Spartacus believes in biology.

[HairyBallTheorem]

Transwomen are biologically male. They are born biologically male and they remain biologically male.

I accept that it must be very hard to suffer from gender dysphoria. I wish transwomen well. I support their right not to be discriminated against in housing, employment and in life in general.

But biology matters. It is biology which means that women in Ireland and across South America and in many other parts of the world are the ones who get pregnant and are then forced to give birth against their will by political systems that deny them the right to abortion. It is biology which enables people in cultures which practice FGM to recognise which babies are female and thus decide which ones' genitals need slicing off with rusty razor blades. It is biology which dictates which foetuses are aborted simply for being female, which infants are allowed to die simply for being female. It is biology which means we are, on average, smaller and less physically strong than men and thus at higher risk of domestic violence up to and including murder (2 a week in this country, into the hundreds in Russia which has recently legalised domestic violence).

I am not prepared to lie about biology. Facts matter. The intersection of facts and political beliefs matters.

This is a hill on which I'm prepared to be banned from Mumsnet.

@Hecalledmecarrots

WeGoHigh versus biological fact.

This is not going to end well!

No not versus biological fact, versus personal attacks!

She's letting us state fact. Just on a IW/LM thread, don't mention pronouns.

@JustineMumsnet
I do understand your position and appreciate it. The thread mentioned has some really important contributions, including that of a mother desperately concerned for her daughter. Please do not delete an entire thread. This has significant and wide-ranging implications.

That parent only joined the IW thread near the end.

I cannot pick my jaw from the floor in regards to the Ben Shapiro video. It's shocking, and even more so that all the other people sit there, cowardly, meekly ignoring biological fact.

I am Spartacus. Biology is real. I have no problem with people living their lives as they wish - I have trans friends. But I will not buy into a delusion and I will not accept the violence and hatred shown towards women.

Justine, I know what you mean by your post, but there is a very, very fine line here.

For example, IW taking offence at being addressed as "You guys" by Julia Hartley-Brewer.

Personal attack or not?

Thank you Justine, we understand.

Thank you for coming on to explain, Justine

I agree that there's a big difference between talking in theoretical terms in the abstract and discussing named individuals. However, sometimes (many times?) in feminism, the personal is the political. It's very hard, for instance, to discuss exactly what is so offensive about D. Muscato choosing international women's day, to tweet from a women's shelter where Muscato was taking up a valuable, much-needed place, the words "suck my dick", without referring to Muscato's biology and the origins of Muscato's sense of entitlement (and not-so-veiled threats of sexual violence).

And at the most extreme, it is infuriating to see cases like that of the absconded rapist who police were forced to describe in public information broadcasts as "a woman, who may be dressed as a man", rather than "a cross-dressing man who has now reverted to men's clothes in an effort to evade capture." This actually went into the realms of dangerous, because it was actively misleading women who might have been future victims as to what this criminal looked like.

I can see that the IW thread must have had you tearing your hair out, and I can quite see. IW is a terribly difficult case to walk the line between accuracy and politeness (not to mention the fact that there may be threats of litigation lurking behind the scenes). On the one hand I don't think IW is in a particularly stable place, in terms of IW's own happiness, and one doesn't want to be unkind. Furthermore, IW's behaviour, while irritating, clearly doesn't present any threat of physical violence. On the other hand, it's very hard to watch IW shouting down elderly women on TV without reflecting on the underlying power dynamics (which, in fairness, I don't think IW is aware of in any overt sense - I think it is entirely subconscious).

@Hecalledmecarrots

Justine, I know what you mean by your post, but there is a very, very fine line here.

For example, IW taking offence at being addressed as "You guys" by Julia Hartley-Brewer.

Personal attack or not?

I agree it's not easy - certainly taking issue with a ridiculous comment is fine, of course. A thread with 300 posts saying IW's a man isn't. Most of the time, inevitably we'll be deciding upon something a bit more nuanced but, in short, we're much more likely to be deleting things said about named individuals than about issues because they have the potential to be more hurtful/ come across as mean.

I tend to agree with Justine. Sometimes it's not worth pushing a point, or picking when you do.

a thread which is specifically about a named individual who's self identified as a women and which repeatedly calls that person he or a man is potentially hurtful and unkind

The truth does hurt sometimes. That makes it no less the truth than it is, and insisting that women on MUMsnet toe the trans party line and say that men can be women IS hurtful and unkind!

Making women LIE about biology and reality is NOT "going high". It is tone policing and it is telling women they are not allowed to be angry about something they bloody well SHOULD be angry about if they value protection of female spaces!

I think I understand...? Maybe...? I'm going to have to be extra extra careful about what I say for a while until I'm positive I do get it, which isn't nice but what can I do.
This current situation is not fun for autistic people.

Anywho... can you clarify whether referring to someone in the public eye - no particular example here of who - as having been socialised as a male, or maybe "experienced masculine socialisation" is acceptable?

Justine, just to add, I don't envy you and the team having to police this hornets' nest and thank you for allowing at least some freedom of speech on the trans debate.

Thank you for the clarification Justine, and once again thank you for sticking your neck out. I know you don't have to.

We're a bunch of stroppy fuckers, but I for one appreciate what you're doing. It's very important.

No not versus biological fact, versus personal attacks!

Saying that an adult human male is a man is not a personal attack.

It is the very definition of "man": adult human male.

This particular adult human male, and several others, may have had surgical changes to their body, but that makes them a facsimile of a woman, and not a woman.

It's not "going high" if women have to lie!

I broadly agree Justine and do appreciate the stance you and MNHQ have taken.

I tend to avoid using pronouns at all (I'm sure this will become a future goal of offensiveness shortly).

I do think that if someone is in the public eye either as an activist or in a official capacity it should be acceptable to point out male pattern behaviour when targeted towards women. #nametheproblem

@JustineMumsnet

Thank you for the message and the clarification.

I'm extremely grateful for the stand you have taken.

I appreciate the clarification and have so much empathy for MNHQ having to navigate this.

I've read rather than posted for the last 2 days precisely because my thoughts had already been pretty much voiced by other (more articulate) posters and there didn't seem to be any point in reiterating the same thing. Sometimes (not always - Spartacus being a good example) less is more effective.

There is an interesting evolution to this. I now see it quite frequently.

Like today for instance, that Zoe Tur clip.

I, and many others, saw it ages ago. I had the same visceral reaction that the women on here are having now. Today.

There are other clips, like the one from Tucker Carlson, where he asks a TRA if it's correct that a man can just identify as a woman tomorrow and take women's scholarships and women's business loans (this is in the US). And the activist nods and says yes.

I'm sure lots of women haven't seen that yet, despite it being quite old.

There are numerous examples like this.

As concern over this issue is spreading more and more women are turning to these boards and discovering all this stuff for the first time.

The same outrage and fear that has been fuelling these boards from the beginning, is reigniting every day for entirely different, new people.

Hence the issue of misgendering - it's actually a rehash. It's more or less what Spartacus was about originally. The ins and outs of censorship.

This isn't going to go away HQ.

It's only going to get worse. As more more people show up. Which they are. In droves. Either completely new to mumsnet, or more likely, new to this issue.

I totally hear you. I know you're under pressure.

I hope that these two things run in tandem: Public awareness, and the acceptance that censorship is wrong, and women joining these boards to voice their objection to the dismantling of their rights.

I believe they will. But it might be a bit of a rough ride to start.

@Idontdowindows

No not versus biological fact, versus personal attacks!

Saying that an adult human male is a man is not a personal attack.

It is the very definition of "man": adult human male.

This particular adult human male, and several others, may have had surgical changes to their body, but that makes them a facsimile of a woman, and not a woman.

It's not "going high" if women have to lie!

No, it's about singling people out personally and the effects of the volume of posts about an individual. We're asking you to put yourself in someone else's shoes here. I don't know if you've ever been on the "wrong" side of a Mumsnet thread, where the sheer volume of posts taking an opposite side to yours can feel almost overwhelming. By way of an example we've often had people writing in saying they feel 'bullied' when in fact what has happened is a lot of people in quick succession have disagreed with their view/side of the argument. That's why we're more likely to delete the personal comments but we're not saying we always will - as HairyBallTheorem and others have said, it can be nonsensical sometimes to raise an important issue without reference to individuals.

We're asking you to put yourself in someone else's shoes here.

I am. I always do. I put myself in the shoes of all women affected by misogyny and sexism and all women attacked by TRAs on the streets, their livelihoods shattered, hounded off social media with rape threats and vile harassment.

Thanks Justine

That seems pretty clear to me. We just need to avoid pile-ons with respect to particular individuals.

How can we describe the entitled, some might say stereotypically male, behaviour of people who are legally female without using the word male? I know it sounds like I'm being pernickety but it is really important to be able to point out and name male socialisation and entitlement, particularly in those who have transitioned legally as it does show that the differences in the way we have been raised remain.

IW, for example, complains about misgendering when people highlight their behaviour that shows they have transitioned. Is it not ok to say someone shows male behaviour, or male entitlement, or male violence when they have transitioned to the fiction of legally female?

I had a post deleted for saying this:
"[I found an interview between x and y] interesting but something is off when a male with no experience of something is invited to speak on it over lots and lots of women who run it [Mumsnet] or use it regularly"

And I had another post deleted which said this:
"[X] is in their 50's aren't they? Male people in their fifties should not get to shout at women like stroppy teens, in private or in public, it's very clearly abusive."

These weren't personal attacks, they were feminist analysis of a situation that they were happy to be publicly involved in. I was told I "did seem to be referring to [X and X] as men", that "these sorts of posts" needed to be "reined in" and that I should reply saying I was "happy" to "get on board".

I think what you have done in the past week @JustineMumsnet is brilliant and I know you must be under attack from certain activists, but expecting women to not mention sex when discussing the different behaviours and expectations between male people and female people is not a workable compromise. You (Mumsnet) are being pressured to censor female voices in order to validate a small number of males. You have countless women here ready and willing to stand with you if you will just stand with us.

These activists do not have fact or the law on their side, that is why they use intimidation and threats - to make it seem like they are stronger than they are. It feels like gaslighting, abuse and erasure when we are expected to submit to that.