MN needs a closer watch of FWR

[BodegaSushi]

There is a concerning growth of posts with racist undertones cropping up on these boards, all under the guise of being proudly 'anti-woke'.

Apparently diversity is 'woke' and worthy of derision.

This is the thread I'm referring to here.

Disney went woke now they're going broke www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4836570-disney-went-woke-now-theyre-going-broke

Mumsnet needs to looks at why that board draws such types of posts, and why posters feel so comfortable openly airing their racism.

@Helleofabore Why did I think I might get shot from all sides?

Mainly because I'm not as knowledgeable on the issues as most posters. I don't have a history of activism or even feminism, but found FWR over the Girl Guides issue, and have 2 particularly vulnerable daughters that I worry a lot about.

I also have extremely limited experience of racial issues, having been brought up and living my whole life in very 'white' areas rather than multicultural towns and cities.

I think what I think is moderate and reasonable but worry it won't be 'enough' for some people and 'too much' for others.

Ah. I see. Only capitulation is acceptable, no discussion about why we should take on those descriptions, just capitulation and acceptance!

Any questions just prove that we are what people say we are.

Every one of these threads is the same. Every single one.

Yes. This!

To people complaining about derailing, this was the second post on the thread:

Agreed! And also gay/lesbian rights being dragged into the trans conversation so that ‘pride’ is demonised constantly

I think you may have detailed many people’s journey in your post. Most of us are here to learn and keep on learning .

Few adults learn from being told that they just have to accept things they find inconsistent or contrary to what they know is fact.

Can I ask for an example of what you find distressing?

I know there have been a couple in pp, a post on slavery was brought up, the Disney thread (which not everyone said was unproblematic, I posted that on the thread too)

Could you say whether you find women posting you cannot change sex part of the issue?

As a white woman with mixed-race kids, which is the same as you I believe, can you please tell me where all this racism is?
I spend a lot of time on the FWR board and I just don't get the racist accusations. I want to know if I'm missing something.

@MargotBamborough
“You're calling out racism without providing any evidence”
I did post evidence on a topic that it had been agreed on this thread was racist when TRAs do it, but the thread decided that apparently it isn’t racist when people against surrogacy do it. So, my Black ass was told either I don’t know what’s racist, or racism is ok if it’s for what posters think is a good cause. The old the end justifies the means amorality.

“When asked to do so you claim it has been deleted,”
It’s not a claim, it is a fact that overt racism is often reported and deleted erasing the most compelling evidence of racism of FWR. The problem is that it shouldn’t be posted in the first place.

“despite claiming it is allowed to run rampant on this particular section of MN” Really? When did I post these words? Oh right, I didn’t, you’re either confusing me with another poster (we’re all the same) or you just made that up.

“You might believe that the only non racist approach here would be for us to assume that you are posting in good faith, take you at your word and self-flagellate for things we have neither done ourselves nor seen others do, but unfortunately for you, we weren't actually born yesterday.”

I’d say it is a bit racist to assume Black posters are posting in bad faith about racism they see and experience on FWR.

Without any evidence, what do you suggest we do?

Your last sentence sums up the issue very well IMO.

I don't like to bandy around the word "racist" because I don't want it to lose all meaning, as "transphobic" has, but I think it is problematic to think you can tell someone's race from words on a screen.

If you think FWR is full of racism, you can still prove it. It's not even necessary to take screen shots or keep emails showing what has been deleted. Just link us to the threads which are full of holes.

All I can provide here is my own point of view, which is that although I do not read all or even most threads in FWR, the only posts I have seen which immediately jump out to me as being obviously racist are the ones saying things along the lines of "trans women are women, just like black women are women", or suggesting that any rules we want to have to keep male people out of women's sport are likely to affect black women, implying that black women are physically closer to men than white women.

As for the surrogacy issue, can you tell us how you think people who are of the view that surrogacy amounts to buying babies should express their point of view without inadvertently saying something you consider to be racist?

You were saying that using words such as buying and selling was racist.

I mean, what other way can you describe surrogacy other than the buying and selling of babies?

It is not approriation to say that what is happening is buying and selling babies, when the people involved are indeed buying babies, sold to them from people selling their babies. And not always theirs...

If we cannot use words that describe a thing without being accused of appropriation then have you a list of words that are allowed and does this change from user to user? Is your list the exact same as another person's list?

Why is it racist to use words in common use to describe things that are happening?

I'm absolutely nowhere near as educated as many posters here, I'm only just starting real reading on feminist issues (have just put Sharron Davies' book on my kindle for holiday in a few weeks. According to some here I may as well have put Mein Kampf on ) but a simple observation of mine of this thread is -

How convenient for posters who have an ax to grind with FWR and the conversation about trans ideology to insist the board and its posters are also racist. I mean despite examples I provided earlier of posts I've seen from the TWAW posters showing that it absolutely happens the other way round, suddenly GC women are Public Enemy Number 1.

Before I get piled on I'm not saying there is no racism on the board. Just I haven't seen it disproportionately there. And it's not all one way traffic. And it goes obviously without saying it's wrong.

@MNHQ I am sad that despite me trying to bring this to your attention a few years ago, racism and poor moderation ha sonly escalated. Protected by you. It is a disgrace.

And you keep doing this by... tagging some account name "MNHQ" that may or may not exist? For years?

The problem is that it shouldn’t be posted in the first place.

So you are requesting that Mumsnet stops being free to all and becomes a members only club that every word is vetted?

Have you actually pitched this idea to them?

This is how I wanted to say it

It's a classic trans activist tactic. Piggybacking onto other social justice movements and appropriating the struggles of other groups to give their cause a legitimacy that they haven't earned.

Hence the force teaming of the LGB with the T+ (because it is widely accepted that LGB people have been historically persecuted, that all they have ever asked for is to have the same rights everybody else has and to be left along to live their lives in peace, and that letting them have that has no detrimental impact on any other group.

Drawing a false equivalence between gender critical feminists and racists is the same tactic, just the other way round.

When I have said to a left wing, bien pensant middle class white man that it's not bigoted for women to want single sex spaces which they don't have to share with male people, his reply was that a few decades ago white people were saying the same thing about not wanting to share spaces with black people and they were on the wrong side of history.

The fact that male people are in no way equivalent to black people in this analogy (but actually the polar opposite, as the ones who have historically done the oppressing) seemed to escape him.

I would have thought that the big racial issue wrt commercial surrogacy is that wealthy individuals and couples from the first/developed world/global north buy the reproductive labour of poorer women (who are also often of black/brown/Asian ancestry) from the global south or old eastern block - and the inherent power relationship/ potential injustice in this is pointed out loud and clear very frequently.

I am sure there are covert racist posters on MN. it would be surprising if there weren't. The difficulty is identify what posts are due to racism v other reasons. Meghan Sussex is a great example. Some people may dislike her because she is black/mixed race. Others may dislike her for encouraging Harry to split from his family, going on Oprah etc. Unless people are explicit it is difficult to me at least to discern who is who.

So many of the women supported by FWR are non-white of which I guess Allison Bailey(sp?) is the most obvious. It would be strange if FWR was particularly more racist than anywhere else on MN.

I'd like to know from the gender identity ideology supporters on this thread why disliking Allison Bailey, a black lesbian barrister from a working class background, as many TRAs do because she had the audacity to bring a discrimination claim against Stonewall, is ok for them while disliking Meghan Duchess of Sussex, a privileged woman married to a Royal prince whose actions have not always covered either of them in glory, is not?

And I have seen hideously racist posts about Allison. Ones saying that her "briefcase was full of spaghetti" (a racist trope from the US) which was handwaved away by pro trans posters both on Twitter and here.

When I have said to a left wing, bien pensant middle class white man that it's not bigoted for women to want single sex spaces which they don't have to share with male people, his reply was that a few decades ago white people were saying the same thing about not wanting to share spaces with black people and they were on the wrong side of history.

Yes, every sad little man on Twitter makes this argument.

Absolutely true. But don't you know Margot as soon as you commit the cardinal sin of "wrongthink" anything goes.

Besides She isn't really Black, she's just a right wing, MAGA hat wearing bigot, so she deserves it.....Or something like that.

[For the avoidance of doubt, I'm being facetious. But I am fed up of many on the so called left who justify actual violence against women ].

I would have thought that the big racial issue wrt commercial surrogacy is that wealthy individuals and couples from the first/developed world/global north buy the reproductive labour of poorer women (who are also often of black/brown/Asian ancestry) from the global south or old eastern block - and the inherent power relationship/ potential injustice in this is pointed out loud and clear very frequently.

Yes.

people were saying the same thing about not wanting to share spaces with black people

People had definitive proof that 98% of sexual assault and all rapes were carried out by black people? Because that is "what we are saying" about male people. Sounds like he's a massive racist if he believes that.

Once you see it's all based on, and drenched in, deliberate dishonesty, you can't un-see it.

The they do it too, and the we aren’t disproportionately racist are not very good excuses.