Does anyone else feel that the tone has changed on this board?

[ViceLikeBlip]

This board has been incredibly important to me, especially when I felt like I was losing my mind because no one else seemed to see a problem with self ID, and everyone else seemed to believe TWAW (or, I now realise, everyone else was too scared to suggest they might not believe TWAW).

You guys helped me rationalise my thoughts, and realise I wasn't some awful transphobe, and I've been really grateful to be part of this community. And I really felt like I belonged: we were pro women's rights, not anti trans rights, and we didn't believe that all transwomen are dangerous perverts but rather we recognised that dangerous perverts do exist, and they will readily take advtange of any loophole that gives them access to women.

More than anything, you guys have been an absolute mine of information - facts, stats, latest developments, and you've pointed me in the direction of news articles and twitter rows that I never would have seen otherwise. I'm genuinely grateful for this.

But recently the mood seems to have shifted significantly. There seems to be a lot of open animosity and ridicule towards all things trans. The recent outcry about M&S letting some people put their pronouns on their name badges felt uncomfortably close to clamouring to have M&S "cancelled".

I guess I used to feel like this was a safe space where I was with like minded people, but now I don't think everyone on here can hand-on-heart maintain that they're not anti-trans anymore, and it makes me very upset to see this shift happening (and happening quickly).

Women also were not seen as fully human
But as chattel , goods

Ownership of woman is passed from father to husband when the father gives the bride away

@Helleofabore it happened to me because I disagreed that Posie Parker was wonderful. I just left the thread. No point if people are simply dismissing you as a troll. And no I never display misogyny in my comments.

You need to give the actual comment /series of comments not a summary of the message you weee trying to give

It's the tone not the message

you might feel that you are missing out

Nope.

@bordermidgebite Yes I know white women were seen as property. Black people were seen as animals and expressly compared to breeds of animals seen as dirty. There are differences.

Yes they both have different structures but these are interlocking. That's what true "intersectionality" means - that structural oppressions intersect. Slavery and the oppression of women were bound up with one another just as much as they were also rooted in racial and material differences. They depend on the same theologies and philosophies and there is a long tradition across the globe of intertwined philosophies of civil rights in relation to race and sex.

Blackface minstrelsy was obviously racist and offensive. But it was sexist and misogynist too. And the people who watched it and performed it and hosted it on the stage did both. It was a performance culture of combined racism and misogyny that was intrinsic to each other. So why is it racist to point this out? American women's rights advocates called for abolition and drew on the philosophy of the civil rights struggle -- and vice versa. Why do you think that history has so many prominent women in it, both black and white?

@bordermidgebite I thought women were fed up of being tone policed?

I've been using MN on and off for about a decade. I remember how FWR and posters like Dittanny were targeted for being radfem and not nice enough. I remember MRAs wanting MN to be shut down, going so far as to swat Justine. I remember the newer, confusing feminist talk guide lines and bans that made little sense. I remember a lot of great feminist posters being targeted and banned, including a safe guarding expert. I remember TRAs wanting MN to be shut down entirely.
It's the same story over and over again: The ladies aren't nice enough and aren't shutting up about their rights on the feminist board, dammit.

@foxgoosefinch no one is disputing that intersectionality. Of course they intertwine.
But you wouldn't for example say slave quarters are the same as concentration camps and explicitly say slave concentration camps. Both had misogyny woven into them. But both were also very different because of the black racism and anti semitism and the material conditions.
This is what I mean by nuance. I don't just want sloganeering, but proper nuanced discussion.

GC is too new as a movement

Judicatory, I don’t see GC as a movement. It is all sorts of people rejecting the concept of gender. For example your Nan almost certainly knows the difference between male and female, and probably would not like someone with a man’s body in a hospital bed next to her. But would not describe herself as GC.

I have no idea whether your Nan is black or white, left wing or right, racist or not. It is of no import. I am simply assuming that like the vast majority of people the world over, they know what a man is and what a woman is.

All women don't think alike. However what is I think objected to is that women who use a tone more similar to the male tone don't like being told off for that tone

The point is that it is tone that often leads people to think you are male .. how something is said

Your tone deafness on this suggests you may be male for example

@julieca

18th and 19th century abolitionists made this comparison because they had no other way to begin to understand their own oppression. And yes I have read many of those original texts. Yes black women were involved in the slave trade because they were black. The misogyny added an additional layer of oppression. Just as it did for jewish women in concentration camps. But they were there in the first place because they were black and not seen as fully human.

This is not true at all, and I think you need to go back and read the actual works by many of these writers for yourself, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Purvis, Catherine Sargeant, Maria Chapman, Harriet Martineau. These were people informed by long philosophical and theological traditions - they were highly knowledgeable and extremely sophisticated. They made these links because of their reading of 18th and 19thc Enlightenment philosophy, amongst other texts. Come back to me when you've read all the Adam Smith, de Tocqueville, Locke, Jefferson, Edwards and Kant that those 19thc. activists you dismiss have read, and then we'll talk again about how they had no other way to begin to understand their experiences.

@bordermidgebite Sigh. Less than an hour in and I am told I am probably a man.

@Needmoresleep I think GC is clearly a movement, a growing one. And spokeswomen are emerging.

Oh, bless you sweet summer child.
This place is incredibly tame, civilised, reasonable, and fairly heavily moderated. I know, I’ve been here maybe a decade under another moniker, and I frequent other places too. I strongly suggest you avoid the wilder edges of the internet where this sort of thing is discussed, such as Mr Moon’s forum for fruit growers. There truly be dragons.

I don't just want sloganeering, but proper nuanced discussion.

So I don't see how anything I have posted is sloganeering. Can you respond to my points about how blackface minstrelsy and cross-dressing traditions were intertwined? For example, a lot of blackface shows that toured both America and England in the late 19thc. were explicit parodies and rebuttals of Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; often including a caricatured representation of Beecher Stowe the female author as a busy bodying figure of fun. there was a little cottage industry of anti (and in fact pro) Uncle Tom music-hall plays and parodies. Beecher Stowe of course was an early advocate for both abolition and women's rights. It would be nice if you could respond to these points that I have made here with a nuanced reply.

That was to @julieca, meant to tag.

[quote julieca]@TurquoiseBaubles Yes your attitude is a common one. Racism within the GC movement doesn't matter ergo black women don't matter.[/quote]
That's what you read from what I said?

I was pointing out that I wouldn't dream of derailing a thread about racism to bring up feminism. You take that to be racist and suggest I think that black women don't matter?

Okay

But that is a forum full of men, Flowerpotsnake. They can do whatever they want. It's more important to berate women for speaking about women's rights issues.

That case of transphobia at the Times caught my attention. The TW was upset about being passed over for promotion, no one listening to her, etc.

I thought at the time "well, welcome to being a women in the workplace"

My next thought was "did you think womanhood was all pillow fights and lipstick?"

I'd argue that TW experiencing the same every day sexism at work as women do is inclusion, not transphobia.

That case is part of what peaked me.

Fascinating posts, foxgoose! Would be great to read more on the history of blackface and musichall, etc.

Well I felt I had to oblige

I am trying to help you understand why that might happen but you are not really interested

But recently the mood seems to have shifted significantly. There seems to be a lot of open animosity and ridicule towards all things trans. The recent outcry about M&S letting some people put their pronouns on their name badges felt uncomfortably close to clamouring to have M&S "cancelled”

I agree. The backlash is here.

I can be angry about anti-women's rights activists and about racism by the way. It's not either/or.

@foxgoosefinch I wasnt talking about you when I talked about sloganeering.
I have agreed several times that various forms of oppression are intertwined. We see this in lots of contexts. Disability oppression also intersects for disabled women with misogyny. I don't disagree with any of that.
But do you accept they are not that misogyny and racism are different? Race is based on a social construct for a start. And although they intertwine, their histories are different.

[quote julieca]@Helleofabore it happened to me because I disagreed that Posie Parker was wonderful. I just left the thread. No point if people are simply dismissing you as a troll. And no I never display misogyny in my comments.[/quote]
You know what. I personally disagree with some things that PP says and does. I disagree with some of the things that Kathleen Stock has done and said. I disagree with some of the things that Julie Bindel says. I disagree with some of the things that Jane Clare Jones does or says.

I also remember something that Obama says. Don't get caught up in purity spirals. No one is going to be pure enough. Ever.

Every single one of those women I have named, are legends all. Because of what they do to progress women's rights. Not one of them are perfect. And they do take chips at one another at times as well. But it also cannot be denied that KJK has galvanised more women with her efforts that would never have entered this discussion than I would say any of those other women.

So what that people disagreed with you and they thought KJK was 'wonderful' and you didn't.

Did you then double down, admonish people and expect everyone to change their minds? You are here on a thread that the OP stated that they now I don't think everyone on here can hand-on-heart maintain that they're not anti-trans anymore, complaining that people did not reply to your post, after yet another admonishment from you.

Because, if you expected people to change their mind simply by reading your take on KJK, then you really do have this false belief that MN FWR is an echo chamber.