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.

My point is (I think somewhat obviously) that when talking about the FWR board, it is hard to feel that any co-opting of the word woke is worse than the constant co-opting of the word woman.

Who said it's worse? Again, it's not Top trumps. People are mentioning what they find unacceptable; I've not said anything besides woke (I think somewhat obviously) but here you are, as usually done when someone is talking about racist issues on FWR, trying to compare what is worse to shut down that particular line of post. Both are bad in my opinion. One is obviously worse to you; Good for you. Now back to woke.

Feel free to direct your post to other posters who're talking about your topic of choice.

Some homosexuals don't feel that the pride flag represents them any longer. They turn up to events and see signs like lesbians have penises and decapitate terfs etc. It's hardly surprising that some homosexuals say this does not represent them.

Perhaps the T part of the pride movement needs to understand how it is making some homosexuals feel. But it won't because the feelings of homosexuals who are not prepared to have their sexuality redefined in favour of genderism don't seem to matter much.

Well let me start by saying I don't know anyone in the gay community who refers to themselves as 'a homosexual', as you put it, so forgive me for saying I think you might be a little out of touch with what we are thinking.

The millions of gay people who proudly wave Pride flags at Pride events around the world consider them symbols of who they are, and futhermore we see it as a symbol of support and well-wishes that our communities have for us.

We consider defacement of our flags as act of hostility towards us.

I, too, have hidden the FWR threads to save my sanity. Unfortunately my ipad doesn’t know I’m a registered MN user so I often see those threads and the racism and homophobic/transphobic viewpoints are also creeping into chat and AIBU etc…

It is disturbing to see this virulent hatred for minorities on display here on mumsnet. FWR and these posters circulate Daily Mail , Fox News, and Russian Troll Farm propaganda freely but do not seem to be aware of the real world consequences of the far right policies they pursue. I live in Boston, MA where the owner of LibsofTikTok, an out and out racist, homophobe, and transphobe encouraged death threats and bomb threats to the Children’s Hospital which threatened the lives of doctors and shut down services for all children. Recently a crazy man with a knife attacked a professor and two students in a Canadian university class on gender. People are being whipped up to a frenzy of hysteria with Qanon style myths and lies about the evils of LGBTQ+ people when the vast majority of arrested child abusers are religious leaders of standard, homophobic, religious communities.

Here in the US and internationally the female , progressive, GC movement is just the sentimental weaponized edge of a larger fascist anti feminist, anti gay, anti trans right wing movement. If you ever watched Tucker Carlson, read Matt Walsh, or paid attention to Victor Orban’s policies you would understand that the British GC movement is just largely composed of what used to be called “useful idiots” whose sincerely held personal beliefs about other people’s lives are weaponized in pursuit of right wing policies.

So you are claiming to speak for all lesbians and gays are you?

What gives you the right to do so?

It's a purity spiral. Probably an engineered purity spiral, but if you were on the outside looking in a couple of years back it was obvious that this would be the outcome. I wonder who will be left once the "robust discussion" that FWR was so famed for has run its course and only the very "observent" are left? See also Spiral of SIlence .

So right OP. Feminism, anti racism and gay rights need to go hand in hand.

Let me a wild guess, by the language that you have used that you are not gay?

What gives you the right to tell us what we are thinking?

This rhetoric that exists, the divide and conquer of the LGBT community mechanations, and the defacement of our flags is a gleeful play from hostile groups aimed at destroying the symbols we hold dear and which have represented our community for decades.

I live in Boston, MA where the owner of LibsofTikTok, an out and out racist, homophobe, and transphobe encouraged death threats and bomb threats to the Children’s Hospital which threatened the lives of doctors and shut down services for all children.

This is the hospital that was performing mastectomies on kids? That Boston Children's Hospital? The one that claimed that babies in the womb know that they are transgender? That see kids as young as 2 and 3 years old to treat their gender 'distress'?

Did she not just actually post a video from their own website? I didn't see the 'encourgagement of death and bomb threats', just the videos. Can you post a link to this encouragement please.

I'm not gay but I have close family members who are.
You are not aligned to how they feel.

I presume your gay family members feel a surge and hope and inspiration when they see defaced Pride flags, do they?

And I didn't claim to speak for all gay people either, I said some have a different perspective, because they do.

Or are you ignoring those voices preferring your own?

What I can't get my head round is how you can't see the redefinition of gay and lesbians to include heterosexuals is not erasure of the meanings of same sex attraction. Do you think that same gender attraction is the same thing as same sex attraction or not? Please can you explain so that I can understand why you don't see a conflict that my family members and other gay people have openly expressed.

I think they feel very sad that there is such conflict. They don't think same gender attracted people (heterosexuals) are gay though. Do you?

It's funny how the blatant racism on AIBU and in chat does not need 'a closer watch' ...

So you see the blatant racism in AIBU and chat - do you report them or is it only when FWR is criticised that you see racism anywhere else but there?

"...the British GC movement is just largely composed of what used to be called “useful idiots” whose sincerely held personal beliefs about other people’s lives are weaponized in pursuit of right wing policies." ~ @pikkumyy77

I don't agree with that either. I don't think the British GC movement is largely composed of the people who are currently posting about Disney movies or Twitter fights on MN. Mostly it's sensible, fair minded women organising around fair scrutiny of laws and the conduct of public bodies. They are mostly off doing that and not on here getting all aerated about a man wearing lipstick.

What is happening on here is not great, but it's not the main thing. It's just noisy.

Expanding definitions occurs all the time, ( look at the history of the evolution of language) and they are no threat to me, or anyone else I know.

I personally don't understand the obsessive, hostile and myopic focus there is on this, in the light of the myriad social and economic challenges women's well being is actually impacted by.

The top 4 countries in the world performing best for the well being of women and closing the gender gap all have policies of self-ID that FWR is so scared of.

I'm happy to follow their lead in not obsessing over singular definitions.

https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2023/

They are mostly off doing that and not on here getting all aerated about a man wearing lipstick.

I don’t care if men wear lipstick. I do care if they think/believe/pretend that wearing lipstick makes them a woman, entitled to use my single-sex spaces.

In the UK, the gender critical movement is not driven by the far right. In fact there has been much debate at how politically homeless many GC people feel, given the disdain the left has shown for protecting the rights of women.

Do you really think that people who want to ensure women have the choice of single sex spaces, allow women to triumph in sport and to permit confused adolescents to not take irreversible steps in changing their bodies are 'useful idiots'? These are not right or left concerns - in fact, in general they are mainstream concerns, but there has been a pretty successful attempt to smear anyone who holds these views.

I think that my gender non conforming autistic teenage daughter might be lesbian.

Can you really not see a conflict with girls like this being encouraged to believe that not conforming with gendered stereotypes might mean they are trans boys rather than what they probably really are?

I'd rather my daughter didn't think that a double mastectomy is the right way to express her sexuality.

Luckily she's not in the UK school system so is largely shielded from the peer issues. She also has a parent who says that there is no wrong way to be a girl.

@suggestionsplease1 so you are happy with biological males being in women's (biological ones) prisons, rape crisis centres and shelters. Are you happy with self ID-ing into women's sports?

All these posters who shout that FWR is full of transphobia can never back it up with examples. Never.

FWR is one of the few places where lesbophobia is regularly openly critiqued.

😂🤣 well, yeah, because somebody always goes and reports them so they don't stand any more. Take a look at all the deleted posts that exist.

My preference is to leave them up for others to see, personally.

But you are a bit naive I think if you can not acknowledge the prevailing tone and sentiment on the board, many conversations are dripping with hostility towards trans people whilst falling short of the threshold that would define them as hate speech

How reassuring.

Agree this happened to me

I mentioned on a thread that I'd walked home from work with a trans colleague and the amount of hate and cat calling she got was really shocking.

Well. Apparently that meant I didn't care about women and girls also being cat called, I didn't care that women in prisons were being raped and I wanted the death of women's sport. It was absolutely rabid.