Why has the ASDA t-shirt thread been removed?

[stumbledin]

@MNHQ - its pointless saying you have concerns. If we dont understand your concerns how can we comply with your rules?!

What, now? What concerns?

@AlbusSirius I get where you're coming from

What does the deletion message say?

Did someone mention the word we can't say?

Had the same train of thought as albus

I think albus has it

(I do understand the rationale though...must be everso tempting to think ‘fuck It...I’m done)

But it does mean that no-one gets To debate and discuss anything...because its too hard to moderate

I reported this thread and asked for clarification. I've no reason to suppose I shouldn't share the response. The concern is, imo, valid though maybe deleting the whole thread is a bit of a sledgehammer. Imo there's a problem of LGBT groups being used by MAPs and their apologists - discussing the issues making that distinction crystal clear is tricky but hopefully not impossible.

We removed the thread as several posts broke our Talk guidelineses_ for generalising and conflating LGBT with pedophilia and child grooming. We've no issue with users raising concerns about the appropriateness of messaging on a shirt - or anywhere tbh, especially with regard to the safeguarding of children, but posts on this thread, including the OP, were not clear enough as to what groups they were referring to. ^

I don’t think anyone said that did they though?

Not from what I read.

Someone mentioned the colours but that was about it. ..

The thread was started by a QAnon supporter (he/she used one of their hashtags). The woman who first brought the T shirt to people’s attention is a QAnon supporter - her twitter feed is full of their memes and slogans. I am really concerned at how genuine issues around child safeguarding are being hijacked by this insane conspiracy theory.

Oh well. Speaking of t-shirts... I saw a man with Down’s syndrome on twitter trying to get amazon selling T-shirt’s that were pretty awful to people with DS... if you get a no’ check it out...

Trying to get amazon to stop...

I don't think anyone meant to say it, and some posts explicitly made it clear that the historical slurs against gay men were completely wrong. At least... I don't think anyone meant to say that in relation to LGBT people in general. Organisations OTOH which seem to have broadened their remit - pride celebrating certain kinks which we may be sceptical about for instance - I hope those weren't the posts which caused concern. That sort of thing should be up for discussion.

Ididnt see the thread. What t-shirt?

BeingBrent @AmazingBrent - his mum looks a hoot (tattoos vicar). Vicarage with tattoos always amuse me for some reason (maybe because our old vicar was a sailor and had tattoos - he used to shock the ladies of the parish by telling them that he got them done in a brothel when he was on shore leave).

Sorry - my autocorrect does weird things. Mostly correct.

@bookworm14

The thread was started by a QAnon supporter (he/she used one of their hashtags). The woman who first brought the T shirt to people’s attention is a QAnon supporter - her twitter feed is full of their memes and slogans. I am really concerned at how genuine issues around child safeguarding are being hijacked by this insane conspiracy theory.

Maybe MNHQ is better at detecting dodgy hashtags than most members who steer a wide course around QAnon and its ilk. I wouldn't have had a clue about that.

ErrolTheDragon See this article for more about QAnon’s hijacking of legitimate concerns about child abuse/trafficking. www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/technology/qanon-save-the-children-trafficking.html

@bookworm14

The thread was started by a QAnon supporter (he/she used one of their hashtags). The woman who first brought the T shirt to people’s attention is a QAnon supporter - her twitter feed is full of their memes and slogans. I am really concerned at how genuine issues around child safeguarding are being hijacked by this insane conspiracy theory.

Well, is anyone surprised that excellent causes keep getting co-opted into supporting unsavoury things? This is the essence of what we've been discussing for ages. How else does a society moving so strongly towards ideas of equality and justice get conned into thinking that speaking out about abuses is bigotry? Everything gets cuckooed these days, from feminism, socialism, LGB equality, whatever.

@ErrolTheDragon

I don't think anyone meant to say it, and some posts explicitly made it clear that the historical slurs against gay men were completely wrong. At least... I don't think anyone meant to say that in relation to LGBT people in general. Organisations OTOH which seem to have broadened their remit - pride celebrating certain kinks which we may be sceptical about for instance - I hope those weren't the posts which caused concern. That sort of thing should be up for discussion.

I think the difficulty is that you can draw a connection between things people think are ok, that have been accepted as fairly normal and good, and some of the things being done now and that are accepted, because a lot of people see them as being the same.

A lot of the child safeguarding stuff is like that. Rainbow clubs have functioned in schools where I am for a long time, including elementary schools where the oldest students are usually about 12. They are run by an adult, usually a teacher in the school. And it's also widely accepted by many, though not officially in school policy, that a lot of young gay kids might confide in a teacher or other adult and this is important if their parents might have concerns or doubts about them coming out.

I don't think we can pretend, when we see the same kinds of approaches with kids who think they are trans, or other social movements around sexuality, that they are not connected in people's minds. For most, a school not telling parents about a child asking to be treated as the other sex is the same as the school not telling the parents that the child is going to the Rainbow club. And maybe it's just a different thing, but it's also valid IMO to question the role of the school with this more generally - do schools really get to make those decisions? Should they really be having Rainbow clubs open to pre-adolescent children? To what extent does the school get to decide the values and worldviews students should be taught are good - because society has given them a lot of leeway in that over the past 25 years. And that leaves the door open to them promoting ideas that many of us might not be comfortable with, like "love has no age limit".

I accept it's difficult to moderate these type of threads. It is, obviously, awful to suggest a connection between LGBT support and paedophilia, as used to be done in the past - and is still being done in some spurious areas of SM.

The trouble is that the rainbow/pride/LGBT support being conflated with MAP, not necessarily on purpose, by people who are purporting to support LGBT groups. For example the previous troll thread about the misplaced button between the rainbow troll doll's legs and the MAP colours on the troll dress, as well as the ASDA love across the ages type material for schools. Those were hailed as pro-trans; someone has to point out that they are crossing a line.

It isn't, generally, GC feminists that are conflating LGBT with MAP - but while safeguarding is being abandoned by some (stress some) LGBT groups it's not conflating to point it out.

The danger is that anything "pro-LGBT" can't be criticised - everything and everyone should be critiqued when it comes to safeguarding children.

As I’ve said on another thread, Janice Turner couldn’t post her article on MN if she wanted to. I was banned for a week for making the same points - less bluntly - on MN.

MNHQ have a real problem here.

I hope you've misunderstood what I did - I reported this thread to directly ask the same question as you did, OP, because I didn't understand why the ASDA thread was taken down either, and IME doing @MNHQ doesn't yield answers whereas using the reporting mechanism may. I didn't announce my intent to do so as I wasn't expecting such a prompt answer but I got one which I've passed on. My intent was the same as yours I think - to understand the reasoning so that we know how to continue to discuss safeguarding issues etc.

Placemarking. I want to know why too.