Vanishing posts on the Jess Phillips thread

[Mner2000]

Numerous posters (here) have noted that their posts were removed from the Jess Phillips thread before and after the event (here) and there being nothing noted on the thread itself that there is no accompanying deletion message on the thread itself.

The Daily Mail clearly has a screen grab of StealthPolarBear on 20/01/2020 13:31.17 that is no longer on the thread - without an accompanying thread deletion message like is normally there.

Is mumsnet against free speech and rigorous debate? Politicians must robustly account for their actions where their policies affect so many. If they cannot do this on a Mumsnet forum, how will they manage in parliament?

Self ID is not single issue - it affects every area of national and regional policy. Maybe if Jess had been able to see a better range of comments, it would help her understand this better and if she had seen the number of comments, it would help her see just how many people are concerned about the real impacts of policy change on such a large level. She says herself that some of the issues raised on the thread were not ones she had come across on the doors but yet we are not allowed to ask them here. This would have been the ideal opportunity to raise awareness of the many, many issues involved.

There must be a better way to arrange these webchats than just deleting people's comments and concerns without trace. What about grouping the questions by topic.

Pencils excellent post.

Do we know why Lang has been banned? Gutted about this.

I asked a question about when the GRA consultation would be published (thanks Pencil) - mine was zapped without any deletion notice and I was emailed with a banning warning if I were to keep repeating questions.

There wasn't another GRA question on the web chat asking about when the findings would be published through. It was the only one and it was wiped within half hour of my posting it.

I'd like my voice added to this thread please MNHQ.

I can't wait to see Jess Phillips stating elsewhere that "even on mumsnet there were only a handful of people who cared enough to comment"

That is how it works.

1984 was not supposed to be an operating manual.

And still no response from MNHQ...

Deleted for wrongthink.

MNHQ swooped in after a tiny amount of questions concerning the rights and safety of women and accusations of ‘shouting’ and ‘haranguing’ were bandied about by them.

It's much easier to dismiss our concerns if we can be painted as angry harridans. Women's anger is rarely taken seriously; we're ignored or told to 'be nice'. But our anger is legitimate, proportionate and valid. If you're not angry about the impact of badly-thought-out (and I use the word 'thought' in its loosest sense) policy and erosion of safeguarding, then you're either not paying attention or you don't care about women and children. Yes, we're angry and so we fucking should be. If dozens of people are all asking similar questions or different questions around the same topic, it's an indication that this is important to lots of people, not something to be airily dismissed with a handwave about nobody on the doorstep ever asking about it. Most people on the doorstep don't even know about half of these issues precisely because of #nodebate and shutting women down when we try to shed light on the subject. As I've said elsewhere in relation to Lang's ban and safeguarding, who does it benefit when that happens?

Try listening to why so many women are concerned about this instead of dismissing it as 'haranguing'. Oh, you can't, because too many of the women with something important to say and ask have already been silenced and deleted, without even a marker to acknowledge they tried.

Why not just let women ask the questions they want to ask? I understand the need to stop repeated questions, but if they were different, but on the same theme, they should have been allowed to stand. This is so annoying.

Agree. Other questions that all came under a broad umbrella heading such as 'brexit' we all allowed to stand. Women's rights were the exception. I'd love to know why.

Other questions that all came under a broad umbrella heading such as 'brexit' we all allowed to stand. Women's rights were the exception. I'd love to know why.

Women's rights were an important issue to ask Jess Phillips about since she was on the Women and Equalities committee and has commented publicly on the issues that we were asking about, such as the so-called "spousal veto" in the GRA.

We wanted to ask these questions because she has taken such an active role in this attack on women's rights.

I'm agreeing with you! They left plenty of brexit questions up despite them all being on one topic. Ours were deleted for all being on one topic.

As JP was on the Women's and Equalities committee, and as she said herself that she realised that the trans position made more sense, then she - of all people - could have explained in simple steps how she came to take that position.

Perhaps now that she's not part of a power grab in Labour, she could do that now. Of course, as a result of the censoring she won't know how badly it's needed.

And yes, lots of Brexit questions allowed. I imagine she thought that BJ could be held responsible for that if she was 'harangued' over it.

I wonder if JP said something to MNHQ which has made them give up on FWR completely? They are just waiting for us to die naturally now...... I just find the timing between this and Lang's banning interesting.

Indeed. And odd that they have not responded to this yet. I reported it earlier today to make sure they hadn’t forgotten and still no answer. Do you think they are hoping we will go away?

As JP was on the Women's and Equalities committee, and as she said herself that she realised that the trans position made more sense, then she - of all people - could have explained in simple steps how she came to take that position.

Perhaps now that she's not part of a power grab in Labour, she could do that now.

Yes. The only reason I was interested in this webchat is because of the Women & Equalities Committee stuff. I don't really care who wins the Labour leadership, they won't be electable for at least a decade anyway. For now they just need to elect a grown up who can supervise the salvage operation.

Maybe we should write to her.

Is there no answer to our concerns MNHQ? No platitudes? Free speech and holding our elected ministers to account is ok in principle but not on webchats or concerning self-ID?

LangClegsinspace I tweeted Jess to let her know and directed her to the other thread. She didn't respond but it was in amongst her decision to withdraw from the leadership...

Hello

Sorry it's taken us a while to respond.

We've been holding webchats on MN for over ten years now and they've become a really valuable way of allowing MNers to interact directly with powerful people and voice their concerns. But along with that we think we have a couple of responsibilities: to all Mumsnet users, giving an equal opportunity for every MNer to post about the issue that really matters to her (it is usually a 'her') even if she's the only one facing it; and to the politicians, who are our guests and who aren't obligated to give us their time and face what several political journalists have cited as being some of the fiercest questioning a politician can face in public.

We thought long and hard about deleting those posts and particularly about using the button that disappears them without trace but the truth is that all the polite requests, evident deletions and emails to users that we had tried previously had just not worked, and the situation was beginning to feel implacably hostile.

For us it came down to two factors: that we knew other MNers were being put off from posting on webchats entirely, and that we were finding politicians more and more reluctant to engage. The evidence that our current approach has in our own terms been successful lies in the really broad range of strong, thoughtful questions on the thread (as some users in FWR have acknowledged) and in the increased willingness of some other politicians to line up webchats.

We take the point that there are lots of sub-headings to this issue and setting a false and slightly arbitrary limit on posts about this feels fairly suboptimal from our point of view but it's the best mechanism we've come up with so far to allow the issue to be addressed and answered by guests without other users being put off from taking part and guests feeling they're on a complete hiding to nothing.

I don’t think repetitive questions (it really only demonstrates the questions people really wanted to ask - and we don’t always have time to read through a thread to make sure someone else hasn’t asked it/or keep up with the threat to see if it’s been answered) put people off (although I find the ‘what biscuits do you like’ a bit off putting), and were those deleted for repeating a Q given a ‘strike’?

Why not ask for posters to submit questions beforehand, select a number based on frequency and importance, then ‘host’ the guest online and feed through the questions like an interview?

You could maybe add a thumbs up/thumbs down on the answer for people to vote on the answer?

I can only speak for myself but nothing puts me off submitting a question to, or reading the answers from, a webchat than seeing swathes and swathes of questions about trans issues. I might be a lone voice on this thread but I appreciate how MN moderated this. I also think there aren't many other places that would allow users to directly ask guests such challenging questions on this issue.

I'm not sure the way this was handled is entirely fair to posters who might face strikes etc for unknowingly repeating a question, but I do think it's good that such Q&A's are not entirely derailed by trans issues.

Thanks for responding. I am sure balancing all the different needs etc is very difficult. But why were repetitive questions on brexit ok but not repeated questions on women’s rights?

Why would someone worth their salt think they were on a hiding to nothing? I would have thought they'd pride themselves on braving (and maybe surviving) "some of the fiercest questioning a politician can face in public" and if they're scared then they're not good enough, surely?

I wonder if LangCleg would go into political interviewing. I think I'd pay to watch that

Lang cleg vs Jess Phillips would be awesome

Thank you for responding Rowan.

The problem is that politicians have never properly engaged with these questions. That's why they keep being asked, by increasing numbers of people, increasingly insistently.

The soundbite used to be a simple 'TWAW'. It's now 'TWAW and women only spaces are important too'. That's progress of a sort but it's still a soundbite, and an even more confusing one. It's just lip service so they can claim to have 'listened to both sides' when they really, really haven't.

Until politicians properly address the multitude of issues for women and children's rights, safety and wellbeing, that are caused by the TRA agenda, then we will keep asking these questions. How can we not? And if we think they have not heard us we will ask again, and we will use every available platform.

This particular webchat brought everything sharply into focus because of JP's extensive work with the Women & Equalities Committee and because of her recent comments on the spousal exit clause. There were far more strong, thoughtful questions about sex and gender that we could have asked Jess Phillips than most other politicians.

Yet there was only a three hour window to ask any of these questions. As a result, an extremely pertinent question about the way Jess Phillips and the Labour Party have behaved towards WPUK had to be substituted out in order to ask another extremely pertinent question about her recent comments on the spousal exit clause. I wanted both those questions asked.

I think you closed that window too quickly. I also think moderation methods are not the best way to go about solving this particular problem.

As an experiment, how about posting to announce the webchat but not opening the comments for 48 hours? That would give everybody time to find out it's happening and think about and discuss what they want to ask.

It wouldn't solve everything but I think it might help.