Deleted/censorship on mumsnet now!

[HermioneKipper]

My thread asking about transwomen/transitioning/penises has been deleted.

Why are we not allowed to discuss this? It’s a genuine question and extremely relevant to the debate about transwomen entering female spaces.

There was no abuse of trans people that I could see aside from a few people attempting to derail by saying that they couldn’t see why women might be concerned about having to share their space!

This isn’t right

Oh no, you can talk about penis all you like.

You just have to centre it appropriately and worship at the altar of it and it’s -haver.

@Ninkanink

Oh and a very important addition to the point I made above about Male inclusion in female spaces being unworkable: do these people ever actually respond to points about women whose religion or culture would mean they absolutely cannot be in the same space with a male?

They don’t ever seem to care about that. So much for inclusivity and diversity and respecting women’s deeply held convictions and beliefs...

The argument usually goes:

1. those women don't actually exist

Some of those women then post on the thread and explain that yes, they do exist, hello.

2. if those women exist then they don't mind because I have a friend with that faith/culture/disability/trauma and they can use mixed sex spaces

Women on the thread point out that this is lovely for their friend, but obviously not everyone shares their friend's personal circumstances, theory of mind is a Thing, and hello, here are more women with circumstances for whom this does not work, and who can only be included in female only spaces.

3. if they do mind it's their fault and they should leave their faith/culture (family, community,) and get over their disability and trauma. If they don't then they deserve their exclusion.

Women on the thread generally reach wtf at this stage, and point out what the words 'inclusion' and 'intersectionality' actually mean, and then explain that the Equality Act has nine protected characteristics and not just one, and this is naivety and ignorance to female circumstances and equality that reaches quite mind boggling standards.

We then usually get to the crux of it which is:

4. Ok, so female people may be excluded and affected but they don't matter as much as the natal male people who wish to use female single sex spaces

Which really is the nuts and bolts of it.

@Artichokeleaves yes, that’s exactly what always happens.

@Ninkanink

The only response I have seen to the questions you raise, is a denial of the facts and figures and claims that women like to pretend to be victims.

I'm not strong enough to carry on at that point

should have also mentioned in response to 3) women on the thread generally also at this point note the complete absence of suggestion that natal male people should 'get over' anything and the heavily sexist inequality of expectations.

It was a good thread. People will have seen it and those people can now also see what happened to it and will draw their own conclusions.

So all very useful, and thank you to whoever started it.

I wish I’d said it on the other thread but has anyone every come up with a workable solution to the ever present problem of figuring out which men are ‘pretending to be women’ vs those who are legitimately trans?

Press for Change worked extremely hard to blur lines here, reasoning that the public were more likely to accept the concept of transsexual people with severe dysphoria than the concept of people who chose to cross dress. And so they coined the term ‘trans’, to be deliberately vague & cover them all.

It just boggles my mind. What do the people who say this actually think it would involve? It makes me so angry that they sit parroting utter garbage like that without even trying to come up with a coherent argument as to how it would be workable.

10 years ago everyone would have - as much as they'd thought about it at all - considered "transsexuals" and "transvestites" to be obviously different things.

And I think many still do.

And they think transsexuals are now "trans" or "transgender".

They've failed to notice that no-one is described as being a transvestite any more.

I have seen a woman here who pointed out (very bravely I thought) that she would be scared to be alone with someone she perceived to be male as she had been raped.

Guess what, she was accused of “pulling the rape-card”. I still cannot get my head around that one. A woman who has been raped is not allowed to talk about it and not allowed to state that she doesn’t want to see penis. There seem to be zero empathy for women from some people.

, you know who you are. The majority of women support you here!

@nauticant

There are 3 main groups within the trans umbrella Cailin66: 1) those who were referred to as "transsexuals", suffers of crippling gender dysphoria; 2) (mainly) young people having identity confusion/disorders of many types; 3) other people with other motivations.

We're not allowed to discuss the 3) group of people.

Not just here though. When the Labour Government wrote the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, no consideration of group 3 was tolerated. So much so that when a late-onset transitioner asked for a meeting with the Minister tasked with the job, it was turned down. It wasn't surprising. That individual had written a 30-page letter explaining how non-homosexual transsexuals differed from homosexual transsexuals, their typical path in life, and then explained that the Gender Recognition Act as planned was going to force late-onset transsexuals to either divorce their wives or forgo the chance to legally change sex. And would the Minister please listen to that second group of transsexuals and not just pretend they didn't exist.

Of course the government could not admit that this second type of transsexuals existed, because that would have posed considerable problems to their preferred narrative of why the government creating a legal fiction that humans can change sex was of no consequence for the rights of women. And would have no impact on society because of the minute number of homosexual transsexuals. They could not allow any scrutiny because late-onset transsexuals when outnumber early-onset transsexuals by a ratio of 9:1. And any public knowledge of that would have invalidated half their arguments for passing this law.

@BatmansBat it’s just awful isn’t it. The utter disregard for aftereffects of actual, literal sexual violence.

But we should #bekind.

Hello @HermioneKipper. We'd like to clarify that your thread was deleted because a number of posts were breaking our guidelines (as the deletion message said) for generalising. If you'd like more detail about this, please drop us a line.

We really must insist that discussions surrounding sex and gender remain civil, and as many of the posts on your deleted thread did not break our guidelines, we don't think it's an unreasonable ask.

If you're not already familiar with our guidelines, please take a look.

What’s the point of this separate board if we can’t discuss things openly on here?

Hi @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet

I think the discussion did remain civil in the most part. Why couldn’t you delete the very few posts that broke the guidelines and keep the thread up.

It’s important to be able to discuss these issues rationally and with respect.

Women’s safety is being attacked and it feels like we can’t even question it. It’s very upsetting

Hmmmm.

I wanted to post something about how society views man’s and women’s bodies on that thread, but I don’t think I know enough about the theory to make a good post. I was hoping others more learned than me would help fill in the gaps.

I know there’s feminist literature about women’s bodies being considered problematic and often viewed as wrong or even disgusting. There’s also lots around girl’s discomfort round puberty and the changes that happen once you start to menstruate and grow breasts. That does get raised on here.

I don’t know how to discuss this but it seems to be relevant both to ideas of nb females and girls/women in general.

It’s not hate speech to ask questions and I’m not transphobic for being concerned about the future of women’s safety and the sanctity of women’s sport

@TrifleCat

What’s the point of this separate board if we can’t discuss things openly on here?

Hello @TrifleCat - the site-wide guidelines still apply on this board. We're not here to trip anyone up though, and so if you're unsure about any aspect of our moderation, we're always happy to discuss it.

I agree that there was absolutely no need to delete the whole thread.

In fact in an ideal world (HA!!) specific terms/sentences/whatever the forbidden words are that break guidelines, would be redacted and the rest of the comment left to stand.

When the Labour Government wrote the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, no consideration of group 3 was tolerated. So much so that when a late-onset transitioner asked for a meeting with the Minister tasked with the job, it was turned down. It wasn't surprising. That individual had written a 30-page letter explaining how non-homosexual transsexuals differed from homosexual transsexuals, their typical path in life, and then explained that the Gender Recognition Act as planned was going to force late-onset transsexuals to either divorce their wives or forgo the chance to legally change sex. And would the Minister please listen to that second group of transsexuals and not just pretend they didn't exist.

That's really fascinating CharlieParley. Is there a link or archive anywhere online to read this?

This is why I sent you to wiki for reasons that have never been explained it's fine to generalise a group of people as having gender dysphoria but not fine to generalise as having gender euphoria.

I find that very instructive

Was it pointing out that the vast majority of transwomen retain their penis that was considered to be 'a generalisation'?

This is a widely reported fact. The GIRES charity has stated that around 85% of transwomen retain their penis, and Janice Turner said in the Times last week that over 80% of transwomen retain their penis.

If this is what got the thread to be deleted then please let us know if you want links to prove that this is a fact, not a generalisation.

Truth is the new blasphemy.

@YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet

Hello *@HermioneKipper*. We'd like to clarify that your thread was deleted because a number of posts were breaking our guidelines (as the deletion message said) for generalising. If you'd like more detail about this, please drop us a line.

We really must insist that discussions surrounding sex and gender remain civil, and as many of the posts on your deleted thread did not break our guidelines, we don't think it's an unreasonable ask.

If you're not already familiar with our guidelines, please take a look.

@YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet and as many of the posts on your deleted thread did not break our guidelines

If many posts were ok, then WHY was the thread deleted?

This is disgraceful, @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet please, grow up! I know Mumsnet has the worst reputation on the net for being so delete-happy, deleting posts here and in AIBU that any NORMAL webforum wouldn't delete, but this has gone beyond a fucking joke now. You 'moderators' (if you can call yourself that), should be absolutely bloody ashamed of yourselves. You're a joke! An absolute JOKE! Not one post of that thread was even remotely, in any normal human being's mind, deleteworthy, let alone entire thread delete worthy. Why couldn't you at LEAST close the thread to further comments but leave it up, as it was a very informative thread, and should have been left for others to refer to in future.

Seriously, @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet grow up. Or take a class in how to be a semi-reasonable moderator. An apology from you would be nice.

We really must insist that discussions surrounding sex and gender remain civil, and as many of the posts on your deleted thread did not break our guidelines, we don't think it's an unreasonable ask.

That makes no sense at all. The specific posts that break guidelines should be deleted instead of an entire thread that by your own admission was mostly fine. This is usually what happens on other threads. So why was an entire thread that was civil and had useful contributions pulled off?