Antipodean fruit grower statement

[nothingcomestonothing]

The antipodean fruit growers site is down. A statement from the owner reads in part:

What I fear more than losing my site, being sued, or dealing with police is living in a world where [redacted by me as would be against MN talk guidelines] while normal people are not allowed to even discuss it.

The mob has already planned subsequent targets. Should we stay down, they will then attack 'gender critical' communities - especially those ran by and for women. No place can exist online which criticizes [redacted], and nothing would excite them more than this power and domination struggle being inflicted on a female space instead.

Posted for info.

Success depends on manufacturing evidence and then getting some highly gullible public figure to believe the lie and scream about it, and then pressuring all platforms that they're supporting something dangerous/evil until the platforms surrender just to get away from the endless harassment.

You might swing that with an edgy place like the farms, but the content that's been faked up there could not be faked here (we've had false posters post here to manufacture evidence, screenshot it and put it on Twitter shouting 'look at the transphobia (I created) on MN!) in the seconds before a mod took it down for years. In a court room that would be easy to evidence. Plus MN has TIGHT moderating rules.

Both sites are dealing with nothing more than male people who would like evidence and statements of reality to be destroyed, because really inconvenient.
However now it's been proven in a court room that females mentioning biological reality is not in fact any kind of punishable crime, the optics of silencing a bunch of mums?

Well it would be quite useful really in terms of publicity, but not to the group who would like the silencing to happen.

TW: Abuse and Suicide

One of the more problematic threads on KFs relates to a young woman called Julie Terryberry. Julie's 'crime' was to be prominent on social media in a way that provoked misogynistic attention. As a result, posters on KF mocked her appearance, her weight, her perceived attractiveness, the fact that she was likely in a violent and exploitative relationship (and that this might have begun when she was a minor and the male in question was an adult) and her mental health issues. They mocked her episodes of self-harm. Posters on the thread (which you can find via Google) boasted about being cyberbullies and one's taglines refer to the poster 'raping' to make money for his family (whatever that means). When Julie took her own life in 2016 they laughed and one said 'good riddance'. Another said 'lmao' and posted a picture to illustrate this. Yeah, they had all their evidence and their receipts (as some of you say) but they used this to hound a vulnerable young woman and laughed at her death.

Make of that what you will.

I'll make of it that it is a disgusting and misogynistic site and not one that I will defend in any way.

Julie's 'crime' was to be prominent on social media in a way that provoked misogynistic attention.

So why are you blaming this on KF, not Twitter, or whatever it was?

You say "they used this to hound a vulnerable young woman". What do you mean by that? There's no reference to them interacting with her in the rest of your post.

You need something more concrete than "there was someone with issues using site A, and they talked about her on site B" to start demanding site B should be taken down rather than site A. Maybe there is, but you're not providing it.

If you go back one page, you'll see that they were mocking the suicide because they didn't believe it was true, as people connected to Julie were popping up in that thread quite regularly talking shite. As soon as it was confirmed, the thread was locked.

I've read bits of that thread before and there were also people expressing concern for the woman because of her abusive boyfriend and mother.

Ok so you don't like Kiwi Farms and don't wish to read it. That is fine. But at least get your facts straight. We are quite keen on facts here.

It's honestly incredibly patronising that you're implying we are supporting something without having full knowledge of it.

It's honestly incredibly patronising that you're implying we are supporting something without having full knowledge of it.

Well, I don't know about full knowledge. It's vaguely possible there's some hideous dark underbelly we haven't seen. Never having signed up, I don't know for certain what's behind the member-only walls you hit occasionally. (Allegedly early not-yet-worthy threads and extra doxxy stuff).

But certainly the vast majority of accusations do not remotely tally with what's visible. It's observably true that most of what is said about Kiwi Farms public face is lies, so why would we believe anything said by the liars?

It's like JKR. You can read what she's written, in her essay, and on Twitter, and compare it to what people say about her, and people are lying. Again, maybe there's a dark underbelly to JKR we don't know about, but that would be pure speculation, and why would we believe the claims of liars?

Yup. One good thing I've taken from being vilified as a terfbigot is I do my own reasearch much more now. No lazy relying on what the "good side" on social media are telling me, even if they have screenshots.

but I don't see you posting concern in here for her

This isn't a thread about JKR and I have posted plenty of support for her.

As soon as it was confirmed, the thread was locked.

I read the whole thread. It was disgusting and the late locking after the event even more so. The locking (and deletion in my view) should have happened much earlier.

You need something more concrete than "there was someone with issues using site A, and they talked about her on site B" to start demanding site B should be taken down rather than site A. Maybe there is, but you're not providing it.

I find the site repulsive and misogynistic but if you read my post carefully you'll see that what I was doing was inviting women here to read it and this thread in particular. I wasn't saying it should be shut down.

It's interesting though. My own feminist activism goes back nearly 40 years and in that time I've seen men's violence against women minimised and excused in various ways and often by women with internalised misogyny. 'She asked for it', 'she provoked it', 'she hit him first', 'she should have left him', 'it wasn't his fault ...' and that's pretty much what I'm seeing here.

(Unlike ScreamingMeMe, I have no knowledge of this woman, or the thread in question).

I read the whole thread. It was disgusting and the late locking after the event even more so. The locking (and deletion in my view) should have happened much earlier.

A perfectly valid view. But it's not up to us how they moderate their forum any more than it's up to them how Mumsnet moderates theirs.

(Actually, we don't even get to tell Mumsnet how to moderate, being mere users! It's all Justine or Josh. Although I guess Justine doesn't have absolute power here.)

Up until you actually break some laws agreed on by a democratic society, each forum has to be free to run their moderation as they wish.

And I'm pretty confident any law capable of forcing them to moderate that thread in a way to your taste would have far more adverse consequences for society as a whole. But maybe you can conceive of some clear line?

Going back to "I'll make of it that it is a disgusting and misogynistic site and not one that I will defend in any way."

I think the only thing I'd press you on is to defend them against attempts to illegitimately take them down through illegal tactics for not-illegal activity. Or can't you even manage that?

Late locking? It was done the same day (30 July 2016). The two further posts ate from Nul, the site owner and a moderator a year later (presumably they have access to lock threads) - Christ knows why they posted that.

This was the lock message

Late locking? It was done the same day (30 July 2016).

I was thinking rather of a time before she took her own life.

Up until you actually break some laws agreed on by a democratic society, each forum has to be free to run their moderation as they wish.

Policy and law in a democratic society are the results, at least partially, of the input of citizens and of debate. There have been, and often at the instigation of women, calls for laws around cyberbullying - I think some jurisdictions do have these.

And I opened a page of that thread by random. These are from page 100. KF users expressing concern and sympathy for Julie.

No doubt there are disgusting posts too, edgelords gonna edgelord, but it's not as cut and dried as some are making out.

I think the only thing I'd press you on is to defend them against attempts to illegitimately take them down through illegal tactics for not-illegal activity. Or can't you even manage that?

You sound awfully defensive here. All I am doing, and on a supposedly feminist site, is highlighting a thread in which a woman was stalked online, made fun of, and criticised (by men) for her appearance as well as her mental health issues. I'm saying that as a feminist I have real problems with that and that I'm calling it for what it is: misogyny - and violence against women. For some reason, some posters seem upset about this and seek to defend it. Each to her (or his) own I suppose but I have real problems reconciling a defence with feminism.

Policy and law in a democratic society are the results, at least partially, of the input of citizens and of debate. There have been, and often at the instigation of women, calls for laws around cyberbullying - I think some jurisdictions do have these.

Indeed. But if "cyberbullying" extends to "third parties talking to each other on the internet about something someone is doing publicly", which is the core of KF, I think we'd be in VERY big trouble. All of us. Most TERFery would be shut down.

I'm still not clear if there was more to this particular case than that.

These are from page 100. KF users expressing concern and sympathy for Julie.

I don't find those quotes very supportive at all!

Indeed. But if "cyberbullying" extends to "third parties talking to each other on the internet about something someone is doing publicly", which is the core of KF, I think we'd be in VERY big trouble. All of us. Most TERFery would be shut down.

Please do not create a strawperson. I'm not saying this at all. The KFs were not talking about a person - they were mocking her weight, her looks, her mental health issues and one said 'good riddance' when she finally took her own life.

That is very different from what we do here and what we'd do here (I hope) even without the mods (and monitors) on our case.

I'd vote with my feet if this site or any other feminist site I have been on behaved that way to women or trans people or anyone else.

Each to her (or his) own I suppose but I have real problems reconciling a defence with feminism.

I think the primary thing is defending the ability to DO feminism.

If a feminist could stop a man being misogynist, a TRA could stop a feminist being transphobic.

Right?

The debate about how misogynist something is is kind of secondary to that, and it really shouldn't matter - although I can see you're debating it. :)

Or are you against free speech?

That sounds awfully American. In the second wave of feminism, feminists debated the idea and limits of free speech. The same has also been long-debated within liberal theory (which is where the idea comes from). Generally, liberal feminists have been the ones advocating few limits to free speech and radical feminists and some others tended towards advocating for more limits (because they recognised that in a patriarchal society free speech happened within the context of male power). Feminists pointed out that speech isn't something abstract and without consequence and impact.

As an example of where societies do limit free speech we can consider that which is paedophilic in nature - hence the redaction of the article in Qual Methods recently (which most people here supported).

If a feminist could stop a man being misogynist, a TRA could stop a feminist being transphobic.

We have to agree to our oppression otherwise we'll be oppressed.

Please do not create a strawperson. I'm not saying this at all. The KFs were not talking about a person - they were mocking her weight, her looks, her mental health issues and one said 'good riddance' when she finally took her own life.

That is very different from what we do here and what we'd do here (I hope) even without the mods (and monitors) on our case.

I'd vote with my feet if this site or any other feminist site I have been on behaved that way to women or trans people or anyone else.

I'd absolutely expect you to vote with your feet - but I was responding to you talking about cyberbullying laws potentially covering KF.

I'd agree that the two sites are very different in tone, but they're still both fundamentally "talking about third parties".

I can see a clear line between "talking about" and "talking to" that lets you have things like restraining orders, but I don't see how you can draw a line between "mocking" and "disagreeing" that would produce a workable "cyberbullying" law covering "talking about" that didn't hit Mumsnet, regardless of its tighter moderation.

YetAnotherSpartacus, was Julie aware of those threads about her on KF?