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.

Imagine being too right-wing for the Telegraph forum! I’m sure we’d have spotted them by now, if they were THAT right-wing.

It happens all the time on FWR. Any poster who calls out anything negative as all is met with "examples pleeeease"

Like the mysterious Telegraph chapter? Any update on that?

That's the problem with privilege, you think everyone owes you an explanation and you don't have to do any of the work.

There are lots of problems with privilege theory as an overarching framework for understanding the world. It's one way of looking at it, and important on a class analysis level, but like all of them it has its flaws. Just to repeat again, MN FWR is a board looking at things through the lens of sexism and misogyny. All women (and men) have the right to post there. If you have a problem with individual posts or threads, report them, or engage on the thread to tell people why you believe their post is inappropriate.

Rightly or wrongly depending on personal opinions of echo chambers the majority of women on the FWR board agree in principle with a lot of things. So when someone with a descenting voice posts with the opposite opinion of course some posters are going to ask for proof or links or stats or whatever. It's not meant to be antagonistic its genuinely so that we can see where the person with a differences of opinion is coming from. It may be they are aware of new statistics or a news article or something that FWR posters in our eco chamber haven't come across.

When someone comes onto a thread say for example about KJK and says she did x at y but we are only aware that KJK did z at y then yes you will be expected to back the new information up.

If the new information supersedes our old information then that helps everyone surely? If the new information once again turns out to be some misinformed old information then yes the regular posters may get a bit annoyed! Especially if a poster is giving us the same old information for the twentieth time.

So if you genuinely have more examples of threads where there has been racism even if it's been deleted even that will help if posters were on that thread even with the deletions they may still be able to remember enough about the thread to know what was deleted. In just the way i was able tho remember the cis and other deletion of Candles.I

You can't on one hand accuse people of not being willing to learn whilst accusing them of something yet giving them little to go on as to what the hell they did or said wrong.

to be fair, it has been shown to work as a tactic elsewhere on the internet and even in real life.

Yes.

It really isn’t. It’s a request, hardly unreasonable, that if you’re going to smear an entire board with an unpleasant accusation – making a beeline right for the specific one that’s faced concerted efforts to close it down by any means possible, but we’ll leave that aside – you give a clear basis for it and substantiate what you say.

The first lesson every kid learns at GCSE/A’ Level is that you can express any opinion you like, but unless there’s something illustrating the point you’re trying to make, it will remain an obscure and unsupported point and therefore is hardly likely to convince the reader. Here, we have a variation on that theme to the tune of, ‘you’re racist, because we say you’re racist, and we don’t have to tell you why we’re saying it, because we don’t owe you anything, and if you try to scrutinise that claim with any pretensions to debate you’re deliberately being deaf to the issues so that provides the confirmation bias that you are, indeed, racist’.

That nature of debate is like a treadmill to nowhere.

To quote one of the examples given, the discussion of surrogacy appears one cause for concern because some posters have acknowledged its transactional nature. The language of buying and selling has been viewed by some posters as racist in its connotations with slavery. So how would you prefer people articulate their concerns on that point? If you don’t agree with the observations about commoditizing people’s bodies, how else should those discussions be framed? Is the question here which modes of oppression it’s needful to consider, depending on whether discrimination is sex-based, or race-based, or both? How are WoC's experiences being discounted here? Or is the real objective that you’d prefer not to see it discussed at all?

That these points are being dismissed as an expectation that posters here expect others to ‘do the work’ for them, makes me inclined to think it’s the latter. But I’m very willing to be corrected on that point. Many here are not averse to doing some heavy lifting in the order of informing themselves, but the persistent obfuscation on this thread isn't revealing much as to what exactly people’s beef is, and what others can do to respond positively.

Shit, or get off the pot.

What Serafina said.

And before someone says it, this is not a denial that racism is a problem on this site. I'm aware the reverse is true, and that FWR is no more immune to that problem than the wider site.

What I'm questioning is the targeting of this board as a particular issue and then closing down discussion when the accusations comes under scrutiny.

So if you genuinely have more examples of threads where there has been racism even if it's been deleted even that will help if posters were on that thread even with the deletions they may still be able to remember enough about the thread to know what was deleted.

You must be joking, several posters cannot even remember they rubbished examples on this thread less than 24hrs ago shown by the oft repeated “no examples have been given” these last few pages and you think their memories are reliable enough to recall posts deleted on threads from weeks or months ago?

I’m going to have to go back and find these examples, because it’s true, I have forgotten everything about them. 38 pages, nearly 1000 posts - I may be some time, don’t wait up.

well i recalled Candles deletion from January so who knows!

Well, the very first post has an example thread, which I’ll add to my reading list when I’m done here.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4836570-disney-went-woke-now-theyre-going-broke

One of the first posts, page 1, from the OP:

“And one recent homophobic comment I remember recently was a poster saying that it was 'unnatural' for a child to be intentionally brought into a world without a mother and father.”

“And posts on a thread where a woman was desperate for advice after her wife (who carried their child) left her and was refusing access were HATEFUL. Along the lines of 'well that's too bad, she's NOT YOURS'.”

Did they rubbish examples or did they do some research and find out that some were already called out, on the thread and not by you, some were thanking the person that apparently was hounded off, some were outright lies and at least one is still missing in action.

Most of the examples on page 1 are about homophobia and transphobia, not racism. Sorry, if you want the examples that were apparently so rudely dismissed, you’ll have to go and look yourselves. Even I don’t have the time for this.

The example of the person being hounded was not an example given regarding racism. It was part of the trans derail and revolved around FWR posters feeling targeted for being banned from wikipedia. A person then told them they weren’t targeted but banned for not following the guidelines regarding page edits and was apparently hounded off the thread. Other posters remember that thread differently and said the person was thanked, not hounded.

You see what I mean about memory?

So, I’ve gone to the thread mentioned in the OP as it’s been given as an example of racist views.

In that thread, the OP implies Disney’s box office failures are due to it being ‘woke’.

The assumption by those initially responding is that the OP equates being woke as being racially diverse ie that the OP is criticising Disney for bringing more diverse actors and representations into its films eg

gloov · 27/06/2023 13:11
What's wrong with having gay people and black people in movies, OP?
What's this got to do with feminism?
I don't get your point. It seems like alt right culture war bullshit

Given so little explanation of the thread’s title in the first post, several posters subsequently ask for further clarification (as people are doing on this thread) eg

RattyHealy · 27/06/2023 12:45
@Hoardasurass could you make your point a bit clearer?

@hoardasurass replied:

For those asking what I find funny about this I will try to explain.
Yes casting a black actress as the little mermaid is a good thing but to then set the movie in the Caribbean during the time of slavery but showing none of that instead having a happy relationships between the races basically airbrushes out slavery and the harms it caused so not great.
Same sex kissing in lightyear again no issue with that.
Not sure why they put guardians in but no3 is just dire and really let nos 1&2 down.
As for my issue with Disney it's the way they have gone on shoving gi into so many kids programs and content.

The OP was not saying they were criticising Disney for portraying same sex couples or for including more racially diverse casting. The OP was specifically talking about Disney promoting gender ideology. On the Sex and Gender board. In fact, the OP posted a total of 4 times out of 295 replies.

Interestingly, many of the posters seemed to include others that were not regulars on FWR and the discussion was quite broad ranging including some heated discussion on the meaning and use of the term woke and as equally on the quality of recent Disney films.

Here is the thread.

So there is no need to be concerned about anyone’s poor memory, you can read the thread for yourself to conclude whether @jeminapuddlegoose was apparently hounded off the thread for explaining how wiki edits worked or thanked…. What do you see @ReleasetheCrackHen ?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4613211-is-anyone-here-able-to-edit-wikipedia?reply=119310531

The person was thanked. So yes, using this thread as an example of someone being hounded off FWR is another really strange example.

This whole thing is strange. If you see stuff then report it and get on the thread in question. Or don't. Its your choice.

@DrBlackbird
Im just going to post some of the posts from only the first 3 pages that the OP of this thread is likely referring to (there’s more but in the interest of time)

The OP of this thread explicitly referred not to the OP of the Disney thread but stated There is a concerning growth of posts with racist undertones

why not make a new disney princess rather than just change the race of a current story, surely that is more racist?

you get Black elves suddenly which doesn't really make much sense

As for replacing existing white characters with black, isn't that rather insulting to black culture?

I don't think it's that anyone objects to black or gay characters it's that this has become so obviously a 'policy' decision it feels like every film is preaching something and most people want to be entertained by Disney not preached to.

Now as to why you chose not to see/include these sorts of posts when summarising the thread, well that’s the sort of lackadaisical behaviour that I call rubbishing examples.

This is why MN usually don't allow TAATs. What's the point in ignoring these posts on the thread then making it out to be some kind of FWR pact to ignore racism, when you yourself aren't challenging the posts you object to on the still open thread?

I can understand those concerns, but white women enjoy privileges that ethnic women do not, I and other ethnic women are not about to put their concerns above our concerns about about racism. That way lies madness. How do you have have a healthy discussion /debate with someone with whom you share a gender/Sex or what ever we are calling it today, but who refuses to do the work to understand how something as simple as skin colour dramatically changes how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you, often not in a positive way. The overriding view here seems to be 'we don't need to learn anything, we are the ones under attack'. If you met us halfway you would know that we are in classic white womens' tears territory. Every time an ethnic woman says that something is racially problematic or racist, white women on these threads claim to be the victims. Cue pile on derision, deliberately misconstruing and general whatabouttery. Its all over this thread. Anyone with a shred of decency would be ashamed.

Its great that you would welcome those insights but its not my or any other ethnic woman's job to provide to them. You would understand exactly why this is not me/us being difficult if you had done the work to enlighten yourselves.. We aren't trying to shut you down, most of us have given up on white feminists as a lost cause/ the enemy and aren't interested in engaging.

The whole point of this exercise is to show you the evidence and examples you and others have badgered for because you and others couldn’t be bothered to read the example thread the OP gave all of us.

I didn’t know those posts existed until this thread.

Why are you claiming I have “ignored” posts when I’m not on that thread?

What have you done other than not bother to look at this thread posted in the OP and take up a position to deny this racism? And now you have the gall to criticise me?

i take from this that it is your position that white women are racist for asking for feedback so they can avoid being racist?

Admirable effort, @ReleasetheCrackHen The ommisson was not lackadaisical, it's disingenuous. Meanwhile JL Rowling is happy for Hermione to be black.