Lang Cleg 2

[TiredofthisBSbutIstandwithLang]

New thread as we got to 1000.

Accusing us of abusive behaviour - repeatedly, and after we have explained many times that we don't think it's acceptable to accuse us of this - falls pretty clearly into the 'rudeness' category, we think.

Anyone who has recognised & survived coercive control will also come to recognise (often with horror) how those close to them have been deliberately manipulated & often used as 'proxies for abuse'. For individual women, this list will often include close friends, family, work colleagues, their relationship counsellor also possibly GPs, Social Workers & the police.
When women describe how the abuser has operated, the way they have used others & its impact, its very common for the first & often strongest reaction to be denial & defensiveness. Sometimes this may even take the form of attack.
Sitting in any room with survivors will confirm the ubiquity of these dynamics. Attending the Freedom Programme will explain how & why.
freedomprogramme.co.uk/index.php

its extraordinarily difficult to recognise when you're being coercively controlled. Outsiders can usually see it before you can. It then becomes immensely frustrating to the person that can see it because the victim doesn't believe you.
Language gets heated, phrases are repeated all in a desperate effort to get the victim to understand what's happening to them. With Lang's characteristic bluntness that must have been extremely difficult to hear/read.
I've been both a victim and an outsider to coercive control. The victim phase lasted about 3 months, with an abusive mother you recognise it pretty quickly. So coercive control is very clear to me now.
Trying to get that message across in the written word is well nigh impossible, as we've all seen here.

Sure, I can see it being annoying Jean, but if you think that someone is accusing you of something that is bollocks, it should be ignorable.

Imagine someone repeatedly saying "You have blue ears and wear rubber ducks for shoes! You're the reason that dogs hate cats! People like you make rabbits turn into the moon."

You'd roll your eyes and ignore.

Equally, someone saying "men are hurting women, and you're complicit in the system if you delete my comment" should be eye-roll worthy too if you don't agree with them.

So is this all a bit of "yes we know but what can we do, stop saying it"?

Or is that nonsense?

@MNHQ Are you able to tell us how many reports in total you have received about Lang?
I think it could be illuminating.
Thank you.

(And a total aside from this but WHY does the android app sometimes post with paragraphs, and sometimes all in one stream of consciousness?)

Telling MN moderators that they're the victims of coercive control and to take the Freedom Programme, is, to me, a shitty and patronising thing to do. We don't see the other side of the screen, we're not privy to what MN are taking on board or what advice and guidance they listen to. To extrapolate that their responses are because they are unwitting victims could very well be considered offensive.

There really is a hive mind on some of the issues that come up on FWR and this appears to be one of them. FWR is and always has been a fabulous resource but the absolute ownership that some posters seem to want to take of it when they're not the ones with accountability is staggering.

So after all they've said, mods are still getting screeds accusing/insinuating abuse that they're in denial?!
I think some are intent on making their point for them!!

Cross posted with blistory

Thing is I very much doubt that LangCleg was being deliberately rude or goady. She was being passionate about an issue on which she was quite expert. If she kept going on to moderators about the need to recognise that they might be being used then it was to try and protect the posters on MN and in fact MN itself.
She was trying to preserve MN.
And for this she has been banned. Fabulous.

I for one rarely post on the FWR boards as I do not understand the Rules and am frightened of inadvertently getting a deletion or something.
This control is yet another example for me of how women are silenced.

Walking on eggshells. Everywhere. that makes life somewhat 'unpleasant and demotivating' sometimes.
I'm not paid to be a woman. I'm not trained in techniques to handle constant harassment and the legacy of thousands of years of oppression, control and exploitation but I deal with it.
Don't know what I'm trying to say really but I'm very disappointed by the MNHQ response.
Are you on our side?

It’s sick

Those screenshots provide a number of red flags many professionals would recognise. Escalation is a significant issue.

Gosh isn't it funny, no not funny, interesting?, no that's not the term either, I know, it's misogynistic how many women agreeing gets turned into a 'hive mind' rather than thinking maybe they all agree because they are right!

I do think it's patronising and rude to repeatedly tell someone they are the victim of abuse and manipulation, simply because you disagree to their approach to a certain issue in their professional role.

Clearly it has bothered moderators who have felt it crossed the line and became unpleasant.

Feeling passionate about an issue doesn't excuse you making people who are simply doing the job suffer.

Maybe they all agree as they're all right
Or maybe they all agree as most people have given up and left it to an echo chamber?

Justine says very explicitly there is zero evidence that Lang’s posts were targeted for reporting by TRAs, and that reports were overwhelmingly from regular mners.

The basis for the allegation of coercive control is the presumption that Lang and others were targeted by TRAs, but that’s not what happened here, according to Justine.

Ergo, MNHQ were not coercively controlled or manipulated into banning Lang by TRAs.

Nor was Hebe in discussions with a Twitter user about said banning (despite the claims no one believed that at all, there are dozens of posts demanding to know more details about this invented and wildly implausible discussion).

So MNHQ banned a poster who persistently broke TGs, in posts reported by regular mn users. The poster had lots of warnings and carried on, so eventually MNHQ banned her.

It’s kind of insulting (understatement) to mn, who are grown up women running an enormous and very successful business, to go on and on insisting that in fact they are the puppets of some twitter users and have no idea that they are being used.

I do wonder what point they imagine they’re making by posting screenshots from here on Twitter (I was screenshotted twice!). It’s not the same as vice versa, because no one is blocked from viewing posts on MN, anyone can just mosey on over and read the threads for themselves, even if they’re banned from posting.
Ah well. Wonder if I can get “antisocial weirdo” on a tshirt 😂?

I think we can all agree with Justine that MN staff members deserve to work in a decent and respectful environment.

In fact the call from Lang and others that MN mods could benefit from doing the freedom programme was evidence not of rudeness to mods, but precisely the opposite.

If this constitutes rudeness to mods then I'll risk the deletion: MN you are victims of coercive control. You are being played by anonymous (and not so anonymous) people, usually with a Y chromosome. You are unwittingly being used to abuse and harass women posting in good faith on this forum. You would benefit from offering staff the freedom programme so they have greater understanding of abuse and control.

When safeguarding is involved it has to be OK for people to report concerns. It is not personal, people are working as parts of a whole system and ultimately managers should take responsibility. Lack of communication always comes out as being one of the issues whenever there is a serious safeguarding review after an incident.

Or maybe they all agree as most people have given up and left it to an echo chamber?

Perhaps. Although the lack of a block button and the inability to make networks of ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ means that Mumsnet doesn’t actually function in the way that online echo chambers are created.
Forums aren’t the ‘closed system’ that social media sites (Twitter, Facebook etc) are.
It’s partly why they (mostly) fell out of fashion.

I'm not surprised we have ended up here.

The catalyst was when MNHQ took the unprecedented move to publically invite non members via social media to report MN members posts. We voiced our concerns at the time that this would be abused by people with an agenda to silence women. You only have to see on Twitter proof of them using you and thoroughly enjoying their little power trip.

You're being used to erase women.

The catalyst was when MNHQ took the unprecedented move to publically invite non members via social media to report MN members posts.

Yes this. To take an example from upthread, think if Susan's Place invited gender critical women offsite to report everything we deemed offensive? Actually you can't even imagine it, it's so absurd. Yet here we are. Female socialization, eh?

Once again, may I point out that identifying someone is a victim of coercive control isn't an accusation?

So rather than errr stonewall everybody (sorry but that is the right word to use in its original context) you need to come up with something more workable. It’s clearly not working well right now since everyone is angry - MNHQ and the users. Oh but the TRAs are happy so there’s that

The coercion made a huge step forward when Mumsnet introduced special guidelines for the feminist forum on behalf of a bunch of people who are known for being (actually) aggressive towards feminists. To make things worse, the rules are murky, making it impossible to apply them in ways that make sense to posters. (An ideal situation for TRAs who want us to be demoralized.) And it is demoralizing when we’re faced with a horrible social trend that is silencing women at work, messing with our kids at school, only to find ourselves walking on eggshells in the places where we come to share our concerns. Our grief was mocked when we lost one of our prominent feminists to cancer, by the same monitors who are gloating about controlling Mumsnet’s moderators and picking us off one by one.

How about coming up with guidelines that won’t be such a nightmare to enforce, even if those guidelines are unacceptable to TRAs? What is Mumsnet without posters? Just because posters don’t get paid, or spend time at headquarters, is it really a good long term strategy to disregard repeated, concerted opinions from the layers of the golden (well, copper at least) eggs?
I just don’t get how a situation where only the TRAs, who want to “queer” our kids, are pleased can be acceptable on what’s supposedly a feminist forum.

Please bring Lang back, and please prioritize the posters. Please create a place where parents can speak freely about the very pressing issues facing our society and children.

HQ wouldn't know who they were talking to, in terms of people reporting, though. We know, beyond doubt that TRAs are in this for the hugely long-term. They will set up a whole persona. Loads.

One of the ways you can tell whether it's control, is the effect, and the effect is booting out a safeguarding proponent from a massively public parenting website.

On the basis of her questioning control.

See when you say "erase women" in the context of this thread, it's rubbish.
What has happened is that MN have banned a poster who has apparently regularly broke TGs and belittled them accusing of being abused...
It comes across as you can't ban as I'm a woman, you're erasing me... um no, I'm a woman doesn't automatically mean you (general you) can say/do what the fuck you like, cos, female.
Maybe you have to have been on the receiving end to have your eyes opened to what goes on on here.

Once again, may I point out that identifying someone is a victim of coercive control isn't an accusation

Nor is describing patterns or dynamics of abuse.