The MNHQ Moderation Team: Thread 2

[BarrackerBarmer]

Follow on thread regarding the data breach situation:
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Dear MNHQ

I'm very grateful for the commitment to free speech you've publicly taken, and for Justine's courage this week.

A former disgruntled employee of MN is writing on Twitter about the 'transphobia' of MN staff, and calling you TERFs. She is showing a great deal of bias and intolerance towards women with feminist views, this may well be her honest opinion, which is no big deal I suppose, since she is no longer an employee.

At least, it isn't an issue until she calls a shout out to her
'friends who still work at MN' to report and take down posts by 'transphobic scum', by which she appears to be referring to any poster objecting to being called TERF by her friend.

Regardless of the personal views of the MNHQ staff, who should be as free to hold their own views as I am mine, I am disturbed that there may be a small contingent of employees who are invested in unfair moderation and will not be applying fair-handed principles, at least if the claims of this ex-employee are credible.

Can you please give posters some reassurance that the difficult job of fair-handed moderation isn't being abused by the 'friends' of ex-employees who are 'reporting it all' and taking down posts because any gender criticism means the poster is 'transphobic scum'?

Thank you.

Watching that video was probably the most painful experience I've had, and I've given birth. Young privileged white girl trying to get dahn wid da real kids yeah? Just what aspects of real life has she ever actually been exposed to? Queuing, only to find Costa aren't serving your fave Chai Latte today or Daddy refusing to fund yet another gap year so you can swish your hair and cuddle babies in Borneo, don't really count I'm afraid.

Oh, and Emma you have no sense of rhythm. Don't ever dance again. No one needs to see that shit.

I had not thought of it till someone mentioned it upthread but they are right. Monetizing activism is all the rage these days.

She's everything I have an issue with.. Young (clueless)... Woke, patronising little posh girl who is totally up herself and full of self importance..... It was her arrogance, not her age that has got her into this mess. We still have NO idea what information she has, we need to know and I hope matters are in hand to do just that.

Oh my god that video... I had to watch it through my fingers it was so cringingly awful. Just no.

And can people please stop infantalising the woman. She's not a child and wasn't one when she deliberately and maliciously attacked women on mumsnet.

At 25 I had already been living as an adult, with adult responsibilities, for 9 years.

She's young, sure. But she's a young adult, quite old enough to own her mistakes and not have us excuse them on the grounds of her youth.

Oh dear god at that video.

I will go high.
I will go high.
I will go high.

Why do you claim posh? Not disputing the rest of it - just don't want any group lumbered with her unfairly!

What's this video. Do I have to search 35 pages on my phone

By 25 I had been an activist and rep for several years.

That video refers to the 'I will get you more money' school of student union activism. The corrupt, non idealistic type.

I have nothing but contempt for those who use SRC positions for personal gain rather than to promote a worthy cause.

Who are all the heterosexual women behind her?

@Wombman It's halfway down page 33...

What physically or mentally

Thanks Bee-Up

By 25 I was a lone parent with 2 DC. They're both around that age now. I'd be deeply ashamed if either of them had done what Emma has done.

Working class crime? Off you go to prison

Middle class crime? Poor little thing. Let's show some understanding

Fuck that

Exactly this

Mumsnet internships are good. In a sea of unpaid internships, Mumsnet internships are pretty ethical - they are paid, at a good rate.

And Mumsnet is a serious business. It should command a great deal more respect than it does - the fact it is still dismissed as a silly, on-line chat forum is down to the fact that it is predominantly mothers that write the content/use the site. Not just women - but mothers: that figure of ambivalence and cultural not-taking-seriously.

I can't believe how saddened I am that someone who gets a Mumsnet internship treats that privilege - and the site - with the contempt that a patriarchal culture meets out to mothers (not just women - mothers) - and all those associated with them.

This, of course, is where intersectional feminist analysis should kick in- highlighting that any woman who is a 'mother' inevitably has a hyphenated identity - one that means she is more than 'just' a mother, and then articulates and explores how those other aspects of her identity are diminished/silenced by the 'mother' part of her identity.

And you could make a case that the diminishment of mothers is such that even natal men are potentially disadvantaged when they take on mothering roles ( - or how the mothering role is valorised more when men do it - take your pick).

But, interestingly, all I see here is contempt. Not interest. Not the curiosity of someone deeply impassioned by politics - how it works; how it can be transformed, extended, re-pragmatised; not the passion of someone with an urge to connect, communicate, persuade, ignite, inspire. Just contempt.

Pure contempt for mothers. Because mothers - and anyone on this site is, clearly, part of that lumpy, porridge-like group - are just a big, grey mass, whose sole purpose and point on this planet is to make your dinner, nag you about keeping your room clean, are fun-sponges, and have no actual intellectual or political contribution, whatsoever, worth listening to.

And that goes for any social media company associated with them. No matter how successful it is, or how ethical its internship.

That annoys me quite a lot.

I think there's a real issue about the divide between (some, not all) young women and mothers. It's a real aporia - a site of unexamined reproduction of some of patriarchy's most embedded and hateful ideology - and it is a bit of a problem.

japancat

cat

That was perfection

The lovely Emma's video was opened with a few takes of breast jiggling. I mean come on, a student feminist using page 3 tactics consciously/ironically/empowermently is a possibility yes, but most observers don't look at breast jiggly through their intellectual lens do they? Or have men changed since I last met one. Don't need to answer that.

I actually have been thinking about this a lot, reading and not posting - and this is what had upset me most - it's such a fucking privileged thing to do.

I'm sure MsIntern is very much of the 'check your privilege' bent - but to piss all over a company that gave her a massive boost to her career - a boost given to a young woman because it is feminist, because the founders try and walk the walk with their employment practices - and that boost was delivered in an ethical way (just compare it to what is going on with Monocle at the moment), with pay, with meaningful work, without having to fight other interns for scraps, because the company is feminist -- that, that, is the action of utter privilege.

It's an action that doesn't recognise the political work behind the position. It doesn't recognise the enormous amount of privilege that put MsIntern in that position in the first place. I'm not one for saying everyone has to be grateful for scraps from the table, and biddable, and meek, and docile, but, shit, the majority of the children I come across will be incredibly lucky if they can be raised out of the foreshortened, foreclosed lives that socio-economic under-privilege 'gifts' them. I can't imagine any of them being so incredibly dismissive and cavalier about trashing that.

It really does just make me very sad.

Agree with everything you said Cat

Mumsnet internships are pretty ethical - they are paid, at a good rate.

They are paid at a bloody good rate for someone who is inexperienced. EH was paid more for her internship than I earn in a Band 3 NHS role where I'm responsible for the health of vulnerable adults, and I have 10+ years of experience. Little Miss Privileged has no idea how lucky she was to have that opportunity, but she pissed it away for the sake of a pat on the head from a bunch of TRAs.

Yes, MagneticMan. That's exactly it. And I honestly think that the 'not seeing it' is actually a huge, big issue. How do you get to the point where you can't see that?

What sort of charmed life do you have to have led if you can't see it?

Possibly because it is women's work that made it and put it there?

And possibly because you just think that's how the (your^) world works?

How do you get there?

Seriously.

And the fact that a young woman can't see this - the feminist aspects for sure - is deeply worrying.

Applause for thecatfromjapan.

I actually think there is a lesson here about the invisibility of feminist struggle - and women's work.

I'm old - I know that this has been an issue I've lived with and lived through. I think it's incredibly perilous for feminist struggle - and all political struggles that women are involved in, actually.

I feel I am seeing it acted out, here, with a woman who seems to not see feminist labour. I keep saying it - it's worrying.