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

Exactly Rowantrees. So did the author not realise/understand or deliberately withhold that information?

Previous thread, OP TerfingHell wrote, Wed 21-Mar-18
"SWEARY GODMOTHER WINS!
Swim England have overturned the rule allowing men into women's changing rooms!

Just shows what you can achieve when you man-up and show the world you've got the balls!

POPPING OPEN THE CHAMPAGNE AT MUMSNET TOWERS

"

SwearyG
"I appreciate the credit but really @YesItsADebate did this. And we have only had it pulled from the website, but that's a bloody good start. I'm hoping that they will be rethinking and publishing something that doesn't put women and girls at risk if they continue down this avenue.

It does show that the smallest act can make a difference. Two (wo)men went swimming and brought something to the national consciousness and started to make people think about changes. This is something everyone can do.

Keep on with the minor acts of civil disobedience!"

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3201083-SWEARY-GODMOTHER-WINS

@CharlieParley

Exactly Rowantrees. So did the author not realise/understand or deliberately withhold that information?

The author is well educated (Cambridge University) and also personally affected/invested.

Women's History Network
'When sources hurt: Researching anti-trans ideologies as a trans person', by Rebecca Hickman
July 14, 2021
(extract)
"As a non-binary trans woman, I wondered at first if it would be possible to write this story without prolonged reference to anti-trans ideologies. However, I realised that, given the deep discursive entanglements between trans-positive and anti-trans belief systems, such a history would be conspicuously incomplete. Thesis and antithesis are too tightly bound.

Having thus decided to research anti-trans ideologies, the next question was how to do so without putting undue strain on my mental wellbeing. I understood from the outset that reading thousands of pages of material that questions my right to exist, processing it, and then making scholarly sense of it would inevitably be an emotionally laborious endeavour, and not one to be taken lightly." (continues)

womenshistorynetwork.org/when-sources-hurt-researching-anti-trans-ideologies-as-a-trans-person-by-rebecca-hickman/

The difference in atitudes between AIBU posters and those on Feminism & Women's Rights board is referred to on the 2012 thread. Also, that at the time it was a significant topic of discussion,

There were other factors involved, but I'm sure there was a thread a few years ago in which some posters acknowledged that they'd reacted badly to posters around that time (and even earlier) for their warnings of what was to come. A number of those posters left (Dittany?) but have been retrospectively vindicated for their keen anticipation of what came to pass.

#nothankyou

MN have hosted this topic when they didn't have to.

No, they didn't have to. But everything I have seen here over the past decade leads me to believe that hosting 'this topic' has been a business decision.

At some point MNHQ saw what feminists were doing on FWR, recognised there was a gap in the market and decided to 'host the debate' because clicks mean advertising revenue. I understand that they have been engaged in a juggling act ever since. On the one hand, more traffic to the site is good for advertising revenue, on the other hand allowing posters to say what they think scares off certain spineless advertisers.

None of that has anything to do with feminism.

'This topic' or 'the debate' are issues on which many people have opinions, on many 'sides', including those which have nothing to do with feminism. This is no longer a feminist forum and it hasn't been for several years. It's a part of MN that MNHQ have co-opted to host 'the debate' as part of their business plan.

I understand why they have done this but I will never not resent them for it.

Having thus decided to research anti-trans ideologies, the next question was how to do so without putting undue strain on my mental wellbeing. I understood from the outset that reading thousands of pages of material that questions my right to exist, processing it, and then making scholarly sense of it would inevitably be an emotionally laborious endeavour, and not one to be taken lightly." (continues)

You know, it really fucking pisses me off that politely challenging the inconsistencies in how the orthodox narrative explains trans identities is "questioning trans people's right to exist" but unilaterally redefining the basis on which most of the population understand themselves, denying their lived experiences and literally taking away the name of a group of people who for thousands of years have been oppressed, trafficked, beaten, treated as property and murdered in their millions is totally A-OK.

Dittany was banned.

@NiceGerbil

Dittany was banned.

Not the impression that I picked up from this and other threads but I was in and out around that time:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/flouncers_corner/1301008-Goodbye-to-Mumsnet

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1301368-The-departure-of-dittany

'
There were other factors involved, but I'm sure there was a thread a few years ago in which some posters acknowledged that they'd reacted badly to posters around that time (and even earlier) for their warnings of what was to come. A number of those posters left (Dittany?) but have been retrospectively vindicated for their keen anticipation of what came to pass.'

I was there and I don't think it was to do with that. I feel like she was gone before this conversation really got going.

I mean it's a long time ago.

The posters back then were great. There were a couple of meet ups for Feminist conferences. Trying to remember names. Sskura obv. SAF I think. Um. Lenin was lovely.

This was before the more intellectual years which for me were a bit hard going. There've been meet ups of a load of them too.

I think iirc dittany had a pretty confrontational style. It was all so important to her and she was so knowledgeable and passionate.

She was and I'm sure is a woman who was what a lot of women would see as extreme I think. And not inclined to back down or agree to disagree. Over the years she had a wide reputation as being a pita essentially.

I thought she was brilliant and clear eyed. She gave a name to all the things I'd felt and thought for years. And a history context and reasons for things that at first were a bit wooah!

I don't remember it being about this in particular but more something that had been on the cards for a while.

I dunno if she still posts I think I'd recognise her style! I'd love to see her again though.

I can't understand how women saying sex is really important for very major reasons. A list as long as your arm.

Takes reading 1000s of pages to understand.

Or eg.

Lots of women are concerned about the consequences for us of replacing sex with gender, gender being invisible, sometimes fluid, and proceeding on unquestioning faith in a declaration.

Even if that declaration is different on different days.

And allows male sex offenders into women's prisons and males into communal changing where you get naked and the ages are 4-60.

It does not take 1000 pages to understand why a woman (or man) would think that.

If a person has a different opinion. Then discussion is good but the views are so unrecognisable that agree to disagree is the likely end point.

Concern about the examples I gave in no way questions anyone's right to exist.

And what does that mean?

If by some miracle it was accepted that some circs mean single sex things are important. How does that stop anyone existing?

Is that phrase where the idea comes from that loads of women want transpeople murdered or executed?

What is the word for horrible/ violent men who actually hate men who are different in any way. And who verbal abuse/ kick in transpeople (and disabled men, gay men and lesbians etc etc).

I've never seen them flagged as denying a right to exist. And I don't think they have a special name AFAIK. Unless they're also a certain type of radical feminist. That feels unlikely though.

God that's a trip down memory lane! 10 years ago.

I see Larry had his hand in it somehow. Not surprised.

I'm sure she was banned

She said that when I met her. It was all years ago though.

It’s very tedious, OP. And sort of scolding. Not at all engaging.

Lionel Shriver’s recent article is much better - wry humour works better than name calling. To be fair though, Lionel is actually a writer.

I dunno. Ten years ago.

I do know that she had long time been s headache for MNHQ.

I'm trying to remember what she said.

Anyway. My point was that those who have apparently had a rethink about her more recently. She had a lot of very very strong views! I don't think that anyone posting now would have been yeah all this other stuff that most people would say was really extreme. Agree. Would have gone off her on this topic alone. I mean esp if they agreed with her other views. Because they all came from the same standpoint. Iyswim.

Dittany wasn’t banned. She was bullied off by a Facebook trollhunting group who patrolled the bereavement section by looking up children’s death certificates in Somerset house.

Gawd really?

That sounds bizarre

They thought she was a troll? What on earth

It's not lost on me that the only mention I've seen of trans people on the active threads today have been this thread claiming mumsnet is a hotbed of transphobia 😂

I had a quick skim of an AS of FWR between 2010 and 2012 - some really interesting threads, although many people have pulled all their posts, so it feels like reading fragments of a ancient text.

Some posters on FWR hit a lot of familiar notes - What's the TRA definition of women? Women are adult human females. References to the interaction between the GRA and Equality Act. There's even a thread from when the Tavistock started trialling GnRH agonists.

Shows that the article in the OP is really poorly researched.

I haven't read Sarah Pedersen's book - I wonder if that covers this.

To answer this question, it is first necessary to explain that Mumsnet was not always like that. In 2008–2013, the majority of messages in threads containing the words ‘transsexual,’ ‘transgender,’ or ‘trans’ were actually positive. Parents reassured each other that gender experimentation in children was ‘normal.’⁵ A thread from October 2012 asking which bathroom a trans child should use was met with multiple expressions of disbelief that the question even had to be asked: obviously, users concluded, the child should use the bathroom that aligns with their self-expressed identity.⁶ Moreover, those who spouted transphobic beliefs were usually accused of ‘prejudice’⁷ or given a derogatory label like ‘fuckwit.’⁸

This is the most accurate part of the article. Have you considered properly engaging with why that changed? And no, blaming Louis Theroux doesn't pass muster, any more than blaming shadowy far right Americans

One of the more interesting things about the thread R0 dug up is that I recognise many usernames, who have since developed quite a different point of view. In this case, I use the word "developed" very deliberately, because their posts today on the subject are far more sophisticated than their posts of yore. In short, the women of mumsnet seem to have gone away and educated themselves.

In short, the women of mumsnet seem to have gone away and educated themselves.

And in the process passed that education on. And so the cycle continues.

Naughty women. Talking about things that shouldn’t be discussed. Saying the quiet bits out loud.

I guess after 1000s of pages of discussion, of links to evidence, of studies, maybe the writer felt ‘unsafe’ in finally understanding that males cannot change sex and to continue to use single sexist spaces as a male is in fact denying female’s needs. …. Yes, that must be very painful indeed.

To realise you were wrong and so, so entitled.

That's identical to what I've seen in real life. Lots of women, and men for that matter, who initially were sympathetic, often under the assumption that there was some clear medical explanation and indications, even if they weren't entirely understood. Often the sense was that it was something like an intersex condition. There was no real question of changes in language.

Now many of the same people see it quite differently.

"As a non-binary trans woman, I wondered at first if it would be possible to write this story without prolonged reference to anti-trans ideologies. However, I realised that, given the deep discursive entanglements between trans-positive and anti-trans belief systems, such a history would be conspicuously incomplete. Thesis and antithesis are too tightly bound.

I find this really a little - isn't it kind of naval gazing for what is supposed to be academic work?

I can think of all kinds of people who put things that are in some way dear to them to the test. Douglas Murray made a point in his book of treating gay rights to the same sort of inspection as other identity politics movements. People like John McWhorter or Coleman Hughes who is just a young man delve into race theory and orthodoxies of anti-racism movements with a critical eye. I have a female relative who is (I'm told) a very good therapist who works in maximum security prisons with male sexual offenders. I know nurses who treat people who are completely awful and offensive to them with real care and dignity.

Somehow I never get the sense from any of these people that having to do this is some kind of imposition on, or exersize in denial of, their identity.

smokedduck

The infantilisation (or self-infantilisation) is one aspect of some trans activists that I am constantly surprised by. It feeds into the ‘most vulnerable’ aspect. And this constant need that ‘safety’ includes only reading or viewing affirming content.