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

Yvette Fielding did say she wouldn't be happy about it because of girls starting their periods early. There lots of jokey references to boys' lack of hygiene and the like. However the tone was jocular not serious.

The accepted idea on the programme was that transgender women should go into women's loos

Everything I read yesterday re how to deal with this in the workplace appeared to indicate there is no choice, refusal to admit them to the female facilities is discriminatory. No acknowledgement whatsoever that women may legitimately have concerns; any such issue is assumed to be born of ignorance and prejudice.

How is this possible when it isn't the law yet?

Don't know, maybe all the employment law and gov advisory advice is presuming it will be law and we should act accordingly. What I read wasn't advisory though, it was very much 'this is what you must do', otherwise discrimination. I'm going to see what HR say tomorrow, I wfh today and I want to discuss face to face. I expect a lily livered response. I was thinking earlier, what if women weren't just in a stall having a pee and didn't know a bloke was in there, what if they went in to change their tights or something? I wouldn't bother to go in a stall for something like that if it was a single sex space. So someone's in there with their skirt round their waist, or their jumper pulled up having an underarm deodorant squirt, and he comes barging in unannounced. No one knew it might happen. Fucking unacceptable.

When was the Wright Stuff debate on? Is it still available on catch up, or YouTube?

I don't generally watch TV during the day but a few weeks ago I watched it at a friend's and there was a very brief conversation re trans issues. Matthew Wright did seem very anti TA agenda and I was very impressed. But as I say, it was very brief and I don't think it would have been the one mentioned upthread.

Would love to see the one mentioned if available.

This is interesting

m.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2064

I'm guessing that requiring a transgender person to use a unisex toilet counts as direct discrimination as it's a policy treating transgender people differently than others.

It does include 'telling people about the situation. Make a list of people who need to know...'

People need to know if a person of the opposite sex is identifying as their gender and wanting to use their loo.

Thank you for that. I shall bring it up. Sources I read seemed to indicate that telling people may be problematic. But as Errol says, all the women in the building need to know who they may encounter in the female loos.

so for example, a woman who decides to live as a man without undergoing any medical procedures would be covered

This is about protection under the equality act from the ACAS link. Interesting that they not chosen to say 'a man who decides to live as a woman without undergoing any medical procedure would be covered' isn't it. Because he would. But it sounds far far more contentious.

They may dispute (or just not have realised and be defensive) that women may need to know - be prepared.

I feel like we've lost the war without even realising it had been declared. I sometime use the changing room in the gym at work. Communal changing room. Presumably someone in the early stages of transition (or not intending to have surgery at all) could now walk in on me naked, strip down to reveal a penis and strut into the showers butt naked, and there would be nothing I could say to HR about it. Because I'd have become like racist auntie Gladys in their eyes - despite over 50 years of socialisation that makes me very jumpy about being naked and vulnerable in the presence of male-bodied individuals. That doesn't count for anything. I would be the one in danger of getting the sack for being bigoted and prejudiced if I raised the issue.

WE should have a choice. This should all be about choice. A unisex changing room/loo should be in every building and trans people should be given the option to use the one of their biological sex or the unisex one. They shouldn't be given an automatic right to spaces esp female spaces because of the issues of male violence and safety. Hell even prison officers and prison psyches (report someone shared up thread) had concerns a large percentage of men were transitioning because they presumed female prisons were an easier ride.

They shouldn't be allowed into spaces that will ultimately push out many women - who the facilities are for ffs - where the discrimination there? What about the woman who for religious reasons covers her body in the presence of men surely she is being discriminated against - firstly for being female and secondly with religious discrimination - because the facilities have been made impossible to use when before they were.

If this was about those people who desire and have a fetishism about being disabled and getting priority access to disabled loos and facilities or taking over disabled groups there would be uproar because of the appropriation of spaces designed specifically for that minority of people and to make them unavailable or unusable would be discriminatory.

Presumably someone in the early stages of transition (or not intending to have surgery at all) could now walk in on me naked, strip down to reveal a penis and strut into the showers butt naked, and there would be nothing I could say to HR about it. Because I'd have become like racist auntie Gladys in their eyes Yes
WE should have a choice and this. We don't have a choice. We have been silenced.

I missed the original thread, if anyone remembers my story then believe me, I shouting at the top of my lungs, and with every fibre of my being : I AM SPARTACUS. I AM SODDING SPARTACUS.

Our achievements are being eradicated. We are becoming nothing... www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37391807?ocid=socialflow_twitter&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=twitter

She signed up as a HE. Was trained as a HE lived amongst other soldiers as a HE, proved their worth as a HE and only recently became SHE.

When the first biologically born female becomes the first to serve on the front line she will have done so by signing up as a SHE, training as a SHE, living amongst fellow soldiers as a SHE, proving her worth as a SHE and this, this achievement will not be recognised as anything other than second best :(

Here in Canada, there's a high school that has dedicated 2 single person washrooms to 'gender neutral' people.

This of course means that girls will have to line up to use it because we all know that males who wear dresses will not use it. The whole point behind AGP is that he gets a thrill out of using the women's room.