A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

[IwantToRetire]

By Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

It has been suggested that the forum-style parenting website Mumsnet is a hub for ‘gender-critical’ feminism, which directly opposes transgender rights, to be practised with little moderation (Livingston, 2018). This presentation reports on the initial stages of a project aiming to investigate that the potential intensification of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet may lead to further marginalisation of transgender people offline (Powys Maurice, 2021). Though studies of non-linguistic transphobic rhetoric on Mumsnet (e.g., Pedersen, 2022; Mackenzie, 2019), and discourse analyses of other radical online communities (e.g., Krendel, 2020) have both occurred, this project is the first to analyse linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet. It also contributes to existing literature surrounding UK-based ‘gender-critical’ feminism; linguistic transphobia; and radical online community discourses.

The presentation explores the rise of potentially ‘gender-critical’ linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet over time through the corpus linguistic (CL) analysis of the ‘Feminism: Sex & Gender Discussions’ board, using three corpora comprising a fifteen-year timeframe: 2008-2013; 2013-2018; and 2018-2023. As the project is still ongoing, preliminary findings will be presented, namely a comparative overview of trends yielded in frequency analyses. Overall, this presentation provides insights into the growing commonality of potentially ‘gender-critical’ feminist rhetoric on Mumsnet and its effect on increasing transphobic discourse on the site.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet-tickets-880795271367?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

(I had just finished my favourite tea time treat of catching up on FWR and was going to get back to the grindstone when this popped up on my feed. So have come back as it is too good not to be shared. Enjoy!)

Am beginning to wonder whether in fact people going to university are too young!

If the law now accepts that men's brains dont mature to 25, it seems all this debt inducing further study is wasted as the teen brain is still giggling and going blank when confronted with real life.

Should there be a pre university post school period call something like University nursery school and only when sucessfully completing this by showing that their brain is actually mature spend time and money of being able to learn and grow from university level education.

This does all sound a bit like a sixth form end of year (aren't we clever and sophisticated) review.

If it is just an analysis of this board hour come they are comparing time period from 2008 wasn't the split from the main feminism board more recent?

A what of a what of a where now?

Ah - these young people these days eh? 😂

Ah I see I stand corrected

well that’s a bollocks thing to do

people need to be able to listen to this stuff, it’s the only way to understand and challenge

It’s sensible to pick a relatively circumscribed topic and corpus for analysis. The PhD does have to be completed in 3 years after all. If Eden had looked at the other side of the coin there’s so much woman-hating misogynist rhetoric out there it would have sunk any chance of finishing in 3 years. That content would also be a lot nastier. It would be interesting to compare and the hatefulness on both sides. Women politely but firmly saying “no”, “I don’t agree with your argument” and “please back up your audacious claim with evidence” would look totally unremarkable against all the hideous porn, rape threats and die in a grease fire/kerb stomping raging.

I assume that's referring to Vivian who said she was thinking of ticking the spam box that's further down the page on the link.

Thank you for saying this.
Being gender critical and being transphobic are different. When the transphobia does appear it makes me angry.

I tend to stay away when it flares up, even though there are important issues to discuss in order to protect both women and transgender individuals.

And another poster who reported it for hateful content.

Me too!
And I'm not going to be kind.

Do you mean go to the live event at the location? Or is it zoom

FFS it was a JOKE parodying past TRA action over GC events.

I'm not reporting it or heckling or even attending. It sounds like a tedious waste of time, frankly.

And the title and the description (or more strictly speaking, a pretendy abstract) is enough to make any dissertation supervisor wince.

Absolutely right.

The best thing is for them to spend several years reading mumsnet and being forced to analyse the language used and in doing so inevitably absorb the information.

Someone had to take one for the team 🎉

Of course.

Reddit?

Don't be mean, it sounds like a very useful study to be used to inform AI assisted totalitarian censorship and Chinese-style withdrawal of social credits for anyone guilty of wrongspeak.

Do you think she realised that Mumsnetters would go to her talk?

If we all get tickets, even worse in person tickets, it will be absolute carnage.

I think the analysis of the three time periods is to show we've got worse over time. Perhaps they'll attempt to project that we'll continue to get worse, hone our rhetoric, until we can literally murder a they/them with a well crafted pithy post.

If the posts aren't put in the context that they were posted in, surely it's valueless? I suspect things got quite heated on here when KJK was assaulted, when the GRR was passed, and so on.

If anyone does go it could be interesting. Although announcing your bias from the offset, that surprises me.

This woman is using us here as research subjects without our consent or knowledge. It's pretty shabby. I thought universities had to do some kind of ethical statement when using people for research? I mean we're right here; it's not like she couldn't ask, or tell us what she was/is doing.

Adam, I don’t think you should discourage people from attending. Having your work critiqued & having to defend it is an excellent way of improving the rigour of your thinking and hence the quality of your work. Eden shouldn’t be denied that opportunity.

I do slightly wonder how this got through the ethics committee though. If you replace GC with another protected viewpoint such as religious belief, I don’t think it would have been acceptable. The challenge shouldn’t be to `eventbrite, but directly to the university

Was that a joke as well?

It's a public forum on the internet. Consent or knowledge of how our posts might be used by others is not relevant.

It's the same reasons the Daily Mail can lift content from here and publish quotes from users for articles.

Particularly when your PhD is to prove that your research subjects are guilty of transphobic hate crime

Suppose someone submits the talk to Police Scotland for Hate Speech. Will the Rozzers be around to arrest mumsnet again? The last time was drama enough.

I can't wait for an queer linguistic theory analysis of the mumsnet focus on tunnocks tea cakes.