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.

Your issue, and the hand wringing over terminology is one of the main reasons more lesbians now are identifying as queer...they can't be doing with the headache of other people trying to pigeonhole and define their sexualities for them, or tell them they are not doing lesbianism well enough.

No, I asked why there is no tolerance and inclusion for women who want to continue to define their lesbianism as homosexuality. I'm not doing anything to anyone, I'm not pigeonholing anyone, I'm asking for mutual tolerance.

But if we put the bullshit aside, we both know you are demonstrating my point really: that the existence of women who will not accept being redefined and stripped of their sexuality or right to be openly homosexual on a sex basis is not tolerated because it distresses those who wish this not to be true or visible .

What you mean by 'pigeonholing' is that the retention of out and proud homosexual women implies that male people are not fully and wholly women. That's the bottom line.

Wouldn't it make more sense to leave the word lesbian for biologically female people who are exclusively same sex attracted and for people whose sexuality is based on gender identity to have the word queer then?

I get that some lesbians are OK with the word lesbian being used to include people who are biologically male, but using the word in that way deprives the original kind of lesbians of a word to describe themselves.

Being inclusive is all well and good when you just mean treating all groups with kindness and respect, and not denying one group rights and respect which all other groups have. But being inclusive does not (or should not) mean that everything has to include you to the point where other groups of people who identify themselves according to common features which they share with each other and you do not are no longer allowed to identify and describe themselves according to those common features they share because this would exclude you, it has gone too far.

Of course you came out with the predictable lies about this.

Of course you did.

And for good measure you added the gaslighty suggestion that I would twist this, when you know full well you’re the one doing that.

Marsha/Malcolm Johnson was very clear that he was a gay man, a drag queen, who never identified as a woman. An interview with him from 2001 or 2002 makes this explicit; total rubbish that he didn’t then have the terminology to refer to himself as anything else.

And he wasn’t even there when it started.

Why are you erasing black lesbian Stormé de Larverie, who actually did play a significant part in the Stonewall event?

Why are you erasing and minimising the contribution of all the actual lesbians and gay men who started Pride?

It is complete fabrication to say that trans people were at the forefront of any of this; indeed, the straight, cross-dressing men of the Beaumont Society, which was involved in the beginnings of ‘trans rights’ in the UK, were actively homophobic in the way they explicitly dissociated themselves from gay men - because they thought it would make them look bad to be thought of in the same bracket.

Only when gay rights and public acceptance had been largely achieved did TRAs decide to hitch their wagon to the LGB cause; not from any kind of altruism - the idea is laughable - but for their own gain.

And hasn’t it been a successful strategy.

Fred Sargeant, the man pictured above having been assaulted at Pride - because Pride really isn’t safe for ESSA gay men and lesbians who refuse to be hypocrites - is a much more reliable source on the origins of what happened at Stonewall, because unlike you or the people who write this twaddle about how gay people owe all their rights to trans people he was actually there.

This is an awfully homophobic take for someone who identifies as a lesbian.

100%

Laughable. Just laughable.

I mean this doesn't bother me in particular, I'm not hung up on terminology and would happily use something else if the right sort of lesbians wanted the word all for themselves.

The reality is language is organic, people try to choose the best fit for themselves based on our often complex, messy senses of selves and don't particularly enjoy others policing the terms they feel fit them best.

And of course we have a long history of policing terminology, identity and behaviours; bisexual women were out of favour for a long time unfortunately amongst many lesbian groups, butch and femme are concepts and identities that have been similarly policed and argued over, over the years.

No doubt the world will keep turning.

Anyway, I am off out to a big lesbian party.

As in, a party with numerous lesbians, lesbians of different sizes will of course be present 🤪

There may also be some trans lesbians there, however will we cope? 😁

Hi. I know Fred. You may have heard of him.

He was actually there.

Hope that helps.

"and have seen the shift from probably 90% presence of men in gay venues to probably around 60% women" 😂
That's because all the lesbian cafes, bars , bookshops etc have closed in the last decade or so. Which you would know if you were a lesbian on the scene for so many years. Way back, us lesbians used to go to gay bars and were generally accepted by gay men as there was no alternative. Bars were hidden away and were often raided by the police or you spotted evidently plain clothes police officers sitting there pretending to be gay looking for reasons to arrest people. Real threats and intimidation.
This changed for all the reasons discussed - including pride which initially was a genuinely liberating experience. Women were able to organise and meet without men's permission and by the 80s there were lesbian venues / meetings all over the place in the UK.

Sadly that has changed and as mentioned upthread, genuine single sex lesbian / women's groups have been forced to go underground because of the demands from men to supervise, attend and monitor speech.

Any vegan carnivores at this party too?

Ah yes. Language is organic. That must be why your movement is so desperate to infuse words with new meaning through the bottom-up grassroots medium of corporate and newspaper style guides and inclusion in school curricula.

Looks more like astroturfing to me.

Quite.

At least General Custer and co did aggressive colonisation honestly, without a lot of mind bending bullshit intended to pretend to everyone (but mostly to themselves) that what they were doing was nice .

Language is organic, yes.

But the forcible redefinition of words to include things they are not supposed to include (because they are the literal opposite) is not the organic evolution of language, it is the forcible colonisation of language.

Now I'm happy to put my hands up and admit that I have no skin in this particular definitions game because I'm straight. But when I hear lesbians saying that they want to define their sexuality by reference to biological sex, not gender, and that including male people within that definition means they no longer have a word for what they are, that resonates with me. Because I feel the same about the word woman. And of course, lesbians are being erased on two fronts, because they are both women and lesbians.

I feel very strongly that a woman is a biologically female person. I think the word includes all adult female humans (even the ones who say they do not identify as women) and excludes all adult males (even the ones who say they do identify as women). I understand that trans women want to be women, but they can't be. The only way they can be women is if we strip the word of all meaning. And then we have a word that means "adult female humans except the ones who identify as men or non binary, plus adult male humans who identify as women". I do not understand the point of this category. The people in it have nothing in common with each other (that they do not also have in common with all other humans), and there is nothing in society that needs to be organised according to this completely artificial grouping. At the same time, we no longer have a word that means "all adult female humans, regardless of any identity they may or may not have", which is something we do actually need a word for. We know we need a word for it because in contexts where it cannot be denied that sex matters, we are being renamed "people with cervixes" or "menstruators" or "bodies with vaginas", which many of us find pretty offensive.

I think that if trans women had any respect for women, they wouldn't call themselves women. They would respect the fact that we are not the same and that we do actually have the right to define ourselves in a way that doesn't include them, even if that makes them unhappy. But they don't respect that. And it doesn't stop at "woman". Now they are saying they are female too, which shows that whatever word we use to describe ourselves, they will not let us have it for ourselves but will start claiming to identify as it.

I imagine that this is how gender critical lesbians feel about the word lesbian.

It really didn't have to be this way. And this is ultimately bad for inclusion and acceptance of trans people, because people who feel bullied and threatened and colonised will naturally not be inclined to be welcoming and inclusive towards the people they feel are bullying and threatening and colonising them.

If we could acknowledge and celebrate our differences and respect each other's particular needs and concerns, we could agree that the world is big enough for all of us and work together to find solutions to ensure that everyone's rights, safety and dignity are respected.

But as long as women are being cancelled, threatened, fired, disciplined at work and denied banking services for not agreeing that trans women are exactly the same as them and welcome in all their spaces, and as long as lesbians are being accused of bigotry for saying that their sexuality does not include anyone who has ever had a penis, I can't see that happening.

The racism on FWR is specifically tied to FWR.

Islanophobia, for eg, is disguised as ‘concern for women and girls over a religion that doesn’t respect women’.

My Muslim friends beg to differ over that viewpoint btw.

Most of the references I see to Islam on FWR are concerns about how Muslim women can use single sex spaces if any male person can just self ID into them.

non members of mumsnet were allowed to complain about posts on FWR and have them removed

many posters have been banned on FWR

posts such as ‘bless’ and ‘yawn’ and have been deleted and posters suspended on FWR

the modding is stricter on FWR

FWR was split into two following posters, who had no intention ever of starting threads, complaining that there weren’t enough of the ‘types’ of threads they were desperate to post on in FWR

FWR is already treated very differently to every other board on mumsnet

As MNHQ have already said if people see transphobia, homophobia, islamaphobia etc they should report those posts and they will be removed if MNHQ agrees

If you see posts that need to be deleted, report them

Well I’m referring to Islamophobia. Discussing Islam in and of itself isn’t Islamophobic, so your comment doesn’t prove any point.

Well women can be critical of religion. It’s patriarchal structure, if that’s what they see.

Others may disagree, which they are free to post about.

Can you give an example of Islamophobia you have seen on FWR?

FWR is already one of the most policed areas. TRAs constantly infiltrate, make abusive and racist posts, screenshot their own posts, then pretend that's what feminists are like. Everyone involved in the gc debate knows which side of the debate is homophobic and racist (telling lesbians they must have sex with men, etc) It isn't the feminists.
Criticism of surrogacy as a practise is child and female centred, with a class analysis. It isn't concerned with the sexuality of the prospective parents.
As for the conspiracy theorists posting articles and links all over MN currently, that's only going to get worse unless MN increases the number of mods.

SageRosemary · 28/06/2023 13:43
"So, how will Pride people manage to cross the road without a rainbow?"

("And then there was the Pride Crossing" thread.)

Mocking a minority as "Pride People" does rather make you think about the poster.

Scolding women for mocking seems to be quite a thing today. There aren't actually blasphemy laws. No one melts because someone on the internet mocked their behaviour.

And when you look at what gets sent in the way of women who willfully and wickedly persist in believing in biological sex, reality and equality, it isn't mocking. Is it? Is 'mocking' what Rosie Duffield is suffering today?

There is never any reciprocal standards in this highly moral behaviour, none of the righteous are busily ticking off those fracturing women's skulls for example, or policing other forums to maintain the high standards of morality. It's merely used as yet another means of silencing women saying inconvenient things.

There is never any reciprocal standards in this highly moral behaviour, none of the righteous are busily ticking off those fracturing women's skulls for example, or policing other forums to maintain the high standards of morality. It's merely used as yet another means of silencing women saying inconvenient things.

Hear, hear. The double standards are glaringly obvious.

And I’ve never seen from any GC woman on MN the equivalent to the kind of racism that so many TRAs come out with - the idea that if male people can’t “be” women, then black women can’t be women either, for example. Just horrendous.