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?

It uses a marxist set of tools to structure itself. It is fundamentally Marxist in outlook. Which is what I said.

It's quite a stupid idea in itself though. Does anyone really think that before private property existed, as much as that was ever the case, there was no significant division between men and women?

I dont understand some of the responses to the quotes I posted.

I am not a marxist(!) but was just illustrating that according to Marx the first oppression was of the sex class of women by the sex class of men.

I'm not going to go on commentating, but suggest not just relying on the extracts I have quoted.

They come from a much longer analysis that accepted (which many still do) that in many cultures the early structure of society was matrilineal ie the blood line was through women. Men, whose role in conception wasn't always understood, were in a sense irrelevant.

Does anyone really think that before private property existed, as much as that was ever the case, there was no significant division between men and women?

There have been a number of interesting threads on FWR on early matrilineal societies, how and why the ended, you could read them and see that nobody is suggesting there has been a time when there was no division between men and women. More that somehow it got reversed and what had once made women primary (pregnancy, creating new life) then became a means of exploitation / oppression.

Bloody well said!

Yes, some people do argue this, but it isn't very clearly evidenced. And certainly not at the time it was written. It's a history based on a theory, rather than a theory based on a history, if that makes sense. And a mythic theory at that.

In practice both patrilineal and matrilinieal societies are a mixed bag in many ways. Both in terms of who hold power, the different social structures, and sexual roles. And it's not like private property didn't exist in some of them either.

It makes me think about Camus' point about the most dangerous thing being utopianism. e.g. the utopian dream of communism justifying anything because if you think you are building a perfect world you would go through anything for it. There's a big difference between noting that pregnancy/caring for babies puts women at massive risk of exploitation and saying that therefore if you changed that reality you would remove the exploitation of women. I don't think that makes Firestone wrong for thinking about it - its good as a thought experiment. But people who genuinely believe you can and should grow babies in artificial wombs etc have a place on the fringes but not leading the conversation.

And likewise the existence of matriarchal or matrilineal societies in the past are really interesting to think about. Maybe they were awesome in many ways. But like @TempestTost says, they weren't necessarily problem free or paradises.

Why are posters bringing in words like paradise and utopian.

Nobody has said that.

This is about recognising that through research (some of which was relatively new at the time paper were written, in that many early socities were matrilineal for reasons only those alive at the time could clearly say. Not just in Europe but elsewhere.

At some point it changed.

And with it women's status and independence.

The Engels Marx paper put the change down to property ownership.

Other people might say something different.

None of the points in response to the extract I posted put forward any ideas about how or why women became subjected.

If we want to change that then at least having any understanding of what underpins it, allowed it to happen.

I've never come across another space, online or otherwise, where being GC is the norm.

That says something very frightening about freedom of speech, given that most people realise that humans can’t change sex. In a healthy society, people would not be afraid to debate and question these issues.

The key reason is that we are a bit older (ie over 30, and a lot of us are in our 40s and 50s) and therefore see the Emperor's New Clothes.

Although I don't like the term "gender critical". I am critical of gender stereotyping, though - ie you must be a woman if you want to wear a dress and heels.

I've never come across another space, online or otherwise, where being GC is the norm

indeed. You certainly can't say that male bodied people shouldn't be in female sports categories in the parkrun discussion group for example.

Lipstick Alley is not as resolutely GC, but again a place dominated by women, where women will say what they think.

Perhaps the issue is of men dominating the conversation else. Though in fairness Quora allows some very good GC posts.

Growing up in 90's online culture, where every space was virulently trans-hostile by default, has given me quite a strong sense of perspective whenever someone makes a claim like this.

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.

It seemed impossible; it looked completely hopeless. Many of us assumed that this would be the way of things forever. Gradually, however, the landscape shifted. People started becoming more reasonable. They actually met trans people. They actually talked to us. The climate of fear gradually faded, and bigotry retreated until we reached an inflection point where you could generally assume that most people you met online wouldn't despise you by default for being trans - or at least, wouldn't say it to you directly.

I'm so sorry that you view the fading embers of the World That Was with fear, as if something great was lost.

It is concerning but there are plenty of posters on here who would like to see mn stop it too

Sadly not everyone is pro women

BH's solipsistic posts are always remarkably grounding as

• an exemplar of the personal perspective being extrapolated to the wider political
• to a sense of entitlement that is oblivious to the continued lived reality of so many other individuals and demographics.

The current Doyle and parallel Hayton stramash is indicative of the absence rather than dominance of women's voices.

Accusations again of fear and bigotry. It's scaremongering nonsense. Women are not fearful or bigots. We have valid topics to discuss and will do so, despite what some occasion Lepidopteran visitors would prefer.

I don’t see why we can’t have a majority female space online. So much of the internet is overrun by males who express misogyny

I don’t want to use those platforms obviously

Despite telling us we’re all being such appalling intolerable bigots and MN being such a place of fear & literal violence, BH seems unable to stay away even though there Is absolutely no compulsion for them to be here

I don't know 1 person, as far as I am aware, who believes that humans can change sex. Everyone in my family, including my wider family, and all my friends think men can dress and have operations etc, but will of course never really be 'women'. I include my mum, in her 80s, and my neices and nephews, in their teens and twenties. Any school mums I have become friends with, and who I have mentioned this topic, all say the same thing 'it's bloody ridiculous isn't it'. You won't see the new flag in many places where I live. I live in East London. Apparently according to ONS, Newham has the highest amount of trans and non binary people...i think not. Knife crime, yes.

Apparently according to ONS, Newham has the highest amount of trans and non binary people...i think not. Knife crime, yes.

And yet, they won't issue an official revision to the census data.

I'm truly sorry about the knife crime. The pall of unease that that horror drops on a community is hard to understand. The fear for young people going out on the most straightforward of daily activities and the general hypervigilance it creates, it's wretched.

I'm always mindful of a useful distinction between epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. The corollary is that perspectives have to be falsifiable and that, plus a realistic interpretation of various studies, data, social phenomena is what is so often lacking from those who would wish to present themselves as someone with an alternate view.

"An ‘epistemic bubble’ is an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded by omission. That omission might be purposeful: we might be selectively avoiding contact with contrary views because, say, they make us uncomfortable. As social scientists tell us, we like to engage in selective exposure, seeking out information that confirms our own worldview. But that omission can also be entirely inadvertent. Even if we’re not actively trying to avoid disagreement, our Facebook friends tend to share our views and interests. When we take networks built for social reasons and start using them as our information feeds, we tend to miss out on contrary views and run into exaggerated degrees of agreement.

An ‘echo chamber’ is a social structure from which other relevant voices have been actively discredited. Where an epistemic bubble merely omits contrary views, an echo chamber brings its members to actively distrust outsiders.

A very thoughtful essay:

To put it another way - why do other spaces deny reality. TRAs are misogynistic and homophobic bullies and some rich people, mainly men, have spent a lot of money trying to silence opposition.

As someone who was born and bred in Stratford, I can’t say I was aware of there being a huge trans population. Yes obviously like most areas, there were a few local TW who just quietly got on with their lives without the drama and demands the TRA’s are now creating.

It’s 20 years since I moved out to Essex suburbia and Newham is a very different place these days. And yes knife crime and gang culture is a massive problem sadly.

The echo chamber thing is partly why I keep my Twitter account as open as I can make it - I don't follow individuals who are highly associated with this issue, though I search out specific accounts. I don't ever want to reach a point where I don't hear what people who disagree with me are saying.

@ButterflyHatched

Growing up in 90's online culture

What is this 90's online culture of which you speak? We got a PC in 1998. It connected to the Internet over a 28K dial-up line. There wasn't any culture.