“Can’t afford to buy a house” thread deleted for odd reason

[JustPleachy]

There was a thread earlier today discussing a BBC News article about housing affordability.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5125124-why-cant-this-woman-afford-to-buy-a-house?page=2&reply=136968598

It has been deleted, with the reason given that there is another thread discussing the same article.

There are often several threads running discussing the same things at any given time, but duplicates are not usually deleted.

Several posters pointed out that, while ostensibly about a woman’s difficulty with housing, the person interviewed was a well known trans activist. This is relevant given that affordable housing disproportionately affects women.

Was this the reason the thread was deleted? If so, why is MumsNet censoring the discussion?

One thread was deleted because it 'wasn't in the spirit of Mumsnet'. Which I quite agreed with, as the person's sex/gender/whatever, had no relevance to the article.

Apparently there was at least one other thread - I don't know if that was deleted.

I've just checked and the thread I'm thinking of was called "BBC again", so not the one you linked to.

Mumsnet isn't transphobic, trans people are more than welcome to go about their lives, any hint of transphobia should of course be dealt with etc etc etc.

But then a transwoman appears in the news in a story that's nothing about sex or gender and the thread fills up with misgendering, discussion of her trans status and general scepticism.

The fact that the story was about a well known trans activist was very relevant. It is beyond belief that in an issue that affects women more than men the BBC couldn’t find a woman to interview. Given there are a lot more women than there are trans women it is statistically improbable. It is relevant to the discussion that the BBC are being disingenuous, and I would like to know why the site are shutting that discussion down.

I read the article before seeing it discussed on Mumsnet.

I didn't know who the person was, nor that they were trans and an activist. The article isn't about women renters having difficulties getting a mortgage, it's about renters in general. The article could just have easily used a man or transman to illustrate the article.

And that’s a very valid and interesting viewpoint. I did know the person was an activist, who appears often on BBC articles across the board. However it’s interesting to hear the perspective of someone who didn’t know that.

Don’t you think it’s worthwhile having these discussions rather than MN shutting them down?

I spotted this on Twitter last night after following the thread on Mumsnet. Really interesting…

https://x.com/JournalismSEEN/status/1815398883951804627

Hi everyone. We've had a look back at the threads discussed here.

The original one that was deleted as not being in the spirit of the site was removed because it broke out Talk Guidelines. Whatever the facts, there was nothing in the article itself to suggest this person was transgender (and as a PP points out, assuming someone's trans identity based on appearance in one photo has gone VERY badly wrong recently on the boards, and that felt like a learning opportunity). But their transgender status (or lack thereof) felt irrelevant to the article, regardless, and was quickly turning into rudeness and very personal comments, so we removed the thread.

It looks like there have been several threads about the very same article, and it's likely we would have felt any more than one was probably one too many in this case. We do regularly 'tidy up' when several threads are started on the same topic, but when a topic has been quite controversial, we'd see even less reason to host several threads about it to be honest.

We'd be happy to host a discussion on the angle of a disproportionate number of transgender people being used for case studies like this, if that is the case, and whether that has an impact on information being gathered about women or not, so feel free to start that conversation if you'd like to. But we won't host discussions that become personal or that are clearly designed to be inflammatory rather than a conversation open to all viewpoints.