Don't quit Mumsnet

[Dorade]

I've seen quite a few GC women on twitter saying they are quitting Mumsnet.

As a strategy that is beyond bonkers.

While there is inconsistency in moderation and daft moves like allowing people to report posts via twitter, the fact remains that Mumsnet has been instrumental in the backlash against the excesses of trans ideology, and setting up a different forum will be completely ineffective by comparison.

I am sure MNHQ are treading a difficult line but us being able to use this forum is immensely valuable. The media take MN seriously. Lurkers are being converted at a rate of knots.

Do not go. Stay and fight.

@Tanith I had no idea that had happened...and yup totally agree...

I liked your post MickHucknallspinkpancakes. There's a cognitive dissonance between "trans women just want to go about their daily lives" and trans identified males actually asking me for something, such as insisting that I refer to them with a pronoun that is incorrect. The live and let live exhortation needs to work both ways, given that I for instance choose to live in a state of both kindness and truth.

I agree that it will be impossible to completely close it down. TRAs should be aware that it's actually better for them that these discussions happen on FWR and only rarely in AIBU and Chat. More people will see them in the latter and even the most dedicated of TRA evangelists would have trouble keeping up the stalking on such high traffic boards.

Keep posting everyone. It is one of the best boards on here. So much to read, so much to understand, and so much to do.

@faceicle you've hit the nail on the head; trans people can believe what they wish, and express themselves how they wish, and I would always defend their right to that. But as you say it goes both ways, they do not get to tell other people to uphold their belief system instead of ones own views; the kind of acceptance they want from others is the very kind of acceptance they themselves are unwilling to give. We have just as much a right to reject trans dogma as they have to embrace it.

Staying here.

I don't want to go anywhere. It's because of this place that I realised what was going on, and the women here are so incredibly bright and funny I would really miss it.
Very concerned about the 'misgendering' thing though. I tried to toe the line, and failed.
I think that this served the TRAs' purpose in two ways.
1)Made me have to write in a very convoluted and confusing manner, which:
2)Ended up in me slipping and using the correct pronoun once, so the whole post was deleted.
Double score for the TRAs.

Made me have to write in a very convoluted and confusing manner

Yes. For me it comes right under Mental Load and performative hoop jumping. A useful way around it is just to use names.

Okay, so we are no longer allowed to tell the truth.

I have considered whether Mumsnet is the place for me and it looks like it isn’t. I hope that they will reconsider, but for now, I’m out.

Best of luck to those of you who continue. I’ll be around in the community on Twitter and in the CATT group on Facebook.

Thanks to those on these boards who have taught me so much.

I'm seriously considering leaving MN. Not sure yet what I will do

But this thread, and the one of lurkers, is definitely persuasive. Thank you for giving me something to think about to counter the frankly bizarre behaviour by MNHQ this week

No, Oleanna ... you can't go. Pleeeaaaase!

I still can't quite work out why so many people and so many organisations are running scared of, in statistical terms, a handful of puffed up self-entitled, egotistical bullies.

attacks on free speech

MN have been clear that although they support free speech, they don't support a free for all. I'm glad they won't stand by and see free speech be weaponised in the way that you and some others have attempted to do.

If a site of 12 million behaves as if 'misgendering' is already a crime, it becomes so much easier to argue that this is already social convention and may as well be codified into law,

Misgendering is oppressive and discriminatory and that is already social convention. It is already criminal behaviour.

UK Parliament Women and Equalities Committee 2015:

279.Further, under the Equality Act 2010, all organisations (including employers and public bodies, such as the NHS) must respect a trans person’s acquired / affirmed gender and any associated change of name. Failure to change pronouns, names and gender markers (including honorifics and pronouns) on records in respect of a trans person would (with a few exceptions)281 constitute unlawful direct discrimination under the Act.

280.Despite these clear legal principles governing records in respect of trans people, we heard significant evidence that trans people encounter problems with “misgendering” (failure to acknowledge a person’s acquired / affirmed gender) and “deadnaming” (failure to acknowledge a person’s change of name) in many situations.
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwomeq/390/39009.htm

Equality and Human Rights Commission:

Harassment is when someone makes you feel humiliated, offended or degraded because you are transsexual.

For example a transsexual woman is having a drink in a pub with friends. The landlord keeps calling her ‘Sir’ and ‘he’ when serving drinks, despite her complaining about it.
Harassment can never be justified. However, if an organisation or employer can show it did everything it could to prevent people who work for it from behaving like that, you will not be able to make a claim for harassment against it, although you could make a claim against the harasser.

@CATTinahat Please don't go, I've enjoyed your contributions to the discussion. We are strongest together!

You too @OlennasWimple Stay please

What about cis and terf?

Perhaps those could be dropped too. I've been called terf on twitter, and cis on here. I don't like it.

But that's probably not considered harassment or illegal because we're just women.

I hear you, OP, but it really depends on just how ridiculous the moderation and Talk guidelines get, and how MNHQ address the various security issues brought to their attention. Right now security is a mess and the response to attempts to point that out has been discouraging. In terms of moderation, there's been a marked clamping down on the ability of women here to express themselves, and an at times downright authoritarian attempt to control specific conversations and ensure that they proceed exactly as the current moderator would like them to. At a certain point that becomes intolerable.

The role that HQs decision played in a user getting threatened and doxxed was a bit of a final straw for me. I'm hanging on to see if they respond adequately to the many pleas from users to admit that that was a terrible decision and reverse course, but it's not looking great so far and we seem to have hit a wall of "how dare users tell us what to do or question our decisions".

Aw, thanks guys (apols for any offence caused by any misgendering....)

I dunno

Apart from anything else, MN keeps making stupid and predictable mistake after stupid and predictable mistake, and it's irritating me more than it should. Telling random tweeters that it's fine to flag up MN posts that they don't like, without announcing the new reporting policy on MN itself ....Well, hands up who could have seen what would happen? (Albeit I didn't think that death threats would come through quite so soon)

It feels a bit like when M&S decided that the way to boost its flagging women's wear sales was to stock things like that hideous pink dress rather than a broad range of good quality basics: We all knew how that would work out, and couldn't fathom anyone who spent more than two minutes thinking about it could conclude that it was a brilliant plan. I don't want to give up a beloved institution that has been so important to me and helpful over the years, but when it's behaving like a suicidal lemming...

Maybe I just need a MN break for a while.

My fear is FWR will shut down but MN will do it in a way where the posters can be blamed for bringing it on themselves

I wouldn't blame them if they did.

There have been some appalling threads this week. Goady threads which are supposed to be funny but frankly just make the forum look ridiculous.

Threads , knowing what MNHQ have been up against, which seem to have no purpose other than to be inflammatory and make their life difficult.

Threads stirring up fear.

Threads where even the sort of trans women some of you claim to support are attacked.

I have been thinking of stopping posting- not because of the reasons given on this thread but because I don't want to lumped in with the "we" referred to on the "I am trans woman" thread.

I think the threads look a bit shit at the moment.

There's been some entirely necessary piss-taking, but a lot of it is a bit - 'not in the spirit of FWR' of being breath-taking genius.

Its predictable though, because it's chilling to have our posts arbitrarily deleted in a draconian fashion to the bidding of hostile misogynists. Is it worth putting the effort in?

@OlennasWimple I am quite new here but I really hope you don't go! The posts of the last few days have shown how important MN is for challenging the misogyny of trans activism and the attempts of the TA's to not just completely trample over our rights, but also to silence any and all dissent to their absolutely regressive af gender politics.

MN is more important than ever, TA's want feminists gone from here, but even if MN stupidly acquiesce somewhat, and i totally agree that they have, we can still discuss everything we want to, even if we have to make some annoying tweaks.

Anyway, I just wanted to be another voice to say to the women who have spent a lot of time on here that as someone quite new I am so, so grateful for what you all created on this board, it has made an enormous contribution in so many ways for women and girls, and I really hope to continue that with the many amazing women on this board. I think we all need to take a break from all this sometimes, but I really hope you come back if you do...

Misgendering is oppressive and discriminatory and that is already social convention. It is already criminal behaviour.

'misgendering' is a stupid made up word for 'correctly referring to a person's sex'.

Biology isn't oppressive and discriminatory.

Forcing people to pretend a lie is true - well that really is oppressive - especially waggling the law at them.

It is controlling, threatening and authoritarian.

Leaving achieves nothing except giving the TRAs what they want and giving MNHQ less trouble.
Imo moderation has always been uneven on FWR. The TRAs are just MRAs in different clothes. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of leaving.

@permissiontospeaksir I think the only people who lose if feminists stop posting here is women and girls. I'm very much of the mindset at the moment of not letting the TA's drive us away. They are misogynists so they will keep trying to shut women down, but if the best they can get is a few post deletions out of hundreds, they will only succeed if we let them.

whoputthecatout

They are white men with money and connections who have been organizing and working toward this political erasure of females for years.
There have been other times in history where a concerted effort was made by men to erase women from the written record and drive us out of the commons. We are living through one and it is a dreadful experience.