Thread 2: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

[VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia]

At fewer than 20 posts left, time for part two.

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5057460-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet

Site Stuff thread that tipped off MNHQ: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus

That FOI is better put together than the PhD proposal.

Something tells me, this story is about to blow up.

Nope, but it is where the buck stops.

The top of the Aston tree, the boss of all of them, which should rather demonstrate the importance of this rather inconvenient event being handled satisfactorily.

https://www.aston.ac.uk/about/governance-management/professor-aleks-subic#:~:text=Professor%20Aleks%20Subic%20joined%20Aston,Vice%2DChancellor%20and%20Chief%20Executive.

He’s only been in the role since 2022, so he can deflect blame onto his predecessor, but he has to fix the problem, not just hide it.

That is an extremely impressive FOI, P.Murray, wherever you are.

Wow, what a perfectly crafted FOI.

DH is away on business so I could probs sit up and read back. Think it would help if I hadn’t arrived late and some of the links had expired. I feel like Sherlock Holmes without Watson, or a pipe, or any of his intellect…

Yep, thank you! It’s very good indeed.

Well done P Murray.

The PhD is no longer the issue. It is merely a symptom of the issue and one of many things that must be deleted, retracted or cancelled. That is the VC job.

Remember don't #be kind. No one at Aston was being kind with their actions. They were the complete opposite. An adult human female, with free will came up with this aided by other adult females and adult males.

Women saying 'men shouldn't be in female spaces' and 'no thank you, the kids don't need your drugs or to lop off their body parts' apparently. Basically women saying no. That's transphobic.

You'll get the gist of the missing links. They're an indication of how fast moving this whole thing has been and speed of the reactions from certain people and a certain university. Some MNers have taken screenshots. Happy reading! 😀

I suspect if you read on you’ll start to find archives and screenshots for the dead links (we started making records when we realised those records were probably going to be necessary).

But surely transphobia is fear of 'trans'? Yes, no men in women's spaces etc is women's rights, no drugs/surgery for children is child protection. So what is this trans thing we are supposed to being afraid of?

So far I am in the middle of the discussion of Mickey Mouse PhDs and realising mine is probably in that category. I am not using the Corpus Approach though, so maybe I can pretend I’m clever for a bit longer…🤣

Mate, I went to GOLDSMITHS 🙈😬😂

Exactly.

Oh yes, I don’t disagree there. Public damage control is very much the VC’s job. But they won’t have been in charge of approving the PhD proposal in the first instance.

@SoupDragonsFriend

I idly google and found this:

"Transphobia is now referred to as transmisia. The “misia” in transmisia means “hatred.” This is a helpful word because it highlights the prejudice at the root of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and systems that hurt or deny the existence of trans and nonbinary people."

That was a new one on me.
Wonder how many new words they've actually invented to support their position.

I'm still raging about Cis.

I'm sure there will be loads more...

Glad to see that the escape committee managed to rescue you before the brain washing started.

Agree with all of this, although I personally no longer give a toss about being accused of “transphobia”. The term is so overused as to become meaningless. It can be, and has been, applied to any hint of women saying “no”.

I am no more bothered about being called “transphobic” by followers of the gender cult than I am about being called a heathen by followers of any (other) religious cult.

I would also be quite interested in seeing research demonstrating that our talk on here has had real life impact. Although I would obviously see that in a very different light to this student and her supervisor.

I am, however, bothered about all of us being accused of criminal activity, and by the time someone is in their early twenties and starting a PhD, they should be intelligent enough to check wether the activity they are accusing us of is in fact criminal.

It is very much in the pattern of abusive, coercive control to allege that our perfectly legal talk is against the law.

Tricky Nicci ain't at Northumbria no more, she went to Aston.

New to me as well. I looked for enlightenment and discovered voluntary endarkment.

Transmisia (also called Transphobia) is prejudice plus power; anyone of any gender can have/exhibit gender-based prejudice, but in North America (and really worldwide), cisgender people have the institutional power, therefore Transmisia is a systemized discrimination or antagonism directed against transgender/nonbinary/genderqueer/agender persons. Transmisia and cissexism are rooted in a desire to maintain the gender binary (i.e. the categories of 'male' and 'female'), a social construction which seeks to assign gender based on a person's declared sex at birth. Transmisia, as well as the gender binary from which it extends, obscures the reality of the spectrum and fluidity of gender and marginalizes the identities and experiences of persons whose gender does not align with their birth-assigned sex and/or who do not align with either category of male or female.
Trans folks can be agents of transmisia as well (particularly when acting as representatives of cis-dominated systems, such as higher education) by perpetuating the notion of gender binary or "passing" superiority and using it to discriminate against other transgender people. For example, a trans woman at a company may refuse to hire a genderqueer person because their gender presentation might "confuse" customers, or a trans male administrator at a traditionally women's college may deny the application of a non-passing trans woman for not "transitioning enough."

<bangs head VERY HARD against every wall in the vicinity>

In the space of about 6 hours this morning, this thread jumped from 3 pages to 11 pages - I came back to it and thought 'woah!'. I've seen fast moving threads before but this is really full on. And normally threads are fast moving because there's at least one TRA poster winding everyone up with nonsense but this thread is dense with information.