Mumsnet moderation of trans rights and gender critical issues II

[PermissionToSpeakSir]

Follow on from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3276551-Mumsnet-moderation-of-trans-rights-and-gender-critical-issues?pg=40&order=

We seem to have lost our transexual ladies. Truscum gets 💐 but the rest, well, sinking ship and all that.

Well we aren't sinking and to madly mix metaphors i wonder if there are no plans to reach-hitch the wagon once we get out of this little local difficulty. Which we will - hurrah! It's already happening.

womanformallyknownaswoman

Great questions.

Amalfimama - in your defence, the person to which you refer often begs for donations to a paypal account in that name, as it has not been changed.

Hang on, we cant use peoples legal names?

Are they taking the piss?
Just change the logo to MansNet and be done.

mansnet

peoplewithtesticalsnet please ;) that's very inclusive for all except women so pretty much fits the bill

I am so relieved that there are more and more women standing up to this shit.
I am horrified that MN is turning on the very group it set out to support.
Men win again and MN is rolling over and letting it happen.
I thought they were strong women.

I never thought the day would come when Mumsnet capitulates to the demands of men. How wrong could I be.

Jeez. There’s a belief that MN actually started this ‘trans issue’. Such effing bullshit given credibility by this new moderation.

Religion, like gender recognition, is a protected characteristic. So if I, as an atheist, were to persistently refer to believers as 'God-botherers', and belittle their beliefs, and some posters on the MN religion threads (assuming there are some) objected, would that fall foul of the EA 2010 and MN guidelines too?

In all likelihood I might vehemently disagree with opinions expressed, but I would never expect believers to be compelled to change their language to accommodate the likes of me.

But on the FWR board, feminists and women are expected to do just that?

Religion held by a person is a protected characteristic. So it’d be wrong of you to say, sit at work and rant about Christianity and mock it on front of a deeply Christian colleague, or prevent her from worshipping/subject her to discrimination etc.

Butvit wouldn’t be wrong of you to criticise the religion itself in as harsh a way as you like in a general sense on MN. It wouldn’t be wrong to say, wrote a sitcom about three priests in a parochial house on a small island. Or write a cartoon where Mohammed and Jesus sit in the pub rather a lot and discuss life.

The protected thing isn't the religion itself, it’s the people who hold the religion. And that’s right and fair.

So it’s the same with this issue. Abuse of, discrimination at work against etc of someone who is a transwoman or transman is wrong. The law protects them because of their protected characteristic.

It does not protect the ideology itself

No ideology is immune from discussion in the uk. None is immune from criticism, mockery, humour, sitcoms or anything else. The ideology is an abstract. The people are what are protected.

What’s happening at the moment is akin to religious people trying to ban blasphemy. Blair tried it. Luckily the idea was shot down.

Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d prefer not to live in a theocracy, they tend not to be terribly nice places.

Hi all

We're going to start applying the new guidelines across all threads today. We'll be letting people know if they've been deleted, so please don't worry that you'll be accidentally suspended.

Please don't do 'test posts' - the mods' decisions will always depend on context so these won't prove much I'm afraid. For similar reasons, our moderation of this thread won't be representative of our new approach, since it's a meta discussion of the guidelines themselves.

We've noticed quite a few misconceptions already, so it's best not to rely on other posters' assessment of our stance, but to look again at our statement and clarifications, which start here. We've posted our position on group terms here.

Thanks all.

If MNHQ is attempting to implement similar guidelines to those in place for workplace harassment - there's some good news and some bad news.

Bad news first:

Workplace bullying is an abuse of power or authority which attempts to undermine an individual or group of employees, and which may cause them to suffer work related stress.

There seems to be case to answer, judging by the number of women citing their distress at the new moderation guidelines.

The Good News is:

Under the Equality Act, employers are also responsible for their staff who harass other employees, but can escape such liability if they can demonstrate that they took reasonable practical steps to prevent the harassment from happening

Thus MN - you took reasonable steps, the vast majority of users on the FWR board rejected those attempts - thus you are off the hook. Carry On.

Kate, unfortunately I do not understand the rules that I have seen and thus rely on other posters to clarify things. If there are misconceptions, it would be really helpful if mn could confirm when they pop up, rather than just refer back to the rules.

I mean to say this in the most non-confrontational way possible so hope it is not read as being awkward, it is just making me rather anxious to have to follow rules that I do not understand, under threat of banning from a forum I rely on.

Will there be an overview of a poster's contributions e.g. If individual posts might be okay, just, but the overall tone is bullying, finding and silencing?

Beyond - I expect that MNHQ will soon realise that rules designed to appease gaslighters are impossible to enforce upon a large population of clearsighted and educated posters.

I mean to say this in the most non-confrontational way possible so hope it is not read as being awkward, it is just making me rather anxious to have to follow rules that I do not understand, under threat of banning from a forum I rely on.

This.

Wading in with my GC size 5s.

Many, many posters have expressed my views far better then I ever could, but I wanted to add my support. I refuse to accept lies and won’t be told what to think.

I’ll be courteous in the interests of polite debate (although I don’t think the other side are concerned with such niceties) but I won’t use fictitious terms.

@KateMumsnet would you please reconsider allowing certain posters to continually goad by posting the same mistruths again and again across multiple threads.

Individual posts may not breach guidelines but taken as a whole the pattern is clear to see. Such posters, and one in particular, are not interested in discussion. They seek only to provoke and their constant policing of threads is tedious at best and certainly not in the Spirit of Mumsnet.

Beyond just don't refer to transpeople as a group by a term that focusses on their biological sex, e.g. MTT, TIM, Transgender males, TM. Transman, transwoman, transperson is what I'll be using.

It's ok though to state that, e.g. transwomen are biological males and a transwoman can never be a woman because women are biological females. A transwoman cannot be a lesbian, because all lesbians are biologically female.

Don't use their 'old' name when referring to a transperson if they are using a different one. Don't refer to a transwoman as 'he'.

Bore - and if we believe that doing all that is deeply, profoundly misogynistic and a betrayal of our own sex?

It's a mouthful but I will just go by the descriptor 'people who have changed their gender identity'. The descriptor of their sex is banned on here. The banning does not change my thinking tho. Still laughable that this is the group that physically intimidates a group they claim they are scared of, a group that has never once tried to prevent these people from attending meetings. How is this inconsistency not being picked up by mumsnet, the press or advertisers etc? Bonkers!!

Bore - and if we believe that doing all that is deeply, profoundly misogynistic and a betrayal of our own sex?

This is the issue.

Yes, I agree with you. But Beyond was asking for clarification of the rules as she was genuinely confused.

Everyone has their own line in the sand. I get that, I really do.

Ok Bore.