Thread derailment

[Temporaryusernamefortoday]

Wondering if I am the only one that’s noticed more and more thread derailments. I’m not talking about TRA taking a TWAW stance but an individual being deliberately obtuse or missing the point of an individuals posts to create an argument about a tangential element. It just seems rather insidious and designed to prevent proper conversation.

This is not a TAT but a thread about a phenomenon.

That happens here though. I didnt say I agree with it. What I said is that it is common in all subgroups and incldued my own in that. People often feel extremely slighted by being excluded on such a basis.

I guess I wouldn't feel that from someone who felt totally different to me about what our similar body means. I wouldn't feel a shared femaleness with someone who doesnt agree with me about what it means to be female.

Fair enough, you do you. But for me, it’s literally just my sex that I share with all members of it. And none of the opposite sex.

I think this is the difference between gender ideologists and GC women. GIs think there is a fundamental difference in feeling because they believe in a definition of woman that I don’t agree with. I don’t because I don’t believe in that concept of “female”. It’s just sex. I just have a difference of opinion, that’s literally all!

This is actually quite an enlightening thread, it’s rare that I consider it from this angle, so thanks for that!

I know that TWAW and TMAM are both absurd statements, with zero evidential underpinnings. They are blatant lies and/or wishful fantasies. TWAW and TMAM are claims in the same league as the 'Earth is flat' and the 'Moon Landings were fake'. Science says NO, they're really really not.

And some nonsense is dangerous. Men in women's contact sports, as inmates in women's prisons, using women's changing rooms and domestic violence refuges has real world consequences. These can be life changing or even life ending for the women and girls affected. It is important we keep on pointing this out.

Moreover not all views are valid. Some are simply silly and need to be mocked. Would you claim, for example, that I just hold one particular stance on the issue of the Planet Earth's shape? Opinions other than my view that it is spherical are to be respected?

Believing the Earth is flat, or a dodecahedron, or an infinite turtle stack, shouldn't get you drummed out of the Royal Astronomical Society? Really?

In the context of this discussion, it's whether mocking those views on threads would be derailing.

This.

I said that I wasnt going to share my personal feelings, but I kind of have and I think it's fair that I do.

I think where I'm at can be best summarised as TW/TM are TW/TM. I do feel that my womanhood and femaleness is centred around my biological being and how that is perceived by others as well as myself. I also think the same goes for others to a large extent. I think my husband's penis and lack of breast tissue is part of what makes him a man, for example.

However, I note that there are a lot of people (trans people) who don't feel that way and some non-trans people who seem to have complementary perspectives on what makes them male or female and it isn't centred around biology.

That's why I think I can acknowledge that TW aren't men but they also aren't women (same for TM). So TW are TW and TM are TM. I'm not sure where that lands me on the GC spectrum but I also don't care all that much as it isn't a feminist issue I prioritise.

This is bullshit.

It's very easy not to engage with posters who are problematic, you just don't respond to their posts in any way.

The recipe thing is a way to shut down an entire thread, including everyone else who was having a discussion. This happens to multiple threads and affects people who were talking about things that are nothing to do with the derailers.

It's either massively self-centred or intended to stop people discussing topics someone doesn't approve of.

If you don't find a thread useful, stop posting in it, it's really straight forward. The recipe shit should get deleted by the mods.

Bollocks! I could say more but I think "bollocks" pretty much covers it

There are times when I think the "questioning" of the person who has the view is itself a derailment.

Thread on question x, poster says, unlike the majority she thinks y. Instead of discussing x vs y it's a litany of " you must believe this, that or the other thing that are bad for women."

And then the thread veers into six other issues that the poster is trying to field at the same time rather than a discussion of x vs y.

For example, a poster says, I think it's ok sometimes to use requested pronouns, in certain settings, and suddenly they are accused of being ok with men in women's prisons and six other things like that. Without ever getting a chance to say what settings they might think those are, mush less their reasoning.

It's not very productive, often the original discussion is lost, and it's really difficult for the poster to hold those threads together at the same time. They usually get overwhelmed pretty fast and you can see them lose the thread of their thoughts.

The people that do it then think they have "won" the discussion.

It simply isn't bollocks. In an academic feminist circle, you wouldn't be shut down just for being GC, you'd be shut down because you think being GC is the only approach to Feminism so it would be unproductive to have you in discussions with other feminists. You'd be too caught up on "but she isnt really a feminist" when all the other people are trying to discuss feminism and the economy.

Yes and the quoting system doesnt help. You go to one quoted reply in your notifications and it unbolds them all from your list and puts them to the bottom once you revisit the thread. Then you get lost as to which you've replied.

There was a mod post the other day warning about posters who suggest to other posters to not engage trolls. So, mumsnet seems to sensitive to anti-troll collective action.

I found that mod post weird, as we were told that it's fine to not engage with trolls, and to remind others that they don't have to, on a politics thread in Chat a few weeks ago.

So I'm neither a man nor a woman? Pretty othering, really.

This is just the same bs that we get from the "real left feminists" who seem happy to play middle school mean girls games anyone who doesn't accept their political leadership.

There are huge disagreements within feminism about what it's political principles are, what is the right view on issues, how to engage women.

The fact that a tiny group of, typically, academic feminists have tried to say that on;y approved people on the left can use the term is just another kind of power grab.

Their vision isn't somehow defined by some feminist politburo, by recieved tablets off the mountain, or vapours from the feminist godess. Because those things don't exist.

This is not a unique situation for a political movement, you will find differernt schools of thought among liberals, conservative, Marxists, neocons, fascists, the Religious Right, the religious left... it's actually the norm.

I don't have much time for gender ideology because it's dumb, but it's not wrong because it doesn't follow the rules of Real Feminism.

Are you not female or male bodied?

It generally does.

I agree with you.

However, there are posters here, long time posters, that will tell people they should not post not gc stuff because it is a gc forum, set up to protect gc people. It happens pretty regularly.

Why would that be definitive, you said you think TM are not women.

Well, yes, I'm female bodied, which makes me a woman. But you said, "That's why I think I can acknowledge that TW aren't men but they also aren't women (same for TM)." According to this, you think I'm not a woman, but not a man either.

I’m not sure I’ve seen much of this but I take your word for it as someone I might not always agree with but think is in good faith.

I am actually totally confused as to why the poster is asking that question at all. All I can think is that they think my personal views of what makes me or anyone else a man or a woman somehow excludes them.

No I think youve read that so wrong, I can't even interpret where the wrong started.