Reducing Moderation Load for MN (continuation of Dealing with Inflammatory Posts)

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

I'm starting another thread - which is really a continuation of the previous post re dealing with inflammatory posts and comments. On Site Stuff, MNHQ have revealed more about their issues with FWR - i.e. the moderation workload. They need that reducing.

Please do also take on board the fact that the combative tone isn’t just in relation to goady posts or trolls - the majority of deletions take place in discussions where there isn’t a debate or conflict. It’s a root and branch problem.

What's the nature of the root and branch problem - is there a pattern to the deletions? Are they from certain OPs? Without fully understanding the problem, I am unsure what solutions to focus on - ie. will self policing the tone work as that assumes it's our comments that are the problem? Or is it, as I suspect, trolling that is increasing the mod workload?

I personally don't report much as I am conscious of their workload. Am I alone in this? Thus, I have asked them if they have analysed which accounts are doing the reporting (to see if Sealion and troll accounts are swamping them). Or is it the mods trawling through comments policing the tone??? Or is it us?

BTW @Datun has suggested pinning a post emphasising self policing. Great idea if it is us - but if so, what phrasing is OK and not? Would I be right in thinking saying "self id doesn't take sufficient account of concerns about women and children is fine"? But what is off limits? I still come back to what is that the root cause of the mod workload increase?

Secondly, I keep pointing out that Sealions/concern trolls use covert bullying so the pattern of someone's comments is important, not just a one off remark. As with coercive control in DV, each individual incident can seem inconsequential, but over time the drip, drip cumulative effect leaves women alternating between enraged and cowering. And with Sealions it's not just the comment reported but a pattern of covert bullying remarks consisting of dismissing others concerns, falsely accusing others(Transphobia), criticism that is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication.

Where I think we may need to be smarter is in dealing with Sealions. I have heard it argued that the debate is needed. But if one is wasting one's time on Sealions, it just gives them more ammunition to report and complain about. It feeds them. Hence more mod workload. The only way I have found effective is not to engage with known Sealions. I just ignore them. I don't engage personally with them. So we potentially have a conflict between those who want to have the debate and yet at the same time needing to call time and IGNORE Sealions, after they have demonstrated an unwillingness to engage healthily. For example on the Inflammatory post - I would have preferred to call time on certain Sealions much earlier - there's no point in being nice if it defeats the object ie having debate with someone who wants to engage plus not increasing the mod workload.
Would love some of your thoughts…..

It would be useful to know why the ‘GG/10 steps to radicalisation’ thread was deleted?
I can’t see a deletion message even though I was on it.

I was reading that when it disappeared MrsB. I can see the deletion message here:

Message from MNHQ: Hello folks, thanks for your reports. We only allow Mumsnetters who are members of our Bloggers Network to link to their blogs on the Mumsnet Talk Boards, so we've taken this one down.

Thanks Pencil. That’s good to know!

Thanks for this discussion- really striking a chord with me about female boundaries and how the debate about why women need to do the accommodation on the (self ID) transwomen acceptance becuse men just won’t, is reminiscent of (my experience of) female drawn boundaries being seen as always negotiatable in other really important contexts. Not just with sex though that’s chiming in a lot, but also my expectations of mine and other women’s consent to what they’ll agree to at work, in my experience.

Its this kind of thing that I can imagine someone born and raised male with male socialisation would find it hard to identify and understand. Given the saturation of culture with it. Given that lots of women (myself included. And whether we are questioning it or not.. . ) are used to seeing this male questioning of their boundaries as just normal and ‘just how it is’, because it’s all that women have been offered thus far in the experience of lots of us. So it’s hard to imagine that things could be different. And the anxiety at the back of the mind is that actually the penalties for women being adamant around a ‘no’ can be very severe for us.

So in some ways as a women it’s better to let yourself think you’ve been persuaded than to really acknowledge that your choice can be overriden whatever you say wherever there are unequal power relations, as the (usually) smaller and physically weaker person: also who for added pressure towards compliance has been often raised within a complex social code around your personal value as a woman and your guardianship of your own ‘reputation’ (in a sexual and work context) meaning you are not taken seriously around consent.

if you are adamant about your own boundaries (around sex, at work) you are setting yourself ‘beyond the pale’ as a woman and then with ‘that reputation’ you ‘make yourself’ fair game and your consent doesn’t even really come into it any more and you can be quite reasonably disparaged and criticised in a really personal way. Who wants that to happen to them? Better to ignore your own cognitive dissonance and be compliant and ‘appear persuadable’.

The problem is that TRA activists have just pushed at a door unlocked by the Rad Fems.

I remember reading, on these boards, many feminists used to argue that women were just as good at sport as men and, if only they were allowed to compete, the Williams sisters would do just fine on the mens’ tour! Sadly, it has kind of happened, with the inevitable results.

Equally the idea that we are sexually dimorphic but our brains are unconnected to our bodies, so there are zero behavioural differences between men and women has long been axiomatic on these boards with ‘delusions of gender’ being the go to New Testament on the subject (despite it being heavily critiqued by many neurologists).

And the bullying and chasing out of any different opinions on FWR has been the model adopted by TRA activists, the throwing about of the word ‘privilege’ to put a halt to discussion, the pretence of very wealthy, well educated people with time on their hands (I.e privileged) of somehow being oppressed etc.

I think the radical TRA movement is a joke and is just a tactical way of certain (a very few) men invading women’s spaces. However, whose tactics are they copying? Why have we got where we are with respect to this issue?

Until we can go back to honest, open discussion without MN talk guidelines (aside from lack of personal attack and civilised discourse) the name of the game is ‘privilege top trumps’ and the TRA’s have had some excellent exemplars to learn from.

However, whose tactics are they copying?

TRAs appropriate language and debating styles from all discussions that surround opressed groups.
Black rights.
Religious groups.
Women's rights.
Disability rights.
Class based opression and Marxism.

The word "privilege" is used by all of these groups to describe their opressors and has been appropriated by straight white males as they have discovered a way to opt into a group and self define as the most opressed group ever and can therefore freely attack members in the above groups which I have seen them do.

Radical feminists do discuss the nature/nurture arguments between the behavioural differences between the sexes and I'd agree I many cases there is no difference, eg in intelligence or mental abilities, but I have never ever seen a radical feminist argue against women-only sports or believe our needs of males are the same.
Radical feminists actually created women only sport in the first place so that women could compete at all.

Speaking of women only sports, women only football has an interesting history

What’s not well-known is that 100 years ago women’s football was huge, drawing 10,000s of people to matches. On Boxing Day 1920, 53,000 people packed into Everton’s Goodison Park to watch the unofficial England team, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies, beat the St Helen’s Ladies 4-0. Thousands were left outside unable to see the game – one estimate puts the potential audience at 67,000.

Women’s matches were played for charitable causes, raising thousands of pounds. Dick, Kerr’s Ladies alone raised £70,000 (around £14m in today’s money) for ex-servicemen, hospitals and needy children

By 1921 there were around 150 women’s teams in England, mostly in the North and the Midlands

Then, just as women’s football looked as if it would be a permanent fixture of English sport, on 5 December the Football Association announced they were to bar women’s matches from all FA run-grounds, effectively removing the opportunity for women to play in front of huge crowds

The FA stated: “Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, the Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged

It wasn’t until 1993 that the women’s game came under the auspices of the Football Association.

I think many women are quite passionate about keeping males out of our sports because we know how they feel about us having it for ourselves!

(Text is from www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/forgotten-history-women-s-football )

Ophelia,

My beef is not with your opinions, which you are entitled to and should be able to put forward for discussion. It is the shutting down of alternative views by ‘guidelines’ (aka censorship) and pack ad hominem attacks.

Rad fems do not discuss the nature/nurture argument. They propound one view in that behavioural differences are all nurture and no nature. If I am talking out of turn, please point to one post by a Rad fem on this board accepting that sex affects behaviour via brain wiring or the hormonal system?

As to the sport argument I have many times seen argued that women are just as good as men without the inevitable corollary that they should compete against one another (within weight classes).

You are indeed right that ‘privilege’ was not invented by rad fems but they are the most recent exemplars (in the uk at any rate).

I accept hormonal and physiological differences can be a cause of behavioural differences including why males are more prone to violence and crime. And guess am a radical feminist. I'm sure there are others.
It's just important to women that "nature" arguments are not used as yet another way to opress us, as it's too easy to hold yourself completely unaccountable when you do that. So it's useful to have those debates.

#TGLWGH

A guy mansplaining societal conditioning to women - right….

Woman,

Can you not see how that type of post just might lead to this type of post?!

‘A cis woman explaining privilege to a trans woman’

Is that now known as cisplaining? I bet that word now exists...

OK. .. yes we are completely aware of how TRAs appropriate our language and distort words so they are rendered meaningless. We talk about it all the time. How can we stop them from doing this? Just stop talking altogether?

Talk about victim blaming.

Ophelia,

Stop shutting down debate, even with those whose views you strongly disagree with.

Allow ‘myths’ to be propagated and discussed.

Stop using words like mansplaining and privilege to shut down legitimate debate.

Stop no platforming, regardless of the idiocy or unpleasantness of someone’s opinions.

Trust that, if all are allowed to speak (as long as it is is not ad hominem and remains courteous) that truth will win out in the end.

Larry - you should read around here more often before having a pontificate! Good discussion here - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3208335-Language-and-use-of-cis?pg=2. On page 2, several of us, including me, explain that we aren't hardline blank slatists. One of dozens of similar threads with similar variety in opinion hereabouts.

Have a lovely Sunday!

Lots of people who aren't trans seem to have an opinion on how transwomen grow up and what they experience.

Transpeople do face our own conditioning, oppression, lack of privilege as other groups.

By the way ‘victim blaming’ is another way to shut down discourse,

As if there is no nuance to any situation, just victims and oppressors.

Lang,

How about you say what you disagree about my ‘pontificating’? This is a discussion board. It would be very boring if we just exchanged links or reading lists.

Have a nice Sunday, too.

Oh god and there's a great big list telling me how to communicate "better" when talking about my feminism which comes from working as a prostitute and seeing first hand how awfully women can be treated by men repeatedly..... and trying to help these women.

And if a trans person ever said I was "cisplaining" I would take a moment to consider why that might be and reflect on that.

yetanother I am sure that you do.

How about you say what you disagree about my ‘pontificating’?

How rude! I was trying to help you out! You said:

please point to one post by a Rad fem on this board accepting that sex affects behaviour via brain wiring or the hormonal system

I pointed to a thread with several such posts!

Ophelia,

I am not telling you anything.

My list addresses the thread. If people want open debate on Trans issues, they cannot close down debate on other issues.

I have no idea how you personally communicate and what I wrote was a reply to your question, not an attack or criticism of you as a person.

I

I'm not sure telling people what they should do is best communication practice tbh.

Ophelia,

So were your questions on your post of 8:14 rhetorical? I am sorry I took them as actual questions.

Stop shutting down debate, even with those whose views you strongly disagree with.

Allow ‘myths’ to be propagated and discussed.

Stop using words like mansplaining and privilege to shut down legitimate debate.

Stop no platforming, regardless of the idiocy or unpleasantness of someone’s opinions.

Trust that, if all are allowed to speak (as long as it is is not ad hominem and remains courteous) that truth will win out in the end.

I had to smile when I saw that list - quoting back at us the tactics are that done to us by abusers to stop us talking is very ironic, if a little tiresome. If I didn't know better I'd say it was DARVO.

As has been pointed out, all you want to discuss has been discussed at length before, so do feel free to review the existing threads and come up to speed.

Have a nice day

#TGLWDH

Woman,

How rude!

I will leave you and the TRAs to play privilege top trumps.

Have s lovely Sunday.