"Mumsnet statement on moderation with regard to..."

[RaveOnThisCrazyFeeling]

@MNHQ, I am wondering if the statement sticky at the top of this section needs a new, more accurate, less misleading title.

A large part of the difficulty that women encounter in discussing these issues comes from the framing of the issue as being about 'trans rights'. This implies that feminists are arguing against the equal rights of trans people, which of course isn't the case at all. It also disregards the fact that women and their rights have any stake in the issues being discussed - it makes it all about trans people having rights, or not having rights, and to the casual, uninformed observer that reinforces the TRA narrative that women are a privileged class denying the rights of oppressed transwomen.

In fact, women are the historically and systemically disadvantaged sex class, and so ha e a very large stake in legal and social understanding of sex and gender.

Might you give some consideration to changing the thread name (and OP as appropriate) to "...discussion of sex and gender" rather than "discussion of trans rights"?

My question is genuine. The parents who I knew all the time and most were reasonable people were really worried. And not in the same hysterical way my racist family get worried about a group of black people. I mean properly worried. I just didn't get it. The staff member was not sacked but you cant stay after all that uproar. It was awful for them.

The bit I was quoting was to do with CP, the parents involved thought the nursery worker has become as CP threat JUST because they transitioned.

That's not the dissolution of child protection we are referring to. Here are a few safeguarding failures in genderist demands and institutional-adopted guidelines we are talking about:

• allowing confidential disclosures
• dispensing with information sharing about children and vulnerable adults
• parental alienation
• mixed sex overnight accommodation

That's just for starters. I recommend the Safe Schools Alliance website, a read of Working Together to Safeguard Children and Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults to inform yourself.

Nothing to do with any individual in particular, including the trope of the "nice trans I know". Safeguarding is not about individuals.

Given that 1 in 4 women have been abused, implication is that about 1 in 20 men are assaulters ( based on average number of assaults per convicted man ) those numbers are not very small me

Like if a plane had a 1 in 20 chance of crashing I think flying would be much less popular

Just will you please give up about that person now? Let it go. Just do. Or talk about it somewhere else. Because that is not the point of this thread and I sense some early weekend CFery

That was to GailCindy!

Also in the context of children, who have to get through "growing up" there will be concern that "pretending" that someone can change sex may make it harder fir children to accept their biological nature . It may add unnecessary confusion to an already difficult ( for some) process. It may also make it harder to explain boundary setting to girls in particular.

You keep quoting and continuing the discussion. I'm not going to just be lectured to by you.

Actually, I take your point about getting derailed

GailCindy. You are being deliberately stupid. Cis isn’t needed because natural born women are women, the word woman covers it fine. If you are trans then you are trans, trans signifies you aren’t the same as someone born and fine with their sex. So why is cis needed if we have the word trans? It’s so they can call themselves women and we become a subset when actually, we are women, not them.

@Mldgebabe

I guess that could apply to nursery aged children.
there was one child in a nursery who wanted to be referred to as a boy. I wonder how that panned out. We used to ignore it mostly. Parents found it funny.

otterlover58.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/grey_rock.jpg 

Tad rude to @ someone who has accepted they were allowing thread to be derailed

Or this even!

There is nothing for you to agree with.. what I have stated is a fact. That is what cis means and I’ve explained why it isn’t needed. What on earth does ASD have to do with anything?

Anyway, back to the original discussion... I think most of us here are very much in favour of the proposed changes and hope MNHQ will agree with us.

Concur with the grey rock. Thread's about forum guidelines.

Indeed Empress, just repeating my post from Monday, it wasn't stunning in any way but it was responding to OP:

I agree, we center woman here, surely, and discuss sex and gender. Spot on OP. The trans issues shoulder their way in invariably, because the TRAs think that is what matters. We only worry about trans rights when they encroach on women's rights

...along with a handful of grey rocks

My understanding of 'cis' is that it means person who identifies with traditional stereotypes customarily associated with their biological sex.

Some of the stereotypes associated with females are ones I feel comfortable with and express as part of my identity. But some of them I reject completely. Some male stereotypes are ones I identify with a bit more. Therefore I am not 'cis' anything. Nor am I trans anything. I am just me. My identity is me. My body happens to be female. My identity cannot be classified as it is unique to me. So it doesn't need a label.

If other people wish to categorise or label their identity, that is up to them. I don't choose a label or a category therefore I don't want anyone else choosing one for me thanks very much.

My biological sex can be categorised, obviously, and that is covered by 'woman'.

I find ‘cis’ insulting; it suggests women identify with their oppression, that small girls are killed because they identify as girls, women are raped because they identify as women, women are paid less because they identify as women. That the reason we suffer, die, are killed, paid less, do more of the caring responsibilities, discriminated against, are sexually assaulted etc is our fault because that is what we identify with.

I agree with pretty much all that has been said, but also want to add one thing.

I am not going to be told what I can and can't call myself by a member of another group. Just as POC get to decide the contexts in which they do or do not want to use the word nigger. That's their decision entirely and - quite rightly - they have no need to think about anyone else's feelings.

I am a woman, the very least of my rights is to decide how I describe myself. If other people want to call themselves a 'cis woman' fair play to them.

But you cannot tell me what to call myself.

GailCindy since you asked, and there may be lurkers who are similarly confused (and to be fair, TRA discourse does deliberately confuse people into thinking 'cis' is just like 'straight' or 'NT'), I'm going to reply with the assumption that you're posting in good faith.

The problem with 'cis', and 'terf', and the title of the talk guidelines in this section, is that they all presume to define us women and our feminism not in our own right, in relation to our experience of what it is to be female, but only in relation to transgender ideology and 'trans rights'. As if women have no stake of their own in what 'woman' means, no right and no reason to discuss an understanding of womanhood or of feminism, that doesn't centre transwomen and then redefine us in relation to the new centre (meet the new boss; same as the old boss, of course).

Further, 'cis' is innacurate, problematic, and offensive because it asserts that those of us who don't identify as trans / NB can therefore be presumed to be comfortable with / to identify with the 'gender role' we were 'assigned at birth'. Feminists reject the notion that adherence to sexist stereotypes is what makes a person a proper woman or a real man, and that being male or female should determine a person's social roles... that's what makes us feminist!!

Can you not see how an ideology that asserts that personality determines 'gender', which then supercedes sex in determinng what it is to be female or male, is every bit as regressive as the presumption that generarions of feminists have struggled against, that sex determines personality, aptitude, social role? Both positions accept that 'woman' = a person who fulfills a stereotypically feminine social role... How can you expect feminists to accept that definition? A 'cis' woman in the 1800s would be one who doesn't think she should have a right to vote, wear trousers, or work outside the home: happy and satisfied with the 'gender role' assigned to her due to her sex. Does that seem feminist or progressive to you? And a born female who felt uncomfortable and contrained by that role would be, what... a transman? Not a proper woman? Someone who could or should just identify out of all that oppression and leave the 'cis' women to their second class citizenship?

Luckily for us, our foremothers understood their womanhood to be defined by their having been born into the female reproductive sex class, and were therefore able to act in solidarity with each other and with us - future members of the same reproductive sex class - to question, challenge, fight against and largely dismantle all the other bullshit that constituted social and legal understandings of 'what it means to be a woman.' That's why we can work, and fight for equal pay, and vote, and be elected to office, and enjoy a thousand other freedoms that we take for granted that they did not have. And we owe it to our daughters and future generations of our sex class to continue the struggle - not to go backward into believing the stereotypes are true and the biology isn't. Not to embrace an individualist, misogynist ideology that disregards reproductive biology as an axis of oppression and undermines female solidarity.

It is an insult to our feminist forbears and to ourselves and our daughters to accept this new orthodoxy that women in general and feminists in particular no longer have a right to discuss 'what it means to be a woman', without defining us according to the ideology we reject, and renaming our centuries-old feminist discussion about womanhood as being about 'trans rights' instead.

Cis is to women as caffeinated is to coffee.

Redundant.

I won’t call myself a cis-woman because that’s capitulating to TRAs’ demands that we accept we’re just one subsection of women, among as many others as they want to invent. Women are women, just as men are men.

“Cis” is less obviously an insult than TERF (I don’t define myself in relation to trans-identifying people or any other group), but I find it actually more belittling.

The problem with 'cis', and 'terf', and the title of the talk guidelines in this section, is that they all presume to define us women and our feminism not in our own right, in relation to our experience of what it is to be female, but only in relation to transgender ideology and 'trans rights'.

This is the argument that some NT people use. They go onto say that they are normal and the ND people are abnormal, that is why they need the label and NT people do not. They don't want to be defined based on the fact they do NOT have an abnormality. That is what you are saying here, you are the normal thing and trans people are the abnormal thing.

Further, 'cis' is innacurate, problematic, and offensive because it asserts that those of us who don't identify as trans / NB can therefore be presumed to be comfortable with / to identify with the 'gender role' we were 'assigned at birth'. Feminists reject the notion that adherence to sexist stereotypes is what makes a person a proper woman or a real man, and that being male or female should determine a person's social roles... that's what makes us feminist!!

I had to read this a few times and get my son to have a look too and he put his finger on it. Not literally, he would want me to add.It just seems to contradict itself. If a feminist believes that men or women do not have to follow stereotypes of their assigned sex in the way that you describe, then you would believe that whoever you are, you meet the standards/expectations of your gender. Basically the whole idea of "gender roles" is irrelevant once you believe there is no such thing as a "male" thing or "female" thing so you wouldn't feel offended by someone using a term that means you feel comfortable as your assigned sex.

The next part where you talk about the fact that some or even most trans people might transition because they like things that are typically for the opposite sex is the only thing that I fully agree with and can see how that might push children into making big decisions that are unnecessary.

But that doesn't make me see the people themselves as a bigger risk for sexual assault or violence.

I wasn't going to reply on here again but saw your post. Thanks for seeing that I am being genuine. I still do not agree that cis is offensive but I can see why we have too make sure it is really right for kids to start to transition.