MNHQ now email posters with how to "get around" the talk guidelines.

[GoshAnneGorilla]

There is yet another thread on FWR about trans people. Like nearly every other thread on there about trans people, it's a load of transphobia dressed up as gender analysis.

Nothing new, sadly.

What is new, is that MNHQ have now sent an email to a poster whose post was deleted, telling them how their post could be within the guidelines, even including a copy of their original post to make editing all the easier. This is because "discussion is important".

So, a few questions for MNHQ.

Are GLBT rights at all important to you?

Will you be extending this " How to bend the talk guidelines" services to racist, homophobic, or disabilist posts too, or is it only trans people who deserve to be discussed in a manner which is extremely offensive?

Just to be clear, I found this thread through 'Active Conversations', not any call to arms on FWR.

OK, so, GoshAnne said:

I do have an issue if MNHQ are handholding people as to how they can vent their prejudices and stay within talk guidelines.

Hence I started a thread in site stuff to query this, because I want to know when else this is happening and if they are doing this for posters with racist, disabilist, or other prejudiced views too.

Actually, I don't have an issue with it, whether it relates to FWR trans threads only or more wide e.g. race, disability discussions as well. I really do think views (even seriously unpalatable views) have to be debated, explored and challenged.

For example, if someone came onto MN and denied that the Holocaust ever happened, should that post just be deleted, or should it stand and attract reasoned, detailed responses from people who actually know their history? I think the latter.

If MN contact people and say (to continue with my Holocaust example) your denial post can stand but take out the anti-Semitic abuse, to tone it down so as to minimise the hurt and upset to other posters then I think that is a broadly sensible way of proceeding.

TiggyD, I don't disagree with the outlines you post above as to how to avoid being transphobic.

However I think you are underestimating the controversy of the issue.

For example you said "don't refer to 'MtF' transpeople as men" - to which I would ask you, what is a MtF transperson to you?

Would you consider a person who was born male, who has XY chromosomes, a penis and testes, a biological male body with usual levels of male hormones and who takes no synthetic female hormones and who has had no gender reassignment surgery to be a MtF transperson? I mean if they claimed that they were a woman and cross dressed and wanted to use women's services such as changing rooms, women only refuges, women only rape crisis centers, cervical cancer screening etc.

Because currently in what gets called trans* by most of us such a person would fit into the spectrum that asterisk denotes.

No, but nobody on the thread in question used the T word, yet apparently it is excellent advice for us to be told not to do do.

I will also point out that thousands of people are petitioning to have Dan Savage no platformed because he used the t word to explain why it should not be used, just as Tiggy did. So it certainly isn't excellent advice. It is a transphobic post.

Good point almoncakes.

See how it is complicated Tiggy! In trying to not be transphobic you have just done something that would have you no platformed by transactivists for being transphobic. I wonder if that makes you more or less transphobic than me and all the biology books in the land?!

I don't think Tiggy's advice is much cop tbh. GAG has already implied she thinks mental illness references are unacceptable, and I doubt any of the transwomen I know would be happy with 'they/their' - while I hesitate to speak for anyone else, I suspect it would be regarded by some as dehumanising.

A full and detailed set of instructions from MNHQ on what is and isn't transphobic would be great but I wouldn't envy them the task - I think they'd end up upsetting both sides. There are a few words like 'tranny' that are obviously unacceptable but most of it isn't that clearcut, especially given how much diversity of opinion there is within the trans community about what it's all about.

In America it would probably be transphobic. They don't like to use those 'bad' words under any circumstances even to say they're bad. In this country using them in order to talk about them is normally considered OK. Otherwise you get a situation like I was in a while ago when I was forewarned not to use the 'K' word in a thread about South African issues. I could not, not, use the 'K' word because I didn't know what the 'K' word was and nobody could tell me without using it.
Racist words are OK in British Scrabble competitions, whereas they are not allowed in America.

Beach, if somebody wants to be referred to as female, I'll call them by female titles. If I don't know their status but somebody is generally giving off a more female vibe than male, I'll go with female again, or neutral until I can figure out what they would like.

And there's no way I'm using an asterisk. No other words have asterisks. I'll occasionally use a hyphen, but that's it with the funny symbols.

But Kim I wasn't deleted for doing either of those things nor did I make any personal attacks. So it seems that things are more complicated than that.

DenzelWashington, I know you didn't mean it that way but could people please stop comparing me posting on MN to Nazis such as Holocaust deniers and Stormfront. It feels very personally attacking and IMO unhelpfully hyperbolic.

Not only did I not mean it that way, but that is not any kind of analogy I was drawing. I used an example far away from this debate to illustrate how I thought guidance could remove gratuitous insult but still allow necessary debate.

I have not compared any of the content of your posts on MN (didn't have you specifically in mind in any case) to anything Nazis such as Holocaust deniers and Stormfront might say, and I am quite irritated to see you suggest that I did.

Beach, if somebody wants to be referred to as female, I'll call them by female titles.

Don't you think that renders what it is to be female utterly meaningless? Which may not bother you too much but it bothers lots of biological females, especially when we want to do things like campaign for abortion rights and address rape, violence against women, equal pay, the right to vote for women who don't have it yet, etc.

Perhaps if all the women in Saudi Arabia claim that they are actually male, they will be allowed to drive?

Oh, it's all so blooming difficult. Even the pronouns.

I don't have too much trouble referring to Kim as 'she', or various other transwomen I know that live as the opposite sex and have been doing so for ages. Feels weird to refer to them as 'he', in some cases.

But when some bloke with a beard in his early twenties makes a Youtube video about how he's genderqueer and a lesbian, and he clearly has no intention of giving up any kind of male privilege, to be told I must use female pronouns in relation to him feels..... problematic.

I know you didn't intend it that way DenzelWashington (and it wasn't you who mentioned Stormfront - it was someone else upthread).

I'm sorry, I am a bit upset at the implications on this thread about me and what I got deleted for. Indeed I'm upset that the thread was started at all. I'm also pretty annoyed for MNHQ. I am no doubt being oversensitive. Please accept my apologies.

You've referred to me as "she" plenty of times. Why not "he"?

Because I imagine that it would upset you and I don't see what the point of that would be.

Apology gladly accepted, Beach.

This whole situation is very, very difficult and emotive. it stirs anger, outrage and protective instincts on both sides.

I would have an issue with someone socialised with male privilege expecting their desires and experiences to trump everyone else's. I have this issue regardless of the gender with which that person identifies though.

I think this is the crucial point.

I also have a copy of Beachcomber's original post. The two things that were flagged as transphobic are things that have been allowed to stand in other posts. I think the reason they were seen as problematic in Beachcomber's post is that they were mentioned in passing without an argument to back them up.

Thank you Buffy, Kim and Denzel.

I don't mind being discussed and I don't mind my posts/deletions/emails with MNHQ being discussed.

I take issue with implications about bigotry, being compared to racists, homophobes and neo-Nazis (I'm referring to GothAnneGorilla's post about Stormfront by mentioning the Nazi thing again, NOT Denzil's post that she has kindly clarified for me).

So calling a man with a penis, male is transohobic?

I don't envy you mnhq