthy lists of exactly what is permissible is that we really do try to moderate contextually. We'd always look at the posts in context and take a view (and the existence of a conviction or a prosecution would be an important part of that context).

One of the reasons we emphasise civility is that it's pretty difficult for users to get on the wrong side of the Guidelines if they post in a civil way. Most trans people experience the deliberate rejection of preferred pronouns as hostile, and we don't want Mumsnet to be a hostile place for them. Also, obviously, it is never OK to imply - deliberately or otherwise - that 'all transwomen behave in this way' or 'all trans people are like this'.

Of course there's never a problem in talking about male-pattern behaviour in general terms, and if we judged that there was really compelling evidence that a transwoman had indecently exposed themselves we're unlikely to be minded to delete references to male-pattern behaviour and male genitalia. But it really would all depend on the tone of the post and the exact context. And we know some FWR users are concerned about racking up strikes and deletions - so posting with civility in mind is always going to be the safety-first approach.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 13:51

Well, civility is really important for us and that's not something we're going to be changing our minds on. We're not a free-for-all (in FWR or anywhere else); having a few principles by which we moderate, which we try to make as broad and thoughtful as possible, is what makes Mumsnet work. And we do fundamentally disagree that civility is an unreasonable thing to aim for.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 16:30

@Binterested

But your civility is deeply offensive to me Rowan. Why is there a hierarchy of who we must be polite to ? None of this is polite to women.

Women make up most of Mumsnet's users and civility is what we aim for across the board, not only on FWR. There are plenty of classic Mumsnet bunfight scenarios (WOHM/SAHM, bf/ff, private/state schooling) where we will if necessary step in and remind people to play the ball and not the woman, because we think that leads to better discussions and more understanding. We talk about it more on FWR partly because we have so many conversations about our moderation on that topic which necessarily becomes a bit repetitive on our part, and partly because as we said previously we're under a lot of pressure from all sides and trying to explain our thinking to everyone. But the principle is the same everywhere.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 25/02/2020 16:41

@FemiLANGul

BTW we will be having Karen Ingala Smith on for a webchat next week so there will be a chance to talk directly to her about all of these issues

Will we actually be able to talk though? Or will questions be deleted as per the previous webchat?

Can we ask her directly what she thinks about women being censored and prevented from speaking the truth because it might be seen as 'uncivil'?

Will we be able to say that on this site women are prevented from 'using language that situates the blame clearly with the perpetrators and recognises it as part of the wider pattern of sex based inequality and discrimination' because it is not civil towards the perpetrators of violence and sex based discrimination?

From what we've seen Karen has strong views on this whole topic area herself so we'd expect some of the conversation to be along these lines, but - in precisely the way we have so signally failed to do on this thread - we will want to keep the webchat focused on the topic of male violence against women, which is after all the object of the Femicide Census and a deeply important subject for most MN users. We'll take a view about how many questions about self-ID etc to allow but our aim will be to ensure a topic of vital significance to our users doesn't get swamped.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 26/02/2020 09:58

Thanks for all your posts - the points made have given us a lot of food for thought.

Just one thing we'd like to stress, in terms of what we 'allow' (or not); moderating decisions are always contextual, and the tone of posts is really important. Civility isn't just in individual words, it can be an attitude that shines off a post, and when it does it makes us that bit more minded to leave that post alone.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 03/03/2020 12:42

Hello - the Karen Ingala Smith webchat is now open here

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 11/03/2020 10:56

Hello - nia have been in touch to flag up that together with the End Violence Against Women Coalition and the Centre for Women's Justice, they have 'put together a case to ask for permission at the court to bring a case against the CPS arguing that they have secretly changed policy resulting in a huge drop in rape prosecutions - which were already pretty low but now virtually non-existent.'

The case is being heard next week (Tuesday 17 March) at the Royal Courts of Justice in London (on the Strand) and they'd love people to show up on the day and give their support.

Nia say:

'It would be usual thing - come down anytime from 9am and hang about visibly outside till they go in at 10 and if some can attend the hearing (it’s open to the public) as well that would be good - if you can attend and have capacity do try and get down there - just turn up – no need to tell anyone or have permission or anything – just rock up there will be women there probably with some banners/placards and please also circulate this and really encourage other women to come – service users, volunteers, your friends and families, women from other orgs.'

You can read more about the case here.

Thanks
MNHQ

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