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?

Safe space, anonymous!

This bit in particular stood out to me -

to a sense of entitlement that is oblivious to the continued lived reality of so many other individuals and demographics

Butterfly talks about the improved online experience for trans people without the slightest hint of understanding or consciousness of how virulently anti woman most online spaces are and continue to be for women with the exception of a handful of heavily moderated, constantly under attack online spaces (it's only recently that the almost constant DDOS attacks have stopped on this site) like this one. Which apparently can't possibly be allowed to stand.

1. Has always been political - see also ‘let toys be toys’.
2. Predominately used by people who can’t ignore the material consequences of being female.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2497536-to-think-if-you-have-a-penis-you-do-not-belong-in-a-womans-prison?page=1

Link to a 2015 thread raising concerns about men in women’s prisons - back when no political party cared about this issue.

I think "Why Mumsnet is so GC" is because the gender-critical viewpoint is allowed here, when it's forbidden in many other places, even those claiming to be feminist. Maybe people are coming here to discuss it. But maybe it's an opinion that a large number of people have, but they don't dare to mention it in public.

Yes - and worth reminding newer members that 'Let Toys be Toys' is the epitome of being 'gender critical'. We were using this term to mean 'being against gender stereotypes' before many people began to be concerned about transgender issues and their impact on women's rights and children's well-being.

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.

Very few people "despise you by default for being trans".

What we despise, and hold in utter contempt, is the individuals who claim trans status should allow them the right to women's spaces - changing rooms, toilets, hospital wards, prisons etc, women's sports, women's prizes / academic grants/ jobs* etc.

THAT'S what we despise and, with reason, fear. Why - because it leaves women very vulnerable to men who are violent and misogynistic, and it means that women (in sport in particular) no longer have a chance to set records and excel among their peers. It means that the rights to equality that women fought and died for have been snatched out of our hands by entitled men. THAT'S what we despise.

Break every gender stereotype you can think of - that's fine. In fact it's more than fine - it's desirable - but don't pretend that you have magically changed sex, no matter how much surgery, hormones, lipstick and twirly skirts you have. You haven't changed SEX and never will.

Let women have what is rightfully theirs, and you stay with the rest of theme. Campaign for third spaces if you feel they re necessary - but keep out of ours. And stop messing with children. Children aren't capable of making this choice - there is no such thing as a "trans child". There are children who explore the world around them, indulge in make believe, dress up, explore their sexuality - and yes, find puberty awful. I'll let you into secret - ALMOST EVERYONE finds puberty awful because the body and brain are going through so many changes that it knocks us sideways, upside-down, back-to-front and inside out.

When people get through this, the vast majority are content with their sex (not necessarily their looks - but with their sex). Most are straight, some are gay, a few are bi- and tiny, tiny minority are trans. If we've let them be themselves and accepted them for what and who they are, they will get through life OK.

Don't claim that you are despised because you are trans, because you aren't. Honestly - you aren't important enough to most of us to care what you are - we don't know you and aren't bothered about you.

It is only when your actions and demands threaten women and children that we step up and say "This far and no further!"

*Eg as managers of rape crisis centres.

Only females can be mums.

Females are subjected to male violence and abuse at an enormous scale.

Male offending patterns do not change with transition.

In the last decade, the numbers of children claiming to be trans has skyrocketed.

Therefore, mumsnet is GC.

If transwomen had always stuck to male spaces, we probably wouldn't 3/4 the amount of threads we do, but we'd have all the rest about schools and children.

Not sure what bitrate has to do with the presence of culture or lack thereof, but there was a whole digital frontier out there and it had its own nascent culture. Prior to social media and the blogosphere before it taking over and homogenising things it was a pretty wild place and the signal to noise ratio was vastly more favourable than it is now. It was, however, virulently transphobic outside of the tiny little safe islands like Mermaids and the various trans-friendly web-rings and portals.

Sorry you missed it. You'd have loved it. You could say whatever you wanted about trans people without the remotest fear of censure.

What is GC? X

What were people saying again about males dominating other spaces? It is quite noticeable, isn’t it, when the entitlement is once again highlighted and demonstrated on this thread and elsewhere.

True story, helle

Entitlement AND emotional manipulation.

I guess when you can reduce being a woman to a constellation of datapoints so that you can wedge your male self into the label you wish to claim for yourself, you might lack the ability to understand aspiration cannot replace material reality of biological sex. That while you can convince a mind that you are something because you say you are that something, the material reality will persist.

Male entitlement is one of those very persistent and lasting traits that those who claim to no longer be men seem to have failed to understand they still all too readily display. Some of those who claim to be women simply fail to understand that womanhood never was based on aspiration nor on changeable attributes, it is about the permanent and hardcoded foundation of having a body that is sexed one of two ways. And how that individual and society deal with the realities of having that particular sexed body.

Hence when one has male entitlement, what follows is the emotional manipulation remains the key tool to convince society that male people can be women. And other male people enable this because they have the same male entitlement of not needing to negotiate life with a body that is designed to be the one that produces the ova needed to continue the human lifecycle.

And so the cycle continues. Same old, same old. Plus ca change.

I believe that the reason Newham and other similar boroughs are believed to have large trans populations is because they have a large amount of people for whom English is not their first language and they didn’t understand the question on gender identity in the census.
I also believe that many people still think a transwoman is female as in a woman who is trans and this also causes issues in surveys etc.

Cos there's no where else on the internet where women out number men and hold the consensus of power and actual power. Other places are at least male owned or male moderated.

The owner also has a background where an understanding of journalistic principles is hugely important to them.

That's about holding power to account and letting people speak about how they feel injustice. In MN case the focus was not on people but predominantly women first.

MN was created because it was felt there was a gap in the market in terms of women's voices. Its not just about helping to flog maternity and baby products.

MN stood up to pressure because it recognised that a failure to do so, would be to go against all of the above and be a betrayal of what it was created for. Which equally would not have been a commercially smart decision.

It was brave to hold out. However it was also central to MNs value both economically and socially in the long term. It's solidified it's market position as centring women and having a unique brand identity that other parenting forums don't share. Women come here over other sites because they feel valued and respected and listened to. That drives loyalty and repeat usage and that in turn drives revenue long term. I think there has been short term hits, but there enough foresight to recognise the long term benefits too.

I was part of the online culture and social interaction in the late 90s. There were approximately 10000 forums worldwide around that time but few had much reach or a large user base.

I had seminars at uni in 1998 which asked the question would broadband revolutionise society. Out of thirty, I think two of us said yes, the others said the technology wouldnt come fast and wouldn't have a huge impact. (I think I won that debate in hindsight). Crucially at that point I was already meeting people in real life that I'd met online. At that time it was considered really odd and yes really really dangerous. I got a lot of comments about it at the time.

To say it was representative of society in anyway like the internet is now, is ridiculous too. It was niche and very narrow in terms of who interacted with who. You had communities that centred on single issues or interests. In part because there wasn't anywhere which had capacity for more in various ways - socially or technically. It wasn't about hiding from other communities though. It was about shared interests and the initial phase of the creation of echo chambers.

These communities could be wonderful in a way that's not possible today because of their innocence but equally those early communities definitely still had all the dark sides that are talked about today. They just weren't recognised in the same way at the time. People were still in this mentality of how amazing it was to meet people like them. They could be extremely cliquey and bullying and harassment were rife. And people did misuse it for nefarious purposes. Child were still vulnerable - those that had access of course. And it was VERY easy to run into porn. There were no safeguarding expectations or browser filters. They came much later.

My journey through the internet was driven by abusive cultures online. I left various communities over time because of it. Perhaps you were unaware of the sexism and harassment...

'Internet culture' in terms of broader participation didn't start until much later - and that includes the social consensus and expectations of site owners. These were created due to problems becoming apparent. So let's not put on rose tinted specs and say that the internet of the 90s was utopia. It certainly was not. If anything I'd argue that it was more wild west.

The earliest communities were influential and heavily male centred to a degree that's heavier than 'real life' and this continues to be the case. Men and women have very separate internet and distinctive usage patterns as a result.

And this is something that's really important to note and understand. Especially in terms of what drives politics in 2024. It's much more popularistic but equally it's subject to bubbles bursting within that as the internet isn't reflective of the real world and how it works in practice. Because they are echo chambers that get carried away and ultimately collapse under the weight of their own bullshit.

And that's ultimately what happened at Mermaids.

It’s comical that someone who, by previous posts, was a male child/teenager in the period of the “90’s online culture” thinks they were forging the way at the vanguard of the debate around trans people 🤣🤣.

I can believe that @ButterflyHatched was debating trans issues online at least pre-GRA and would have encountered anti-trans bigots, but I'm wondering how much they had in common with the current crop of GC feminists.

Mumsnetters are worried about real practical problems (foreseeable yet somehow not foreseen) like employment rights, the mass transing of suggestible children, dangerous medical experimentation, fairness to women, safety of women and children, and now, we've just been 'told', an outbreak of sexual fetishists practising their fetish in public.

I suspect that the last item on my list would have been the only one of concern at the time to your traditional anti-trans bigot, whom I otherwise imagine as the sort of old-fashioned conservative who would also have been against gay rights and anything else a bit 'alternative'.

The GRA is 2004. The EA is 2010.

My brother came out in 2006. His mate was a couple of years earlier.

Both were early adopters. My brother was a heavy user. I can't say about the other.

I definitely think online communities were influencing young adults at this time. My brother was in a USA / Canada based community. So much so that his internet usage led to him dropping out of uni. (He was at the end of his course not a first year drop out). This would have been 2002/03.

He's also almost certainly autistic and struggled socially. Ditto his school mate.

So I am well aware of the influence of the internet on this subject at this time. And I do feel strongly that it was about social contagion rather than 'pushing a civil rights agenda' for the oppressed.

It's funny how the only authority on this is apparently butterfly though.

20 years ago no one really even used the term ‘transphobia’.

Re-writing history to suit the TRA narrative is deeply irritating.

@RedToothBrush

Crucially at that point I was already meeting people in real life that I'd met online. At that time it was considered really odd and yes really really dangerous. I got a lot of comments about it at the time.

Yeah I met my first sexual partner when I was 17 via an online gaming community. Mum was absolutely terrified when I travelled to the other end of the country to meet him in person for the first time.

My journey through the internet was driven by abusive cultures online. I left various communities over time because of it. Perhaps you were unaware of the sexism and harassment...

I was the youngest member of an all-female Counterstrike clan and we saw it first-hand whenever we joined a server under our non-secret handles. It was absolutely horrendous.

'Internet culture' in terms of broader participation didn't start until much later - and that includes the social consensus and expectations of site owners. These were created due to problems becoming apparent. So let's not put on rose tinted specs and say that the internet of the 90s was utopia. It certainly was not. If anything I'd argue that it was more wild west.

The process by which that frontier was colonised led to a string of obnoxious sites that seemed to revolve around being as horrendous as possible to other people. I hated SomethingAwful and all its ilk with a fiery passion for what they did to the internet.

The Gender Recognition Bill was being debated in parliament while I was already living deep stealth at the other end of the country and awaiting surgery, having started a new life at university. I'd already spent years learning exactly how people will treat you if they find out you are trans, both online and offline, by that point.

The aroma of Greer and Raymond was unfortunately already overpowering by the time I discovered the relevant newsgroups. The comparatively recent 'Gender Critical' rebranding was a genius move as it allowed for an alliance with the kinds of people who would normally run screaming or tut away into their tabloid columnist hate-screeds at the idea of anything calling itself 'radical' or 'feminist'.

There is nothing new about the current crop of anti-trans rhetoric, other than that it got louder and better funded after the war against gay marriage was lost.

I find these assertions are 'unburdened by evidence'.

I was the youngest member of an all-female Counterstrike clan

No you weren't. You were the youngest member of a mixed sex "Counterstrike clan".