Hey,
Thanks for all your thoughts on this. We’re delighted with yesterday’s judgement because it vindicates the position we’ve held at Mumsnet for some time. Namely that people should be able to discuss sex-based rights and the implications of gender self-id freely, without harassment and that it’s not transphobic to do so.
This has not been an easy position for us to hold - we’ve been frequently labelled as a hate site by a few vocal activists on social media and in outlets such as Pink News and many of our advertisers have been targeted with such accusations, and subsequently withdrawn activity. So it’s a relief that, as of yesterday, our position is very clearly on the right side of the law.
That said, we believe it’s important, and in fact the only way forward where competing views and rights are directly in conflict, to be respectful of other opinions and beliefs - hence our insistence on civil debate and our keenness to be inclusive of diverse voices. There’s an important difference - hinted at in yesterday’s judgement - between stating a view in principle and stating it in an aggressive and offensive way - such as deliberately misgendering individuals or repeatedly trotting out ‘transwomen are men’. Threads devoted to named individuals to unpick their gender presentation, appearance, lifestyle or personal choices constitute a personal attack, so we will continue to delete them along with unfair generalisations. It’s this type of behaviour (as opposed to the view that sex is immutable) that we consider to be transphobic, and hence it is against our Talk guidelines.
Posting guidelines on Mumsnet have never simply been about a set of defined rules of what can and can’t be said: we always want to take context into account because this is as much about the kind of community we want, collectively, to create (one that is inclusive, supportive and thoughtful as well as incisive and bold) as about the semantics of what’s written.
We also think now might be the time to consider a reshuffle of the topics in the Feminism board. Feminism and feminist organising has always been a crucial part of Mumsnet and we want all Mumsnet users to feel they can use these boards to discuss the hundreds of ways in which sex - and gender roles - impact on women’s lives, irrespective of their views on sex and gender. So we’d like to introduce a separate topic for Sex and Gender issues and at the same time streamline some of the other topics under the FWR umbrella (some of which are rarely used).
I know some of you will be disappointed that we insist on respectful language and inclusivity here when elsewhere many gender critical feminists have had to put up with extraordinary amounts of incivility and indeed downright harassment. Please be assured that we will continue to insistently make the case for women’s right to be heard on this topic both on Mumsnet and off. But we do believe it’s far more effective to do that from a position of the moral high ground.