What gender heresy caused you to be thrown out of Facebook groups?

[KatMcBundleFace]

Standing up to gender wang has been my downfall on several Facebook groups.

The Admin of a 745,000 strong group I recently joined, decided to call JK Rowling a "sadistic piece of shit, terf". He then banned posts about Harry Potter, because the group needs to be "safe space".
He turned off comments as they were not going his way. He then booted out people for just laugh reacting, me included.

Imagine if these pampered children actually have to deal with anyone genuinely sadistic.

I've also been thrown out of a wild camping group for backing up someone who said it was dehumanising to call women "period havers". The admins bullied that person and called him fat. Yup, literally that playground.

My biggest win was getting thrown out of a group run by Facebook itself. They are obviously going for Stonewall points and are training group admins in Gender ideology. There was a post about not using "gendered language". The example given was something like its bad to say "Hi Girls", in a group for women, as not all women identify as women, or some toss. Of cause the replies were a mess. From virtue signaling gone wrong eg the woman that went "we use guys to be inclusive " (she got jumped on), to people saying it was bollocks, to a couple of enbies saying that they are LITERALLY VIOLATED when they have to see terrible things like "ladies and gentlemen". The enbies then decided that everyone who disagreed with them should be booted out because its now an unsafe space.
I called that behaviour bullying. And with that I got banned by Facebook staff.

I must admit I stopped managing my group after that. It was very big and a lot of work. It generated a lot of interactions for Facebook, plus wider media coverage. I was a volunteer, for a horrible corporate business.
Facebook sells data and undermines democracy, but at least the enbies feel seen.

Anyway, has anyone else experienced this in Facebook groups?

Agreed. I think he would be appalled by the treatment of JKR and also the tyrannical methods of transallies, getting women (and men) sacked for asserting biological truth. Vimes would have a field day with transallies.

I often think of you. Glad to see you!

This thread makes me sad for the many slights and injustices.

I've not been chucked off a platform but took myself off Twitter in disgust in 2019, at the treatment of women. I'd been wasting time there since 2006 (met my fiancé on it) but I'd not go back now. I do not join FB groups anymore because this issue always seems to come up - however unlikely - and I won't lie.

I have found it harder, in real life. Speaking up about safeguarding concerns in a job where child safeguarding is key has made me a social pariah with some of the thirty-something women I work with (I do think there's an element of ageism going on there too though as I'm in my 50s and confident enough to be politely direct)

It often blows my mind how unkind the 'be kiiind' people are.

I think being politely direct has been the issue. We've tried that and suggested compromise ti be treated like scum for suggesting it.
I'm now being very impolitely direct. Any male that thinks he is a woman and should be entitled to everything we have as a female sex class will be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms.

It often blows my mind how unkind the 'be kiiind' people are.

When you base your thinking on the immature, childish fundamental belief that you are kind and tolerant (however biased, misguided or plain wrong), it's only 'logical' that you would consider anybody who believes or acts differently from you is unkind and intolerant.

Therefore the use of the words 'kind' and 'tolerant' is completely falsely appropriated (we're back to Inigo Montoya again): what they really mean is 'agree with me or else' - which is so obviously the exact opposite of kindness and tolerance.

And they accuse us of only wanting an echo chamber! At least we're wanting to properly discuss and consider the matter in a logical, adult way, rather than instantly resorting to violence, threats, doxxing and defamation - in the exact way that somebody with the limited ability to rationalise of a young child but coupled with the power and presence of an (especially male) adult would do.

Is the balance of born male and born female equal between these gatekeeping bullies of does it skew to one side?

No @DialSquare not speaking up has been the issue. Some of us do it IRL and where it matters.

Yes I tend to agree @WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I was following South Africa's answer to Owen Jones on fb as I do try and follow a broadish range of people on social media. He was ghastly to some poor woman who was dared suggest that disadvantaged girls globally were far more of a priority than trans. I liked the woman's post, that was it. He promptly blocked me.
He goes on about "white fragility" a lot. Eusebius, look in the mirror my guy.

Pratchett's dwarves have no gender (until Cheery), but he's quite clear that they come in 2 sexes. And that women are discrimated against because of their sex, not their gender.

I think he'd be right behind playing with presentation and breaking down stereotypes, but not authoritarianism and denying reality.

I've not managed to get myself personally kicked out of anywhere yet, but was one of a group that - by persistent TERFery - almost got an entire forum closed down. Having previously splintered that same forum by mere RFery.

I've been a member of a geeky Facebook group for over a decade but am seriously thinking of leaving for two main reasons- one being the handmaiden-y fawning over a male who does gender switched costumes, but with so many bizarrely staged photos that it's obvious that he's not just there to proudly show off his sewing skills - he's getting off on it. The second was the handwaving away of John Barrowman's dubious behaviour while at the same time absolutely slating JKR.

I totally agree. I have been speaking up for years in real life but something has really shifted in me recently that I'm making it very plain without any tiptoeing around. I used to suggest compromise. Not anymore.

I have been mainly baffled and bewildered (ignorant) on the trans debate, and always avoided commenting on Twitter and another forum because it seemed whatever you said, however carefully, however neutrally, you’d enrage one side or the other. I once tweeted something along those lines and got a pile-on even for that! I’d read linked articles by both sides and think “well that sounds reasonable”, but refrained from comment because pile-ons are no fun.

However, a tweep I mutually followed - and agreed with on pretty much everything - announced she was unfollowing everyone who followed JKR, whether or not they had liked or retweeted or supported JKR’s latest article/tweet/whatever. Insania! (So I blocked her.) Just an illustration of the extreme positions people hold, and how they can make one wary of joining the debate.

Which is how totalitarianism takes over a society. They don't go out and break the enemy's windows on the first day, they bed in, and expel anyone who doesn't completely agree with them, and make sure that no-one dares to challenge them. Then they can do whatever they like.

You can easily see how even the most extreme of beliefs can take hold - and thus be considered the norm/mainstream - when people are actually blocked, disallowed, reported to the captured authorities, threatened with violence etc., for just peacefully holding and expressing basic science-based views that virtually everybody would have held without question just 10 years ago.

It's not even just celebrities being cancelled now and de-platformed from speaking; it's potentially all of us on SM and in everyday mundane life.

You don't even need to express an opinion; merely following a 'persona non grata' is enough to get you auto-blocked - even if you are one of 'them' and seeing what the 'other side' are saying. There must be plenty of the TRAs who, going by their own rules, should be automatically blocked, cancelled and threatened for following GC people - if they don't follow or engage with them, how else could they possibly know what they're saying in order to threaten them for in the first place?

👏👏And this is exactly what is happening.

I've spent years on a small, left-leaning talkboard where the consensus appears to be that cancel culture is a right wing fiction. I always thought this optimistic at best and delusional at worst but even I'm shocked by what I've read on this thread.

The scale and depth of it is scary. At the risk of sounding like a conspiration, I have to say that it looks like a huge effort directed from high places.

Have you ever come across this interview with him, where he's asked if the dwarves are supposed to be a parallel to human trans people?
www.oocities.org/fasterthanlife_2000/int_pratchard.htm

Oh Hi

Glad you aren't completely gone!

I was banned from both Planned Parenthood and NARAL because I said that only women need abortions and have periods.

I’d like to support your new venture too.

It's such a bizarre, immature perspective, to not want to win (or at least convey) your argument by discussing it logically with somebody who disagrees with you. What's the point of having knowledge or conviction in the first place, if you don't want to express and justify it/yourself (respectfully and in an appropriate place) to others? It goes against all normal adult human principles.

The only logical conclusion I can reach is that people like this either are very unconfident about their own stance or otherwise know that their arguments cannot stand up to any reasonable scrutiny.

There's nothing wrong, after having a mature discussion, with realising you don't have common ground, agreeing to disagree or otherwise accepting that your beliefs may well be a matter of personal faith (nothing wrong with that at all) and not provable, unequivocal scientific fact that you have successfully argued that everybody else must accept.

I think the rot really started to set in when universities were captured and deliberately transformed from places where facts are learned and opinions shared to places where the opinions held by those who shout (and claim victimhood) the loudest are promoted to 'facts' and 'truth', to sit alongside the actual proven facts.

One of the key aspects of university always used to be that now we are all adults here, so normal debate and differing opinions are entirely appropriate. You may be offended by other adults' sincerely-held perspectives on things, but you either mobilise the debate with logic and facts (not feelz) or otherwise accept that you starkly differ.

"This is THE truth because it's important to me and it upsets me and makes me feel 'unsafe' if you don't see it that way; so your lack of instant acceptance is faulty, dangerous thinking, bigotry and actual violence and thus hate speech and wrongthink" belongs in the (albeit more eloquently expressed than normal) kindergarten.

If you are confident in your facts and the strength of your logic, then share them! Would you, as an adult, expect it to hold any water in the court room if you just stood there shaking your head, murmuring "No, that's obviously wrong" and nothing else? Would you truly expect to win or be exonerated/justified/respected in your case?

I had not come across that terrible, terrible interview, no. They clearly caught him in a forgiving mood to engage with that at all.

This seems to be the place for this story. A woman in America has been sacked from her job at a games company, because of one online bully - who complained about social media accounts she was following:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11682563/Woman-fired-following-transphobic-Twitter-users-speaks-out.html

Lynne said that Limited Run Games, where she had worked since November 2020, was actually more concerned with the online backlash than the types of Twitter accounts she followed.

Lynne was fired on January 6, hours after activist Jessica Blank, a trans woman and activist, who uses the moniker Purple Tinker, publicly accused Lynne of being a 'transphobe'. Blank shared screenshots of accounts followed by Lynne and said she would stop shopping with Limited Run games until Lynne, who was the company's community manager, was fired.