That it's not just what you say, it's also how much you talk about it.

[NicolaHare]

Surprise, another trans thread! But the dynamics of online spaces fascinates me.

Take MWR. Some stats. Feminism Chat has been active since 2010. At this moment 364 pages of threads have been generated. 144 of those pages contain threads that were created or active since January this year. At the beginning of 2018 a significant portion of threads were trans themed and these threads tended to contain the most posts, and the board has only grown more fixated with the topic since then. You have to go quite a ways back to find a page of threads that isn’t 90-95% to do with trans people.

Nowhere else on the site is so obsessed. For example: on the LGBT themed boards you only have to go back 1 or 2 pages to find threads from 2017 and earlier. There aren’t any trans threads in the 1 and a fraction page of threads from 2018 on the politics board. There are, I think, about 2 in the half dozen pages of threads from this year in the currents affairs and news forum. And in 2018, all the education forums combined have generated about 5 trans threads.

This is weird, right? Why is a general feminism board with an overwhelmingly non trans userbase so fixated on a group of people they don't belong to and the issues surrounding them? It would be weird regardless of what anyone in any thread had to say on the subject.

Not surprising, though. Trans sceptical feminism ironically almost always ends up focusing on the transgender question to the exclusion of all other topics that its proponents believe that trans inclusive feminisms are neglecting, and so neglects them to an even greater degree. Honestly, I’m sceptical that they are being neglected at all: it seems to me that conversations about pregnancy, menstruation ect are happening in public view at far greater volume than ever before, taboos surrounding bodily functions are increasingly discarded by the discourse and pop culture, and that when we talk about erasure we’re actually quibbling about terminology, the trappings of language and not the substance of the conversation. To assign a motivation to the common theme on feminism chat of “We are being silenced elsewhere!” a significant part of it might be the catharsis of imagined persecution. “We are saying the truths THEY don’t want you to hear! We are rebels!”

(This interview with a former gender critical trans woman is worth reading. It’s American and several years old, but it describes the many of the other toxic intellectual cul-de-sacs you can observe in MWR. www.transadvocate.com/is-sadism-popular-with-terfs-a-chat-with-an-ex-gendercrit_n_18568.htm)

But to set aside the discussion of substance. Do you think that the mere volume of trans threads in feminism chat is indicative of a kind of transphobia? If it were a forum of straight people talking about nothing but same sex attracted people, even if what they had to say was positive would we not be inclined to see in it's users a troubling insecurity with regards to queerness. If it were a forum of white people talking about nothing but people of colour in the most effusive terms, would we take this at face value or would we assign sinister motives (as the resonance of Get Out suggests many would)?

Kathleen Stock and Rebecca Reilly Cooper have both written on gender as philosophers.

Read Martha Nussbaum on why Butler is a con.

The reason the conversation always breaks down, is because it begins with the unproven premise, that transwomen are women.

If the conversation began, as it does with many GC transwomen, with an acknowledgement that transwomen are biological males, whose needs and experiences are different to ours, I think you'd see a very different tone emerging.

Forcing people to adhere to incoherent articles of faith is, in itself, a bad faith move from gender-believers.

It's like an atheist and a Catholic having a discussion about truth, but the Catholic won't let the conversation go ahead unless the atheist commits to belief in God (IRL I find Catholic people perfectly amenable and open to conversation - I'm a lapsed one:))

Yes how very dare we talk about something on MN that affects women

But I must admit l find all these threads really interesting reading from GC posters and I'd like to encourage them to continue to post.

I've spent the last ten years building a business and raising babies. All that time I would have said I was a feminist but, mostly, I was just busy and blissfully unaware that what it was to be a woman, the language of womanhood and the ability to talk freely about women's rights was under attack.

I couldn't be more grateful the the FWR board constantly tapping through onto active threads to shake me out of my lazy apathy.

Kathleen Stock and Rebecca Reilly Cooper have both written on gender as philosophers.

Can you recommend me any particular articles? I am familiar with their writing about trans people. What else have they written - as I said I'm particularly interested in GC perspectives on gender non-conformity and deconstructing gender roles that do not make trans people the subject.

Read Martha Nussbaum on why Butler is a con.

Butler is far from the only theorist of gender on the table: plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/

Also, I haven't mentioned her in my posts at all. I have pointed towards Serano, whose best known book presents a somewhat ambivalent view of some of the gender politics of queer theory in the final chapter. Trans people who transitioned in the 90s and earlier often reject JB. Trans people who come out in more recent years (particularly those of younger generations) increasingly use her tools to conceptualise themselves and the world, which is part of a more widespread adoption of post-modern perspectives that identity is performative, which many people who have never lived in a world without personal computers feel are the best theories we have for understanding life in the internet age.

Nussbaum, who has written in condemnation of the attitude "transgender people are found disgusting because their bodily and sexual nature stands out [and] compel fascination" (which is something that the subject of the interview linked in my OP also critiques, and at greater length). And I believe Emily would argue that trans women be admitted to the female sex class and trans men be admitted to the male sex class, which is my position more than yours.

I am not interested in feminist theory so I dont post much here.

But I have to say I think the women's prisons situation is not being highlighted on mainstream news. It's in papers but I don't find people I know are aware of the situations that have been occuring. I keep reading stories to my dh as he denied initially that this could even be allowed. That's middle Britain encapsulated for you.

Maybe it's that MPs and TV journalists are not going there, so it's being fenced into a "esoteric concerns of feminists" corner of this website / the internet.

Is this on the wrong board? Doesn’t feel like an AIBU thread with all the learned discourse and pleas fir academic articles. Should it get moved to FWR where it would be more at home? (Or would that bugger up your statistics? )

Look - a site about parenthood has predominantly female posters a lot if whom are mothers. That means there’s never going to be loads of ‘authentic trans voices’ fir the other side of the robust debate. It is what it is. I’m not sure why you’re surprised or what you’re potentially being unreasonable about.

Women talking to women about women and women’s rights. Not unreasonable no matter how much or how frequently we talk.

the language of womanhood and the ability to talk freely about women's rights was under attack.

As I said in my OP:

...it seems to me that conversations about pregnancy, menstruation ect are happening in public view at far greater volume than ever before, taboos surrounding bodily functions are increasingly discarded by the discourse and pop culture, and that when we talk about erasure we’re actually quibbling about terminology, the trappings of language and not the substance of the conversation.

Though I can see how you might think this not to be the case if the only feminism you engage with is a forum that obsessively catalogues every impolite request to use more inclusive language that makes the news or goes viral on social media, and every instance of a person being chastised or having some kind of career setback for not using the latest terms generated by the activist language merry-go-round.

Thankfully, we actually live in a world where forums like mumsnet exist with specific sub forums to discuss pregnancy and childbirth in detail; where fashion magazines for teenage girls publish articles about endometriosis (www.teenvogue.com/story/endometriosis-period-pain-book-excerpt?verso=true); where media created by women is allowed to embrace the scatological (ie Broad City, Girls, Call the Midwife ect); where fiction explicitly and intimately detailing women's embodiment and women's inners live is afforded ever increasing literary prestige (I highly recommend Carmen Maria Machado granta.com/the-husband-stitch/); and where feminist projects like Roxanne Gay's Unruly Bodies are available for free or at very little cost (medium.com/s/unrulybodies)

Morning, everyone. We're going to move this thread over to FWR, as it seems to be a discussion about that board.

If it were a forum of straight people talking about nothing but same sex attracted people, even if what they had to say was positive would we not be inclined to see in it's users a troubling insecurity with regards to queerness. If it were a forum of white people talking about nothing but people of colour in the most effusive terms, would we take this at face value or would we assign sinister motives

I recommend you listen to Fae talking here in this recent TV appearance, who recommends strongly that comparing trans to other groups is not an acceptable strategy and Fae never does it. I suggest you may want to incorporate that principle into your thesis for our benefit here today?

Women talking to women about women and women’s rights. Not unreasonable no matter how much or how frequently we talk.

This. OP you lost me when you seriously posted an article from "the transadvocate" which has included the writing of such intellectual giants as Laurelai Bailey, who once tweeted:

If every time a TERF opened their mouth they got a fist in it, they wouldn't open their fucking mouths".

Rather hostile to women, don't you think? Ah you say, but not all women. Just the disobedient ones. It's amazing how If you remove the t-word it just sounds like any common or garden domestic abuser?

Jeez I read 3 of them essays you touted on the unruly bodies site
Just saying to anyone else. Don’t bother. They were tedious and dull.
Wafty bollocks

I assume you are aware that there was a government consultation on the GRA this summer, ending in October, which is why most of us have made a massive concerted effort to get the subject aired as much as possible so that all people affected are able to discuss?

So there is clear cause and effect going on here, we made a major effort to publicise a consultation, therefore it gets a lot of discussion, which was the intention. Glad to see you noticed we were succeeding in generating the conscious raising we set out to do.

Prior to this major effort, not just here but also with the groups of women arranging meetings, anyone not showing deference to the male desires on display were being othered everywhere. We have managed to reduce that somewhat but it still needs work.

So do expect us to continue to discuss and inform ourselves about this major issue affecting women and girls and the associated othering being used to supress us.

MNHQ why have you moved this thread to FWR when there are Brexit threads on AIBU that you haven't moved to the Brexit topic? (for example) Presumably the OP wanted to open the subject up to a wider audience than the FWR board.

Why does FWR have to put up with this shit? Why can't we just be left alone to talk to each other fucking ever, even once? Even the OP put the thread somewhere else so that others could talk about us, which they are more than free to do.

Thank you for posting this OP, it’s always beneficial when people who advocate for TRAs come on here to ‘educate’ women. It usually results in lurkers getting their eyes opened to the abuse and removal of women’s rights to safety, privacy and dignity, under the guise of ‘inclusiveness’.

I read an article recently which seemed to be making some similar points.

Recommended by Helen from Mermaids.

intersectional.home.blog/2018/11/10/the-mumsnet-tirade/#comments

Hehehe I was just going to post in response to OP that MNHQ moves trans threads to FWR and as if by magic
Morning, everyone. We're going to move this thread over to FWR, as it seems to be a discussion about that board.

I personally wish we had a specific gender theory board as I miss being able to discuss feminism, the huge volume of threads about gender pushes other stuff off the front page.
I also wish MNHQ wouldn't move all the trans stuff to FWR

MNHQ why have you moved this thread to FWR when there are Brexit threads on AIBU that you haven't moved to the Brexit topic? (for example) Presumably the OP wanted to open the subject up to a wider audience than the FWR board.

Exactly! Be careful Mumsnet HQ, that could be seen as ‘othering’ and excluding the OP. You don’t want to be accused of being ‘transphobic’, do you? Naughty Mumsnet.

"Lots of people think that non trans women and trans women are the same though, so it's not like the posters on FWR are interested in a group they're not part of, right?"

I think you mean women and transwomen. Women are not and never have been "non trans women"

Thankfully, we actually live in a world where forums like mumsnet exist with specific sub forums to discuss pregnancy and childbirth in detail; where fashion magazines for teenage girls publish articles about endometriosis (www.teenvogue.com/story/endometriosis-period-pain-book-excerpt?verso=true); where media created by women is allowed to embrace the scatological (ie Broad City, Girls, Call the Midwife ect); where fiction explicitly and intimately detailing women's embodiment and women's inners live is afforded ever increasing literary prestige (I highly recommend Carmen Maria Machado granta.com/the-husband-stitch/); and where feminist projects like Roxanne Gay's Unruly Bodies are available for free or at very little cost (medium.com/s/unrulybodies)

Why should the existence of any of these things equate to getting us to shut up about the erasure of women's sex based rights? Can you imagine how a similar conversation would go if the roles were reversed and one of us posted on a TRA discussion board, bearing in mind the doxxing and death threats women have already received? It's the violent attempts at silencing women by TRAs which have made women flock here, and they will continue to do so.

You mean... sometimes trans rights advocates post trans-related threads in other parts of MN, and then they get MOVED to FWR, contributing to the OP's stats on the number of trans posts here?

OP, take it from someone who knows a bit about data and analysis: quant is not qual. Trying to extrapolate "why" from "how much" is a fool's work. Only people who are trying to twist their message try to do that.

I recommend you listen to Fae talking here in this recent TV appearance, who recommends strongly that comparing trans to other groups is not an acceptable strategy and Fae never does it.

Why is it inappropriate with regards to the specific analogies that I've drawn - particularly wrt the straight people talking about gay people example, as trans folk are similarly subject to homophobia.

This is all a bit highbrow for me but I come to the WR boards because I share concerns with many people here. That some of those concerns have 'come to life' (people who were observed male at birth in women's prisons, sporting events, groups etc) and are happening at the same time that periods are "queeriods", women (adult human females) are referred to as "womxn', 'menstruators', 'cervix havers' or 'non-men', makes me determined to seek out those who want to put the rights of women & girls (observed female at birth) front and centre.
I wish trans people no ill and will defend their rights - but not at a cost to mine.

However articulately someone asks me to pipe down, matters not: this stuff is happening and we can't even fucking define ourselves without cries of "Some women have penises."

LittleBrownDog wins the thread as usual 🤣

LangCleg Couldn't agree more. It's so irritating, especially the pompous tone with which it's usually done. Often reminds me of Adrian Mole.