3 questions for GC women

[ChirpyFinch]

As the title says, three questions for the women in this chat.

1. Do you think the majority of people are gender critical, and why/why not?

2. Globally, the right wing is more vocally gender critical than the left. They are also far more likely to be regressive on a range of women’s issues like abortion and anti-gay. Why do you think they agree with GCs on this one issue but disagree on so much else (if you think they do?)

3. How many trans people do you estimate there are globally?

I have a response. Fairly bland and sadly very unsupportive. It seems that cake is an Evil Distraction from Serious Conversation and derailments are not in the spirit of FWR.

I'm disappointed but I hope that someone there might listen and pay attention. On the bright side, they respond quickly.

Hello,

Thanks for getting in touch.

We’re pleased to hear you’ve found the Feminism board a useful resource. We put significant time and effort into moderating this as well as the rest of our forums. We believe in the importance of freedom of expression so long as it’s civil and legal. We should also clarify that moderation decisions rest with MNHQ and we will take the appropriate action where we see fit. Posting about cake on a thread for the purpose of derailing it does not meet our standards for civil debate. Posters are not obliged to engage with any thread and can choose this option rather than a derailment.

We’re sorry to learn that you have felt our rules too circumspect. We are in fact one of the very few mainstream sites on the internet that allows people to express openly gender critical views but this approach is only viable if the discussion remains civil and therefore open to those with opposing views on the sex and gender debate.

We try to avoid being overly prescriptive because whilst a tick box of what is and isn’t allowed would undoubtedly make it easier for our moderators, experience tells us people find ways to circumvent the letter of the law, and it’s the spirit we’re trying to promote. Instead, we ask users to be civil and we ask our mods to make decisions in context. Consequently, it may not always be apparent why a post has broken our rules, but we do our best to clarify this when a user has questions and we don’t ‘punish’ anyone for accidentally falling foul of the guidelines.

We continue to host discussions around these issues, despite the significant costs in terms of moderation resource and lost advertising revenue. In return, we ask our users to stick to our rules.

Thanks for your understanding.
MNHQ

'We are in fact one of the very few mainstream sites on the internet that allows people to express openly gender critical views'

This was the case a few years ago.

It is not the case any more.

And I think it is also worth asking whether 'lost advertising revenue' is still the case.

Look to Bud Light.

We are in fact one of the very few mainstream sites on the internet that allows people to express openly gender critical views

I don't think this is as true as it used to be actually.

So stating it like some big positive being thrown to us all seems a bit ... underwhelming

X post 😆

It seems that cake is an Evil Distraction from Serious Conversation

I feel seen, also 'eek!'

I will be eternally grateful to MN for allowing free conversations on this topic when nowhere else did.

However the conversation has moved on considerably and I would expect this to be reflected in moderation.

Great work, Boiledbeetle. Naturally it falls on deaf ears though. It's probably just an AI response.

As I pointed out to them a couple of days ago, conversations are not trains, they don't run on rails, and therefore they cannot be derailed.

If people having a serious discussion pause for a little light relief it does not stop the discussion, does not erase the earlier points, and does not invalidate either anything that went before, or any subsequent point. Mumsnet deleting posts does erase points and removes elements of the discussion.

Their rule book is based on false assumptions and most of their actions based on it therefore make no sense. Which, being quite demonstrably the case, makes me wonder what it is for. Control for the sake of control, and, indeed coercion do seem the likeliest explanation

I think they are probably just going with what's easier. The moderation bot auto deletes for any complaint and then sends back AI word salad justifying it if you challenge it. This is the case with most so-called moderation now.

But the moderation bot doesn't. I requested a post of mine be deleted the other day (because I'd messed up a quote / reply thing) and three days later there it still was.

The last para is certainly boilerplate - it's virtually identical to the MN comment on the thread.

Posting About Cake

<slow, sad and disappointed head shake>

you've let yourself down, you've let Mumsnet down, you've let the whole of women kind down

I hope you're all pleased with yourselves

BernardBlacksMolluscs · Today 12:16
I think moderation here often strongly reflects the personal views of the moderators on duty at the time

Gosh, yes: one day you could say AGP, next day you couldn't. It felt very personal. I can't remember the exact details now, it was a few years ago, but IIRC one of the mods leaked a load of data (email addresses?) relating to FWR. Nothing invested there, obviously.

IIRC one of the mods leaked a load of data (email addresses?) relating to FWR.

It was IP addresses. Ironically enough one of the people she targeted was being sarcastic and was a "trans rights" supporter, but she obviously didn't grasp that.

Well one thing that this does tend to disprove is that FWR is an echo chamber.

What has been happening though is a whole lot of emoting and what seems to be catastrophising that is overamplified as part of a wider emotionally manipulative activist fall back. The old ‘you are all so offensive because you won’t even use pronouns’ type of fuckwittery. And we can now call it fuckwittery and articulate why.

So on one hand we have to wear the constant framing of our lack of compliance as the most harmful of all and this is to be accepted. And any pushback is to be considered abusive.

It really is plus ca change.

I suppose some requests do fall through the cracks if the bot is particularly busy. There's no reason they would refuse that request, so it sounds like an error.

In defence of recipes.....

Sometimes there is a thread that becomes tense to the point that there is a standoff. There is the danger that the protagonists lose the plot and end up shouting at each other. This would result in mass deletions and, ultimately, erasure of the thread.

Enter the cake recipe. There will be four or five responses. The overall effect is to take the heat out of the argument and give the protagonists time and space to relax and consider each other as people rather than 'fuckwits'.

Cake recipes are a safety valve.

I've just had a quick look back at the start of the thread, and whilst it is now a sea of deletions I reckon without the cake segway this thread would have been dead in the water before 100 posts!

Women need cake. Without it we stumble and fall in discursive malaises. Also we get hungry.

Oo they look a little like Nanny Ogg's Jammy Devils that I (once) made from the Discworld recipe book.

Intrigued by the condensed milk in this one though. 😃

<Bookmarked>

Agree. It could be anything else innocuous- jokes, amusing anecdotes, talking about our kids, etcetera.
It's often an effective troll pesticide as well.

Just checking: 2 1/2 dozen = 30?

I liked this thread all the more for the cakey interludes - and not because I bake, but because it felt like it epitomised everything that's great about this corner of the site.

You've got this wealth of knowledge and experience, robust debate... and a sprinkling of subversive baking humour harking back to a long feminist tradition of using what few domestic weapons we have to assert ourselves.

I honestly don't think anyone's genuinely hoping to derail the thread fully, because everyone's too interested in thrashing things out. The cakes are more, to me, a witty way of communicating to potential trouble-makers that a proportion of posters aren't taking things too seriously and will keep it light-touch until they know it's worth engaging more fully.

I can see it would be disconcerting for a new poster, and am wary of in-jokes being wielded against a newcomer after the delights of teenagehood. I try not to join in for this reason...

...But also -

When you compare this with the dross and abuse that populates the internet, what a unique, precious corner this is! Seriously, a place where any upstarts are gently warned, and the elders' tensions diffused, not with a brutal putdown, but with a series of (I assume!) excellent recipes?! (And these interspersed in any case with endless mini-essays of thoughtful, respectful replies!)

Yes.

I'm not so hot on the cakery. I think if it becomes an accepted way that MN allows to derail a thread it will become a TRA tactic for derailing, and if MN doesn't allow it will will become TRA tactic to cakespam threads to get them deleted.

I think the more valuable a thread becomes, like this one which started out with an OP asking questions in bad faith but transcended their intention to become a great excercise in revisiting and comparing the axiomatic basis whereby diffferent woman challenge and reject gender ideology, the less we should post things that risk getting the whole thing deleted.