Article with sums up where we are now

[happydays2345]

I found this article online, and thought I would share it.

It sums up brilliantly where we are now! 😊

aninjusticemag.com/mumsnet-how-poor-moderation-created-a-transphobic-swamp-adf391ccf9fc

It's a pile of nonsense.

#NoThankYou

One paragraph in and the 'writer' showed they don't understand the difference between men in women's spaces and women's in men's spaces. Of course they weren't alarmed, what women pose any kind of threat to malr bodied people? The stunt was clearly to raise awareness, not scare men.
Only one side resorts to scaring and threatening people.
I assume this is what happens when students drop GCSE science for creative writing.
Either that or hair dye does indeed deep through to the brain. Funny how I managed to have bright red hair in my teens without developing an urge to become a men's rights activist though.

Fears were also raised about single-sex spaces, particularly the possibility that ‘a big hairy man with a functional penis between his legs’ could enter a women’s bathroom.

And who immediately thought of the male who lectures about ‘widening the bandwidth’ when they read this. And then heard Magdelen’s ‘they chop your cock off’ comment?

#NaTa

Article with sums up where we are now

I was very disappointed by the lack of sums. I feel mislead, OP

The author would do well to:
– pass the piece to a fact checker to remove or correct some of the more egregious items;
– request the assistance of an editor (some painful solipsisms in the text).

OP if the author is a friend - it's unkind that you didn't suggest this assistance unless, of course, you felt unequal to the task.

Let me suggest that the OP 's presumed friend or object of admiration for this piece might try out some writing exercises. One might be to make a close study of some threads and write about the moderation from the point of view of one or more of the participants who are moderated for some fact based statements.

It's always a useful exercise to understand the perspective of another party in a discussion - it deepens the understanding of your own position. Helen Joyce observed with considerable distress that she had endeavoured to do this for her book and had implored people for well argued pieces that explained gender ideology but none were available.

And Dissenting voices are insulted out of the room until only the most insulting viewpoint survives.

Made me think of the ‘your mother was a hamster’! And of course, that was the worst thing that this author could come up with. No threats, no violence. Just…. insults. So OP, do you see the significance yet? And if people are so afraid of being insulted, they perhaps need some therapy if they cannot simply walk away from the internet and do something more positive. Almost like…. I don’t know, describing reading something as ‘unsafe’.

The platform then acts as a safe space where those who remain can unilaterally discuss ideologically pure solutions.

No MN regular I know talks about safe spaces in relation to reading and interacting on the internet. Only one group seems to do that.

And it shows how very little this person actually knows since there actually isn’t agreement on every issue discussed here at all.

The credibility is actually really low for this so called article but I do confess it is making me giggle in some parts.

Insults …. Ha ha ha ha ha. Oops. Sorry. Is that insensitive and … insulting to laugh …

These rules focus solely on superficial manifestations of transphobia, including transphobic phrases like ‘trans identified male’ (TIM), while doing nothing to prevent the continued proliferation of factual delusions

Seriously OP. This is great. Thanks for posting.

As usual when people start threads with articles that are posted as ‘gotchas’ without any further input from the OP, they never quite go the way the OP wishes.

But, I am finding this one is really good for irony.

@InspiralCoalescenceRingdown

This is pure apologetics. It's not designed to persuade non-believers, it's intended to paper over the cracks of a believer's doubts.

That's why it doesn't back a lot of things it says up (like the points @aliasundercover mentions) - you're meant to already believe the TRA line on those things.

Absolutely this.

As social media platforms have finally begun to understand following the 2020 US Presidential Election debacle, constructive debate requires some basic standards for factual accuracy and accountability, not just specious civility.

I am in stitches. Really. Do you honestly not see the hypocrisy here OP.

Factual accuracy and accountability!

Factual accuracy and accountability!

That was particularly irritating. To be fair, this is in a week where it's taken a strikingly long time for the BBC to acknowledge their egregious defence of the 'suicide' stats while they've been gaslighting the nation in plain sight and dodging meaningful discussions of the encroachment into women's competitions in the Olympics.

Oh dear. Miranda Yardley identifies as a gay male nowadays & this article misgenders him.

Isn’t that literal violence?

@Helleofabore

As social media platforms have finally begun to understand following the 2020 US Presidential Election debacle, constructive debate requires some basic standards for factual accuracy and accountability, not just specious civility.

I am in stitches. Really. Do you honestly not see the hypocrisy here OP.

Factual accuracy and accountability!

Factual accuracy is particularly ironic, given that denying basic biology is the tenet of the trans agenda.

And then finally.

To summarise, when a platform touts its free speech credentials while permitting one group of users to hound out dissenters, that is a red flag. When a platform begins to attract those banned from better-moderated forums for violating their minimum standards, that is a bellowing claxon.

I am assuming that this writer thinks that the better moderated places are Reddit. And the connection between Reddit and red flags is very obvious when you look at who was recently moderating there. May still be there, I don’t know. Anyone seeing the content allowed on Reddit, will certainly know what ‘standards’ of moderation this writer wants to see and allow.

OP. Great job.

Isn’t that literal violence?

Or even a non-crime hate incident? (Except that Miranda would need to perceive it that way and I can think of few people who would be less likely to endorse that perception.)

Still, a lucky escape there. And one of the reasons that I suggested the author would benefit from submitting work to a fact checker and editor. It's a slip-up that might results in a report and an indelible shadow on a DBS with its implications for future education and work prospects.

Do you think if we all added footnotes in our posts we would be considered more credible? And not just insulting meanies.

It’s astonishing that in an article that is a critique of the feminism and women’s rights part of the website, that it studiously manages to avoid ever mentioning feminism and women’s rights

You’d be tempted to conclude that the author either doesn’t think that’s important, or that they have to studiously ignore it to make their point…

Unconvinced, OP! Got anything more persuasive?

@Helleofabore

Do you think if we all added footnotes in our posts we would be considered more credible? And not just insulting meanies.

It is the fate, alas, of reality based commenters, to be characterised as insulting meanies.

I, for one, would be thrilled if it were activists who are hostile to MN were the ones to persuade MNHQ of the need to upgrade the forum features in such a way. Perhaps there might also be an edit function - with an audit trail, of course.

The writer’s also either missed or ignored that a big part of the awakening on MN was concern about a violent male (without a GRC but with a self-described ‘seven-inch surprise’) being sent to a women’s prison. Maybe that didn’t fit the narrative.

Archived; archive.is/CRQYE

Women knowing what their sex class is though lived experience are not 'anti trans' or 'transphobic'.

Its bizarre of you to acknowledge that trans activism erases womens rights and ignores us as a discrete sex class and expect us to cheer you on, on a Feminism board.

To summarise, when a platform touts its free speech credentials while permitting one group of users to hound out dissenters, that is a red flag. When a platform begins to attract those banned from better-moderated forums for violating their minimum standards, that is a bellowing claxon.

I don't think the writer realises that this is just the feminist board on MN. They seem to think it is the whole site.

I hope they don't think 'The doghouse' is a stand alone site to discuss anything dog related, whether or not you like dogs.

Can words identify to have other meanings now op? The word summary is an odd choice. I'd have gone for 'long, rambling and biased' myself.

The reference by "justabunchofcunts" must be invaluable scientifically

It’s certainly not been my experience that transallies get hounded out. Personally, I welcome the input, because I want to understand their position. I want for it to make sense. I want people to be able to voice their opinions. I rarely report

The issue is that the most prominent critics of the feminist board who show up sooner or later get frustrated and start getting abusive, or find themselves otherwise unable to stick to the rules around language, because they feel they absolutely must call users “cis” or “t*rf”, or call us Nazis.

I understand that it can be overwhelming to come to a place where your point of view is in the minority, and to suddenly come up against posters who will relentlessly analyse what you’re saying, and look for evidence and justifications, and internal coherence, which probably hasn’t happened before. I see transallies get a lot of latitude, probably because users want to have the conversation and don’t report much, so the posts don’t get flagged for removal in nearly the proportion that GC users posts do.

It seems to me that the problem isn’t the lack of moderation, it’s the presence of GC voices at all that’s the issue. There isn’t anything that MN can do to evade the ccusations of transphobia, because the people monitoring the feminism board don’t participate in the rest of the site, have no interest in it, and would be happy to have the whole place taken down, losing a great source of support for women, in the quest to shut down women’s voices.

A classic example of how those who hate women spend so many hours on here frothing over the relentless centring of women's rights and child safeguarding.

The idea that this meaningless word salad of accusations in any way compares to the sheer range of intelligent, insightful, considered, knowledgeable posts on here is