Mumsnet invented a feminism that is rooted in female experience. Honest.

[FloralBunting]

So, I know you are all hyper-privileged white middle class women who really only know suffering through what to say when the Au Pair doesn't load the dishwasher correctly etc. But I thought you might be amused by this dillock writing a thread on the potted history of how Mumsnet managed to warp all your brains into thinking feminism wasn't about promoting porn and being a #BossBabe.

twitter.com/RodentWild/status/1434087672105025538

I particularly enjoy the tweet at the end of the thread pointing out that some of us used to be in patriarchal 'submissive wife' cults ( That'll be me, duckies, owned it, speak out against it at every opportunity, what are you doing to counter the abuse of women, tweeter? Oh, you're attacking women for being mothers and getting retweeted by Roz Kaveney. )

Still, I did enjoy being called an 'Mn prominent t*rf'

Is that Teddy of the " literal violets"?

'it wasn't much leap to adopting the belief their oppression (and that of all women) was rooted in their reproductive function.'

But you say this like it's a bad thing!

when BIPOC and disabled women started to challenge their new found beliefs

Got to this point. When did 'black, indigenous, and other people of color', along with disabled women, start 'challenging the new found beliefs' of the majority here? And how did that lead towards gender critical feminism? Must have been before my time. I joined Mumsnet in early 2017 because it allowed genderism to be debated - while censorship was fierce almost everywhere else.

But late for me to write anything coherent but he seems to be saying a lot on MNetters first experience of sexism often relates to pregnancy/being a mother etc.

1. No shit Sherlock
2. That’s a problem because....?

He also seems to saying you can’t be a proper feminist if you haven’t read the ‘right’ books?

Cross post with @Aparallaxia

The whole exchange, from the SNP woman at the start is bizarre. They appear to be living in an alternate universe. I look at the images of the women protesting and see… a range of ordinary women.

Oh and the whole “they welcomed/defended fascists, because there were three odd men standing on the other side of the road, who obviously had nothing at all to do with women’s rights? Presumably they were as much a part of the women’s group as the anti-women counter protesters and equally welcome. Indeed, had they joined the anti-women protesters it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the rhetoric where they want to abolish prisons and police and are generally anti-establishment.

It’s so odd that we are both terribly conservative with a small c and fascists at the same time. It’s almost as if some anti-woman activists will use any smear to hand.

It’s almost as if some anti-woman activists will use any smear to hand.

Oh yes, that’s the modus operandi IMO.

@FloralBunting that doesn’t even make sense - maybe post in the morning.

334bu Yes that's Teddy the fantasist who lies about what happens at SNP branch meetings and is scared of purple.

Isn’t all feminism rooted in the female experience? It just seems a really obvious thing to say about feminism.

I'd love to know what magical thinking enables such commentators to see behind our usernames and identify our class, race and disability.

It's really not a good look, assuming that articulate women (whether you agree with them or not) are all white, middle-class and not disabled.

Who are the indigenous people referred to in BIPOC? I mean it's always advisable to consider whether a term that arose in one country can be applied to another, but this one is just daft.

The most famous indigenous people of Scotland whose name we know were the Picts. Descendent from Iron Age tribes like the Caledonii, the Picts were fully merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dal Riata in 900. Within about 200 years they had disappeared.

I can do an analysis like that for all the known "indigenous" peoples of the British Isles and the result will be the same: they haven't existed for many hundreds of years. And the British Isles in particular have been conquered so many times, it's hard to determine who actually was indigenous (not the Picts, nor the Caledonii as far as we know). And that last invasion was in 1066, so what was indigenous then merged with the invaders. Their descendants are now the majority of the people.

So BIPOC. Who's the "I"?

This is the post Teddy refers to, not sure it is really the same as alluded to in the Twitter thread.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3953597-The-nuclear-family-is-at-the-heart-of-rape-culture

I always find it strange when Americans comment on UK stuff. The BIPOC thing for instance. Indigenous in the UK means… Celts?

that last invasion was in 1066, so what was indigenous then merged with the invaders. Their descendants are now the majority of the people.

Why do people always forget that we were last conquored by invasion in 1688?

(Though, I appreciate, such small numbers are not relevant to your, very valid, point)

Indigenous in the UK means… Celts?

Since ethnicity is determined by things like language, I'm choosing to presume it's all of us who pronounce vowels correctly.

Despite us all being insufficiently indigenous and being shamefully concerned with the feminist aim of being as equally successful and happy in life as men and fathers, whilst mothering, they do still seem to be inordinately interested in what we are writing about here.

They have to scrape the barrel for criticism because of a single issue: not believing in the extreme gender theory we are expected to swallow uncritically.

Look dear critics, you believe it if you want to. It's entirely optional.

@CharlieParley
The most famous indigenous people of Scotland whose name we know were the Picts.

The Picts is the name the Romans had for all Britons. It comes from Pictii, or people of pictures. Because they were shocked at how the Britons were tattooed. Romans reserved tattoos for slaves and criminals. They’d never seen them on a people that used them for ritual and decorative reasons. So, not being able to tell the tribes apart, they called them the Pictii...later angelcised to Picts.

“Picts” became associated with Scotland only because that was only part of Britain not conquered and colonised by Rome.

My irony scale just broke "cosplay/drag acts as feminists"

...So, when BIPOC and disabled women started to challenge their new found beliefs, and their unchecked privilege, they were mortified. That's when their trans hostility started ramping. Cooking up an ever-present "threat" from trans women to "all" women let them reject the...

I don't see how you can simultaneously demonise white mumsnetters as privileged and then praise the viewpoints of mumsnetters who are "Black, Indigenous or People of Colour". There is likely to be some overlap there!

WildRodent, I'm sure you're looking. I must enquire: do you also talk about "Pin Numbers" too? Please stop it. Unlike you, I expect, I have no degree, but I still trouble myself upon occasion to think about what initialisms stand for.

I've been here for 12 years. I don't recognise the picture you're trying to paint, although I agree that the Scottish mumsnetters have done a good job of radicalising us all. Although I don't think that's what you meant.

P.S. when I joined, I was only two years out of living in a homelessness hostel instead of going to university. Funnily enough, I'd had a choice in living in a mixed sex hostel or a female only hostel, and I chose the female only one. I'd like that choice to be open to young women in the same situation I was in today.

So fie on your privilege.

While you're trying to smear mumsnetters as white racists, I'd like to know if you have any comments on a particular event following the protest outside the Scottish Parliament.

Did you notice that a prolific white trans activist on twitter accused a mixed-race woman at the protestof having a scary skin colour (trans activist thought it was fake tan) and devoted tweets to making fun of her skin? Did you see that the public figure and white transwoman Jane Fae joined in on the mockery of a mixed-race woman's skin?

While she was at it, the trans activist accused the same woman of appropriating twerking, andoppressingthe counter-protestors by, as far as I can make, existing in public while being mixed-race.

twitter.com/NehandaMusic/status/1433558820899352585?s=19

For some strange, unknown reason, the trans activist has chosen to delete these posts while claiming she really definitely isn't racist. But we all took screenshots.

The trans rights movement in the UK is so white that they don't even know what mixed-race peoplelooklike!

So there you have it. The women's rights protestors may have committed literal violence despite not touching the counter protestors, because they had a mixed-race woman with them, in front of the delicate trans activists.

Right side of history, my arse!

It's Hetty Spoon, the sharpest tool in the cutlery drawer, that one.

Pictish was a non-Indo-European language, so certainly those who spoke it were there before the Indo-European Celtic invaders. [Insert Rangers joke here.] However, who was there before the Picts is a ticklish question...

There has been some friction here in the US between anthropologists and archaeologists, who of course deal in historical realities and material remains, and Native Americans, whose myths sometimes place them in North America since they came into being. One practical problem is that tribes are demanding the return of human remains and/or cultural artefacts that may or may not belong to the tribe asking for them or even the same tribal grouping (e.g. a people speaking the same language or a language in the same group—given that there are zillions of isolates in the Americas, and many languages have disappeared almost entirely, deciding who's related to who ain't easy).

The present political climate, with the emphasis on inclusion and equality, and with various attempts under Trump in particular to build pipelines, drill for oil etc. on lands sacred to a particular tribe, seen against the long history of genocide, exploitation, forced conversion, etc. etc. of Native Americans, and different cultural values attached to objects and human remains, also doesn't make it easier to arrive at a just decision as to who gets to own what and keep it where.

What Native Americans would say about feminism's origins? You asking me? I'm Anglo-Saxon. My ancestors arrived in the UK sometime around 600 CE and have done bugger-all since, so far as I can see.

These people are so very odd.

It's been said before many times before, but just look at the ethnic diversity of the women at the forefront of legal action against various aspects of gender ideology. White feminism?

Maya Forstater - Jewish family
Sonia Appleby and Allison Bailey - Black British
Keira Bell - mixed race

For starters.