Fucking hell, has anyone looked at the F Word website lately?

[GorgonLondon]

They have really drunk the Kool Aid, and then some.

It's an apparently feminist website (I loved it back in the day) that is now predominantly concerned with bigging up Paris Lees etc.

Have a read of their policy on 'transphobia'
www.thefword.org.uk/about/the_f-word_bloggers_position_o/

I'm so glad that I have all of you, vipers!

Yeah Jill, there was a point when every post she made had 200 comment wars underneath it about why she was such a horrible person because she hadn't centred someone else's experience.

I just wondered if she was really on board with it all or if she started to see through it.

The F word now seems like just a site for aspiring journalists to have a practise. Does anyone actually read it anymore?

Yes, even Twisty's blog died in the ass once she drank the koolaid. It is probably now a blog about food selfies and grammar now.

Feministe and Shakesville provide an interesting compare and contrast in terms of similar dynamics going on in the comments and the impact that had on both sites. I think that many of the handmaidens disrupting other feminist sites now learned their tactics at one or the other.

Helen G's first post there was in 2008 and after telling the fascinating tale of their life story and recent surgery trip to Bangkok, then plugging Lisa Harney and Julia Serano, G launched into attack on radical feminists. That was the exact point the f word totally gave up giving a shit about women imo. Quote:

"I have been concerned, however, to find hostility towards trans women (in particular) from some radical feminists online. It is a truism to say that, to some ‘womyn-born-womyn’ (and that term in itself reflects a worryingly biocentrist viewpoint), while women are second-class citizens, trans women are simply second-class women. I’m still not sure if that’s trans-misogynist, transphobic or both."

"To be told that as a trans woman I am variously reinforcing the gender binary, supporting the patriarchy, using male privilege to gain access into women’s spaces, that I ‘take up too much social space’, that my experience and identity is not valid and that I am not a real woman (whatever that may be), demonstrates an insulting and offensive attitude which can only have come from bigoted transphobes. They would deny not only my lived reality as a trans woman but also what it takes to change sex. This is not something I have ‘chosen’, any more than anybody ‘chooses’ to suffer any medical condition."

www.thefword.org.uk/2008/01/a_period_of_tra_1/

Did anyone read the cis privilege checklist? If only!!! Who do these men think the are? Shame on amy feminst supporting the concept of cis privilege in a world where girls are shamed for having periods, too poor to buy menstrual products, die childbirth, aborted for being female, fgm, murdered by their partners, raped by their male partners etc etc

"Not really sure what point you are making about 2014 there Cote,"

I'm sorry that wasn't clear for you.

The points I was making were:

(1) TRA tried to get MNHQ to formulate transphobia in a way that would stifle debate on here like it did elsewhere, and drive away the feminists. They failed, imho because we talked about it first and MNHQ saw the clusterfuck such a policy would be on a predominantly female parenting website.

(2) F-Word has the same definitions of transphobia back then as the ones in the OP of this thread, written yesterday.

Kim (OP of that thread) got all their posts deleted at some point so you don't see it there, but F-Word definition of transphobia was posted on that thread as a possible guideline for MNHQ's future policy.

That didn't happen.

The F word now seems like just a site for aspiring journalists to have a practise. Does anyone actually read it anymore?

I'm not sure - I know I stopped reading years back - proabably around the same time as a lot of you and for the same reasons. I find it so depressing that so many feminist sites and forums changed for all the same reasons. It really is silencing women.

As an aside I followed one of the links there is a cis-privilege list - it was an extensive, exhausting list (and I mean exhausting not exhaustive) and a lot of it didn't even apply to me (or many women I expect). So many links to 'educate the women.'

Reminds me why I stopped reading. I read about feminism because I am interested in and care about women who are oppressed because they are biologically women and its getting harder now to find places where you can simply discuss this without a bloody side show.

Joan: Helen G's first post there was in 2008

Ah yes, I remember that grand entry. Helen G was busy in the comments in the months leading up to that. Basically, the entire takeover of the site was down to change of editor, and for the life of me, I cannot recall her name, but I had seen her IRL at a meeting, and I was not impressed there either (no action came out of that meeting, probably to save the women's library, again, but the talk was about maybe some action sort of). Hang on! Finally thought of the name, I called her 'Jessie-wessie'. Her and her limp lettuce politics.

@Iamawoman - I hadn't read your post - I see we are thinking the same thing!

Ok thanks Cote.
They would be barking mad to adopt the F-Word's looney tunes list.

Did anyone read the cis privilege checklist?

Eeeek, I shudder to remember that outbreak of unsanity. I remember the Oppression Olympics rather well (unfortunately). I did coin the expression for its follow-on companion, the Privilege Pissing Contest. Which was all in the guise of 'denouncing' one's privileges, but came out a lot like bragging. Of course, all designed to make women pay penance for, ummm, existing. First on that list should have been Breathing, clearly.

Jess McCabe, you're right LaSqrrl, her introduction as editor did create a shift.

The shift was within, maybe 6-8 weeks? Then 'bam' full on floodgates. It took me hours to remember her first name.

Kim (OP of that thread) got all their posts deleted at some point so you don't see it there, but F-Word definition of transphobia was posted on that thread as a possible guideline for MNHQ's future policy.

So has our twitter friend. I wonder if they're aware of it from then or just coincidence?

twitter.com/mumsnetreport/status/993942083776995329?s=21

1) TRA tried to get MNHQ to formulate transphobia in a way that would stifle debate on here like it did elsewhere, and drive away the feminists. They failed, imho because we talked about it first and MNHQ saw the clusterfuck such a policy would be on a predominantly female parenting website.

Yes, tactics don't change much.

libfems do my fucking head in.
Fun-feminism/feminism-lite thats more about an identity or a slogan on a fucking t-shirt than about emancipation of women

Much feminist. This is what JM chucked out women for:
twitter.com/helen_bleep/status/572887101500489729
From Helen G - "Shag a TERF? I'd rather remove my own appendix with a warm spoon."

If I recall correctly, the fall of the F-Word seemed to be over in a matter of less than six months? It was pretty damned fast. Big part due to heavy moderation. Mustn't offend the bros-in-skirts y'all.

**Kittyclaws - yes it was exhausting-seems it was compiled by someone with some kind of psychopathy about women!!

Someone mentioned Manboobz. I remember that and how unbearable it became there.

It only takes one or two TRAs to destroy a site too, because narcissism.

Yep, at a time when online feminism was booming Jess M took over the only feminist site which mainstream media (well, the guardian) ever bothered to look at and killed its popularity so quickly all that was left was a jane fae helen g etc circle jerk. I just looked and the f word uk twitter account posts regularly and supposedly has 45000 followers but almost never any interaction with any of them.

And Jess is now the features editor at Inside Housing. Pushing women aside for men doesnt seem to have paid off in the end.

Mainstream uk media I mean.

Was Kim147 the same person as Ego?

Manboobz is one site I had never visited, ever. Strange that.

killed its popularity so quickly
Yes! So bloody fast, made your head spin. Unreal, really unreal!