They scraped Mumsnet again.

[ArabellaSaurus]

archive.ph/e0u3Z

https://bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/article/4/1-3/7/

Another data scrape. I'd say it's also defamatory against Mumsnet.

I've archived.

Article is a load of tedious wank, as you'd expect.

'In this study, however, we excavate what it means to write like a GC by analyzing how GC forum users rely on reactionary language and deploy storytelling practices in ways that calcify their anti-trans ideologies as personal and natural while rendering transgender people as anti-feminist, dangerous, and monstrous. To identify how GC groups perform political mythmaking and construct extremist identities, we undertook a computationally assisted discursive analysis of two popular GC forums: Ovarit and Mumsnet’s “Feminism: Sex & Gender” board (abbreviated to “FSG”). Through comparative platform discourse analysis, we analyzed over 80k posts and comments scraped from Ovarit and over 60k posts and comments scraped from Mumsnet (Burgess and Matamoros-Fernández 2016; Lewis and Marwick 2017)'

The only mildly amusing thing about it is the name of the Journal.

BATS.

Isn’t this just the digital version of eavesdropping on conversations which you know you won’t like so you can use them to back up whatever point of view you’ve already decided on?

Unfortunately this is the sort of crap "research" that our ICO and politicians will rely on when making new internet laws and refusing IP access to allegedly harmful content. It's already happening and even an international image hosting site (imgur) has been blocked to UK users based on this. Funny how porn is always allowed through though.

Justine has commented on the site stuff thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5441037-another-data-scrape-from-academia?reply=148441163&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

a public interest case for academic freedom to comment on published material

What public interest is there in defaming the members of an online forum concerned with women's rights? This paper is libellous: it starts from the false assumption that we are motivated by hostility towards trans people (as opposed to a desire, rooted in safeguarding, to keep the bepenised people out of the spaces reserved for the becunted people) and that false premise constitutes the defamation.

In the past, academics have researched how we talk to each other without slandering us. Someone did a paper on the semiotics of the Suffragette imagery we use without slandering us.

a side-effect of the dispersal of GC internet users is that activity in anti-trans spaces has become increasingly obfuscated and insular.

Translation: the women have made private spaces to talk where we can't monitor them for compliance with rightthink, and we don't like it.

Copy pasting the Site Stuff post:

Hi all,
Thanks to those who flagged this. To be clear, scraping or copying Mumsnet content without a licence breaches our Terms and Conditions. We did not grant permission for this project.

What we are doing now:

We will contact* *the journal and the authors’ institutions requesting the ethics approval, data-handling details, and the immediate suspension of any dataset sharing that includes Mumsnet content.
We will ask that any scraped Mumsnet data be deleted unless permission is obtained and proper safeguards are in place.
Why this matters:

In our view posts on Mumsnet are often pseudonymous, not anonymous. Combining usernames, timestamps, and URLs can increase the risk of identifying posters.
We require researchers to request permission so that user privacy and safety are protected and projects meet accepted ethical standards.
We'll keep you posted on the response. Meantime, if you have concerns about your posts or want to discuss this with us directly, please email [email protected] with the subject line “Data scraping”.

Thanks, MNHQ

@ArabellaSaurus

Thank you for the thread, and for alerting MNHQ.

Good work.

I've given up trying to read the "research" but want to ask a basic question.

Is it really "research" if you state at the beginning that you have a set of beliefs and then go round trawling the internet to pick out the bits that support your already decided opinion:

The fundamental organizing principle of anti-transgender political movements is the belief that transgender identities are illegitimate and that “biological sex,” conceptualized as reproductive anatomy and karyotype, inherently determines the “correct” sex and gender a person should possess. Within this framework, sex and gender are both determined by what gametes and reproductive role a person “should” develop, with intersex variations and fertility challenges represented as “disorders” of “normal” functioning rather than legitimate identities. Gender identities other than “male” and “female” are dismissed entirely as fabrications or delusions.

Its a bit like if I was an atheist (implying I dont believe in a god or any god) and then set out to show that, guess what, some people do believe that there is a god or gods.

The arrogance of thinking that your belief (in gender identity = sex) is the norm and anyone who thinks differently is mad, bad or dangerous.

Do University Libraries usually have their own research and publishing department.

Does this Library also allow pro gender critical research?

They seem to have one paper which is I think isn't research bu an article by Karen Dansky as to why some gender critical feminists who would normally vote Democrate voted Trump.

@IwantToRetire “biological sex,” conceptualized as reproductive anatomy and karyotype, inherently determines the “correct” sex and gender a person should possess.

They seem to have completely ignored the many GC people who don't have a gender at all. I also keep thinking about this claim:

GC users’ rhetoric consistently disparaged, targeted, and demonstrated enmity towards sex workers, who were referred to as “prostitutes” (nOvarit = 509; nFSG = 371) and accused of proliferating the “porn addicted” and “pornsick” (nOvarit = 1,350; nFSG = 482) conditions under which gender ideology allegedly proliferates. Denigration of sex workers is an established component of GC ideology."

I'm not familiar with Ovarit, and I don't understand how they came to this conclusion, but on this board, and in GC conversations elsewhere I've never come across such a thing, never mind as "an established component of GC ideology." It would come down to blaming women for men's failings, which is what men do, and is certainly not practised by the women of FWR.

Perhaps I didn't read enough of the study - since what I did read was garbage - but I can't actually see how they came to any of their conclusions.

The 'study' is complete drivel that reflects badly on the institution.

GC users’ rhetoric consistently disparaged, targeted, and demonstrated enmity towards sex workers, who were referred to as “prostitutes” (nOvarit = 509; nFSG = 371)

In my reading of the paper, the nOvarit and nFSG are just word counts. I could be wrong (much of the methodology appears to be missing) but It is not clear if they take account of context at all.

It is also not clear if they they take account if a user's post includes a copy of a previous post i.e. if the collection process double, triple (or more) some word counts.
As other posters have pointed out, it does not seem to be a serious bit of research at all.

I guess that if you have been given a grant to research this you have to submit something to justify the payments. All you need is a supervisor who is happy to give it a cursory glance, say well done and sign it off

'... intersex variations and fertility challenges represented as “disorders” of “normal” functioning rather than legitimate identities.'

This seems grossly offensive.

. intersex variations and fertility challenges represented as “disorders” of “normal” functioning rather than legitimate identities.'

When did infertility become an identity?

Exactly.

If only I’d known infertility was something I could just identify my way out of. I could have saved thousands on IVF.

As if having a DSD in the first place is not bad enough, imagine if you kept coming across shit like this. It must be infuriating.

I may be being unduly nice, but my reading of "intersex variations and fertility challenges" at least suggests they haven't conflated PCOS with DSDs. I have PCOS, I'm definitely a woman.

Oh dear, I was a bit mean to a scraper and had a post deleted. I hope MN have a good legal team on this case and make them delete everything. It's not as if they actually need the data, their conclusions were reached beforehand.

I’m going to disagree - I’m all in favour of telling these faux researchers who try to force team women who stand up for women’s rights with neo Nazis to FRO.

Still, looking at the editorial board of BATS and the team behind CATS, I’m thinking this ‘paper’ is going to have a fairly small circulation, and will be mostly read by people who define themselves by their pronouns.

Its the usual criticism that someone having a belief that sex work is exploitation therefore hates women who are (forced) in prostitution. The same as saying if you dont belief if being able to identify into a gender (sex) then you hate people who do.

Without cross polluting this thread with another one, it is as daft as saying because I am a vegitarian I hate meat eaters.

How is this research.

All they saying is that some people (especially those pesky women) are allowed to voice an opinion, and it is hateful because we the researchers (who set the bench mark) say it is impossible to have an opinion and not turn that into a hate throught.

Which probably says more about how they live their lifes.

I wonder where the funding money comes from.

What a waste.

Bearing in mind that the salt-wasting form of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia literally kills the children who are born with it, and most DSDs have some negative impact on the people who have them, I'd say that "disorder of normal functioning" is an entirely legitimate term to use. I don't consider my migraines an "identity".

I didn't have children by choice, yet even I can see that declaring infertility to be an "identity" is hurtful and completely lacking empathy towards women who cannot concieve or gestate the children that they desperately want.

Worse than that, it's akin to accusing someone vegetarian or vegan of hating farm animals.

Hating meat eaters is the equivalent of hating punters and pimps.

Did you use the variant on eff orf that gets described as a 'death threat' when they run to the mods? When the BBC wanted to make their Archers boards unusable they hired a company who used a range of disruptive strategies, and that accusation was part of the package. I spotted it somewhere on MN recently and got all nostalgic but knew it was doomed.

Is there a rationale for deletion, e.g. forbidden words picked up by an algorithm, or is it sufficient for somebody to report a post that offends them? I had a post deleted in which I referred to our most charming visitor as a small passerine bird of the Paridae family. I also called him "he".