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 agree.

To be honest, I think it’s rude to butt into a thread with a parallel discussion about something completely different. Whatever the motives of the OP the discussion about GC feminism got really interesting, and scrolling past endless posts about cake to read it is frustrating.

Can’t MN simply delete the derailing posts and leave the rest of the thread whenever this happens?

Yes - 2 x 12 + 6 = 30.
Or are we not permitted maths either?

I think we're permitted the 2 x 2 = 5 type of maths. Or is it arithmetic? I'm old enough to have done the separate o- grades.

.

I’ve been on the opposite side of a deluge (a crumbing?) of cake posts. To me, the purpose appears to be to suppress a poster’s speech - the MN equivalent of ‘talking over’ someone else. It’s as dehumanising here as it is in person.

I find this incredibly ironic given that the censorship of women’s speech is an ongoing theme here.

Declining to engage is not stopping someone from talking. Unless you consider women are obliged to respond on command.

I think Arabella’s point above is a good answer

people say say stupid things and people are rude and unpleasant all the time, and that goes double on social media. It’s part of the price of entry (and why I have hidden AIBU)

I have been on the receiving end of a couple of MN pile ons. It was pretty horrible, but it wasn’t dehumanising

I’m sure when you posted here you engaged in good faith and answered questions intended to get a fuller understanding of your beliefs, and didn’t ignore the difficult ones

but not every poster who comes here with a view that is not in line with the prevailing majority does that. In fact they almost never do. And cake posting is a way of dealing with that incredibly frustrating experience

think about it. Someone turns up to tell you that your views are stupid and evil and you must agree with their views, but when you try to get them to explain their views they refuse to. Cake seems like a good way to go

I have sometimes wondered over the years when this concept of digressions 'derailing' a conversation comes up (I've been reading the suggestion on different forums that cover many topics over more than 20 years) whether it's a question of different people being wired differently.

I don't find diverse discussions, cake etc problematic in online discussions any more that I'd have a problem with a serious RL conversation in, for instance a pub or cafe, that veers off into a flurry of chat around sport, someone's recent holiday, a news item, and then returns to its original topic. That's how human interactions work in my experience. But maybe some people can't cope with it in RL either?

I'm always quite ruthless about keeping people to the point in I'm chairing a formal meeting, because I want to see the agenda covered, the issues moved forward, everything finished within a set time. Then I like to see tea and biscuits available afterwards for networking that gives people a chance for random chat that might in turn get them started on their next actions.

But in an online discussion that doesn't have a set finishing time, there's surely plenty of space for cake, scrolling past what you aren't interested in isn't difficult.

But maybe some people do find it so - perhaps we should have an AIBU?

or not

Only women who say wrong things, particularly about cake are dehumanising and should be deleted. Start a goady thread about how women are associating far right for thinking sex is real and this is FINE. It's not rude or dehumanising at all.

Likewise. It's typical of human speech to have multiple parallel conversations at once.

If you want to bring it back to the original subject it's easy to do and we do it all the time in spoken language when we want to.

it's a question of different people being wired differently

100%

posters whose comments I always read with great attention safe in the knowledge that they’ll make me think have said on this thread that they don’t like cake posts. Other posters who I hold in similar regard have posted to say they do.

having spent most of my teenage years firmly as a member of the ‘out’ group (you try being the girl who refuses to deny that she’s a lesbian in a 1990’s provincial comprehensive school) I’m never going to be comfortable cake posting myself, but luckily the power of my scrolling thumb means I need neither read nor interact with them if I don’t want to. And I get why people do it, and I genuinely don’t believe it causes any especial harm to the OP

Am sure someone else checked this too, but the OP has never posted before or since this thread. You would think MN would weight this when considering other people’s engagement.

And posted over a less-than-six-hour period on this thread. Not, I suspect, an honest questioner, but did get a lot of honest answers.

And cakes.

People post on MN FWR for many reasons. If your purpose is to post to shame the posters on a board, I actually don’t see why that should be left without challenge. I don’t believe that this OP, one never posted before, posted to “discuss” anything. This has been a style of post we have seen too often, but thankfully not so much anymore. And they tend to happen around uni holidays coincidentally.

I remember more than once appearing screen captured on Twitter for simply posting a non controversial post in answer to such a ‘demand’ to ‘discuss’.

The people on this board are not here to perform on command for anyone. They are also not here to speak moderately, or nicely either, or be welcoming either.

Yes and I think the demands to perform really highlight the (very male) narcissism behind the demands.

Fully agree @SquirrelSoShiny

How inconvenient of us, to not behave exactly as we're meant to.

I fully intend to continue to be an Inconvenient Woman. I'm even worse in RL....

Checked back to the very beginning of this thread. OP posted "questions for gender critical women" at nearly half past midnight, was immediately challenged as to why anyone should answer these questions, failed to answer, refused to give their own opinion, responded to a poster stating that water was not wet, asked the disingenuous question "Right, so is the GC position that gender itself as a categorisation tool is meaningless? Or that it has meaning but that meaning is inherently tied to your sex?" - clearly trying to manipulate answers to suit their agenda but not saying what their agenda was - and at that point the first cake post was posted and deleted.

I don't blame people for posting about cake. OP had already stated water wasn't wet. Where is there to go after that?

I must admit I find pleas to be welcoming to people support other posters who have used slurs or used slurs themselves, have censured others, have shown their own prejudice against a group of posters on the board to be tone deaf. I also question why people who declare that interacting with a board makes their mental health poorer because post on such a board. Maybe it is a lack of personal boundaries? I don't know. I genuinely think a group of anonymous people posting on a discussion board (it is not a support board) is not about to harm my mental health. If it does, I need to leave because I am taking it all too personally.

And fuck, I am told constantly how 'offensive', 'vile' and 'odd' I am. I have been repeatedly told by a poster on the main board that I need to 'educate myself', that I am 'ignorant', that I am 'transphobic' and that I am hateful. I have had all the jibes about my username.

And yet, I know that I am but one women on this board who has fared the same behaviour. So many face this every day. And that is just the ones who have not been banned.

Yet, I never see one poster who jumps on to censure us, censure those posters who effectively abuse others. Instead, those posters tend to make judgement calls and say 'well, you obviously deserved it'. And when the fact that they supported a poster who only ever posted on the thread in an abusive way, usually a PBP, there is nothing but crickets.

It is remarkable how hypocritical that is, until I realise that is likely to be their point of being on the board.

all the jibes about my username

bah! ignore them

Look at pretty pictures instead and look forward to one of the best things about winter

I do ignore them after I laugh. Because that is of course why I chose the user name.

But I do also love love love hellebores!

Thanks Dean

We're all in charge of our own mental health at the end of the day. Giving away your wellbeing to anonymous internet posters is not healthy.

And while I appreciate that we shouldn't make personal attacks, that doesn't include disagreement. People who can't handle disagreement and find that it distresses them probably won't enjoy a discussion board very much. Nobody is entitled to demand that other people post a certain way, or respond to them, or agree with them. That is, as has been pointed out, coercive and manipulative, and many women recognise the dynamic very well.

So true Arabella. On both posts.

Just like giving away your power to post on a publicly open internet forum is not healthy either. Nor is positioning others to have that power over your posting. I find positioning other posters to have power of whether you post or not, and making those accusations, a form of abuse.

I know I've posted this a few times on other threads, but as we near the end it seems fitting for this thread.😘