Reddit banning users for sharing Julie Bindel article

[Cwenthryth]

twitter.com/bindelj/status/1374372934379204608?s=21
Julie Bindel has shared on Twitter that Reddit is banning any mention or sharing of her Spectator article & banning users for discussion Aimee Challenor/Knight as well.

Here’s the spec article
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-green-party-s-growing-contempt-for-women-s-rights

That metro article is very well written and just states all the facts. I don’t see how anyone could claim it was transphobic (am pre-empting that that will be a criticism!). It just shines a massive bright ray of sunlight on the whole situation.

Trying to blame an automatic process though....hmm. The original article mentions AC very briefly in passing, wasn’t even the focus of the article. I am somewhat unconvinced by the “overzealous automatic moderation” defence.

If known, have you used the pronouns the individual uses to describe themselves in your story?

www.ipso.co.uk/member-publishers/guidance-for-journalists-and-editors/transgender-guidance/

UK Regulated publications ... Metro (Associated Newspapers Limited) Metro Scotland (Associated Newspapers Limited) metro.co.uk (Associated Newspapers Limited) metro.news (Associated Newspapers Limited)

www.ipso.co.uk/complain/who-ipso-regulates/?letters=m

@MaudTheInvincible

That Metro article doesn't actually mention Aimee's gender identity. Just uses cross-sexed pronouns throughout.

It slips in a reference to transphobia though.

It says Aimee left the greens citing transphobic bullying. Which is true and also a strong hint.

Some more articles

www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-reddit-censoring-the-spectator-

www.epistlenews.co.uk/science/03/24/reddit-is-banning-anyone-who-takes-aimee-challenors-name-heres-everything-you-need-to-know.html

www.gamerevolution.com/news/677190-reddit-private-community-aimee-challenor-censorship

Can't read the spectator article but I did notice this....

Clearly reaching a wider audience now!

The Green party's woman problem is here - archive.is/s4GPL
Is reddit censoring the spectator - archive.is/pG9xp

@Tanith

AC is a handy cover. This is all too comprehensive for one not very bright 20-something to have achieved by themselves.

Now that light is being shone in certain murky areas, AC makes a nice, dispensable scrap to drop as a distraction.

Are you saying that someone is or someones are using AC to push through their own agenda?

This is terrible for the trans community. AC's story has all the elements which they are deperate to avoid and disown.

@WarriorN

Can't read the spectator article but I did notice this....

Clearly reaching a wider audience now!

Slow hand clap for Aimee.

desperate to avoid and disown.

But not desperate enough to actually take action on, apparently. Just trying to sweep it under the rug.

Which in turn was what AC was criticised for in the Veritas report. It's a huge repeated pattern.

David Challenor bears some responsibility for this, but Aimee Challenor, as an officer of the party both nationally and locally, should have made sure that she gave enough information to people in positions of responsibility so that they could act on it. We believe that she did not do so because the primary issue in her mind was the reputation of the party in publicity terms.We do not believe she considered safeguarding issues. That was an error on her part.

From our conversations with her, it is clear that Aimee Challenor did not demonstrate a clear understanding of safeguarding and still does not see the safeguarding issues that this case gave rise to.

@MingeofDeath

This is terrible for the trans community. AC's story has all the elements which they are deperate to avoid and disown.

I've never seen TRAs disown something like this. Normally they just round on the person(s) bringing it up, with accusations of transphobia. Let's see if this time will be any different.

First Metro article I've ever seen that wasn't draped in rainbow flags and sympathy.

Amazing.

I've had a look at the UK trans subreddit and they're not happy. Of course, there are posts supporting AC.

Karen White. Jonathan Yaniv. Amy Challenor. There's a couple more, I'm sure - people who've been enabled to victimise others again and again, and then been protected from criticism by organisations who were determined to give them the benefit of the doubt no matter what. For what? A bit of feel good policy that no-one bothered to follow up on to see how it actually landed? Every time, the cover-up has turned out to be even more shocking than the original mistake.

It's the enabling people and organisations in this who make me most angry.

determined to give them the benefit of the doubt no matter what.

That's Glinners repeated point. So these are outliers? Well they're very central outliers.

Why do they keep turning up in central positions, with people protecting them?

That means you have an institutional problem.

Just as a point of information Aimee stood to be MP for Coventry South in the 2017 General Election, getting 604 votes. By contrast the Green candidate in 2015 had managed to get 1719 people to vote for him.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_South_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

@MingeofDeath

This is terrible for the trans community. AC's story has all the elements which they are deperate to avoid and disown.

Absolutely. This is where “acceptance without exception” leads though, this is where lack of safeguarding and lack of gatekeeping gets us.

This current drama with Reddit doesn’t have anything to do with AC being transgender per se - the issues of immediate concern here are safeguarding and censorship, for sure. However I personally don’t think you can completely ignore the facts that AC is transgender or has in the past campaigned publicly for trans rights, they’re not irrelevant to the situation as a whole, you can’t manage this as a safeguarding and censorship issue and the person at the centre of it just happens to be transgender. AC’s trans status and activism has meant that concerns about this individual raised by women (and some men!) for years have been dismissed as transphobia. A young man would not have been fêted and elevated by older politicians in the way AC was as a young transwoman, nor been fast-tracked to so many positions of influence. The point we are at now is all because AC is transgender, and how AC has been treated as a transgender person. AC is still only 24, remember, and we are all a product of our childhood and youth experiences.

Reddit has a huge hypocrisy problem here.

All the people who use it enough to mod their own reddits know what content doesn't get deleted. You can't make your reputation on being such a bastion of free speech that you're forced to permit truly infamous reddits, and then ban someone for posting an article from the Spectator.

Wow, I am exploring Reddit. Some interesting subreddits, there.

To be crystal clear - the point I am trying to make in my last post is that the issue is not AC being trans, it is how AC has been treated because they are trans.

I ‘get’ that they don’t want their staff harassed... however, being a moderator and potentially having access to private information and a direct line to posters surely would mean that you need to be someone trustworthy, with good judgement and integrity.

Someone who has been found guilty of not understanding safeguarding, etc etc etc is surely the type of person you would not perceive to have good judgement or common sense.

@NecessaryScene1

determined to give them the benefit of the doubt no matter what.

That's Glinners repeated point. So these are outliers? Well they're very central outliers.

Why do they keep turning up in central positions, with people protecting them?

That means you have an institutional problem.

Exactly this!! It’s the fact that organisations whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors do not appear to be applying their standard safeguarding processes to certain people for reasons that do not seem to be entirely clear

And some individuals turn up again and again with an astonishing level of influence which on the face of it makes no sense