Oh look, it's those guidelines making no sense whatsoever again!

[TheProdigalKittensReturn]

So, I got an email about a comment in which I said that I wanted to know why genderists keep comparing trans identified males to black women and lesbians being deleted. I think this is absolutely barmy, and have said so to HQ. I'm also baffled as to how this breaks any guidelines and thought perhaps it was time for us as a group to revisit the guidelines and explain once more to MNHQ why they're not working.

What's actually happening here is the the obsessive trans activists who monitor this site are attempting to pick off posters one by one. We lost Orchid last week, and she was just the most recent of many. I'm not sure in MNHQ realize that's happening and welcome it or if it's somehow escaped their notice, but it's a pretty messed up thing for them to be allowing to happen to their users, in my opinion. Are they going to allow this to continue until the only commenters left in this forum are the TRAs who want the entire site shut down?

I know the people who despise the women here would very much like this to all happen under the radar, and that's exactly why I'm not allowing it to play out that way.

And enforcing "civility" that's really deference is far more important than pointing out racism or homophobia.

I'm interested in the language MN uses when responding to posters.

Upthread a poster mentions being called "uncivil" for using inverted commas around tw. I've also read about users being scolded for being unkind or that MN may not be the best platform for them etc. The usual comments women might get for standing up for our rights.

A couple of weeks ago I reported a post that used the phrase twaw in bold capitals. I figured that if I had written the opposite, it would be deleted.

I thought that I would be taken more seriously by using the same tone and language of others, by saying that the post was "triggering" and "bigoted" that it implied women do not exist, that women's rights are human rights and that the post was womanphobic.

MN said they would look into this and were sympathetic and that if there was anything they could do in the meantime, to let them know.

Nothing came of it (unsurprisingly) but it made me wonder if certain posters, using certain phrases and language are treated with kid gloves for risk of hurty feelings or MN being branded phobic.

Yes, I would have received a stock response similar to those who complain that a post has upset them, but how does MN decide what's mean and what's nice? As a woman, such phrases do hurt me. The distortion of biological fact hurts me, the inference that I am uncivil for not wanting my rights or safety violated, hurts me. But who decides what is hurtful? What measurement is used and how is fairness applied?

So often women speaking biological fact and not playing a victim card, will receive responses about being uncivil and implications that we are mean and nasty.

I wonder what response Orchid received? I was the first person to reply to the child poster on that thread and I knew something was amiss. I saw Orchid's post after mine. Why was it removed MN?

Posters who simply believe that trans people are weird, or shouldn’t be allowed to express their trans identity, just aren’t welcome on Mumsnet.

Good - lucky that none of the posters we're talking about here ever says anything like that, eh?

Good - lucky that none of the posters we're talking about here ever says anything like that, eh?

As I said upthread though, this could be taken to mean that expressing the need for single sex spaces is challenging people’s right to ‘express their trans identity’ so I think we need clarification on this.

Fair point.

I forgot that we now live in 1984 a world where definitions are fluid and ever-changing and full of hidden meaning!

Talking's post is fantastic, and sums up my unease. I'm planning to share it with my daughters, both of whom have already experienced too much violence and unreasonable comments before they're even half way through their teenage years.

I lurk, mostly. Please, wise ladies, keep posting. Because I lurk, read, and talk in the real world. Talking, and taking this subject into the sunlight demonstrates whether there is substance to the arguments or not.

(I have had to modify my words here. Anyone who knows me in rl would laugh their socks off, because that doesn't sound like the usual me)

From my pov, as a long-term user of MN (joined 2005, but lurked for 3 or so years before that, so very very early), not prolific poster on FWR but avid reader here, I would find it a lot easier if you were to mod as suggested by 2BthatUnnoticed.

I post infrequently in FWR as far more eloquent and educated posters than I am have usually already articulated what I want to say - posters like Talking, Michelleoftheresistance, BarbaraStrozzi, Lang et alia. I want to add my voice to the chorus here pointing out that there is nothing civil, fair or transparent about the way FWR is moderated, or the ridiculous linguistic contortions we have to perform to avoid having our knuckles rapped for posting scientific facts. Dear goddess, how have we come to this?

And I'm sorry but Justine's post is really a whole load of nothing. There is no acknowledgement that we have a point, there is no desire to bring clarity to the moderation rules or - better yet - to move them to being on a par with the rest of the site. No acceptance that like it or not, the mods are acting as agents for coercive control by being unable or unwilling to spot blatant gaming of the reporting function.

I wonder if Justine and the moderation team ever read the transwidows thread, and consider that it is a guaranteed fact that some - not all - of those raising their voices to quell ours will be the type of person who can deliberately put their partners through what those brave, quite frankly fucking wonderful women have been put through. Is that the kind of person anyone would want to appease at the expense of women trying to stand up for their rapidly-eroding rights?

Regarding coercive control - it isn’t easy to hear you’re engaging in abusive behaviour, but I think most of us would want to know if we were, or even if we looked like we were. ‘Accusing’ isn’t what posters are doing that I’ve seen; they’re pointing out a lot of the mod team might not be aware of the behaviours that underpin it and may not recognise it in others, ie when we get malicious reporting and thread-policing.

I don’t think anyone has chucked ‘you’re just like my abusive ex’ at the moderators; it’s an invitation to learn (or prove us wrong), not an accusation.

As ever it is good to know, even if bit by bit, some more terms that cannot be used. I am seriously considering writing an unofficial autism-accessible version of the guidelines and updating it as more information becomes apparent - as posters (and not just autistic ones) keep saying it’s very difficult to keep track of what is/isn’t a strikeable offence. I have 0 strikes so far, guessing since I don’t post very much and mainly by luck as I thought ‘peak trans’ was fine.

I wonder if Justine and the moderation team ever read the transwidows thread, and consider that it is a guaranteed fact that some - not all - of those raising their voices to quell ours will be the type of person who can deliberately put their partners through what those brave, quite frankly fucking wonderful women have been put through. Is that the kind of person anyone would want to appease at the expense of women trying to stand up for their rapidly-eroding rights?

I was going to say this but I felt it would be a bit ungrateful for me to do so, given MN give the trans widows a bit of extra leeway as to how we talk about our ex's, but I'm glad somebody else has said it.

I'd put money on it being not just the type of person described in the trans widows threads but maybe being exactly some of the people described.

Also- and I've said this before- it's an extra level of mind fuck when trans widows have to pussy foot around with the words we are allowed to use to describe other people who we can see are just like our ex's.

I have taken to using @MumsnetHQ whenever I comment on a thread I think should be seen and considered in regard to the guidelines.

The term for a pregnant female is now 'carrier', very derogatory when you consider its actual meaning and also dangerous from a medical care standpoint but heaven forbid we use actual biological terms that in no way mean to offend, remove rights, dignity or jepordise medical care.

I’m really annoyed reading through this thread. It’s the blatant lying from HQ that it’s really starting to annoy me. The condescending way they talk to their users and basically saying what we are seeing and feeling isn’t true or doesn’t matter is shocking. I can actually say things on Twitter surprisingly, that would get deleted here, it’s ridiculous. Why are they putting men above their female users? It’s gross.

Here's @glinner's latest - for your perusal, @MNHQ. As we all know, glinner has been in the firing line of the TRAs too.

unherd.com/2019/11/dont-give-in-to-the-transbullies/

He speaks the truth. We know it, you know it.

Everyone on this thread knows that feminist Mumsnetters are being sold a pup here. We can see that we are being held to a higher account than the rest of Mumsnet - we know that these guidelines, these deletions, these strikes, are UNFAIR and UNEQUAL - we know this because we can read. We can read the posts on other boards, and we can read the posts that are sanctioned here, and we can see the unfairness.

We know that racism and disablism and ageism etc is not treated in the same way as the so-called-transphobia. And we know it's because the TRAs are bullying you, and targeting your advertisers in a way that advocates for other minorities simply do not do.

Here's a few excerpts:

^Don’t give in to the bullying trans activists
They'll come for you at the slightest perceived transgression. But you're not a bigot. Be calm. Stand firm.^

It could be anything. A throwaway line in a press release, or a casting decision, or a packaging design that somehow made it through the focus groups. A charge of transphobia forms in an instant out of nothing, and then follows you around like a loyal, smelly dog.

It’s been a little over a year since I decided to enter into the heated debate around currently fashionable gender ideology and the same activists who smeared the former tennis player Martina Navratilova and the singer Marc Almond as transphobic have thrown everything they could at me too. And yet I have not changed my position one iota from what it was when I began.

I can summarise my position thus: women exist. They are not just an idea or a feeling. They have the right to assembly, the right to organise, the right to demand private and safe spaces free of men

Amen to that.

Thank you @MNHQ for sending me a detailed response regarding deletions and strikes.
I appreciate you getting back to me and talking through various posts.

I'm trying not to appear churlish by taking a detailed private response and dissecting it publicly, BUT, I did wince a bit about the tone and language used in the MN response: 'not in the spirit of the site' and 'that is never going to end well'.

I've been on here for 14 years and go on AIBU a fair bit, where there is lots that could be deemed not in the spirit of the site - but what is the spirit of the site?

The line about strikes Obviously we'd hope you won't need to receive any more anyway is unfortunately not my decision to make. I can't predict what is a interpreted as a misdemeanour on FWR.

For example, longstanding poster Orchid wrote "poor you" then she was banned.

Even the biscuit Emoji is deemed offensive

Obviously we'd hope you won't need to receive any more anyway

If that's verbatim... well... I cannot think of a "civil" description of the tone! I didn't even take one like that when I was bollocking my kids!

Lawks-a-fucking-lordy.

I can’t predict what is a interpreted as a misdemeanour on FWR

And this is the point @MNHQ

Reasonable, cooperative women who have posted here uneventfully for years and want to stay inside the rules find themselves unable to

What’s wrong with your rules for this to be the case?

And that is exactly what I meant about the tone that messages from the mods often take and how very not OK it is. My parents never talked down to me that way. My ex tried to, and that is why he is my ex.

This, for example.

Obviously we'd hope you won't need to receive any more anyway

Surely the person who wrote this is aware that it reads as "stop making us hit you" to the person on the receiving end? Why are you talking to your users that way?

It is verbatim Lang

As Dolores Umbridge might say: "Tut, tut!"

That's an accurate analogy Prodigal

I've pondered their phrasing and the more I consider it, the more disturbing it reads.

Surely the person who wrote this is aware that it reads as "stop making us hit you" to the person on the receiving end? Why are you talking to your users that way?

Well yes. Which ever way you cut it up, it does indeed come across exactly like that.

Why are you making me treat you this way, is an awful thing to say to somebody.

Many of the members here will have sought out this site for support and advice, precisely because they are spoken to that way.

I don't think you want to be the kind of people who behave this way MNHQ - so why are you?

what pressures are you under that you are allowing to turn you into Delores Umbridge?

Obviously we don't work for Mumsnet, though sometimes given the level of expectations placed on us it kind of feels like we do. When I'm at work I manage a team of people. If I spoke to any of them like that, or even made them feel as if I had, I'd want to know about it. MNHQ otoh don't seem to want to know.

I also got a detailed reply from MNHQ for which I'm grateful. I got no emails about strikes because I had no strikes. However, I got suspended after I had a dumb moment and made a post that they considered trollish. In this case, I wished they would have contacted me about that, and I hope HQ will in the future message long-term posters if they get suspended about what happened.

So, again, what's the difference between a deletion that counts as a strike and one that does not? Are they ever going to explain?