FWR

[MarsScarlet]

FYI: I've name changed for this to avoid a pile-on.

This post is about the overwhelming negativity and hostility with the FWR board that new posters and posters with a differing viewpoint face if they attempt to use the board.

There is a persistent group within the board that are, to put it simply, hateful towards others. Despite posting there on and off for more than 4 years, I have never felt welcome, despite not holding any particular extreme views or being abusive to others. Without exception, I am accused of being another poster, or a man, a TRA, or some kind of paid activist. This occurs again and again until I leave a thread in frustration.

I’ve seen this happen to many other new posters. Few return. Why would they? Such an acidic atmosphere doesn’t encourage healthy discussion. I’d just like to discuss women’s rights, but this board makes discussion impossible.

I’m not exactly sure what the answer is, except for @MNHQ to request the board to tone down the rhetoric a bit and back off on any new names they may see on the board. Let people engage with you rather than actively drive them away.

I agree, which is why I post virtually all my feminist posts on 'Sex and Gender', because I cannot see any part of feminism that isn't 'sex and gender'.

This.

Yes I've seen the same fairly regularly from certain plop posters.
Many like the op here accuse us of being big meanies and when push for specifics it's always about our tone.
So @MarsScarlet how exactly should we change our tone on the board? Also it was the TRAs who demanded the split of the feminist board so if the other one is too quiet maybe we should just merge them again

No. Basic civility would be cool.

You've taken a general point personally, and then snapped back sarcastically. Have you considered your own style of interaction may have an impact, too?

The problem is, because you can't give examples, everyone's imagining a time when they were justified in whatever they said, so it's a bit pointless saying there is negativity or whatever.

My advice is post the posts and threads you want to see, respond to questions even if they make you analyse your view in a way you're not comfortable with, scroll past derails, be clear in what you're saying and assume that if you're ambiguous, someone will take the most offensive interpretation

I guess OP you can't compel other people to post in a way you personally find acceptable, so you'll have to continue reporting any obvious personal attacks like everyone else, and getting on with it. Or not. Up to you. I fail to see what you expect anyone to do.

Because there is a group of people who believe that the board is hateful and that it shouldn't exist. There are posters who frequently name change who continue to call posters transphobic and accuse them of shutting down discussion when it actually them, under a new username who is continuing to do this. They often get deleted but not banned, or they do get banned and then rejoin to do it over again.

It is actually why posters might advance search new names. To see if they should be reported to MNHQ as we have also been told to not troll hunt on threads. If a poster has a long past history, they won't be a PBP and don't need to be flagged to MNHQ.

I name change often and have been in and out of FWR for 15 years - it's a perfectly fine place, with lovely supportive women when the situation calls for it, and firm-boundaried formidable women when someone's taking the piss. I'd suggest some resilience practise is probably needed.

Bear in mind, if you have a different opinion to many people, then there will be many people responding - that's not 'a pile on' it's just that this is a board, with lots of people (perhaps chat is better if you find too many people asking questions a bit too much?)

When there's been frustrating posters, who dance around giving clear answers, yes, the regulars do get a bit antsy, they will keep dragging the topic back - I'd say if you can't defend your viewpoint perhaps some self-examination is in order.

I'd like to use the FWR board but it's too hostile.

This is an example where I think being clear and specific would help with civility.

You actually mean, afaict, that "a handful of posters are consistently hostile".

As part of the FWR board I consider myself included when you say "the board is too hostile".

I would hope you wouldn't extrapolate from a few individuals to describe the entire group with any other group. So can you see here how your wording could reflect what you mean a bit more accurately and in a way that doesn't smear all posters? (< not a sarky tone)

Discussion on the board can be forthright, but it's rare to see gratuitous aggression IME of several years of using it.

What tends to attract multiple posters engaging with a single other poster - and result in newcomers complaining about 'meanness' - seems to fall largely into two broad categories, I find:

1. when posters make assertions that they can't back up with evidence, or even refuse to define their own terms. This was in evidence over the weekend on a thread, with a poster repeatedly denouncing FWR posters as 'anti-trans' while refusing to define the terms on which they were resting their argument. Cue lots of posters asking for clarification. That might feel like a pile-on, but it's a result of the poster not following basic and sensible debating routine and defining their own terms and argument. All they had to do was define the terms of the discussion they themselves started. What's hostile about being asked to do that?

2. When posters are presented with evidence, including official stats and data and just ignore it and plough on with their own biased opinions, as if the data doesn't exist. Like being told that the official stats show 99% of sexual assaults are carried out by males and that's why we don't want them to be in women's toilets. That then being ignored, even when asked to clarify whether they want men's feelings to be prioritised over women's safety. Repeatedly dodging that simple quesitno, while banging on about FWR women just being mean, for example. Of course this going to be questioned. Why would you expect it not to be?

No wonder it gets short shrift, the women on the board want a proper debate. This is a site for adults and it's right and proper to assume posters using it possess adult-level debating skills and adult-level emotional maturity and resilience. There should be no abuse, of course, but a robust debate of facts, evidence and ideology should be expected.

Paraphrasing means giving greater clarity to something using different words. They mean the same.

“we know everything, have lived everything over many decades - so don't bother". This isn’t the same as what I said.

Please could you have the courtesy of quoting what you're responding to?
Leaving it open to interpretation means you're likely to be misunderstood.

Is it this sort of requirement that you disagree with? I find it really helpful but my brain isn't necessarily like others'...

"You just wrote it - I paraphrased it. Hellofabore ? - writes this kind of thing often."

Really? Now you are getting personal.

"we know everything, have lived everything over many decades - so don't bother".

Seems like you have a pretty hostile interpretation issue right there.

And it could well be considered the very example of 'incivil.'

Oh Popey.

I can only assume it is me, since we now have a thread where I have been named.

The Board was heavily monitored a few years ago, so posters had to really carefully manage their speech and language or they were banned. There were regular posters that argued their opposing views and it became the norm to ask for “evidence”. We got used to immediately meeting those requests with stats and peer reviewed evidence. We became used to a really hard lined response and it was really tiring the threads were full of holes where posts had been deleted and posters were banned for saying biological facts. It was a magnet for bad faith vicious posters trying to get the board shut down and the women silenced. In the end the board was split.

I am genuinely sorry if you feel you can’t post there on issues that are important to you. Please keep trying and please try not to take responses personally. I have had arguments on there but I have found that if I try to accept the other posters views and think why they might feel like that it helps me to frame my response and to really analyse my own position.

Exactly. I use the words I use because they're want I want to say. If you change them, you change the meaning.

I'm beginning to see why OP's posting style might not gel on a board that closely analyses arguments that have been made.

OOhh - so you just don't like Helleofabore?

can't say I've ever noticed her being a problem myself - again, I really think that perhaps you just need to use another board if you don't like the regulars on this one - there's plenty of them

I did wonder if the discussion on this thread would get accused of people being hostile. I don’t think this thread has been hostile. People just disagree or are finding it hard to agree with OP in the absence of actual examples.

Just to add, I've been posting on MN for about 18 years, and many years ago I did find FWR a very hostile place to post (even though I am a full-on feminist!).

In those days, when MN was much smaller, there was always the danger that a few 'big name' posters could gather personal followings, and that their little gangs would enforce a posting orthodoxy and harass those that didn't fit into it.

That happened in many parts of the site but in FWR it was particularly severe because the little gangs were able to fool themselves that they were supporting a kind of purity of feminist thought, rather than just being caught up in the standard forum dynamics of that period in the history of the internet.

These days, FWR is less about purity of feminist theory and more about responding to the emergency-level of misogyny and VAWG that have escalated so severely over the last several years. It is a much more practical space than it was and, on the whole, a constructive place to post.

I'm just remembering one thread where I was posting very much against the grain. It was about whether or not there should be the planned study into the use of puberty blockers. Almost all posters thought not. I was making the case that the study would be reasonable and could be valuable (not sure whether or not I still think that). Lots of posters disagreed with me very fundamentally (I understand why), some were even angry. It felt uncomfortable , but no one posted in a manner that was remotely unacceptable or report-worthy.

It isn't everyone, no, but most of the really active posters.

Please don't take offence - I don't recognise your username as one of the regular ones that crop up.

@popeydokey

Please could you have the courtesy of quoting what you're responding to?
Leaving it open to interpretation means you're likely to be misunderstood.

I wasn't responding to any particular post.

I hope everyone can see that no one has been particularly "unpleasant" on this thread. Or they have a different interpretation on "unpleasant" to me.

Seems so. Looks like a thread just to name and shame posters that the OP doesn't like or agree with.