Thoughts on MNHQ's response to the Spartacus thread

[OlennasWimple]

As the Spartacus thread is about to reach capacity, here's a new thread to discuss MNHQ's response to the issues raised on that thread and in a few other places over the last week or so.

is lesphobic to insist that a lesbian likes penis. Feck off with that shite.
Add message | Report | Message poster KateMumsnet (MNHQ) Tue 30-Aug-16 21:08:00
Hello all

Thanks for all your input on this - we've been listening and thinking hard.

Couple of quick points to clear up: it's actually not the case that people have been banned solely for misgendering - it will have been part of a broader discussion here about whether that poster is able to stick to the rules generally.

We must admit to being slightly taken aback at being cast, by some, as the evil slave-baiting Roman republic in this grin - as lots of you have pointed out, Mumsnet remains one of the few places where these issues can be discussed at all. It would have been much, much easier (both in terms of the resource and the toll on our moderators' sanity!) to shut down the debate as others have done, but instead we are working hard to find a realistic balance between free speech and being a space which welcomes everyone.

From our perspective, the whole issue is pretty much covered by our Talk Guidelines. If people are using sex-at-birth pronouns to provoke, inflame, or belittle, then that's against the rules and will usually have to go. If it happens as part of an otherwise broadly respectful (even if heated) discussion, we look at it in that context and take a view.

Some of you have pointed out a disjunct between allowing posts which mirror mainstream scientific thinking, while asking MNers not to describe a trans woman as 'he'. We can see your point on this,and also accept that there is a fair amount of dodgy stuff on the trans side that can rightly be described as anti-feminist and regressive - but what we'd ask you to think about is the impact on the parent who's not an activist, and likely isn't even posting, but whose adult child is transitioning, or who is doing so themselves. Would they feel belittled, mocked or attacked? Would they think Mumsnet was not for them? If so, we're going to have to remove it. It's a fudge, but it's the best we can do at this stage.

In all but the most extreme headline-grabbing cases, we do think it's possible to debate the core principles without referring to individuals in a way which will cause hurt. Most of you have said that when talking to a trans person face-to-face you wouldn't insist on using birth pronouns or names - and generally, on this and other issues, we encourage people to treat others with the same courtesy they'd use in real life. For every MNer who posts on a thread there are likely to be ten who are lurking - statistically, some of those will be trans or love someone who is, and we need to take account of them too.

We hope that makes our thinking a bit clearer overall. Do continue to tell us your thoughts - it's probably unrealistic to think that this issue will be quickly resolved here or across society as a whole, but it would be brilliant if MN could be part of the solution, we think.

MNHQ

*Fruit cider
*
Nina passed as a woman???

www.feministcurrent.com/2015/11/10/why-i-no-longer-hate-terfs/

This. All of this.

What is it with being 'offended' by x, y or z??
Plenty of women with XX chromosomes cannot have children or may not bleed or whatever - I don't see them campaigning as an organised group against contraceptive service/terminations/women's rights in general?!

How very odd. TA comes across as more and more delusional and seems to display disordered thinking IMO.
What is also odd, is that the transpeople I know in RL find it just as odd and do NOT feel represented by the movement.

MW not calling pregnant women 'women'?? WTAF.

Fruit, those links make no sense. The second says "GCF/TERFs are generally sex-essentialists who believe that sex is a natural binary because there exists some undefined male or female essence that is found in all men and women. Sometimes this sexed essence is viewed as habits acquired during early socialization and at other times it is some specific sex attribute.". This is nonsense.

Gender-critical feminists believe that gender is a social construct; it is not innate (how can it be when gendered behaviour varies historically and between countries?). They do not believe in a "sexed essence"; they believe (and are backed by science) that your sex is determined by your chromosomes. That's it. No essences. If you don't believe me, find me a gender-critical source who says that there is an undefined sexed essence. And see what these gender-critical people, some of them trans, have to say about gender. genderapostates.com/

Agreeing with Lalsy, that is almost the exact opposite of what gender critical people think (AFAIK) - the whole point is that the only thing that is inate about being a woman (or man) is the physical biological reality of chromosomes and the physical differences resulting from that.

I'd say it's transpeople (as a group) who believe in the male or female essence, hence believing that you can be in the wrong body (i.e. with mismatched essence and body)

Yes, exactly. And Fruit, if you want to prove what a group of people think: firstly, proceed with caution as humans are gloriously diverse; and secondly, quote one of the people that do think that (not someone who has utterly misunderstood or deliberately misinterpreted them).

…but I have to say that as an infertile woman, all this contraception-centric feminism over the last month has been alienating for me…

— Julia Serano (@JuliaSerano) March 3, 2012

This is a transwoman. Claiming infertility as a woman. Tell me this is not bloody nuts. And women talking about their fertility/infertility is alienating to Julia

How well do you think that would go down on the Fertility/conception boards on MN.

Still think we should just shut up?

Whoops wrong thread

Sex simply is a natural binary in humans and most other creatures which reproduce sexually. We're we can't do parthenogenesis, we're not hermaphrodites or sequential hermaphrodites (species which can change sex). Our sex is determined by our genetics, XX or XY, not by environmental factors. Sex is entirely about biology.

This is not a 'belief' - it's scientific fact. That site is simply lying totally mistaken about what gender critical people think.

If that was a mis-post, it fitted pretty well with the surrounding ones. Julia is not a biological woman so isses pertinent to biological women won't be relevant, obviously.

Errol

I know, but wanted to put it in the thread that is proposing to MNHQ that us all to fuck off to a trans area that cab be hidden, because none of this impacts on them. Anyway, it's in both threads now

I think it's increasingly clear that Fruit gets all her information about women like us from the trans lobby and isn't interested in listening to what we're saying at all. A perfect example of the regressive left - close your ears, shut down your reasoning abilities, submit to the ideology, parrot the approved slogans. We are the Borg, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. That sort of thing.

Hi. Is there a link between Transgender critical thinking, TERF and Radical Feminism ? I see the last two labels constantly given to women who may just have a point of view that is different from what is considered PC. A male with critical thinking is not considered in the same way.
If I had thoughts that my childs Dr was wrong with a diagnosis, as has happened, I would not be criticized for expressing that and would be allowed to ask for a second opinion.
I also dislike being called Cis.
Why is it ok to call someone a nasty name just for expressing an opinion or a preference? :-)

Errol - that fits perfectly here and tbh, given my past infertility issues I would find it fucking insensitive and dismissive of my needs if a man claimed their infertility was like mine and my infertility issues - related to my ovaries, my female hormone levels, my womb - was alienating. My womb doesn't work. You never bloody hand one. biological fact there.

A bit like discussions on religion threads where people cite 'Answers in Genesis'. Part of the problem is that there are various things where if you google, the top hit is likely to be 'Answers in Genesis' and its ilk - the same thing applies to trans issues but probably much worse because for someone looking for information for the first time it will be less obvious what the biases of a site are.

Fruit wants people to hate, it's easier to punch down than punch up so go for the TERFs even if it means completely misrepresenting what they actually think.
Or she's just badly informed and just needs to stop listening to TA lies and find out what is actually going on. #benefitofthedoubt

I think that Radical Feminism is much broader - it's not just about attitudes to trans issues but encompasses many other areas (e.g. views on prostitution, porn, and is a political movement aimed at eliminating patriarchy and is more militant than, say, liberal feminism. Interestingly the first definition on Urban Dictionary calls it a hate speech movement which I would disagree with.

TERF is a term only ever used as a way of silencing people who are in any way critical of either an individual trans person or wider trans activism and is very frequently accompanied by hate language or abuse.

Gender critical is less clearly defined but to me means that you acknowledge biological differences and believe these are what defines the difference between the sexes but reject the gendered definitions of masculine and feminine stereotypical behaviour which both sexes are often expected to conform to.

Many trans activists claim that being Gender Critical means you are inherently rad fem and a TERF however I think there are a fair amount of women - including me - who wouldn't identify as rad fem but would say they are gender critical and feminist (but maybe liberal)

sorry - that was in response to microferret. My analogy came from the conservative right not the left ... dogmatists of either extreme are as bad as each other in closing their minds to facts which don't fit their theories.

twat - yes. Having been through subfertility I know .... I'm desparately sorry for people who are infertile but that translates into trying to help those who are in the throes of it, not STFU. A trans person generally has had a choice about their fertility and put it as a lower priority? (unless they were medically transitione as kids )

yes errol its part of the reason kids should not be transitioning. But it absolutely is a choice. There are options for trans men and women to have children at a later date If they so choose.

Is fertility, again, only considered a women's only issue? we hear of transmen(who are biological women) having babies in the news a lot so one can assume they have considered the ramifications of hormone treatments and/or drastic surgeries and made a decision based on that. Rarely hear about transwomen having children.

Do any Transwomen consider freezing sperm before opting for surgery? is it offered as an option pre-op so a transwoman could use a surrogate later? Is freezing eggs/sperm information given at any consultation for a person transitioning? Is it standard practice?

Just how many transwomen are affected by infertility given stats state only a small percentage have complete surgery?

Curiously is the infertility a perceived infertility - due to lack of female reproductive organs or because they are in fact sterile/had surgery/no longer have any reproductive organs?

I need to catch up properly, but just felt I had to post on the irony of "you are denying Mtt experiences" vs "you are not liberal if you don't believe in gender, you are a TERF"

Do not assume you know better than someone else about their internal thoughts - oh, ps I know better than you

If "terf" alone implies you are a radical feminist (obviously knowing bugger all about what it is, but we'll ignore that for a second...) why does the term "swerf" exist?

Good point makeslogicalsensetome2 - what's a gender critical man called? Still a TERF? Or, for that matter, a gender critical transgender person, Ought they to sit down and stfu too?

The tweets in the article linked to up thread are so nasty. So much hate directed towards women. And we're the ones labelled phobic.

Having an ex who transitioned I did get their point. I on the other hand was told to be supportive or I was Transphobic. Why is that the only option women have? I do not want to be demoted to 'other' which is what Cis is. Can we talk instead of being told?

The way transphobic is thrown around really boils my piss anyway, but I particularly object to it in cases of women who have lived with a male partner for years, maybe even decades, and are suddenly expected to accept that the partner is actually a woman and has always been a woman. You're turning that woman's whole reality and experience upside down, and just because she doesn't instantly accept it she's transphobic? Bugger right off. Especially since if you fully drink the cool aid the transgender person has always been a woman and so their body has always been female - does that mean that the woman who married a man and had sex with a man is now a lesbian?

I saw Kris Jenner getting a lot of stick for using 'he' in reference to Caitlyn after transition and all I could think was hang on, from her pov Kris was married to a man called Bruce for >20 years, had children with him, bla bla bla. TO expect her to not only fully accept this but also to change her language and effectively get rid of 20+ years of habits overnight was ridiculous. No Kardashian fan but I actually felt pretty sorry for her there.

Of course RadFem is not just about transitioning and the lack of support for it, RadFem also wants to abolish sex work and insists on calling consenting sex workers prostitutes, hence SWERF. Not all RadFems are TERFs or SWERFs, I have to add, but both of these ideologies stem from RadFem.

I don't use the term TERF or SWERF to shut down debate, I would rather have these conversations despite how uncomfortable they are. But by me using these terms, it makes it clear to the reader that my train of thought is that these debates are attempts to exclude transpeople and sex workers from certain areas of society and this line of thought is ignoring their voices.