Mumsnet moderation of trans rights and gender critical issues

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
We've given lots of thought to our moderation policies around trans rights and sex and gender issues and thought it would be a good idea to articulate where we stand in the form of a clear statement, so everyone can be clear about our moderation going forward. You can find it here. Hope it provides a helpful reference point. Thanks.

@Daim - report me (3 posts at end of previous page)

"80% of MIAT in the UK are AGP, so no."

Do you have statistics to back up that claim? And what do you mean by MIAT?

Mumsnet you need to be thinking about:

1. Gender critical feminism as a protected characteristic

2. Disability discrimination

This is a good point. Religion/belief is a protected characteristic. We are being asked to accept a pseudoscientific belief system as truth and need to be able to have the words to deny it.

Do you see that as aggressive daim? Or abusive?

I don’t. I see it as mildly exasperated with a hint of light sarcasm.

And I worry greatly that too much policing kills debate.

To me, the mod policy should be the same as that for racism, disablism etc.

I’m thinking another thread for those of us on the autistic spectrum might be worthwhile. We maybe do need to set out clearly how this amount of word substitution and veiled meanings affects us and makes it difficult for us to participate.

I thought I understood MN’s original post, however following the discussion I am now unsure of what I can and cannot say. I often have problems with reading things and thinking they’re unambiguous, and then it turns out NT people are able to infer something completely different by reading between the lines.

Eresh

Yes. And it is permissible to state:

God does not exist.
Religion is a mass delusion.
Religion is harmful.

That doesn't get a deletion or a ban. Yet, at least the first 2 statements, should be more contentious, given that there is no evidence one way or the other for the existence of God (whereas there is plenty of empirically verifiable evidence re males and females, men and women, and the impossibility of one becoming the other).

Maybe TIM has too much emphasis on the trans bit and not enough on the woman. Men who identify as women could work instead.

Yy sporadic

The correct and accurate pronouns to refer to all 'transwomen' are 'he', 'him' and 'his'.

Sorry, I have no sympathy for anyone who can't bring themselves to use a neutral pronoun. Pronouns are bad for women. Pronoun use is historically changeable. Pronouns are easily to neutralise without feeling like you're lying. Why anyone would feel the need to die on the hill of pronouns is beyond me.

Or just 'men' Kitty.

Gibber, you said:

"I still don't know enough about Miranda to comment and I am not going to get sucked into talking about a real person without knowing his circumstances"

And yet here you are referring to Miranda as male when you are simultaneously asserting that trans women are not male.

Sporadic, if you start one please do link it.

I get quite anxious about the idea of such a huge source of support for so much of my life being withdrawn from me because I don't agree with a certain way of seeing gender.
It affects me directly because of how I conceptualize being a lesbian.

I would have agreed with you 2 years ago Rat. But in the current context of men taking over women's sports, men being key note speakers at women's events, men being housed in women's jails etc. it is just another thing that normalises the current lunacy.

Biology is factual, and grouped.
Its terms are objective, unambiguous.

Identity is subjective, and individual.
They CANNOT use the same terms.

We need terms for identity that relate ONLY to the individual who declares an identity - and are NOT conflated with the objective biological terms that distinguish a biological sex class.

You can have a personal identity, if you want one, but you cannot claim other people in a biological group to which you do not belong must declare they share it with you. Let your identity stand in its own right. Not as a stolen biological word that describes a class of billions of people with a definition that excludes you. That cannot be your identity.

'Female'/'Woman' can NOT be both an objective thing AND a subjective thing both.

It cannot be a SEX and a GENDER IDENTITY both.
It cannot be a group with shared factual characteristics, AND at the same time an expression of subjective individual feelings.

Female cannot be the word I use to objectively distinguish myself from male, and yet simultaneously the subjective word males use to remove that distinction.

These claims compete. They conflict. They cannot co-exist.
There will never be a squaring of this triangle. It will always be a logical conflict.
A triangle cannot factually be a three sided shape and at the same time and in the same conversation an identity possessed by a square.

This 'debate' cannot be moderated to a successful outcome.
You can't use the same words to have opposing meanings without this almighty clash prevailing. For ever.

In every other clash: This is MY house/no, it is MY house, society adjudicates.
It cannot be factually MY house, and also subjectively the house you identify as yours.
Equal weight cannot be given to both claims.
One claim takes precedence, the other is rejected.
It cannot be moderated.
It must be adjudicated.

Female cannot be factually 'the biological sex class ref: XX chromosomes, ovaries/ova/fallopian/uterus/vagina reproductive system, anatomy' and ALSO a subjective identity for XY penis/testicle/sperm/prostate people.

We are allowing a group who profess their subjective feelings to disregard, displace, and supersede the factual reality of another group.

Society has created this irresolvable conflict.
It cannot be moderated.
It must be adjudicated.
And truth and fact must prevail.

Maybe TIM has too much emphasis on the trans bit and not enough on the woman. Men who identify as women could work instead.

Not really, because TIM includes everyone born male who fits under the trans umbrella. It includes crossdressers, gender fluids and non binaries. Men who identify as women is only a subset of TIMs. I think men who identify as women would also be unacceptable because there is too much emphasis on the fact that they are men.

It's about time that mum's net acted on this, the shear amount of hate that comes up on here is amazing. To be honest a lot of the comments made could quite easily be considered a hate crime

it is just another thing that normalises the current lunacy.

But militantly pushing it back to other way is manifestly bad for women! It's an absolute own-goal for feminists to make a stand on the issue of pronouns. Think of the blind audition studies; when someone's sex is known they are they subject of unconscious bias, and women come off worse. There is no need to broadcast one's biological sex in everyday language in the context of personal pronouns - we have the words to convey it when it is necessary. The people who benefit from this constant identification of people as either man or woman are men, and the people who lose are women.

It's too much of a stretch I imagine for us all to call everyone "they" (we're just too conditioned not to), but to not use it when it is both socially accepted and socially requested smacks of spite. And it's cutting of one's nose to spite one's face IMO.

Coercive control

Bidermann's chart of coercion

1. Isolation (for example, removes victims social supports)

1. Monopolisation of perception

1. Induced exhaustion and debility

1. Threats

1. Occasional indulgences

1. Demonstrates omnipotence (this is an interesting one - pretends co-operation can be taken for granted)

1. Degradation (another interesting one - lack of privacy; name-calling and insults)

www.cheshirewithoutabuse.org.uk/biderman-chart-of-coercion

I would like this post to stand. It is important for women to understand how coercive control works.

Great post, Barracker.

Will someone get a 'strike' if they say that Rachel Dolezal is white? If not, why not?

My mum doesn't have nets anymore.

Mumsnet might also want to get some legal advice on sexuality and specifically lesbianis as a protected characteristic

Happy to recommend Counsel

TERF is used as an attempt to silence any woman who doesn't agree with trans ideology. It's been so much used that it's lost much of its power to insult. Hence usernames like Terfulike.

Cis is bollocks but I don't want it banned either. Explaining why it's bollocks is very helpful to lurkers.

MNHQ, I don't understand why you intend to ban TIM (though no mention of TIF, oddly). Surely you know that any term we substitute that makes it clear we're describing males who identify as women will be equally transphobic to the kind of TIM barraging MN with complaints? Nothing will satisfy them until we agree that there is literally no difference between them and women. They are trying to censor the vocabulary we need to point out the difference.

And TRA is a useful term. There are plenty of TIM who don't go along with the aggressive language, crimes and policy of the extremists who are driving the agenda. I think it's important to differentiate between the TRA and the transgender population as a whole, many of whom don't like the activists either.

Finally, one of the things certain TW go wild about as the worst type of transphobia is examination of the fetishes that drive this group. It's a daft thing to deny, because the evidence is all over the internet. I've lurked on transgender groups on Reddit. It can be very disturbing. The objective truth that some men transition because it arouses them.- and in a very rapey misogynistic way.- needs to be discussed and acknowledged because it affects women directly. MNHQ, would the whole trans widows thread be deleted today?