‘We’re takin it down now’??!

[AchieveBelieve]

The mental health thread has been zapped. I suppose I should have expected it - I was feeling raw last night and probably opened up more than I should have on here. Lots of other women were frank and open about the impact of the current women’s rights issues on their mental health and it made for somber reading but fucking hell it was a testament to the feeling of so many women on here. And it was deleted because of the opening post, even though that was written over 2 years ago?! It wasn’t ‘civil’ apparently. I can’t remember what it said to be honest. Maybe it overstepped I don’t know. But I’m raging at the cavalier deletion message that ended with ‘we’re takin it down’ - sounds like something you’d say in a computer game. If my post contravened anything I would have appreciated a message from MN. Especially given the nature of the posts I would have expected some sensitivity rather than the gung ho deletion message.

I appreciate this will get deleted too as a TAAT but just thought I’d vent.

You know it's time we found a way to address the fact that advertisers are responding to a pressure group who in all likelihood aren't buying their products in vast numbers, if at all, but are very good at mobilising to protest.

I'm not making any kind of judgement on what any kind of person buys or doesn't buy any particular products, in that assumption, rather that a group which is actively looking for targets will find them to contact, rather than just contacting companies they actually use.

I'm not sure how, other than I think positivity in terms of contacting the advertising sites might work better than fire-fighting negativity. I for one will start making a point of telling companies that I saw their ad here etc. Small start and I'm sure we could do more.

Small start and I'm sure we could do more.

Perhaps MNHQ should develop an official line of "Radicalised by Mumsnet" merchandise

Perhaps MNHQ should develop an official line of "Radicalised by Mumsnet" merchandise.

I'm in! Like other posters I came to MN when I was pregnant with my first child, I've dipped in an out over the years because the issues make me so frustrated. PP is right that this is what is most threatening about the site. Women actually finding out about what's going on in our schools and institutions and being exposed to rational debate and information that can help them make up their own minds. Heaven forfend!

I'd buy some

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Small start and I'm sure we could do more.

Perhaps MNHQ should develop an official line of "Radicalised by Mumsnet" merchandise

Yes. I would buy things like mugs, tea towels, aprons and oven gloves for example. I always wear my pinny for cooking and cleaning (separate ones for each) and in these Covid times I change my kitchen and bathroom towels frequently.

@MichaelMumsnet - whether your moderator missed it as an old post or not is missing the point of their terrible tone and the way they addressed the OP. You wouldn't do this in the MH section I hope, so why was it okay here?

See, I think this is just verging on conspiracy theory territory. Someone on this thread has apologised for bumping said thread as was just wanting somewhere to offload, but you're talking about All Seeing Eyes demanding shutdowns of threads.

So women discussing their own mental health are obviously, you know, a bit paranoid. A bit mad.

Thanks for the practical demonstration of gaslighting, Quaagars.

And thanks, in this weird Handmaid’s Tale world of the present day, to whoever recognised and named the Eyes.

Quaagars and lamenting it was not deleted because it was bad for people's mental health, it was deleted because the moderator thought there was a 'tone of derision for transgender people'

T/O This is not mental health, but I think it might be cheering for anyone interested in feminism. This morning, radio 4 mentioned the British Library has and exhibition opening on Friday, but available online, called Unfinished Business. Feminism has made strides, but certainly it is unfinished business.
One hideous report yesterday was that in Kenya (?) a mass 'season' of Female Castration is in full swing, the victims paraded through streets.
I'm furious that the feminist movement ever let anyone get away with using the mealy mouthed fgm name. Men, all men, recognise and fear the word Castration. Women's bodies do not include a surplus flap of skin which can be cut off. Anything sliced off is Female Castration. Please never permit it to be called anything else.

Castration is removal of the gonads, isn't it - so testicles - to render infertile and meeker, due to loss of testosterone. I don't think it's the right term for mutilation of the external sexual organs.

Please could I not be deleted for considering whether a ‘Deleted by Mumsnet’ merchandise line would work..

Anyway
Michael thank you for your points on this. You said: we'll do our best to take context into account and continue to moderate within the principle of civil debate

Sounds sensible but I’m a bit worried that your clarification didn’t distinguish between ‘debate’ (which the relevant thread wasn’t) and a mental health support one (which it was).

Nobody was debating on that support thread, women were just talking about their experiences of worsened mental health caused by a particular set of issues and were offering each other support. Is that a distinction that can be made for moderating purposes?

My point in my now-deleted post above was to make this same point. It feels inappropriate for posters to be arguing the toss on threads about women’s experiences of worsened mental health. And if some people are allowed to have feelings that other people should accommodate, then surely everyone is, and particularly on a support thread?

Like many others in other threads, I have had deletion for naming my own individual experience and how shit it was (and without generalising to a group, so within guidelines as far as I was concerned). It feels a very inappropriate basis for deletion, on a site which is ‘in the spirit’ of support.

Chopping off all or part of the penis, with or without gonads, is clearly not a thing it is physically possible to do to a female body. Nor is removing a surplus flap of skin.

Men, all men, have a really strong reaction to the idea of removing any bits of their genitalia, with the exception of the foreskin, which for thousands of years in some traditions has been removed by custom, harmlessly, and is sometimes done for medical benefit and necessity. It does not, and is not intended to, impair the sexual urge, not the sexual pleasure, of men.
Female castration is done with that sole intention.
Letting men get away with the false idea it is possible harmlessly to remove any part of a woman's genitals, by allowing them to call it circumcision, was and is reprehensible. The alternative name must be castration, since that is the nearest equivalent to destruction of male and female genitals.
Beheading is misnamed if it is called 'haircut'. Burning people alive by putting petrol filled tyres round their necks was not a 'necklace'.

20Mum - can I suggest you start a separate thread if you want to discuss that, it doesn't seem to have much to do with this one.

There are so many issues this has raised that my mind is racing so this will be a jumbled post.

Any old thread is NEVER out of context. They should stand in the same way as people / libraries preserve old papers. They are an historical documentation of what was happening at a particular moment in time. And especially important if that then lead to actions, campaigns, whatever. Mumsnet should be proud to be the host to these moments.

Another worry is the tone police. This isn't about advertisers and out side pressure. There are members of mumsnet who genuinely seem to believe that because they would never speak in that way, or would not want to be part of a discussion on how others percieve something, that they report the thread as being inappropriate. I had a thread deleted because someone genuine thought it shouldn't be discussed that research had shown (or the researhed claimed it had shown) that murders of trans women happened because of the murderer felt they had been decieved. (Waits for this post to be deleted.)

And I think this is also a tone problem. If you are feeling really bad, desparate even, using language that some reading from a secure place appears to be irrational, is exactly why supporting what are called mental health issues, are so liable to be underminded by the mind set of the supported. How many women have been sectioned because their reation to the life they have experienced because they are a woman, is about reinforcing the patriarchy. I cant remember the slogan from the 70s but wasn't it something like "I'm not mad I'm angry".

Many, many women feel that the "logical" conclusion of the TWAW agenda is that they are being erased, invalidated, and that the system is allowing if not encouraging it.

Why of all places would mumsnet feel this is inappropriate?

Do they want to become "peoplesnet"?

Glad its been looked at again. It is still slightly conerning though that it happened in the first place.

Gosh, it's almost a perfect example of what a certain banned poster was pointing out isn't it?

20mum
I'm furious that the feminist movement ever let anyone get away with using the mealy mouthed fgm name.

I don't think that describing something as "mutilation" is all that mealy-mouthed really.