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???

I thought you didn't support gender binary? Guess you do, when excluding MTT from society eh?!?!?

IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat by the way thanks for posting that awful Julia Serano quote, I've seen it before but the solipsistic narcissism of it never fails to take my breath away. They are literally telling women to shut up about an issue which impacts upon us profoundly - the right to control our own reproductive capacity - because it makes them feel left out. And this person is influential, and considered credible by the trans community and its allies. Is this not the height of fucked up?

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

I cant see where any poster has said female sex workers should be excluded from female places or excluded from society.
The posts which say transpeople with their penises should not be allowed in certain protected female spaces are spot on. That is not an exclusion from certain areas of society that is protecting the women who access those areas.
My dp would not be allowed in a womens refuge because hes a man and that is accepted by all including you Fruit. But if my DP wore a dress and called himself Jane you would then say he should be allowed?
Why, he is still a man his sex has not changed but the putting on of a dress makes him acceptable to you. Why is that?

Fruit, Fret supports the sex binary, not the gender binary. Because unlike the gender binary, the sex binary is real, and is generally visible due to these little things called secondary sex characteristics. It's that old chestnut biology again...

My origin is asking various friends who are RadFem, alongside reading various feminist literature whilst writing my dissertation.

Fruit, you seem to be falling for the old chestnut that there's a right type of feminist to be and that your views on intersectionality make you the best type.

That's both an anti feminist and anti woman view. Calling a woman a TERF is never acceptable. Sorting feminist theory in to good and bad is never acceptable.

Feminisism is inclusive of different views but it always centres women. There's nothing wrong with a belief system that doesn't centre women but it isn't feminism. If transactivists want to centre transwomen, great, I'm glad someone is doing so but I as a feminist am not going to do that. Nor will I make any apologies for it.

Fruit, you seem to be falling for the old chestnut that there's a right type of feminist to be and that your views on intersectionality make you the best type.

That's both an anti feminist and anti woman view. Calling a woman a TERF is never acceptable. Sorting feminist theory in to good and bad is never acceptable.

Feminisism is inclusive of different views but it always centres women. There's nothing wrong with a belief system that doesn't centre women but it isn't feminism. If transactivists want to centre transwomen, great, I'm glad someone is doing so but I as a feminist am not going to do that. Nor will I make any apologies for it.

I cant see where any poster has said female sex workers should be excluded from female places or excluded from society.

I'm pretty sure the attempts to abolish sex work ARE excluding sex workers and their voices, driving their work underground, risking their safety, and making it impossible to work legally.

Izzy MTT are not "men in dresses" for goodness sake. Stop being hysterical!

'Stop being hysterical!'

That's a terrible trans-exclusionary turn of phrase, you know!

The swerf argument is ridiculous. There are very few consenting sex workers. Over 90% of sex workers want to leave prostitution. I live in Germany, where prostitution has been legalised, to much fanfare. What is the result? A huge increase in human trafficking, in STDs amongst sex workers, in criminal gang involvement in the industry, and brothels which advertise flat rate sex - where you can violate a woman over and over again for several hours and pay a pittance. Once again, liberal feminism is just old fashioned patriarchy dressed up in shiny new clothes. It's a tool being used to convince women that oppression is sexy, fun and my least favourite word: "empowering". Empowerment is a bullshit funfem concept designed to make us collude in our own subjugation. I'm only interested in liberation. Empowerment and all the smug false narratives around it can just fuck off.

Buffy - fruit's not going to do that, any more than she did with me when I asked her what her understanding of gender-critical was. She just posted a link to a daft article which accused gender-critical feminists of being essentialists (in other words one which invented a straw-man which was the precise opposite of what gender-critical feminists actually are). I've come to the conclusion that she does not actually want to engage with any of us, she just wants to jump up and down shouting "you're all evil TERFs". So I for one am not going to engage with her any more, since there is no possibility of reasoned discussion.

I thought you didn't support gender binary? Guess you do, when excluding MTT from society eh?!?!? grin

I think you are confusing sex with gender again.

A women dressed in a "masculine" manner is in the majority of cases going to be recognisable as a woman.
A man dressed in a "feminine" way is in the majority of cases going to be recognisable as a man.

We are generally pretty well programmed to recognise what sex people are for obvious reasons, and sex is a binary. However, none of this has got anything whatsoever to do with gender.

Fruit I can see you are trying to make some important points, but it is really hard to follow when you confuse sex and gender.

Sex = male/ female and is a binary
Gender = what society believes masculine and feminine are. Depending on point of view gender is either non-existant or a continuum.

If you could use language in the same way as everyone else it would really help

Buffy not really at this precise moment, at work on my break, don't have my diss for exact references. However if you DM me I'll be happy to send them another time.

Errol pretty sure someone accused me of pearl clutching up thread

I'm certainly not interested in trans activism in its vile forms where people are threatened etc. What I'm interested in is people, I want equality for everyone.

This is what legalised prostitution looks like Fruit. It ain't pretty, and it certainly isn't empowering for women www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/hells-angels-brothel-raided-by-900-officers-say-german-police

Stop being hysterical!

Fruit are you a man?

That kind of comment is said by men to women when they want to shut them up. It was usually followed by a quick slap ya know just to calm those hysterical women down.

StatisticallyChallenged ..'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? .'

Turns out in my case I was told I may have sensed my ex's feminine core which made me possibly Bisexual and I was offered support to talk about how I felt living with a woman but shut down when I didn't agree he was a woman. Where is the equal rights in that?
Asking questions is not violence however making women move over make room without asking them first is self serving and egotistical in my opinion. Men are not being asked to do it .
MTT worry male bathrooms are not safe because men may assault them. Is anyone making men be accountable, and scoot over to make room for Trans people in the same way women are expected to?
Add to that only a small number actually have bottom surgery and there is no need to wait years to change their ID anymore. People don't have to present as specific gender and we are not allowed to ask as its taking away from their authentic experience. Its confusing.

I'd also, while we're looking for sources, love to know some details on what these radical feminists who are pro-sex work and pro-genderism believe?

I suspect you are mixing up radical (the theory) with radical (extreme)...?

I'm pretty sure the attempts to abolish sex work ARE excluding sex workers and their voices, driving their work underground, risking their safety, and making it impossible to work legally.

Holbeck in Leeds has been given a legal time frame where sex workers can legally be as can their punters. If i remember correctly it was only a matter of months before a sex worker was found murdered in a bush. So much for legalisation being safer.

By the way protitution is illegal in this country, rarely benifits the women, is usually run by men, drugs play a large part as does mental health. But hey wanting this trade abolished is all about silencing the female sex workers voices. Nothing to do with it being dangerous for the women at all.

Jesus I was kind of joking, talk about trying to rewrite other people's identity in order to validate your own!

And Fruit

"Izzy MTT are not "men in dresses" for goodness sake. Stop being hysterical!"

Well, that's kind of the whole point of a lot of these threads - defining what is a man (and woman) and where you draw the line between them. -Some people say you're a woman if you say you are.
-Some people say you're a woman only if you are born XX with female sex organs.
-Some say broadly that but that they would call someone fully transitioned a woman.
(there are other lines too!)

Most of the Spartacus thread posters fall in to the second two groups and so by that definition a TW is, in fact, a man in a dress. Not hysterical in the slightest.