Why is Mumsnet so GC?

[ireallycantthinkofaname]

Maybe an odd question but I've never come across another space, online or otherwise, where being GC is the norm. IRL I only ever discuss GC views openly with one family member, whose stance on it is similar to my own, though, so I'm not saying it's unwelcome.... Just curious how/why it's come about. Any thoughts or theories?

Do you have any awareness, Butterfly, that what you're describing is your own personal skewed interpretation of that era which is subjective. You are not a definitive arbiter of Internet history. You talk as if no one else here was around at the time or using the Internet in that era. In addition, what you describe relating to feminism is just speculative invented revisionism.

The internet went from an initial collection of tiny chaotic islands populated by a high proportion of open-minded (often queer or otherwise marginalised in some way within regular society) people excited about its potential, to a brutal lawless frontier where the excesses of 90's lad culture were replicated with even fewer consequences for the perpetrators of harm. It was horrendous.

Aw bless, is that how you imagine it used to be? I've been online since it was all ArpaNet and then UseNet. And we used to complain how much of it was misogyny, porn and aggression, and we'd dream how much less nasty and vicious it would be when more women had access to it and it wasn't just a gaggle of techy blokes with poor social skills.

How we laugh about that now.

Readers, do you need any more convincing about just how much 'anti-trans = anti-women'? How misogynistic some people who use that term 'anti-trans' are?

Can you think of what other male sub group is so misogynistic who hate non-compliant women so very much? Reading the recent posts about gaming ... the comparison is hard to miss.

The campaign 'Let them speak' is really quite successful, isn't it?

Butterfly's flights of fancy get ever more overblown with every new thread.

IT WAS A TIME FOR WAR. IT WAS A TIME FOR HEROES. IT WAS A TIME WHEN THE NET WAS WILD, PORN WAS FREE AND LAVERNE COX RULED THE WORLD.

THEN GERMAINE GREER ARRIVED TO RUIN EVERYTHING WITH HER WOMANLY SMELL.

NOW IN 2024 A LOOSE GROUP OF REBELS HAVE TAKEN AGAINST THE FEDERATION VOWING TO FIGHT THE INCORRECT INTERPRETATION OF THE EQUALITY ACT EVERYWHERE.

ETC

ETC

Ya near made me snort ginger cordial out me nose for giggling, ya bad wee skitter ye 😂😂😂

You don't half talk some shit Butters.

a brutal lawless frontier where the excesses of 90's lad culture were replicated with even fewer consequences for the perpetrators of harm. It was horrendous.

What, like this? https://terfisaslur.com/

Why don't we have a 😂button?

Taking the place of lightsabres, rolled up copies of the SSE exemptions from the EQA 2010...

Still have to make the noise though...

That is fucking hilarious Butters.

I was a grown up in the 90s, with a house and everything, and the 'internet' was pretty much non-existent, apart from people using isolated corners for their work. Images were still 600 pixels wide, max, and there was no social media to speak of. I have no recollections of a 'lawless frontier'. At all.

The Internet of 90s had three ears, a left one, a right one and a lawless front one.

@ArabellaScott

ONLY TIME WILL TELL WHO WILL SURVIVE

REBEL SPACESHIPS STRIKING FROM MUMSNET HAVE DECLARED TIME FOR PRONOUN BATTLES ON X TO BE SET ASIDE AND THE FORCES OF ALL WOMANLY ODOURS TO JOIN TOGETHER IN A FINAL EFFORT TO GET SIR KEIR TO WISE UP

I see #OperationLetThemSpeak is doing brilliant work 🙌

Wow that's proper word salad.

Socialisation sometimes really shows.

First time online was in 1995. I specifically went in search of other people like me and it turned out that they were out there if you could work out where to look. You just had to be so, so, so careful.

So at the age of 11 or so, you were plugging in the dial up internet, taking up the phone line for the evening and seeking out “people like [you]” and having discussions you described as

We had those debates. Over and over and over and over again. We allowed the discussion to be reset back to base principles and run through again and again because we wanted people to have a chance to walk themselves onto the target

Of course you were. How incredibly precocious, talented, time rich, well equiped and articulate you must have been to have accomplished this. Presumably you had a dedicated phone line, no homework, no set bed time, school the next day didn’t matter. And you used that time on the internet to seek out trans people. And by the end of the decade, you ended up medically transitioning.

So we could be saying that even back in the 1990s, spending unregulated time on the internet contributes to being convinced medical transition is the correct path?

It really demonstrates why we shouldn’t rely on the retrospective rose-tinted history of middle aged males as a guiding narrative for treating today’s youth, doesn’t it? They can’t remember anything properly.

I assume this massive derail is in fact a clever and subtle way of illustrating why mumnet is so GC.

It's not even a choice.

Its survival instinct.

The need to not let the tide of male entitlement submerge us.

It's mumsnet, not your blog, mate

the British anti-trans movement.

It isn't "anti-trans".

It's "pro-women".

There is a difference.

Quite.

I think that sexism existed prior to the ladism of the 1990s.

Also if you had dial up at home as a teenage in 1995, ok.

DH's dad had a job in the industry. I've just asked him when he got the internet ... It was before then btw. It was a good job.

Let's just say, you've got to be a spoilt brat rich kid or from a family from someone who worked in the industry to have the internet at home as a teen in 1995.

And that in itself is interesting for various reasons.

It's quite comedy. At time I wonder if it's my brother or one of his mates.

Like it's so freaking weird the things in common.

That shouldn't be the case.