Bloke here. Apologies for the length of this post.
I’ve lurked on Mumsnet for years. I think for lurkers it’s like listening in to private conversations; something which most people would not want to be caught doing in real life, but which is entirely acceptable in the context of an online forum. Because men and women are so different (a gulf of sex, i.e. biology and lived experiences, which cannot truly be crossed by either group), there is something especially compelling about listening in to conversations between members of the opposite sex. I’ve seen comments made by other men elsewhere online which articulate gender critical positions and concepts, which I suspect can only have come from them lurking on Mumsnet and the FWR boards.
There are literally millions of people who visit this website and just read threads without ever joining and posting. Most will doubtless be women, but there are a lot of men who lurk on Mumsnet. Only a small percentage of women and men will venture onto the threads in Feminist Chat, but a small percentage of millions is still a significant number. Significant enough that it will include journalists like James Kirkup and numerous other opinion formers and influential people.
Mumsnet has become the predominant place where the public debate in the UK about transgender rights vs. women’s rights is taking place. Moreover, in the absence of politicians debating these issues (as observed by James Kirkup), the public debate on Mumsnet fills that vacuum and takes the place of the political debate, and will influence what politicians eventually do about the proposed GRA and these issues more generally.
Here, the various arguments and issues are raised, tested, and demolished, changed or refined. In the process, the debate repeatedly spirals back to the fundamental issue: what is the definition of woman. Justine Roberts and commentators have talked about how this debate is a matter of free speech, but as many have noted it is about something even more fundamental – the very meaning of words. Ultimately, communication between people depends upon using words that have shared meaning. When two groups use the same words when discussing something critical to mean things that are completely antithetical, there is an unbridgeable divide. In that situation where one of the groups is a tiny minority, it loses.
‘Man’ and ‘woman’ have meanings shared and accepted both by the medical/scientific community and overwhelmingly by the several billion people on this planet, who know in which category they and the people around them are. Those meanings cannot include a further supplementary meaning which is the complete opposite of the shared and accepted meaning, because that would result in the word ultimately being denuded of meaning.
Society and ordinary people will not accept the meaning of words being destroyed in this way. As is already happening on this board, people will simply find other words, or create them, to express an agreed and shared meaning in order for people to be able to communicate.
For those promoting the transgender side, ‘cis’ has the same significance. Without it, they cannot define themselves in the category of ‘woman’ in a way which acknowledges their differences from biological women (and the majority of them know that they cannot simply pretend that those differences do not exist, otherwise they are seen as hopelessly delusional). Those differences are so manifestly obvious that if there is no alternative qualifying label which defines biological women as a subset of women, then by definition they must be men, because those differences are the very defining characteristics of the category called ‘men’.
For most people words are used to describe a shared reality, for transgender proponents they are used to create a reality which only they share – easily sustainable online amongst themselves, but not in the real world, and not even actually believed in by their supporters.
When push comes to shove and it actually affects them, the vast majority of ordinary people are gender critical - especially men. Overwhelmingly men will not want to have sex with a transwoman, they will not accept a person with a penis being naked in a women’s changing room with their wife or daughter, and they find women/girls being beaten by men/boys in what are supposed to be single sex sporting competitions to be repugnant.
To those gender critical posters to whom the debate must seem like a Sisyphean task, I would tell you that you are winning. Like soldiers at the frontline, it’s hard to see the bigger picture when you are tired and despondent as a result of the never-ending slog of stating your case, handicapped by the rules imposed on you. In fact I think you have already won – this issue is only going to become even more mainstream, and no politician is going to touch it now if they can avoid it. Any legislation is likely to be prompted only by something triggering public outrage, e.g. if Ian Huntley is moved to a woman’s prison.
I‘ve registered to make this post and will de-register after posting, because I am a man and I think that this debate is one which is primarily for women (except where the issues of children and safeguarding arise, which are a matter for everyone). Before I do so, I would like to say how much I admire many of the gender critical posters on here, and appreciate the many informative posts. It has been impressive and enjoyable to see intelligent, knowledgeable, amusing and articulate posters patiently, politely and inexorably deconstruct and debunk the various meretricious and pseudo-scientific arguments that have been put forward.
However, the most effective posters on here are the transgender proponents. If it were not for them posting to make their case, most threads would quickly die after a few posts, and the FWR board would indeed be just an echo chamber, which would attract far fewer visitors and lurkers. The pro-transgender posts provide the other side that is necessary for a more substantive exposition of the issues (which is more likely to sway the opinions of lurkers, as well as being more entertaining). If those posters realised how much damage they do to the transgender cause, they would stop posting. However, most of them lack self-awareness and the ability to see how others will see their arguments, and so will carry on posting. Any that do stop posting are soon replaced by others who cannot resist stepping into the fray, believing that their superior scientific and legal knowledge will win the argument (a big hello to GibbertyFlibbet), and the new posters often prove to be even worse (or better depending on your point of view).
For all Justine’s comments about the problems caused by hosting this debate, I suspect that it brings a lot of traffic to the website, and strengthens Mumsnet’s brand/USP and market position. Justine and her team have had quite a bit of time to prepare the new guidelines, and regardless of their own individual views on these subjects, they will all have known that the ideology and beliefs of the two sides are incapable of being reconciled. They have deliberately chosen not to provide approved alternative words for TIM or cis or terf, because they know that there is no formula of words that would be acceptable to both sides, and that by providing any approved form of words they would be considered to be taking sides in the argument.
I am sure they also knew that publishing the guidelines would itself trigger a spate of new threads and fierce argument, as happens whenever there is any significant development in this subject. Indeed, if I were a cynic, I might think that they published them now rather than let sleeping dogs lie, in order to rekindle the fire.
As for the new rules, individual posters are not governed by the Equality Act, but Mumsnet is because it is a service provider, so it has probably had the lawyers in to help draw up the rules. The key point is probably that whatever the rules are (whether very strict or very relaxed), they must not discriminate against either sex or gender reassignment (both being protected characteristics). So whatever the rules are, they must be applied even handedly to both sides.
I think therefore that with regards to terminology and what words are or are not acceptable, it depends on context. So simply repeatedly posting that someone is a man, especially without any further worthwhile context, is antagonistic and goady (and it does not add anything to the discussion; it spoils it). Whereas I suspect that it would be acceptable to point out when a transwoman is behaving just like a man, e.g. ‘they are exhibiting typical male abusive/misogynistc attitudes > they are not a woman, they are a man’. So I think it’s about having a meaningful substantive discussion, rather than just using a word which someone considers offensive simply in order to assert your right to use that word to describe them.
That’s enough patronising mansplaining from me, other than to say in the words of Young Mr Grace, ‘You’ve all done very well’.