BIWI Just laughing because I wondered what else you had posted about and Mumsnet Advanced Search (not 100% reliable, I know) tells me that your very first post on Mumsnet on 11/09/2007 starts, "As a Guardian reader" 😂- on a thread titled "Why is the Daily Mail so hated on here?"
You go on to say,
"I hate the DM with a passion - and I do 'read' it fairly frequently as my business partner gets it. (Why I have no idea). Every time I read it I am still shocked by what purports to be 'reasonable' editorial views about women, single parents (usually mothers), immigrants (usually branded asylum seekers), those not blessed with employment, etc etc
But their financial and health pages are good - just a shame about the rest of it."
So I am going to ask you to consider exploring resources on X that you might have overlooked in your narrow focus on who owns the platform, hindered by your echo-chamber assumptions and "guilt by association" perspective on the political leanings of users.
Twitter and now X provides a platform that is invaluable for professional development and scientific collaboration across all subjects.
For example, is there anything like the Symplur Healthcare Hashtag Project on your preferred alternative platform?
Healthcare Hashtag Project
Healthcare Hashtag Project, a free open platform for patient advocates, caregivers, doctors and other providers that connects them to relevant conversations and communities.
https://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/
I also wonder, would you suggest to libraries, bookshops, schools, universities and colleges that they should stop stocking books from a particular publishing house because you disapprove of the politics of the owner?
Perhaps you would because that is close to the political pressure successfully exerted by activists on publishers, libraries, bookshops, schools, universities and colleges to cancel authors who dissent from their pet theories and positions.
Assuming that you are still a Guardian reader, you will no doubt be aware that intolerant staff, mostly based in the USA, have petitioned the Guardian to ditch respected UK journalists or have bullied them out of the their jobs.
Can't think why but I am reminded of this:
"The feminist origins of ‘political correctness’: PC terms in JSTOR"
Abstract
When ‘political correctness’ became a public concern in the USA in the early 1990s, it was almost immediately suggested that the term had long been something of a self-ironic slur in left-wing circles. While a number of people testified to this, the evidence advanced was almost entirely anecdotal, and to date no systematic attempt to gauge the reliability of these testimonies has been made. The present article seeks to rectify this. On the basis of a statistical account of politically correct (PC) terms – ‘politically correct’, ‘politically incorrect’, ‘political correctness’, ‘political incorrectness’ – in the Stockholm University version of the JSTOR database up to 1990, it challenges the received view that the term originated as a left-wing in-group marker which was used self-ironically. The evidence suggests, on the contrary, that the modern understanding of political correctness as a form of censorship first emerged in debates internal to the North American women's liberation movement. The article tables all uses of PC terms in JSTOR up to 1990. Before 1980, PC terms are used very sparingly and practically always non-ironically, with the possible exception of the one area in which the term gains ground in the 1970s: feminism. In JSTOR, prior to 1990, PC terms appear most frequently in feminist activist journal Off Our Backs (OOB). Usage in OOB makes evident that the notion of political correctness in the feminist context at the time was tied to a theoretical discussion concerning female sexuality. Climaxing at an academic conference arranged at Barnard College in 1982, this debate was pivotal for establishing the ironic understanding of political correctness we live with today, including the modern understanding of the concept as a means for the ‘closing of debate’. In sum, evidence suggests that the received view of the origins of the term ‘political correctness’ must be reconsidered.
Full article (no paywall):
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14647001241248752