Feminism chat under attack

[InfiniteSheldon]

I'm seeing a lot of threads being started and posts on threads that are subtle and not so subtle attempts to shut the topic down or make it unusable.

To put this into context, it's happening and has happened before. Those of us who voted Leave saw this in the EU boards now there has been an almost total shut down of the Leave voice because of an aggressive and determined close down of speech. Those of us worried about self I'd are being slowly shutdown too. I don't care if you voted Leave or Remain I'm just using this to highlight that this happens we need to not sleepwalk.into it again.

I've seen the #weseeyou and it seems a great response (fairly sure some of the responses to these type of threads are planted too). I know you can't ban posters from engaging and obviously I wouldn't want to. But feeding the trolls doesn't help.

Seriously? You feel that the anti-selfID voices on this board are being shut down?

Try posting something sympathetic to a trans perspective and see what happens.

The weseeyou and other unrelenting troll hunting strategies are being applied indiscriminately by GC posters who are seeing conspiracy, plants, attacks and shut downs in every dissenting post.

And now it's escalating to whole threads alleging mass trolling.

How come you don't just report every single one of the posts you suspect of lacking veracity or bonafides to MNHQ, like they ask you to, and then see what they say?

Agree OP - it's a sustained and very fucking obvious attack.

I'm choosing, on the whole, to ignore them. I see them. We must just keep talking, raising issues with self ID and keep sex-segregated spaces.

The more awareness is raised - the better, and in a funny sort of way, the twitter outrage may bring more users over here to see what the fuss is all about. Many have been peak-trans'd by FWR thread

everyone is entitled to debate. the deliberate attemtps to shut down the debate are not acceptable but debating on the board and holding different views, is what free speech is about. abuse is not acceptable, but different people have different views of what this constitutes.

Yes I've seen it too. You mean apparently innocuous threads like : what would you do?

Plus the obvious derailing, trolling, starting threads which are only aboutvtrans and nothing to do with FWR. I particularly enjoyed MNHQ's decision to move one of them to Newbies' Corner 😏

Ernest the Sealion is a tedious poster, but its best to remember to talk to the people lurking.

Derailing tactics stand out a mile, and the nastier their posts become the more followers they lose.

I think we need to just ignore the derailers and stick to the subject title. It's usually obvious after looking at a few posts in a thread if the OP is just after a bun fight and deliberately winding people up. People are free to participate in these if they want but be aware that there are a lot of TRAs on here at the moment trying to derail threads and make this forum more argumentative and less supportive than usual.

This thread decoded...

disagreeing = shutting threads down
derailing = adding nuance or context I don't understand
we see you = I have no counter argument that makes sense
shutting down speech = Mumsnet removed my abusive posts
Trolls = people who don't see the world exactly like me

Hope this helps...

Yes I've seen it too. You mean apparently innocuous threads like : what would you do?

Perhaps I should stick to the other sections of the site. Seeing as self-ID is a big topic and there's a lot of discussion about it, I was curious about what people would do if they were in a certain situation, how they'd handle it. Perhaps SuperDandy does have a point. I've seen pretty quickly that there's an awful lot of paranoia on here.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you

Well, if ibaker23 posts weren't the definition of derailment, I don't know what it. But if someposters don't see as that, we must be paranoid, InfiniteSheldon.

Someposters just like to increase the bandwidth of what is relevant.

I think the comment someone made on another thread was spot on: it's actually fine to have posters come on here with arguments which go against the prevailing view of most posters, because unlike for instance the Guardian's "Comment is Free" (aka "Comment is censored") there is no blanket modding policy. So long as you stick to tackling the arguments, some interesting counter points can be made.

There's an obvious example of this in action where someone who I gather has a long and inglorious online history of carrying out "Gish Gallops" on boards like CIF and Feminist Current has posted a scientific paper. The result has been quite a few posters on here who are professional scientists critiquing the paper, discussing its methodology, the statistical robustness or otherwise of its results, and whether it actually establishes what the OP thinks it establishes. I think it may have come as a bit of a surprise to that OP who is used to posting loads of random links on CIF then watching as any gender critical responses get deleted.

There's another thread which I suspect may have been started in the hope of provoking screen grabs out of context for twitter, but again, it's been met with patient, evidence based argument, such that the OP has more or less painted themselves into a corner where they're pretty much having to deny that there is any difference in levels of violence between the male and female population - again, leading to evidence based rebuttals.

The "Socratic Sealion" was pretty annoying, but I think they've been escorted from the building now!

bethmins on his/her first post on mumsnet has just provided an excellent example of the sort of deliberate antagonism coming on to this forum.

Ah, but being a GF is different when you're also Righteous and Attempting to Enlighten the Gender Heathens, Rebecca.

I'm sorry Milly! I misread

bethmins on his/her first post on mumsnet has just provided an excellent example of the sort of deliberate antagonism coming on to this forum

It might not be a first post. Posters name change. I would also say your reaction to dismiss it out of hand rather proves the point.

The list omits my favourite- "you must be a man"- frequently used against posters with a long posting history. My favourite one of those was the poster who had posted on other boards about her and her children leaving an abusive partner but was apparently still a man.

Of course posting history has to be taken at face value but if some of these so called men are really men they spent months and years building up a female profile. Seems a bit unlikely.

More and more I’ve come to the conclusion that much of the debate on both sides is more about scoring points on line and nothing to do with the issues in real life.

I also see a race to be perceived as the victim. The premise of this thread being a prime example.

Lots of posters on the gendercritical side will say that they are happy to have a debate however when somebody pops up that they don't recognise to start a debate, they are accused of being here to shut the board down and get ammunition for Twitter etc. You can't have it both ways. You either want to debate or you don't.

I also see a race to be perceived as the victim. The premise of this thread being a prime example.

This.

Re victim hierarchy: feminists can't just sit there and ignore it when TRA claim to be the most oppressed people ever. It has to be challenged.

I also see a race to be perceived as the victim.

This is FWR. We are here to talk about our rights and experiences. When someone points out male suicide rates, or male on male violence, and women then talk about sexual abuse rates, we aren't racing to be the most victimised, we are focusing on women's rights.

There is no race to be a victim women are the victims in self ID