ManFriday article in the Daily Mail

[flowersonthepiano]

Good coverage of ManFriday at the Hampstead ponds - including supportive comments from Debbie Hayton, and not so supportive (stop being silly wimmin) comments from Jane Fae
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5796701/Hampstead-ponds-row-continues-transgender-demands-going-far.html

I was the one who spoke in Newcastle about the TRAs coming after the Equality Act after they'd cracked GRA reform. I'd actually been to a session earlier that week about the GRA which was run by a local trans support/lobbying organisation called Be, not by the Guides - I'm not a Guide Leader. The transperson running it spoke about the fact that, although the EA has sex exemptions, they were being worked around by lots of organisations. And that the EA would be next in their sights.

re Twitter shadow banning: under the GDPR you may have a right to challenge Twitter's automated decisions.

Oh thank you Procrastinator1 I hope it won’t come to that but if the threats morph into anything real then I might have to go down that route.

The TRAs hate it when we take any action and they always do this in the aftermath so I think it’s mainly hot air. It’s supposed to frighten me into submission and it’s not going to work. Let them build up their dossier of evidence against me and let them serve proceedings on me. I have no career, no children, nothing they can attack. I’ve come through years of anorexia. They can’t do anything worse to me than that.

So yes, Stonewall are going after female-only spaces, and we can reasonably infer that the Equality Act will be next in their sights.

YYY. I'd forgotten that manifesto commitment.

It's good that we have a copy and paste response to all the disingenuous transactivists who suggest we rely on the Equality Act.

@AvaBelmont, thanks, it's always best to get this direct from the person who was actually there. For some reason I had it in my head that you were a Guider and Be had been training you.

Sweary - can you say specifically what you are supposed to have done?

@SwearyG, if it comes to crowdfunding, I will donate.

Me too.

@Ereshkigal I would hope I'm not alone in questioning and being concerned about the Twitter software's ability to perform this thought policing in a rational and proportionate way

One of the huge problems with AI and automated decision software is that it picks up the bias of its creators. So software written by Silicon Valley dude-bros is unlikely to treat women fairly.

Sarahar, crispbutty, supermatch and the others... I won't waste my time on you and I hope others won't either.
I know what you're up to I'm sure others do too.
Mumsnet wouldn't let me say what I think of you on here but you will never stop people from telling the truth. Men can't become women. Nobody thinks that they can, even you.
Deal with it.

@MsMcWoodle - I get threatened with police reports for every ManFriday action. The changing rooms had them reporting me for sharing photos of women without their consent (they were pictures of me and I think I consented) and they also complain about us going into the changing rooms.

They also appear to be keeping a dossier of things I said that they disagree with. I am not positive about Mermaids and say I think transing children and telling them they can change sex is child abuse. I won’t stop saying this because it’s true. This is where they’re countering about libel and civil action.

The shadow ban is clearly due to being a woman with an opinion.

Sarahar, crispbutty, supermatch and the others... I won't waste my time on you and I hope others won't either.

I don't. I have better things to do with my time.

Right. Thanks Sweary. I am now going to really concentrate on the children thing. It is so important that people like you aren't silenced about this. Every child who gets started of on the puberty blocker route is another tragedy waiting to happen.
I am going to start a new letter writing effort concentrating on this. And I have other plans too...

One of the huge problems with AI and automated decision software is that it picks up the bias of its creators. So software written by Silicon Valley dude-bros is unlikely to treat women fairly.

Quite. A programmer friend of mine has also pointed this out to me.

swearyg

I don't like it when journalists frame women in terms of who their parents or partner are and it felt pretty invasive to me.

Brogrammers, he called them.

I'd better read the thread...

I think the final sentence of the shadowbanning process is the key,

"All of this shadow banning will be handled by an algorithm, meaning who gets banned will depend mostly on the reactions of other people."

So the human involvement is in the creation of the algorithm and then in the active reporting.

If there are established grounds / words etc that will prompt a ban, these can then be used effectively by the people reporting & as the decision is automated, likely successful.

It would be interesting to know how Twitter manages the bias that inevitably exists as some people may be more likely/able to report than others.

I imagine - but don't know, obvs - that Twitter keeps a personal reputation score for each of us in addition to the obvious follower, like and retweet counts: how many people we are blocked by; how many reports are made against us and the reputation levels of the reporters; engagement rates. They might even do sentiment analysis on replies to our tweets?

If they do, imagine the weight the block lists carry. The purpose of block lists might be more than simple echo chamber creation.

I'm interested in the twitter business as I got banned from MN briefly because I was posting that I didn't believe it made a huge amount of difference to grass roots participation in sport that transwomen could compete as women.

I think there are plenty of very serious issues with accepting the dogma that transwomen are women, but they centre on areas where abuse of that system will put women in danger, like in refuges, hospitals and prisons. I also have grave concerns about teaching children that playing with toys stereotypically associated with the opposite gender means your body might be 'wrong' rather than that toys are toys and for use by anyone (which is what I believe).

I just don't care which particular tiny minority of people get to win the gold medals at the olympics. It will never be me or anyone I know, and its always going to be massively unfair on the majority of people who want it to be them, and we will continue to enjoy our sports week to week at the level we can compete at regardless...so meh.

Anyway, the point is I got banned because I was upsetting a lot of people who didn't agree with me...

I think basically I got accused of trolling because my point of view differed from the majority on the thread....and because I keep stating it every time there was yet another thread about it. (there were a lot as it was peak Caster Semenya controversy at the time.) I think MNs modding on trans threads has become more nuanced since then.

In summary, I don't think it is at all appropriate to silence the minority, whether its MN or twitter...and even whether they are actually the minority, which I'm not sure the GRA critical even are!

Ok, Jordan Newman, here's my comment

Fuck off, you creepy, threatening, misogynist. And take your 'team' with you.

seconded.