AIBU in thinking the special talk guidelines are out of date?

[TinselAngel]

Post Forstater and in the current climate where the assault on women's rights is being discussed everywhere, AIBU to say the special FWR guidelines are no longer necessary?

MN no longer needs special rules to appease the activists who monitor the site, in order to maintain its ability to host the debate, when it is no longer the only site where the topic can be discussed.

I posted the something on the Trans Widows Escape Committee thread a couple of days ago, and it was deleted, it was my first ever deletion on that thread in 6 years. As an experiment I posted the same thing on Twitter and nobody batted an eyelid there.

Is it time we women of FWR, and in particular trans widows, were allowed to speak freely?

Yep, I think it is. This conversation has opened up everywhere. And if anyone should be allowed to speak freely, it's the trans widows and the parents of children caught up in all this.

The general atmosphere has changed. I got a deletion a year or two ago under a former name for 'misgendering' someone who wasn't even named. Possibly that fact that I was raging, in very blunt language, about a healthy young woman having a double mastectomy, prompted some monitor or other to snitch. I don't think that post would be deleted now.

When they are deleting posts that point out that a baby suckling on a man, using up energy it needs to thrive and getting no nutrition for the effort, then they really needs to relook at what the hell they are doing.

The IPSO guidelines also changed this week. Won't be impact surely has to be that we can now call a man a man otherwise we would be misleading people, right?

YANBU!

The trans widows thread seems to be being targeted for deletions at the moment, which is reminiscent of the coercive control we've all escaped from.

It's always the biology threads that get deleted for some reason. Some people just don't want to hear that men don't have periods, can't breastfeed, don't have vaginas etc. Especially that women don't have penises. Biological reality really offends people on here. Deletion in 5, 4, 3 ,2.......

Apologies for being slow but what is FWR?

I believe the board used to be called feminism and women's rights?

Yes. I think from some posts from MN moderators that the way they approach the issues is more flexible than it used to be now, too.

They've said that there's not a blanket list of banned words, so much, it's more about general tone and intent. Which is probably more in accordance with the rest of the site. So presumably we don't need Special Rules so much anymore.

A thread in Site Stuff, maybe?

Agree.

I'm not a fan of my intent being assumed TBH.

I also think it very much depends on who happens to be monitoring the thread at any given time. I've said stuff on some threads that has been allowed to stand, and the exact same thing on another thread and been deleted. There doesn't seem to be a consensus among the mods what is exactly permitted and what is forbidden.

Agree - which is unhelpful, given that too many strikes against you can lead to a permanent ban.

As I've posted many times before, I'm very grateful to MNHQ for allowing debate when few other platforms would, but the rules now seem murky, out of date and overly restrictive. I've had posts deleted for stating incontrovertible biological facts. That's not on.

YANBU.

I rarely post these days. I think the excessive claims of detrimental impact on a bunch of men who have unhealthy obsessions over women talking was overblown when the rules were written. Now? Ridiculous they're still being used.

YANBU.

Yeah Mumsnet out of step now

twitter or X are not banning women or men for speaking the truth

speaking as one who was banned by Mumsnet for you know speaking the truth

But they did give us a chance to speak looking back when everyone wouldn’t. So there is that

Someone started a thread about our religious views which I thought might be interesting but it's vanished - probably because of repeated use of the use of the word which is an anagram of live and starts with e and ends with l.

It's a term for an idea right? not a description of a person.

Me, neither. But I can only presume this is what 'not in the spirit' means.

That thread was awful. IMO the op was being very hateful towards transgender people (and Muslims).

I've had one deletion, where I used the Three Letter Acronym. I couldn't work out why my post had fallen foul of the rules.

There is a balance to be had. People do perceive tone in written communication - it's impossible not to do so. Whether the perception is correct or not. It's down to the poster to be as clear as possible, to minimise the chances of things being read with an unintended tone. The recently deleted thread was a good example where the OP's tone seemed strange from the start, and then got worse with the comment about Muslim people later.

But to answer the original question, no. YANBU.

It's great that we've got this board and that mostly it is free of deletions. However, sometimes people need to say things that might be considered controversial to some people (e.g. biological facts, Three Letter Acronym) and it's unhelpful when these are removed from an active debate. It's on everyone to make sure that debate is respectful.

I’ve had posts deleted only on a couple of occasions. Once ages ago for making the observation that gender ideology has many cult like qualities and once very recently for talking about the traits of AGP men as a group (I think). I don’t understand why these two topics are particularly out of bounds. I don’t know if the bans on these subjects are entirely not allowed or if my wording was just a bit clumsy and I crossed a line. It’s frustrating because now I’ve been threatened with being suspended I will just avoid those topics entirely but I guess that is the whole point isn’t it?

YADNBU.

I'm grateful for Mumsnet providing a safe space for us to speak. It's the reason I coughed up to be a premium subscriber. But I do think that many deletions are unnecessary. We get a lot of irritating TRA interlopers who complain about everything, but MNHQ don't have to kowtow to them.

Things have changed. We used to get deleted for use of certain words:

Cult
Castration
AGP
Peaking
Man
Fetish

And for being too specific or generalising.

It's now less clear what the rules are - as I understand it just generally depends on various factors.

When I started reading here it took me ages to work out what the references to "mountain summit" meant. I used to read political forums where Peak Oil was discussed academically, so genuinely couldn't understand why this was a controversial or offensive term.

as I understand it just generally depends on various factors.

😂

Not being allowed to say castration is insane. It's a fact that testicles are removed as part of MTF surgery.