Shon Faye has theories about women, mums, and Mumsnet.

[ArabellaScott]

https://crooked.com/podcast/trumps-plan-for-peace-in-ukraine-only-pleases-putin-the-politics-of-modern-love/

Shon Faye '... for most of the 20 tens, one of the kind of online hubs of transphobia, really big mobilization of anti-trans groups and some of the most prominent, taking to the streets, anti-trans campaigners and actually kind of got radicalized on a website called Mumsnet. It’s a parenting forum and, like, I think it serves a, you know, a function for a lot of parents, but it’s I think it’s something like 90% women. So mostly mums. But yeah, like on certain corners of that it became like this hub and like basically any pro trans point was shut down for mums of trans kids, basically bullied off the website and it basically became this now. Is that coincidence? And what I was interested in and it’s kind of a - for me, like, a microcosm of the general problem you’re talking about, because in America, there’s a lot of right wing groups that use moms in the title of Moms for Liberty.

Coco Khan Yeah, right.

Shon Faye Yeah, 1 Million Moms. And they’re like these, like, potentially far right groups. And yeah. Is that is there a link? Why Mumsnet? I guess what they would say is that motherhood is a point where you radicalized and they like, well, we’re not going to accept this like denial of biology by the trans cults or whatever they say. The reality, I think, is that actually you find quite a lot of women on parenting forums who have lost their identity or feeling quite unsupported, often whether they have a partner or not. There’s even these studies that show that men think they’re doing 50% and they’re not.

And so, so, a lot of of women who have young children are on these parenting forums and perhaps I argue for and quite resentful, resentful, it may be suppressed resentment of their own partner and resentful - like, the fact that society does this bait and switch with motherhood where like there’s a lot of pressure on women to do it and then when they do, it is kind of like, well, get on with it. And if you’re a bad mother, that’s your fault. And if you fuck your kids up that's your fault.

Andrea Dworkin, this radical second wave feminist, kind of said that, like, women often can’t express their resentment against the men closest to them, so they deflect it. Right wing women will deflect it onto people of color or lesbians in the 70s, and I think that’s a good example of like how motherhood is used. Like lots of black motherhood was so used in Trump’s recent campaign. Yeah, because it’s this idea, particularly white motherhood, right? It’s like we’ve got to protect white children from the threat. Whatever the threat is at any given generation.'

Nish Kumar In this instance, the threat is specifically in various forms. The three people currently go kill.

Coco Khan Yeah.

Shon Faye Yeah. I was going to say, when I said in every generation I was like, but it’s using it. It doesn’t it doesn’t feel abstract. As we said this time, it doesn’t feel too abstract to I mean, yeah, very fair observation. But it’s clever, right?

Because anyone who’s a parent, you know, the protection of young people is a sort of noble aim. And a lot of parents will have a very real fear, fear of like, children being harmed is like a is a very natural fear, but it’s also one that’s easily manipulated. Yeah. And with far right movements, you know, it has a long history of like, it’s good for, you know, recruiting women and it’s also good for recruiting other men. But like the idealization of a certain kind of puritanical motherhood. I mean, I’m really loathe to invoke Nazi Germany like fascistic regimes have always known that a particular idea of the mother is quite a potent idea in that imaginary. And, you know, that’s not me saying that motherhood or motherly love is always this right wing reactionary idea. It’s not. But yeah, I think it can be weaponized in that regard.'

Shon Faye has, inexplicably, just published a book of presumably this sort of deep insight and wisdom.

I'm still trying to parse out what the 'grain of truth' is that was alluded to.

Feminazis are just bitter man-haters but because we're mothers we have to pretend to be naice and so we have to instead be nasty to Shon Faye.

That's what the argument boils down to, yes?

Apparently we are. But then there is this chart from the latest Yougov. So... there is that.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425

Does Faye actually think in terms of categories like "white motherhood" and "protecting white children" (weird and a bit disturbing) or is this just a way of implying women on Mumsnet are racist without needing to worry about complicated things like evidence?

Oh dear Lord - is there nothing that the men won’t splain?

A perfect example - right there in black and white - of why TW aren’t women and never will be, regardless of how they present their idea of womanhood to the world.

Oh save us all! He’s back. Remember at the beginning of all the nonsense we had him and the likes of Paris Lees and Munro Bergdorf constantly lecturing us about what transphobic bigots we were then they all went quiet for a few years pretending they were too frightened of the army of mummies to have social media profiles. Let’s just hope we don’t have to endure Paris Lee’s “journalism” again as well. We’ve suffered enough!

It really upsets them that women were able to discuss gender ideology on mumsnet after they had made impossible for females to voice their concerns everywhere else on social media. They did all they could to silence us, monitoring threads and reporting anyone who was a bit too blunt in voicing their opinions.

Some women did get banned for harping on about the dreadful concept of child safeguarding (deeply offensive to watchers -who may not always have had the best interests of children at heart). Some of us got warned, sent to the naughty step, and threatened with the nebulous "spirit" to the extent that we pretty much gave up contributing, but there were always enough wise, crafty and stalwart women continuing to pick their cautious way through the minefield, day after day, writing posts that opened the eyes of newcomers who were "just being kind". For every long time contributor banned there at least two new lurkers popped up to say they could be silent no longer.

The TRAs tried every trick in their scurrilous arsenal, including threatening legal action against women for telling the truth about their motivations, going after advertisers, and spreading the stupid lie about us having been radicalised due to our fluffy ladybrains being awash with pregnancy and breastfeeding hormones - or just incapable of the kind of clarity of thought to them seems intrinsically male.

No wonder they are peeved. They thought they had everything stitched up, Stonewall law was being rolled out and it would only be a question of time before all opposition was silenced by fear, the threat of violence and the horrific examples being made of any women who dared to speak, to the extent that our only option was to enjoy our erasure.

Despite being hobbled the discussion continued here long after other social media platforms had banned anyone refusing to pretend to believe that a woman can have a penis or a child can be born in the wrong body.

Of course they hate and fear mumsnet, just like they hate and fear non compliant women everywhere.

Luckily truth will out, we only had to endure, and wait. Women are good at endurance, though I can't help wishing we didn't get quite so much practice at it.

Well Shon IS Mary Whitehouse, so no Shon probably hasn't.

In answer to “why Mumsnet”, this site was way ahead in letting us speak when debate was getting shut down left right and centre elsewhere. I know that wasn’t without a bit of a fight, but huge respect to MNHQ for being brave in a time when you could get arrested, doxxed and shut down for stating facts.

Good grief I thought I’d seen the last of SF
what a deep voice; full of ‘like’ ‘like’ ‘like’ and lots of vocal fry. Can’t listen to SF’s ramblings. Didn’t SF say ‘women- enjoy your erasure’????
And Nish - the very woke bro
Can’t listen as I’d want to scream and can’t watch as I’d be shouting at the screen
2 mins was more than enough- I admire those of you watching: I see that as taking one for the team!!
Wonder what SF and Nish think of their own mums??
(sorry if they said; told you I can’t stand more than 2 mins)

a lot of of women who have young children are on these parenting forums and perhaps I argue for and quite resentful, resentful, it may be suppressed resentment of their own partner

So we are basically a group of man haters?? Whether they ID as women or not. Or am I too dumb to interpret his words that don't actually say anything.

For years trans was no debate and that included within their own groups. Everything was 'you do you, and we're going to cheer you along'. That's why there are no logical arguments -sex and gender are different, but men with gender are female; gender is internal not external - ask about pronouns! yet its impossible to distinguish between a woman and a man with gender.

Now they are having to justify policies that have been made at their request, and they have nothing.

Faye wants to pretend that he's thought long and hard about the situation and even researched it. He can't steelman the GC case because he can't then argue against it. So instead he's thought long and hard about the women who are doing womenhood wrong and decided that not only are they doing womenhood wrong everything they think is wrong, too.

The fact that it is mothers and older women standing up to his stereotypically male demands has probably hurt him more than he wants to admit. We are women who are part of a womens group, we are mothers therefore nurturing, yet we not only excluded him from our group, we refuse to look after him.

Double rejection.

Who?
And how the hell are his opinions relevant?

Speaking as a non-mother, one of the things I love about Mumsnet is the extraordinary range of knowledge that posters have here. Not only heavy-duty stuff like law and medicine, but things I'd never come across before, like an exquisite gallery of slime-moulds (Google them, they're far more gorgeous than they sound!) and Samurai learning how to arrange flowers.

I missed rule twelve:

12. Women’s ability to recognize male behavior patterns is misandry.

You aren't misunderstanding anything. It's just good old fashioned misogyny.

Thanks Shon.

MON THE SLIME MOULDS

I've noticed trans activists have shifted their approach. Shon expresses remorse:

'... I realized that probably a few years ago I was consumed with rage all the time and wishing ill on people that wished me ill and permanently in that state of of rage and and kind of hatred and realizing I was being coached into meeting that energy with that energy. ... I talk about the kind of Wild West of the left wing Internet in the 20 tens when everyone was calling everyone out. And I mean, I was engaging in that too. And I sort of say in the book, like, I have regrets about that. And in some cases I’ve apologized to people directly for like the ways in which I was quite unforgiving and quite self-righteous, as many people in my 20s are.'

Delivered with a pained expression and semi-mystical chat about redemption.

Ah, I found the grain of truth.

Repent, mothers.

It's not true that women become more right wing, more conservative or more reactionary - but not surprised to see the mum-bashing and lumping women in together.

Some women can become more right wing, usually women who were already conservative. Left wing women generally become more left wing, often radically so (in the feminist sense). But the framing of what is left and right wing is off. Trying to frame safeguarding as a right wing issue for mothers is mental.

Who actually becomes more right wing and conservative are men when a) they age and/or have families and revert to traditional gender stereotypes and absolutely fucking hate when women call this out both on an individual and on a societal level and b) they accrue more assets.

That's what I see from these two here. They are 100% indulging in a stereotypical, misogynistic bashing of mothers for thinking about something other than their man's dinner.

I tried reading the transcript, but the inability to express an idea without an endless litany of 'like', 'yeah', 'kind of', 'you know' is pretty tiresome.

Guess that makes me, you know, kind of far right, yeah? Kind of like a language Nazi or something, yeah?

It's what i mean about him pretending to think long and hard about GC views.

He hasnt, he's just embarassed about how he manafested his anger at women ten years ago, because everyone has the tweets. He's still angry, still cant justify why what we are saying is wrong, but is now falling back on the twenty 20s far right bigot/nazi insult. He's pretending that he's grown and now can see the failings of GC women - it not him and anything to do with what hes doing, its their husbands ignoring them and the women turning nazi. He's not really angry, hes just having to deal with deplorables.

Hes just copying kumars logic about anyone who doesn't vote 'correctly', so of course he's lapping it up.

Thinking long and hard about why women want to be able to name issues that only affect females without males interfering and why they might get pissed off when males mansplain being female to them and ignore why women know sex is important?

Jeez. And still not getting it!?!

Women often find their focus shifts as mothers, from adult social intercourse, which inevitably includes pandering to/working around the male gaze, and male attention, in a male-centred world, to the predominantly female world of childbearing and childrearing.

(All mothers are women, most primary carers are mothers, most of those working in healthcare are women, most educational staff are women.)

So yes, women change.

And many men resent this loss of women's attention very much.

It is totally shocking that a website made up predominantly of people* who want to get pregnant, are currently pregnant, or have been pregnant are very aware of biological reality.

*I mean women here, but pointing out how stupid it is that TRAs are trying to remove pregnancy and motherhood from women.

This prick. Writes shite books. Hates women.