"Mumsnet is incredible!" Spiked podcast on Terf Island and MN

[ILikeDungs]

Spiked gets it, and understands Mumsnet's important role with their 'authentic thoughts' and MN's organic debate vs Stonewall's false presentation of the trans issues.

My kids were virtually grown up before I discovered MN. I think I became concerned about women's rights to SSSs and the seduction of children by the trans issue and was probably led here by that 'notorious transphobe' Glinner. I'm sorry now that I missed the parenting advice but the FWR threads and posters are brilliant and the Gardening threads really helped my potatoes.

I don't agree with Brendan O'Neill on everything (obvs.) but he does write very well, he can be so funny and scathing at the same time.

It is still primarily a parenting site. And you don't throw away a couple of decades of brand recognition because it's also more than that.

I don't think it's remotely a coincidence that it's one of the few places on the Internet which was willing to host a range of views during the depths of 'no debate'. Where else is majority female (understand structural sexism, VAGW etc etc) , majority parents (care about the well-being of kids and safeguarding ) , and also understand the realities of sex and our sexed bodies (TTC , pregnancy, birth and onwards).

Oh my, you've just reminded me why I visited MN all those years ago. Penis beaker!!
I should have stayed really. But better I found it again, later than never

Yes MN has opened my eyes in so many ways. The phrase I first heard on here 'Not my circus, not my monkeys' has quite literally changed my life.

And it introduced me to Spiked and Glinner and also has enabled me to articulate my thoughts and beliefs about a number of issues around women's rights.

Plus it introduced me to the word Slay which allows me to irritate my teens on a regular basis.

The tricoteuse? Knitting whilst entitled heads roll?

LM formerly Living Marxism. And their weekly The Next Step , usually devoted to attacking other lefties as hopeless reformists or just sell outs. You'd be 'love bombed' if they got your phone number or address !

Was it really over a decade ago that the penis beaker burst onto the world stage and entered human consciousness? Yes it was - 2013. I see you can get containers marked 'penis beaker' from all manner of outlets, from Amazon to Etsy. Future archaeologists investigating the landfill sites of the anthropocene will probably name us the 'penis beaker people'. This will no doubt shed new light on the true purpose of the original beaker ware which emerged in Europe in the early bronze age.

That’s who I was thinking of in my reference I’ll bring the Tunnock’s while we knit.

Frankly I can't believe anyone could read the relationships board or AIBU and read again and again the same shitty behaviour, abandoning of children, career limitations and the resulting financial percariousness, the mental, physical and sexual abuse that women are living with and thinking it's normal, just how men are, and not come out of them a fire breathing furious Feminist avenger.

Women on MN don't become feminists because of the feminism boards, we need the feminism boards because of everything else!

🎯

Your social experience of the world changes after becoming a mum. Before parenthood you think mums' marginalised status is largely self-inflicted, oh dear silly mummies opting out of work to do baby stuff. Who cares if they get left behind? After parenthood you realise it's largely socially inflicted and now it's happening to you too.

Motherhood helps you notice how shit gender roles are for women and this makes you cross. No wonder Mumsnet is the crucible of gender critical feminism.

100 % this. I very genuinely had no idea how hard it is to juggle career and motherhood. I say motherhood advisedly because it is still the case where the wife does the vast bulk of the load- including the mental load which even the best of intentioned husbands sometimes have no idea about. My DH is a feminist and ally and one of the good guys. But it still fell to me in the end to scale back my work dramatically when DS1 was revealed to have a range of SEN. (Because DH the higher earner, it made better sense, blah blah, all that crap). And I am the one who keeps track of appointments and so forth. If I had given any thought at all to what being a working mother was like in reality I would have assumed smugly that it all came down to 'being organised'. How wrong I was. Embarrassingly so.

I'll never forget DH coming back fuming from a medical appointment with DS1 aged around 6-7 or so... so under 10 years ago as DS is 15 now. I was abroad for a work conference. The consultant asked 'Where is mum?' DH said i was away for work. There was a comment along the lines of 'That's unusual.... how did you manage to get time off your work to come today?'.

This is in the UK. If I thought society had moved on from the idea of motherhood being wife work then having my first child in 2010 quickly disabused me of it. I would say my feminism became much stronger- because i also just naively assumed the fights had all been won by the mighty Giantesses who came before my generation.

I listen to Spike's podcast, I don't about know about their pedigree, Marxist's and all that, but I've found them to be reliable commentators on current affairs, they mention a lots of little facts that I don't hear on other outlets, which I find very illuminating. I was thrilled when they started talking about Mumsnet, I thought Candice Holdsworth's take on Mumsnet was very fair. I liked the description 'down to earth' feminism.

Agree. He just nails it which makes the articles so satisfying to read.

MN re-woke my dormant feminism. I'd packed in the whole career lark to have to have DC (to quote @MajorBryantIsAnArse 'Because DH the higher earner, it made better sense, blah blah, all that crap' plus I didn't like my job) and spent years feeling very cross that newspaper feminists had nothing to say about SAHMs, as if we were beneath notice. Even when I stopped reproducing and finally got another job it still rankled.

Anyway, I have a sock to finish this evening, so Brendan et al can chat to me as I close the toe...

Mumsnet radicalises women. It's focussed on women's experiences and they can be shittily unfair so we get radicalised. It's not our fault, they made me do it!

If anyone had said to me a few years ago that in the future two of my most regularly-visited sites would be Mumsnet and Spiked, I'd have wondered what on earth what was going on! But I'm very grateful for the thinkers and writers in both places.

Same.

'[Mumsnet] ... gave birth to what I think is a new sort of down-to-earth feminism as well, rather than that sort of austere, abstract feminISM that you had from, have with, like Judith Butler - who pioneered gender ideology - which doesn't matter to people in their real lives. And what I love is is that this just grew and grew and grew and so many people came together from different ends of the political spectrum and really managed to oppose what was a very well-funded movement, just using the power of their speech, which is incredible'

I came to mumsnet for the breastfeeding advice and my eldest dd is now 20!! Ashamed to say I didn't get involved in the feminist threads until dd was in her teens and had become fixated on gender identity and wanting to opt out of being female. At the time I hadn't even considered this was anything to do with feminism and thought it was merely a new teenage fad. What a learning curve that turned out to be. The knowledge, wit, support and understanding from these boards empowered me and got my family through some really horrendous times. Thank you wonderful women of MN! On a comical note I love how now whenever we need advice on anything from leaky taps to tax queries my husband says ask yer ones on the MN!

The odd thing about the Spiked/ex-RCP mob is that their line on trans doesn't align with the rest of their (admittedly eclectic and unpredictable) politics. They are or were at various times very much in favour of brave-new-world technology from nuclear power to gene modification. O'Neill made a notorious climate change denial TV programme. By rights they ought to be embracing trans as part of progress towards extremely modified bionic people.

Kenan Malik on the other hand talks a lot of sense and I don't think he's been involved with them for a very long time.

I think, like most people, they just think it's bollocks. And they are pro free speech etc.

I'm another who has always been suspicious of the RCP mob. But on gender they have been refreshingly clear, and done plenty to publicise the issue.

Brendan O'Neill has made an effort to get his head around the feminist elements in a way a lot of men don't. He also will strongly stick up for individual GC women. I remember how angry he was at the way KJK was treated in NZ.

I heard this and was so pleased, I have been on here since 2008 and it definitely was where I first found out about being Gender critical. I had a great moment when I tentatively broached the subject with a woman at college and she said "Basically Humphrey I AM Spartacus". Spiked is a relatively new one for me and I do enjoy Brendan O'Neill's work.

Thanks for all the background on this thread, so interesting.