I've been thinking about this all night (see? Emotional impact!) and I didn't want to revisit it - in fact I considered deregistering - but it's still in Active so I'm going to say what I've been saying in my head to Mumsnet all night, if that's okay. Re: actual harm. I'm talking about the rape thread, but I think everything I say can equally be applied to the disablity bashing.
I said upthread that I was a rape victim in not dissimilar circumstances, and that when rape apologists come on and say that it wasn't rape (to the OP) they are also saying it to me. And to countless others, some posting, some lurking. Because the thing is, I'm lucky. I have a feminist mother and good role models, I'm very well educated on rape and the law, I enjoy good mental health.
There is a poster on these boards who posts very infrequently, who I know MNHQ is aware of, who has some very serious depression and mental illness to the point where she expresses frequent suicidal ideation. Her history includes a rape when she was young followed by an abusive relationship. One of the holds on her that the abuser had, and still has despite the relationship ending, is that he has always told her that the rape was her fault. When she came on the boards, she had internalised that to the extent that she could not, for a long time, believe us when we told her it wasn't. The unanimous support she got helped her to stand up to the abusive ex and seek some help for the first time in her life. She now has an ongoing support thread here, which has been her lifeline on some very, very dark nights.
Now that was a classic 'stranger' rape, which tends to get more support. If it had been an 'acquaintance rape' scenario, and people had told her that it was her fault, those people would have been strengthening everything her abuser had always said. I'm glad that didn't happen.
But who knows what she reads now? It wouldn't surprise me at all if she reads all the Relationships rape threads. When I was in conscious recovery (by which I mean, after I'd stopped spending years thinking it didn't count, was my fault, etc., and started to educate myself on the issue), I read other people's stories over and over.
So you've got a woman, a rape victim, with suicidal thoughts and a huge amount of self-blame going on in her head, who is reading threads where people are saying that rape is over-reported, it's not real rape unless significant force is used, women ask for it with their behaviour. And those threads are allowed to stand, which means that Mumsnet, her lifeline, is condoning those attitudes.
That's an example of some real potential for real, actual harm done to a real person who is pretty reliant on this site. And that's just one person. Who knows how many lurkers there are?
So that's what I want Mumsnet to think about, please, not just the OP but the very numerous women on this site who have mental health issues, or who are struggling in poverty while benefit-bashing goes on, who are rape victims or have SN children or all of those things. There is some real, actual, potential for harm here. It's not just people like me who rant in our heads for a couple of days or put our hands over our bellies hoping that our daughters will have it better than us. It's people already on the brink, who rely on this place for support that they don't get elsewhere.
/soapbox