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?

Our GC views here aren't normal in a lot of society and it's nice to be able to speak openly about scientific fact without being shut down.

I wonder if preference falsification is in play.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies, Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.

A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.

In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.

80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cass-sunstein-how-change-happens/

This is a decent podcast which discusses preference falsification among other factors influencing mass social change. Transcript available.

100%

All the same views as us, but without identifying as nasty fash vipers.

My close coleagues are all GC but we work in a very PC environment where identity issues are prioritised so its whispered and acknowledged quietly.

I think society is GC, I dont know (apart from clients of the group who are trans or their family who push it) who arent.

Our GC views here aren't normal in a lot of society

That just isn't true. The difference here is that we can express them.

Even in younger age groups, the majority do not support the Stonewall position. And remember that lots of people are still confused about trans terms and think that TW = biological woman who IDs as trans. The true figures are probably higher.

And it's not just here on Terf Island - similar findings in NZ.

It is crucially important that we do not tell ourselves we are in the minority. That's what TRAs want policymakers to believe, but it's horseshit. We are the majority, and we will be heard.

I think in some settings - my lefty academic-related workplace for example - GC views are common. It’s just that they’re held by a silent majority.

So looking at our workplace you’d see that a third or so of people have chosen to include pronouns in their email signatures, and you’ll see the endless promotion of trans months etc in the company-wide newsletter.

What you wouldn’t see is me and (I hope and strongly suspect!) many others like me rolling their eyes and muttering to ourselves at the latest email on trans awareness, or the fact that Dave has unnecessarily added he/him to his email.

The first time I became aware that there was a growing conflict between trans people and women reality was when I read about Helen Steel and the anarchist book fair (I'd just returned from living in Thailand for 10 years, so had missed other events).

I read people describing Helen Steel - HELEN STEEL! - as bigoted and fascist. When I tried to discover more about what happened my usual reliable sources were either silent or agreeing that what she had done was terrible - though they were quite vague about what she had done.

As I searched for more information I came across the FWR board on Mumsnet. At the time it was literally the only info I could find that was not pure TRA propaganda: TWAW; No Debate; everyone adding 'T' to everything then claiming it had always been there.

It sometimes takes me a long time to decide where my loyalties should be, and so many people I had regarded as truthful and allies were TRAs that I found it difficult to believe the evidence of my own eyes. The Tara Wolfe case pretty much had me convinced, but it took rubber-wanking-in-the-loo-at-a-children's-charity-man for me to fully realise that the TRAs would defend absolutely anything as long as it had 'trans' before it, that compromise could not work with ideologues and truth deniers.

I've never left. Thank you mumsnet.

Mumsnet educated me on this topic. It was around the time of the Women's Equality Party becoming established (which I initially thought was a great thing) and I was feeling increasingly frustrated at finding the MN feminism section full of threads about the 'trans' issue, as I couldn't understand why it was taking up so much airtime. Having recently had my DC I was more bothered about things like maternity rights, equality in the workplace and sexual assault.

I can't remember who, but it was a MNer saying that once any man can declare himself to be a woman on self-ID alone, not needing to go through any medical process, then any female space was open to him and therefore access to vulnerable women and children. At that point, something clicked in my mind and I realised that, with the self ID bill looming, this was an emergency.

The second point that got through to me was around transitioning young people. I had taught in diverse areas of London throughout the noughties and this issue had never, ever come up, so the idea that there was a sudden epidemic of young people with gender dysphoria being treated with irreversible processes was horrifying.

I was also old enough to remember the surge of people suffering from multiple personality disorder in the 1990s - plus other peaks in psychological disorders during the noughties and 2010s - so wondered if this was something similar.

From that point on I have been working behind the scenes to stand up for women. I am not brave enough and my situation isn't secure enough to be completely 'out', but I have completed consultations, donated, written emails, spoken to my local councillor, complained to the county council about a display in my library, written supportive emails to key GC women, nominated GC women on International Women's Day and a few other things I have probably forgotten. Plus quite a bit of passive resistance to language changes in the workplace.

What had I thought before that peaking moment? I hadn't heard the term 'transgender', I knew that there were transsexual people who suffered from psychological difficulties around their sexual identity, but I assumed that they all went through a surgical process before 'becoming' the opposite sex. I thought it affected a miniscule proportion of the population who were so much the exception that they might need special arrangements for compassionate reasons.

Did I ever imagine that a man just dressing as a woman would be expected to be seen as a woman and allowed to get changed with women in a changing room or competing in a women's sporting event? Or that women could be censured for objecting to this situation? Or that the language used to describe entirely female experiences like periods, pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding could be changed? Not for one second.

Haven’t RTFT but in answer to the OP, because it’s representative of real life. I’ve never met anyone IRL - not one single person that I’ve ever talked about it with - who thinks men can become women or women can become men. It’s actually normal to be GC.

You can be GC without being unpleasant to trans people you come across too.

You can be GC without being unpleasant to trans people you come across too.

Can you explore what you mean by "unpleasant"? IME, what counts as "unpleasant" is not a point of agreement and can depend upon perspective. E.g., Is compelled speech and thought "unpleasant" as well as a milestone towards compelled action?

Even before the trans issue became a big deal the MN feminist board leant more towards radical feminism and the idea that gender was an oppressive construct. So it was a natural progression for this to become a predominately GC space (helped by the fact that MNHQ resisted the pressure to shut down GC voices).

This speaks to a broader pattern which is that, for reasons I don't fully understand, a strand of feminism rooted in the radicalism of the second wave survived on into the 21st century in the UK despite apparently dying out everywhere else.

By unpleasant, I’ve seen abuse shouted at TW at bus stations or sneering about what they look like in stage whispers so they hear. That’s what I was thinking of.

I know there are other aspects that TRAs may think is “unpleasant” like not allowing a TW to attend a women only refuge and in that I’d prefer that person to receive suitable help elsewhere as a TW isn’t a woman.

What I think is a real credit to the many many intelligent women particularly on the sex and gender (previously FWR) boards is how they anticipated a lot of what has actually now happened.

The it will never happen thread is particularly instructive - https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

I think Mumsnet is reflective of most of the nations views. It was, and this is a credit to Mumsnet, the only place that women could really talk about this online (but our speech was heavily monitored before the Forstater case).

The TRAs really did a great job with the 'no debate - you bigot' theme that was going for many years.

Reasonable. I feel the same way about abuse shouted at women at bus stations and stage whispered sneers about our appearance.

Do you think it is solely people with a declared GC perspective who engage in the behaviour you describe? Or are they the sort of people whom my mother would have described as "pass remarkers" and always have something negative to say rather than keeping it to themselves?

When I see someone who is presenting as the opposite sex, that is what I think ( "That is a man presenting in women's clothing". "That is a young woman presenting in stereotypical male ways, or who has facial hair") I don't tend to think of them as 'trans'; because to my mind 'trans' is a contemporary social construct not a 'real thing'.

Obviously I never comment that a man is obviously a man, or say loudly " my god, look at the size of his feet in those silver Birkenstocks" - but that is certainly what I'm thinking. And I'm sure everyone else is too. You can't help but notice the incongruences - that is just human nature.

I imagine it is usually the same 'white van man' who might shout comments out of the car window at women, or others, on the street.

I once saw a young man wearing a long skirt walking up the street towards the university and a car honked its horn at him, for example. Other people did 'double takes', looking back at him as he walked past.

My kids go to school in a predominantly working class area and I agree with you and PP.

Yes, I have had quite a few trans patients, and some describe really disturbing encounters. A certain type of bloke seems to be driven crazy by anyone gender non-conforming.

The saddest patients are the ones who don't understand why they have been singled, out because they have convinced themselves they pass. (I'm mainly talking about naive teens/early 20s)

It's unfortunate for trans people that activists have diluted the term 'transphobia' to such an extent that many will now assume it means 'accidental misgendering' rather than active discrimination, and dismiss it.

Timing. My ds was born early in 2004 and I came to MN a few weeks later struggling with breastfeeding. So my son is the same age as the Gender Recognition Act.

I was one of a big surge of new users who arrived that year partly due to the publicity about SWMNBN (a popular childcare guru sued MN for ?libel I think because some posters were extremely uncomplimentary about her methods. I'm so socialised by the financial risk to the site I still don't want to name her!)

MN still felt small then. It was British and practical and you could find a range of views. The site and users overall were robustly pro-vaccination (it was the early days of Wakefield's mission to destroy measles immunity) but there were users here who were certain their children had been vaccine damaged, and on the whole we all coexisted.

Also it was quite lefty then. Soft left, but it was born out of metropolitan New Labour circles and it showed.

So there we all were, dealing with the shitshow of early parenthood and the fun if what felt at times a bit Iike a group of friends. There were live birth threads and physical meetups and present swaps and sharing in joys and sorrows, and it was feminist in a very simple uncomplicated way. We discussed whether it was a mistake to name it Mumsnet because it's important for men to participate in parenthood. And we kept on sharing and consciousness raising and it got both bigger and more commercial, and feminist in more detail as our children got older and we got grumpier

Then when my son was a teenager I went to work in a specialist service which was partly for trans people, and like a lot of parents of teenagers at that time encountered men telling me they were completely female and expecting me to teach them how to be feminine - the idea that I could or would do that just because I'm a woman made me so angry. Then the daughters of friends identifying as men, alongside neurodiversity, bullying and eating disorders, and we saw the data showing an explosion in numbers among girls nationwide. And the same year my husband's health finally collapsed and he died, there was going to be a law change that made being a woman something men could just say they were. A total elimination of any concept that being a woman was an objective reality that meant something. And I, for one, had had enough.

Because many male TRAs are also very IT literate. For example iirc Aimee challenor worked for? Was a regular mod on? Reddit. They've often been transed due to online interactions and are heavily invested in the online world.

(In the context of online content)

This section was always full of radical feminists, which is really all GC Feminism is.

This is such bollocks. I don't consider myself a radical feminist but I know that it's incredibly unfair to allow women and girls to compete in sport against biological males, and that it's totally unacceptable to allow biological males into spaces for vulnerable women and girls like rape crisis services. It's not effing rocket science.

You might be thinking of "The politicisation of Mumsnet" by Sarah Pedersen.

https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/preview/957922/PEDERSEN%202020%20The%20politicization%20of%20Mumsnet.pdf

Great post. Never really expected to read the phrase ‘shoehorn penises’ but if made me guffaw so thank you for that!

Thank you! Yes! Sorry, should have Googled the title before posting.