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.

Interesting. I wonder what triggered my post needing to be hidden until the MNHQ team can have a look at it? No direct links except to Mumsnet pages.

What did you post Bosky?

I'll take your word for it about Julie and Dave. Well, not so much take your word, as take on board your interpretation of it. Because I don't know one way or the other.

It goes against my impressions. But since my impressions have resulted from just a bit of skim reading, albeit for several years, I'm prepared to accept that I may not be seeing the full picture.

But I don't know how I will reconcile that to the fact that I will probably still use the site to find stuff out. There is no other place that contains the kind of in-depth information that kiwi farms has.

I don't condone the misogyny. But I'm not sure if I would be contributing to it by looking at the site. Did somebody say it was funded by members?

For what it's worth, i've seen way worse on Twitter. Twitter allows paedophiles to publicise to each other the age of the children and babies they're interested in.

I feel your pain

i once flounced in a fit of temper and had to come back with a 1😩

You're brave. Hell would freeze over before I'd let MNHQ have my personal data. They have shown time and again that they can't be trusted with it, and that they don't take data breaches seriously.

I'd happily support MN Premium, if I could do so without sharing personal data. Until then? No way.

I'd happily support MN Premium, if I could do so without sharing personal data. Until then? No way.

Same.

We've already had posts deleted quoting the opinion that they are 'anti-trans'. That means, to me, that HQ could easily be infiltrated by a TRA. There must be loads of men's rights activists who would love to become an actual mod.

Same x2

This is where your argument comes apart re the right of internet host services to refuse service based on ideology falls apart. Your women's only services will not not be hosted by ISPs, your commenters' freedom to explore certain topics arbitrarily deemed 'hateful' or bigotted will be under constant attacks designed to shut you down. That you do not yet realise how important it is for services like Cloudfare to not apply ideological rules to websites other than legal ones is the reason women have been chased from pillar to post and find so few places they can comment freely on very important issues that affect them and child welfare.

I don't condone the misogyny. But I'm not sure if I would be contributing to it by looking at the site. Did somebody say it was funded by members?

There's no banner ads or whatever that most sites pick up revenue from, so you're not incidentally earning them anything.

Unless you're personally donating crypto-currency, have set up your Brave browser rewards to donate to them specifically or automatically as a visited site, or are buying some of the occasional merchandise, you're costing them money by visiting.

Ok, that's what I thought.

Which is why I pointed you directly to the source

Drat! It was a long post and I composed it offline - just checked it and I slipped up, I DID include a link to a specific thread on KF. 😬

I should have just posted the Title.

I'll try again, removing the link.

"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 feel that you are comparing the worst of KF with the best of Mumsnet.

Stray from FWR and you will find complaints, and occasionally actual evidence, of every sort of whatever-ism and whatever-phobia you could care to mention. It's hardly a feature of Mumsnet but the copybook does get blotted.

What makes you think Mumsnet is a "feminist site"? It does not advertise itself as such.

www.mumsnet.com/i/about-us

It hosts two dedicated Feminist Boards - that does not make it a "feminist site" by any stretch of the imagination.

I cannot see how to link to the A-Z of topics:
www.mumsnet.com/talk

Mumsnet is more than FWR.

KF is more that its most rancid posts and threads.

I was made aware of KF by a similar discussion on Mumsnet FWR some time ago so I went to have a look. I didn't know where to start so I clicked on "What's New" and landed on the saga of a "YouTube-Mom" who was systematically poisoning her children.

This was meticulously observed, recorded and archived on KF and the evidence passed to the relevant authorities. I think it was probably this one (you will have to search for it, I think my previous post is "being looked at" because I stupidly included a link):

Thread title:
Susan Schofield Cabana, Cory Cabana, & Michael Schofield / Schofield Productions / @bipolarnation - A Tragicomic Tale of Psychiatric Munchausen's by Proxy

The next thread I came across was responding to a call in a UK Newspaper for mourners to attend the funeral of an elderly man who had no relatives. Resulting in attendance by UK KF members, flowers, tributes, etc. (I can't find that conversation and life is too short to go on searching.)

Then . . . I stumbled into some of the worst of KF and called it a day.

As far as the "bad language" is concerned, yes it is horrifying. But bad attitudes can also be expressed in extremely anodyne language. It could be argued that that is even more harmful because it is seductive. It's more like a Tourette's tic on KF, like the guys (it's usually guys) who fucking punctuate every fucking sentence with fucking "fucking" all the fucking time!

However, just as not every member of Mumsnet is female and a feminist, particularly outside of FWR, not every member of KF is male and a potty-mouthed misogynist.

As PP have mentioned, there are some extremely measured and well-informed people on there, male and female.

I doubt that any of the media celebrities who get dragged to within an inch of their lives on Mumsnet (not talking about FWR) have killed themselves as a result. I also very much doubt that any of the internet-celebrity clowns and monsters under the KF microscope have killed themselves as a result.

I don't think it is unreasonable for us to criticise KF on FWR for tolerating anti-feminist content (what is expressed and how it is expressed) whilst applauding Mumsnet for tolerating what some (me NOT included) perceive as "anti-trans" content.

However, in the same way that Mumsnet tolerates "pro-gender identity ideology" content, KF also tolerates "pro-feminist" content.

For anyone who does decide to visit KF, try a search for "TERFs" - opinion there is divided on this vexed subject!

My personal favourite is a thread titled:

"How to detect TERFs?"

At my business I want to give TERFs a discount.

How do I detect TERFs?

This is Internet business.

Favourite answer:
"Ask them what they're (sic) pronouns are. If they tell you to fuck yourself, they're probably a TERF"

Thanks to HighWind for mentioning the "Beauty Salon" as I hadn't seen that - it's "Beauty Parlour" BTW - and lawd luvva duck - there's even a "Gender Critical" Board!

I don't know what all the KF categories mean and I'm not in the slightest bit interested in finding out. What I have found extremely handy though is using the Search Function to find out if there are any receipts for the backstory and misdemeanours of various males who habitually harass women on social media, report them to employers, etc. etc.

As others have mentioned, they are a LOT better at preserving the evidence than we are here and they do not tolerate unsupported allegations.

Those who do not wish to avail themselves of this valuable service, just don't go there.

I do despair at the authoritarianism of suggestions that it would be a good thing if KF was prevented from existing. This when gender-critical content has been censored by being removed from the internet by all the main social networking and blogging platforms and people (it's not just women) have been banned from using PayPal and had their bank accounts closed.

Those are the lengths these people will go to in order to censor inconvenient content: the personal and financial ruin of those who persist in putting it online or publishing it.

I would rather that a niche-interest forum occasionally spattered with misogynistic slurs (the more serious allegations are unproven) is allowed to exist than support politically or ideologically motivated censorship of legal content.

Heaven help us if the gender-identity authoritarians get their way and gender-critical views are classified as "terrorism".

This video needs adding to an existing Mumsnet thread:

Lawyer and author Sarah Phillimore on examining the conflation of political speech with violence
GB News 28 Aug

The defence of womens rights is not terrorism
www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/4460380-The-defence-of-womens-rights-is-not-terrorism

For anyone who has not come across this yet, I would highly recommend this 2008 paper by Alice Dreger:

"The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age"
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1

Looking back again at earlier posts, I suppose I could have just said: "I agree with TheClogLady" instead of rambling on!

"I don’t have the answers but if the choice is a) paedos can be discussed but the trade off is offensive (including misogynistic) language or b) no misogynistic language but also no way to discuss child predators, I will choose ‘a’ every time.

Besides, shutting down certain types of language/banning words doesn’t shut down thoughts or change opinions.
It just shunts them off into darker and darker corners.
Banning misogynistic language won’t do shit towards solving actual misogyny (same as banning the sharing of GC opinions online doesn’t do shit to stop feminists thinking feminist thoughts or organising offline).

Sunlight."

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4620584-antipodean-fruit-grower-statement?page=4&reply=119621444

@Bosky 👏 👏 👏

Excellent post Bosky, thanks for reposting.

As an aside: why are we not allowed to post links to KF, or even mention it by name? Some people might not find it very nice, but it's not illegal, is it?

Thanks for the time-stamped link.

"I have a couple more segments time stamped that I can share if Mumsnetters are interested?"

Yes please - 4+ hours is a lot to plough through!

I don't think it's just KF links that are verboten. I believe there are other forums that are banned too. I don't know why. The Talk Guidelines say:

Post deletions

We're all for freedom of speech. That said, we'll remove posts we consider to contain personal attacks, to break the law and/or to be obscene, racist, sexist, disablist, ageist, homophobic or transphobic, once they are brought to our attention. We will also delete any posts that we think are just seriously unpleasant (please note that any subsequent posts repeating the words in the deleted post may be deleted, too).

Posting links and spamming

We have no problem with people posting the odd link to other sites/blogs that other posters might find useful or interesting. But we'll delete anyone's attempts to spam the boards with links, as a way of promoting their own product, services, survey or e-petition, as it annoys our members.

www.mumsnet.com/i/netiquette

Yes please - 4+ hours is a lot to plough through!

I have a few highlights noted:

0:39.30 - the energy of the attackers, and Mumsnet
0:59:00 - how do we define "doxxing", and what's Null view and KF's rules?
1:23:25 - field report from a straight man on sex with a transwoman
2:43:15 - the tide is turning
3:15:00 - "Well, the reason why you become less tolerant is..." [lots of observations about transwomen's behaviour, including their view of women] "So I have definitely radicalised."

2:09:00 - the Byuu/Near "suicide"

Great post, Bosky.

You find info on KF you won't find anywhere else. For example, KF has been extremely useful in digging out information about the activities of Steph Hayden. Hayden, as we know, is very litigious and has been successful in covering up a lot of their personal history as a result. If you tried to publish similar info about Hayden on MN or anywhere else, you'd be deleted.

You'll note that actual victims of harassment, such as Louise Moody and Caroline Farrow, have already popped up to express their support for KF. It's Hayden who would like it down.

KF is more of a threat to harassers than a resource to them.

Harassers and bullies have far, far more to fear from sunlight.

This is how bad things are right now, there is so little free speech allowed that people have to resort to defending the group that abused them.

I only looked at KF in the last few weeks after reading about the events that ultimately seem to have led to this recent downtime. I ended up looking at a thread that documents surgeries and while a lot of the posters say really awful, mega-edgelord things, I do actually think that gathering this data and the photographs are essential. The images alone are one thing but the ongoing stories of some of the people they are documenting the posts of, are revelatory. I genuinely believe that if an actual major news documentary maker, like a Panorama special or 60 Minutes in the US, ever put these images and stories to a mainstream audience, this would be over almost immediately.

I knew, even when I was more of a be kind/TRA type than GC that these surgeries didn't yield great results. And since then, I've read more and thought I knew the worst of it. But that thread, not the people posting on it but the stories they are cataloguing are just so fucking horrific and genuinely heartbreaking. The disconnect between the words and the pictures, the desperation. The real lives being so utterly changed. If this information and these stories were front and centre, real public knowledge, I very much doubt it would be allowed to continue. I just feel so, so sad knowing that this is happening and being cheered on by lots of smart, kind people, who don't truly know what they are supporting.