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 is horrifying to think that you have to be THIS good at talking to be allowed to talk at all.

Yes. It also feels a little bit classist to me - where is the room for the more direct working class way of speaking? (Thinking again of what the Deptford People's Project said)

Having just ploughed through a lot of the FWR board thread in active, I am so much in agreement with this. A lot of the 'serves you right' comments seem to come from people who feel they have been 'shouted down', which, having spent so much time on these boards lately, I'd say just means out-argued.

It seems that we're in a damned-if-you-do/don't situation. Speak plainly? Disrespectful. Goady. Not in the spirt. Put forward robust arguments backed up by fact? Shouting down. Being abrasive. Unwelcoming.

So many posters here, but all of us wrong.

This is so very very disheartening.
The last few weeks especially I was feeling so grateful that this amazing spreading of awareness and intelligent was happening and that MN was enabling it. It felt like a kind of revolution or explosion or something dramatic and exciting was happening.

Now it's all deflating...because as others have said, women may not have these conversations where anyone can see or hear. They can only be behind closed doors and the doors are closing right now.

Intelligent discussion *

As so very well put, we are being rounded up in a ghetto.

Like fucking lepers

Meanwhile, misogynistic threads deriding the appearance of women are alive and well in AIBU. I guess it's only women with feminist opinions that need heavy moderation.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3221105-To-think-that-many-most-female-race-goers-attending-Ladies-Day-at-Aintree-look-a-mess?trending=1

@AntiGrinch I’m sorry for anyone treated that way. Like many of us I have experienced psychological abuse.

I also had "bad communication style" thrown at me just last week (as Spoonless) and told my concern wasn't important and that I wasn't entitled to draw any inferences from a fact. Sound familiar? The only situations in which I get that are when people are in an ideological bunker and can't or won't understand. GC is the dominant group on here and guilty of most of the things you're fighting back at.

As @thanksjaneshusbandatcaresouth has said elsewhere, of course we each see our "side" as victim, so that makes the actions of the other "side" look aggressive to us when they band together, even though it feels defensive to them (and vice versa).

I know you feel justified by your rightness and I agree that you're damned-if-you-do/don't. But IMO "the biggest threat to women and girls' rights in 100 years" is not transgenderism, the biggest threats to women and girls' rights in 100 years are the same as they always have been. You are not "being rounded up in a ghetto", you're isolating yourselves and eating feminism by splitting it into factions and the only winner is The Patriarchy.

it's interesting... I have read this comment about 'you're eating feminism' a number of times on twitter recently.
I have some specific concerns for women and girls at this current time. I am able to understand the nature of these. I would like to discuss them and have been made acutely aware in recent months where and how this discussion has being made difficult/impossible and the manner in which this is challenged.

Hi Gasping. I agree that there are really important things for feminism to do that have nothing to do with trans issues.

"But IMO "the biggest threat to women and girls' rights in 100 years" is not transgenderism, the biggest threats to women and girls' rights in 100 years are the same as they always have been. "

Right.

The existence and visibility of transgender people is no direct threat to women and girls. I wish them all well.

BUT

There is a dynamic at play currently which goes beyond - way beyond - the direct influence or visibility of trans people, and is not in the interests of women and girls.

"Yes. It also feels a little bit classist to me - where is the room for the more direct working class way of speaking?"

We're stuck in a catch-22, if we engage using blunter/less academic language then we run the risk of being shut down for being rude, but if we avoid it and speak in a more convoluted academic way then we are accused of being privileged, middle class, "white feminists". (NVM the offensive insinuation that neither WOC or working class women can write in an eloquent academic manner)

Once again they don't hold their own to the same standards.

But IMO "the biggest threat to women and girls' rights in 100 years" is not transgenderism, the biggest threats to women and girls' rights in 100 years are the same as they always have been.

Respectfully, I don't see how the definition of woman (adult human female) being redefined by men for men and the erosion of sex based protections leading from that is not the biggest feminist cause for concern in many, many decades.

That is the very definition of patriarchy at work.

"the biggest threats to women and girls' rights in 100 years are the same as they always have been"

I agree on this, for example some things that have been going on for so long and been used to limit women's rights and freedoms;

• assigning the sexes/genders certain personality traits and abilities
• the idea of a male/female brain

you're isolating yourselves and eating feminism by splitting it into factions and the only winner is The Patriarchy.

How? Feminism has never been a monolithic block. There are a range of feminist opinions here. The majority are alarmed by the potential redefining of the word ‘woman’, by the removal of single sex spaces, by things like housing Male bodied prisoners in female estate. Far from eating ourselves I’d say no issue has united feminists this much for quite some time.

Is transgenderism a threat? I suppose that depends on the definition. Transgender people’s existence is not a threat - the prevailing opinion here agrees with that and says that trans people should be protected from discrimination, access appropriate treatment etc. The issue is self ID and the TRA/MRA lobby.

How do you think this issue is making feminism eat itself?

The big threat (patriarchy) has now found a way to manipulate us all into changing the actual definition of woman, making sure males are included in this new definition. It has found a way to erode women's boundaries without our consent.

It's pure evil genius. All in the name of transgenderism.

So I will have to respectfully disagree with Gasping.

I truly can't understand the position of those who believe you can continue to fight for the rights of the biologically female, of women and girls, after ceding that there exists no such common group.

Once you've decided woman is nothing more than a sound, a label with no meaning that belongs to anyone, how do you even talk about the people in the world who are there in plain sight suffering for being female, let alone fight for them?

If you can see sex, understand it, perceive it, know it, BUT not name it, or talk about it, or protect it, how will you fight for it?

I just want a place where I can talk about me and those like me. My daughter. My mum.

I don't see this as being about using academic or elegant language. I have always been far more careful about what I say on these boards than I am on other threads because it's so important. But I think directness is fine. Some of the things I try and avoid are:

Sarcasm - and sometimes it's the people who write well who are most prone to this.

Making personal comments, and in particular talking about anyone's clothing or appearance.

Threads about what some nutter has said on Twitter. I don't really see the point.
There are probably more.

I actually think the phrase 'peaktrans' might be unhelpful because for a long time I misunderstood and took it to mean being fed up of trans people. I doubt I'm the only one who's made this mistake.

And yes, I totally agree that nothing will be good enough for abusive TRAs and if they are getting to MNHQ then that is deeply worrying. But in the meantime, the people I always think about are lurkers - because I was one myself for such a long time.

I truly can't understand the position of those who believe you can continue to fight for the rights of the biologically female, of women and girls, after ceding that there exists no such common group.

Quite.

Sorry - it took me a while to write that and I see the conversation has moved on.

Floisme Agree with everything you just said - except I am prone to sarcasm. It's a character flaw....

Oh me too flowers but I try and save it for the other boards

Floisme Do we have to though? It's my default to express frustration....

I think the problem is that it can come across as belittling. I'm prone to it myself but I really try and keep it in check on these threads.

Great post, @floisme. I’m also guilty of sarky commentary and sometimes it hasn’t been received as such. Judging tone is really difficult.

What about the word ‘transgenderism’? I find it quite a useful one, being to ‘trans’ or ‘trans people’ what Islamism is to Islam.

How do you think this issue is making feminism eat itself?

Because the numbers involved are small and you are attacking one aspect rather than the root cause. Maybe that's another way the patriarchy has found to manipulate us.

You won't stop misogynistic trans behaviour unless you stop misogyny as a whole. In the same way as in the 80s. lesbians put aside their justified differences with gay men, who were frequently misogynistic, silencing etc. But there was a bigger common thread.

I do appreciate the far more coconsiderate tone we have atm though. It makes a huge difference to the outcome.

("the numbers involved are small" was mainly in reply to OvaHere.)

It's rather like lesbians who insist that they can still be lesbians while sleeping with men. Part of me sympathises, part of me rolls my eyes, and possibly because of my inconsistency most of me doesn't see their inconsistency as a fatal flaw in anything.

Radical feminism is about dismantling roots of patriarchy such as gender stereotypes which place women at the bottom of the gender hierarchy, male supremacy, male VAWG, tackling issues around prostitution, and helping mothers.

Many rad fems reject the idea of gender completely. To me it's just another word for personality.

Far from you are attacking one aspect rather than the root cause transgenderism has become a big part of the root cause of female subordination. And we are fighting this alongside fighting all other aspects too. I am part of a group promoting the Nordic Model. And am involved in ManFriday (Happy Friday by the way!).

Transgenderism is another expression of patriarchy. It reduces us to a set of stereotypes or an intangible "feeling" in a man's head while reality remains unchanged. That males have advantage over females no matter how they identify.

We can do nothing to help women if the word women has no meaning.