Is Mumsnet shutting down GC views? FAO Justine Roberts

[Pluvia]

Mumsnet, are you aware that GC views are acceptable and are held by the vast majority of people in the UK?

Why are you using the 'not in the spirit of Mumsnet' argument to shut down discussions?

In the thread about a trans co-worker you allowed pro-trans arguments presumably from the US, Australia and Canada to mount up overnight. When GC women here in the UK countered with facts this morning you shut the thread down. I didn't see a single offensive post — unless you've changed policy and now think using the medical term autogynephilia is offensive.

This is not acceptable. Maya Forstater's case established that GC views are worthy of respect and yet you seem to be censoring open debate.

How can you tell of someone is "post op"?

How do you tell the difference between a transexual and an "erotic crossdresser"?

The transitioned males we can trust are the ones who do not attempt to transgress the social contract.

Basically, the good ones stay out of female single sex spaces so the bad ones stand out.

I just posted some articles about Leanne Mills on another thread, Leanne tells the story of declining to join the local gym as to use the women’s changing rooms, (where women were naked) wasn’t fair on the women, even though Leanne was by then post-op.

Sadly current day transactivism insists on the opposite, that female people who object to males in their spaces should be excluded
in favour of the male.

So, are you suggesting that anyone who points out the ways that a TW, or someone presenting as a woman, does not pass and is clearly male is necessarily transphobic? Wouldn't that be like the child in the emperor's new clothes?

There’s general Mumsnet “not in the spirit” and there’s Sex and Gender “not in the spirit” and it’s clear there’s a different benchmark for the two.

Some of the anti-Megan Markle posts are really nasty and toxic but are somehow allowed to stay ...

Woman is fast being reduced to a free floating theoretical concept - rather than an embodied reality - and a concept or set of symbols which can be adopted by anyone who fancies.

Bloody hell. Glad I am getting on in years! but fear for my DGD future if this batshit theory and similar really take hold.

Big pharma......... no surprise there.

Suggesting the breaking of U.K. law and allowing posts that encourage the access of males to women's spaces is not in the spirit of a site for mothers.

Next time I'll be reporting all those posts.

No, not remotely. Where have I said that?

Demanding women-only spaces, or pointing out that trans women rarely 'pass' is not transphobic.

Lots of the posts on that thread were saying far more than that, and straying into some very dodgy territory (per my post above). I expect that's why it was deleted.

I did not see the thread in question but I have never seen GC views be censored on this site. In fact, they are by far the loudest and most visible.

However I would happily work with, get to know and respect a transwoman colleague.

I wouldn't. Why the hell should I happily work with and respect a man who, in my opinion, is attempting to colonise womanhood by reducing it to dresses, breasts, and nail polish?

But I do have a big issue about being compelled to go along with a lie. Perhaps you don't suffer from the cognitive dissonance many of us do when required to pretend in public that we are not seeing what we are seeing and that all our senses are telling us is wrong? Do you have no empathy at all for the rest of the staff, compelled by peer pressure to go along with someone's fantasy? Why should avoiding the discomfort of one individual require the collective discomfort of many?

Yes, this, completely. I think it's the way that the majority science-based understanding is now being considered as hateful and intolerant; whereas the minority view is being pushed through as the only acceptable view.

Nobody (reasonable) is objecting to religious people who are devoutly living their faith themselves - even if whatever that faith is seems senseless to most other people - because they are not trying to force other people to live as if they too accept the faith as proven fact, with anybody peacefully disagreeing being intolerant or a bigot.

With the current Zeitgeist, it appears that the majority of us who do not whole-heartedly go along with these minority views are automatically 'wrong' - and many other negative slurs as well.

You aren’t paying very close attention or you would realise that both of these things can be true at the same time.

Yes, the GC position (or as I prefer to call it ‘material reality’) is the majority view on the site, just as it is out in the real world, but GC opinions are also frequently censored 🤷‍♀️

Woman is fast being reduced to a free floating theoretical concept - ratherthan an embodied reality - and a concept or set of symbols which can beadopted by anyone who fancies.

I think, sadly, you're right. I do hope that the EHRC will work quickly and efficiently to ensure that sex and biology are welded permanently together.

Only when they tip over into saying things like companies should not employ trans people because they are mentally unstable, or advocating campaigns of harassment against individual trans people.

Most of the traffic on this site, from what I've seen, isn't like that, and remains uncensored. But this particular thread crossed the line on multiple occasions.

I hadn't read the whole thread, but I didn't see anything offensive.

Why was there a need to pull the whole thread rather than make individual deletions if they were truly necessary?

Who decides what is and isn't acceptable comment or observation?

But I do have a big issue about being compelled to go along with a lie. Perhaps you don't suffer from the cognitive dissonance many of us do when required to pretend in public that we are not seeing what we are seeing and that all our senses are telling us is wrong?

For some neurodivergent people it can be really quite hard to have to essentially play-act in the workplace and not "say what you see". This doesn't mean trans people should not be employed, just that employers need to recognise and acknowledge that there are potential conflicts and that it would be sensible to try and resolve them fairly, rather than telling people to shut up and Be Kind.

Could not agree more. I was about to post on that thread, and it had gone. I completely accept that if someone hotfoots it here and says 'What do you think about this, my neighbour Joe Bloggs, who lives at 12 Anywhere Crescent, Anytown, AN1 1AN, is now Josephine Bloggs ...' that's an invasion of privacy and should be deleted. But in the case of a couple who voluntarily gave an interview to the BBC on a controversial subject how can anybody say we can't discuss their views?

That is because this sub board was set aside specifically for discussions around sex and gender. People who don't like the topic could always stay away from it. There is a 'general feminism cha't for those that prefer.

It depends on the moderator on shift!

I had a post deleted that was a very long one, almost an essay. Had a chat with the mod via email and the bit that got it deleted seemed to me to be the least congee bit and certainly not something that contradicted employment law (it was a observation re: nonbinary being a recent addition to the public discourse, in a humorous tone).

Perhaps MNHQ would consider being more explicit about why posts are deleted, rather than the catch-all ‘breaks talk guidelines’ (which are quite nebulous, as some words are ok in some contexts) or the difficult to parse ‘not in the spirit’ (which is next-to-useless phrasing for many neurodiverse posters!)?

GoFasterKnickers:
"Whether people like it or not, trans people exist and have a right to exist."

Indeed. But we should distinguish. This can be (and is) read different ways.

If 'trans people exist' is taken to mean 'there are some men who claim to be/would like to have been women and some women who claim to be/would like to have been men', then, fine. Of course such people exist.

But that's not what some trans ideologues mean when they say 'trans people exist. If 'trans people exist' is taken to mean 'there are some men who have changed sex and become women and some women who have changed sex and become men', then no, no such people exist.

(Of course there are also legal fictions: some men may have the juridical status of a woman in the same way Tesco has the juridical status of a person. Fine. Such legal fictions have always been around.)

In plain terms, there are no men who have changed sex and become women. No such people have ever existed; nor do any such people now exist.

Is it allowed to say this on MN? It is the plain truth.

Constant lumping of post-op trans people into the same bracket as fetishists is unhelpful and unkind.

Do you really think it was feminists who decided that cross dressers are actually transsexuals?!!

Because it wasn't.

There are way more cross dressers than there are transsexuals. It certainly wasn't women who decided they are actually women and should have access to women's spaces.

You're directing your ire at the wrong people.

Take it up with Stonewall.

My impression in the last couple of weeks has been that there are fewer old hands who have all the info at their fingertips and an increase in people who haven't got much depth of understanding.

Interesting - I'm not a regular poster on these boards but do read them frequently and I've started to have this impression.

a young generation of women have bee brought up with all of the gains made by previous generations and many have yet to fully realise that sexed differences are real and consequential.

I don't think that new though - I was teen/young adult in 90s and came out of education with impression I'd face few issues being female even in a male dominated environment - it was a huge shock when I found myself paid less, given fewer opportunities and had training withheld because I was female.

I job hunted - as did DH female college denied a promotion for a job she was essentially doing because she didn't have enough experience only to watch a man with no needed experience be given the job. In both cases other women also saw the situation and left - and despite us and men like DH and other male colleges stating the problem the workplaces still had no idea what the issues were meaning all women left and frequently decide it must be women as a group who were the problem.

The Op was uncomfortable and unhappy with her work situation didn't feel able to raise it at work logical thing to do is job hunt out the entire situation.

And of course you can now make those accusations safe in the knowledge that all the evidence is gone and you can say whatever you like and no one can say 'But I didn't actually say that. I said [quote]' Convenient, eh?

*My impression in the last couple of weeks has been that there are fewer old hands who have all the info at their fingertips and an increase in people who haven't got much depth of understanding. *

Yes, that might be true. The tide has turned, and explanations for newbies may be taking second place to either a more active role for a lot of women, or just an assumption that it will sort itself out, now the tanker has been turned around.

In plain terms, there are no men who have changed sex and become women. No such people have ever existed; nor do any such people now exist.

I also find it disingenuous - and actually very reductive and offensive - when people make a distinction concerning those who have had cosmetic surgery to remove/add/amend the appearance of physical parts.

If an adult man chooses to have his genitals removed or an adult woman chooses to have her (healthy) breasts removed - in order to (as they see it) look less like the sex they are but are not happy being - then that's their decision (and I truly hope they don't later regret it); but a man without a penis is still a man, just as a woman without breasts, or who has undergone a hysterectomy, is still a woman.

Having cosmetic surgery on sex-based areas of the body, or taking opposite-sex hormones, is a personal preference, but in no way represents an official 'compromise' which somehow opens the door for you to access facilities that are still restricted to the opposite sex; in the same way that you in no way lose your existing access to facilities that are restricted to your own sex.

Plus recently there have, imo, been a few bad actions/GC impersonators who say stuff like ‘I’m as GC as they come’ and then a few lines later use an obvious pejorative against trans people that has never been acceptable on mumsnet and is rarely heard anywhere at all these days (except as a humorous in-group self-reference).

A woman calling an obvious male a male is enough to make TRAs angry, so no genuine GC Mumsnetter needs to resort to crude insults to provoke a response.