Let's have a thread in support of free speech for women and factual transparency

[MinaPaws]

Because freedom of speech for women was hard fought and a long time coming.

And because facts are becoming expendable in all areas of reporting and debate these days.

In the mid 1990s I volunteered on a campaign tour to raise woman's awareness of their right to vote for their MEPs. We parked the campaign bus in high streets across UK.
When we called out, 'Use your vote in Europe' everyone walked by.
When we added a fact to the campaign cry: 'Women, you've had equal voting rights to men for less than 70 years. Use it or lose it' everyone stopped.

People have no idea how fragile women's rights are. How new they are. What a silly little blip in history of mankind they may appear to be.

We have a right, I believe, to explore and challenge new legislation or policies in any place at any time if they marginalise us or reduce our physical safety.

Can I start by saying what I think this thread might concentrate on:

Freedom of speech - anyone have a problem with a woman's right to that?
Women's rights - anyone have a problem with debating this?
Factual accuracy - anyone prefer false facts?

For the record I have started this thread because I am passionately for freedom of speech, women's rights and debates based on fact.

I am not passionately against anything or anyone. This is a positive thread.

Seconded

Women's rights have been hard won and grudgingly give, that's obvious from the way they are so easily removed again.

In every country where women lack legal status and rights, they suffer as a direct result.
In every country where women have the semblance of equality, we have to fight to retain even the most basic rights.

The Tories will soon debate removing the right to housing benefit, if you are in a DV refuge. I know we have a lot to deal with right now, but we cant forget and let them slip it in under the radar.

I woke up this morning thinking about yesterday's big thread. MN was set up by mothers for mothers as a safe and honest space to discuss what motherhood was really like. And it was successful because there was no pre-existing space that offered such support. Not rose-tinted, but frank. The need and desire for it speaks for itself.

Although it has since become a behemoth chained by advertising tie-ins, DM plagiarism and government scrutiny these things are not the purpose or function of MN. Its purpose and function is surely what it always was: to provide honest and open support and discussion for women about motherhood. Which intrinsically makes it primarily a space for adult females who reproduce or care for children. Anyone interested in the opinions, needs and challenges of mothers is welcome to join in. But surely not to dictate, oppress, silence, veto, block and censor the voices of those for whom the site exists.

This is such simple, evident common sense I wonder how the hell the goalposts moved so swiftly and crazily out of sight.

If mothers are strenuously denied freedom of speech on the primary forum dedicated to their experiences and opinions, where can we enjoy it? Where can we come together and agree or disagree, debate uncensored the core rights we want to retain as women. These aren't rhetorical questions btw. Does anyone know of a reliable alternative online meeting space?

There are alternative spaces, and more could be created, but none of them offer the advantage that this one does of being so big that both journalists and politicians use it as a means of taking the temperature in terms of public opinion among women. It's because of its size that people pay attention to trends on this site, and splintering off into smaller groups would dilute that. Which doesn't mean the smaller and in some cases private groups don't have a purpose too, but frankly I'm not willing to give up this one just because some on the mod team have been, well, let's call it overzealous and inclined to punish commenters for talking back to teacher.

There's power in numbers, and given how high the stakes are right now I think we should be leveraging that power as much as we can.

I think this forum is the right platform.

It is only because of this site that I've become more aware of women's rights and the need to defend them.

I've also been angered at the censorship I'm seeing. I want to add my small voice to this in the hope that there will be freedom to speak and defend prejudism against women.

Good points @AngryAttackKittens

I've just caught up with the last couple of pages from the last thread.

Towards the end womanformallyknowaswoman has a post about the behaviour of MNHQ, and, that in the current climate, we understand MN's fear of being targeted and sued by certain people/organisations. So MN flails around creating new guidelines, banning words, deleting anything that could be seen to be 'uncivil', 'hurtful, or put them at risk from people wishing to do harm. MN knows it is vulnerable so tries to apply all manner of ways to protect itself from, mainly, financial harm.

I then thought of the parallels for us women. We see that we are under threat, things have changed in recent years. Language, rights, spaces, resources are all being chipped away at to deny women access to the basic rights and resources we have fought for. The notion of gender self-ID seeps into our everyday lives (changing rooms, girl guides, NHS wording etc). Then we see an even bigger threat coming, the attempts to legalise self-ID. We feel vulnerable. It's no longer safe to take a live and let live attitude towards other people. We, like MN, feel it is now time to tighten up our boundaries and assert what little power we have, largely the right to free speech.

MN doesn't like this. It protects itself by asserting it's power when under threat but when we feel similarly under threat we are told to shut up. When people attack us and try to take over our spaces and we complain MN either tells us to shut up or silences us if we won't.

So MNHQ, we are all feeling under threat at the moment and the threat is coming from the same places for both you and us. How can you justify doing all you can to protect yourself from these malign forces but criticise, silence and threaten us when we want to do the same?

How can you not see the parallels here?

Women! You have been allowed to discuss your biology freely for so few years, do you want this right to be eroded? Do you want it to disappear in law?

Great OP. The facts are with us and we must keep shouting them out.

Women! You have been allowed to discuss your biology freely for so few years, do you want this right to be eroded? Do you want it to disappear in law?
@UglyCathKidstonBag This is a central issue. It's critical that the importance of this is not undermined. Because it's true.

It's not by chance that there's no universally common vocab for a little girl to refer to her genitalia, in the same way that boys can to their willy and balls. From birth girls' bodies are minimised, silenced, complicated. Do you call it daisy or foofoo or minnie etc. No common language is a form of repressing voice.
Only recently have girls started to be taught about periods - not just the technical once a month the egg etc but: your thighs may ache, you may have diarrhoea, feel sick. Your breasts may ache and you may feel furious or depressed for a couple of days. These symptoms will pass. We were told none of this when I was a girl. Likewise, perimenopause is a term I'd never even heard until I was almost out of it. Why do scores of women go to their GP in their 40s and early 50s complaining with bafflement of chronic exhaustion, joint aches, hair loss, weight gain, memory loss? We worry and panic and self-diagnose. And eventually find our ways to online forums (thank God for the internet) and discover most women have these symptoms at some point due to perimenopause and menopause.

Similar could be said of pregnancy information and post-partum health issues. (Why did no-one tell me the drugs given for a C-section can prevent your milk coming down for weeks. Weeks! Babies lives depend on this information. It was not even mentioned let alone highlighted.

The natural life cycle of women's bodies and women's reproductive systems were not considered worthy of attention, reflection, healthy support. They were largely a mystery, a secret until the advent of open forums like MN.

So what's that - over ten but under twenty years in the whole of history that we've had access to broad, first hand knowledge of our own bodies - can share it and pass on advice for cures, palliatives and offer wisdom and support. And it could go if the impact of our reproductive systems on our bodies and our health is deemed - for whatever spurious right-on inclusive reason - a banned topic of discussion.

And then the impact of our reproductive systems on our wider lives is also up for censorship: maternity pay, post-maternity break return to work rights and status. We're only one generation - one - into it being commonplace for our daughters to take such thinsg for granted. That's how fragile our access to knowledge about ourselves is. It could all vanish within their generation.

Knowledge is power. Withholding knowledge is an abuse of power, used as a tactic to disempower. Preventing dissemination of knoweldge is too.

It may seem histrionic to protest so loudly but silent obedience hasn't ever worked.

WichBitchHarpyTerfThatsMe

So MNHQ, we are all feeling under threat at the moment and the threat is coming from the same places for both you and us. How can you justify doing all you can to protect yourself from these malign forces but criticise, silence and threaten us when we want to do the same?

How can you not see the parallels here?

The lack of reflection from MN that their organisational behaviour is bullying by proxy is shocking - it's so reminiscent of DV dynamics where the woman can't take her understandable anger at being battered to her abuser, so discharges it onto the kids or others around her. So she looks like she's the problem and the abuser goes unacknowledged.

MN and we are being attacked by the same malign forces so should be on the same side ......

We have a right, I believe, to explore and challenge new legislation or policies in any place at any time if they marginalise us or reduce our physical safety.

I think this is too little - why can't we discuss anything, at any time, in any place? Exactly as men can do.

Why has our right to free speech already been removed without our consent? It's like verbal rape by stealth - it's disgusting - exactly like a rape victim would feel, I imagine, when her rapist's words are being rammed down her throat and into her being, along with their dicks. The violation is palpable and causes profound harm to her wellbeing and safety, often lifelong.

And here we are having the same done to us from all sides - like being gang-raped.