Should MN have a Gender Identity (or similar) subsection?

[TheThermalStair]

I used to be a really active member of this board, for years. Similar with real life groups. Now there are very few discussions about most feminist issues, and tonnes and tonnes about trans/gender identity issues.

I FULLY UNDERSTAND why people are interested in talking about this, on all sides. But I miss discussions about other issues. To me having a feminist board that seems to be 90% gender chat isn't representative of the feminist issues that women face in the UK let alone in the rest of the world. The alternative would be to have a "non trans/gender identity related feminist chat board" but that feels pretty silly. Is it just me that feels this way?

The difficulty with the “start the topics you want to see” proposal, is that if 80% of the people following the FWR forum are here to talk about trans issues, they end up derailing any other topic to talk about that.

I have recently been on a couple of threads that have not been about gender identities impacting on female issues at all. They were not relevant so were not discussed.

If the rights of females are directly or indirectly impacted by prioritizing gender over sex, do you just ignore those impacts and wish others did as you do?

If others can see the impact and you can’t, do you read and ask questions to work out why they are posting what you believe is irrelevant to the topic. Or is your mind set that any discussion on the impact is based on hate?

I can only assume that OP doesn’t actually understand the issues or what is at stake.

I've been here for about 15 years and was involved in the original debates about whether to start an fwr board.

I've met dittany irl

It's a mix of things.

This board has brought lots of new posters who are single issue as it's one of the only places it can be discussed without abuse/ pile ons / efforts to doxx /banning etc. A lot of these new posters do not id as feminists but are women who are concerned about the removal of our safeguards language etc.

Many feminists who have been here for ages while missing the broad range of topics, understand/ agree with the idea that these changes in law, the real life consequences (prisons etc), the use of idpol by many as a way to attack women who stand up for women, the way our political parties are failing us etc is simply huge. And the removal of our words, decent data, and subdividing us into distinct groups (menstruators, people with s cervix etc) can only massively impact the efforts of feminists to raise women's issues, discuss them in a widely understood and meaningful way, and obscures that issues X and y and z are not separate things but all relate to one group- women and girls.

Loads of old regs did leave for private boards where they can post freely/ and don't post here or do so less often.

HTH.

In real life everyone I know where this has come up (I don't raise it) has thought us dangerous misogynist bollocks except one.

When I first became interested in feminism in the eighties as a kid, it was because I saw some tv programme about how there weren’t enough women’s toilets because architects still produced plans which gave more space for men’s toilets, as they thought men would be in public places more.

It fills me with rage that we were still dealing with that in the 1980s as we were in the 1880s. It fills me with rage that we have it as one of the threads in 2021 because we are still trying to get enough women’s toilets.

And yes it is under gender critical stuff, but it is the same feminist issue we have always fought.

And when we have defeated gender identity theory (which we will) misogynists will find a new reason why we can’t have toilets, or women’s groups, or discuss the menopause, of have women’s refuges, or for women to escape stereotypes, or for proper mental Heath care for girls, or love just women.

Because the attempts to control women remains the same; it’s just the justification that reinvents itself.

2. A key tenet of genderism is to stop women talking about their sex. If we can't talk about sex we can't talk about sexism. If we can't talk about sexism we can't talk about topics such as VAWG, abortion, glass ceiling, prostitution, pay gap, data gaps.

3. If you want to be able to carry on talking about all those things you'll need to carry on talking about sex, and challenging the genderist narrative.

This. With bells on.

@LibertyMole

The early days of the feminist board were a nightmare.

There were loads of trolls and MRAs constantly starting threads about how misogyny didn’t exist and how great bdsm was.

I genuinely think a bunch of them found a new tactic in transactivism. Not to suggest that all TRAs were or are MRAs, but it's been a while since we've seen bog standard MRA trolling.

I agree with you OP. So many posters have had to hide the feminism board because they are tired of all the GC posts and so have nowhere to discuss other topics related to feminism which is a shame. Not all feminists are GC and any attempt to discuss this issue just gets jumped on and overwhelmed by the GC posters. So the discussion gets shut down. It’s a real shame that it has come to this.

People complaining that they have to hide the feminism board because it is doing feminism wrong have also been a main feature of the board since its inception.

Thanks @LibertyMole @NiceGerbil @Wandawomble for being willing to discuss this, I really appreciate being able to have the conversation and think it over.

@Helleofabore I think you've mistaken my beliefs and politics tbh. I suppose for me it's as if this was the totally dominant topic on a gay rights board. It's CLEARLY RELEVANT but it's also not the only issue. Like I said in the OP I really do understand why people want to talk about it. It's more that unlike some here I don't necessarily see it as the biggest issue we're facing - I think tbh a lot of this will fade away in time and gender identity issues will be treated like an issue that affects a tiny minority of people, which is what it is. (Waits to be pounced on for being naive etc).

I also get pissed off about people on here slagging off "wokeness" etc because it makes me feel like I'm reading the Daily Mail and feels really crass to do this ignoring the term's origin in anti-racism campaigns. But that's another issue.

I don’t post here for fun, I post because there are things that matter and are affecting my life, the insertion of males into female spaces and the effect that is having on my daughter’s mental health is one of them.

I second this.

If I did not feel that the rights I enjoyed were under threat for my teen, I would gladly not discuss anyone’s gender identity again.

However, here we are. My teen is facing going to university where the women’s officer has a high likelihood of being male despite there being an LGBT officer as well, and from what has happened nearly everytime, it is not female issues being prioritized by that role anymore. My teen is playing sport against males in female sports teams in under 15 squads. My teen is facing many issues where gender being substituted for sex is directly effecting them.

Yet it seems that we are regularly told any discussion about it should be sectioned off because apparently it is irrelevant to women’s rights according to some posters or just not important enough in their eyes.

Are you kidding?

The house of Women's rights are currently ON FIRE and women all over the globe are fighting for their rights to safety, to stop the slicing off of healthy young teenage girls breast, no sterilisation of their children etc.

And you think the feminism board discusses it too much?

If it DOES fade, it'll be because of the hard work by women to fucking keep women's single sex facilities. It won't be proof that it's not an issue.

No one is saying you can’t talk about it. I genuinely don’t get the resistance to it. This is exactly why sub-boards are created, to stop sections being dominated by one topic. 🤷‍♀️

I am resisting it because it would make it harder to join the dots.

This is what we are fighting, the basic right for women to have a political voice, dismissed by this self important blowhard:

https://twitter.com/WardlawSteve/status/1393532961652359168?s=20

The point about the EHRC is it has a tricky job – to negotiate the tricky ground between competing freedoms. The new head as simply apparently thrown that out. If women are allowed to question trans identity – importantly HOWEVER they choose to do it, even abusively - (2/6)

without sanction, then with all protections being equal, why can’t a racist discuss repatriation without sanction, or a holocaust denier discuss that at every Jewish conference without sanction? See my previous thread on the pyramid of prejudice (3/8)

– where simply some prejudices are deemed worse than others. Under the new head, the @EHRC has intervened in the Forstater case to argue there are no limits on freedom of speech. But this CANNOT be the law, as it totally does away with the hate speech qualifications. (4/6)

Gender issues don’t affect a tiny number of people though

The redefining of women to include men affects the 51% of the population that are women

I think the "please move the only feminism board about women's facilities and women's rights in the UK to a secret board somewhere else" is disingenuous at best.

If you can't cope with it as a discussion point, that's on you, not the whole rest of the board.

Reddit probably offers what you'd prefer, they are 100% trans positive so don't even bring up the topic except to celebrate it.

I’m really not interested in hearing more about this issue. As I said it pointless trying to discuss it, but it would have been nice for non-GC feminists to have a place to post. Perhaps we could have our own sub-board.

@Theeyeballsinthesky

Gender issues don’t affect a tiny number of people though

The redefining of women to include men affects the 51% of the population that are women

I think it's pretty clear that wasn't what I meant. I mean the number of people who identify as male while being biologically female & vice versa is actually really small. I tried to find figures, in the UK we're talking a fraction of 1% and no-one knows how many/few, although the census will change that.

Yes. It is a tiny issue.

So why has it had such mass institutional capture? Why has it already harmed women? Why?

I wonder if this issue is also bigger when you work in the public sector, like I do, where its already stopped me accessing facilities and services.

Blimey I was expecting debate but I can see a lot of you are battle-scarred and ready to jump to wrong conclusions and exaggerate about proposing a "secret board" or being too sensitive to ever read anything about this issue. It feels a bit "if you're not with us you're against us", which is ironic as statistically I must have met some of you in real life and probably shared a drink.

"the attempts to control women remains the same; it’s just the justification that reinvents itself." I really believe this and I happen to think that the way this one issue has been a proven distraction/diversion/derailment tactic is regularly used to silence women and - ironically - stop us discussing other things that we care about. It's not that I disagree with people posting on this board, I just feel a bit like a lot of it is misogynists/trolls going LOOK OVER THERE and we all look over there. Meanwhile shit continues to go down.

I am resisting it because it would make it harder to join the dots.

Exactly.

I'm one of them but I name change frequently and occasionally deregister for good measure. Doxxing and data security are real problems

Same. I can't remember if there was a FWR board at the time, but I have been posting on MN about feminism since 2005.

I'd love to focus on issues other than being GC but, as every other feminist issue depends on women's right to define themselves by sex, there is no choice but to deal with the existential threat that the TRA movement poses.

I wonder if this issue is also bigger when you work in the public sector

I also think it's bigger for those with teenage children, which would account for a lot of Mumsnet members.