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.

I’ve reported it when it’s happened on threads I’ve started. I also think the timing is interesting… the particularly bad examples I have noticed seem to start late at night. Bit of a drunken rant at women, perhaps?

Different time zones too

No it doesnt suggest that. It suggests that they believe that, probably due to their personal experiences, and that their view isnt based on research or anything else. Just their feeling. That is a way of knowing. Read a bit into epistemology. It explores how people know things and what knowing actually is.

The other thing is that especially in this environment, it can be unwise to get into certain discussions because the whole conversation will be derailed by people attacking your comment. For example, if I listed some of ways people view womanhood, the assumption that I think that and then the attempts to argue with me about what they believe that I believe would take over the thread.

I saw this the other day when someone gave a perfect answer as to why midwives like me may respect the gender identity of a pregnant person we care for. It quickly turned to wanting to question the poster's views on the subject which are totally irrelevant to why a midwife provides care in that way. It's all an attempt to say "see they believe TWAW so that is why they are saying something that seems compassionate to trans individuals".

And then it gets onto the tiresome thing of wanting to exclude people who think differently either by personal attacks on their character or doubting their authenticity.

It actually reminds me of midwifery debates with hard-core naturalist midwives who don't believe that educated informed women would think differently or make different choices to them. Their differences must always about their entitlement or oppression, never their agency or autonomy. If a midwife disagrees in any way in these circles, she is excluded as a doctors handmaiden or a medwife.

If in doubt I always just scroll past. For an actual derailer, direct engagement is the goal.

Of course we will all interpret intentions differently. That thread from 2019 is quite good.

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.

Yes, I agree. It's all over mumsnet. Deliberately trying to shutdown the actual topic because of their perceived agenda.

That thread from 2019 is quite good.

Which thread do you mean @potpourree ?

Also, it's the aggressive way people respond on these hot topics.

Let's say I say (please remember these are JUST examples):

Me - I'm a midwife who uses trans inclusive language in my work

Poster1: so you don't give a shit about women?

Poster2: you shouldn't be a midwife

Poster3: so you let men take over all womens spaces?

Poster4: dont listen to Me, no midwife would ever do that

Poster5: Me is a troll. Dont engage

Poster6: asks a genuine question

Poster7: snark behind genuine question

Poster8: what do you think of a man who dressed like a woman in 2002 and broke 17 male sex offenders out of prison? Are you ok with that?

Poster9: Me is okay with that and killing puppies.

No it doesnt suggest that. It suggests that they believe that, probably due to their personal experiences, and that their view isnt based on research or anything else. Just their feeling. That is a way of knowing

I completely disagree that someone's feeling that, for example, most people on benefits have never worked is a "way of knowing". The stats suggest it's extremely unlikely to be true, and what I'm interested in is truthful things.

Generally I will try and call out classism, ableism, racism and misogyny when I see it underpinning people's statements - this is the sort of thing I meant by people not actually being interested in exchange of views because they might have to analyse their own a bit too carefully and just reiterating what they reckon.

But I'm happy to disagree with you and leave it there! Obviously there are tons of areas where fact isn't important.

And yes, it probably is a waste of time to do this 😁

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3691023-Bunburys-guide-to-community-disruptors-part-4

Posted upthread

That's why I am telling you to look up epistemology. It explores how people know things and what knowing is. You come to know things through a mix of personal experience and academia, like the majority of people from the dominant cultures in the West. That's not how everyone builds their knowledge bank, though.

Understanding how people come to know is very important when wanting to understand humans..

https://fiveable.me/key-terms/intro-anthropology/epistemology

I will bear that in mind, thanks.

Oh right thanks!

Perhaps it’s unfair, but I find the regular posters who engage with the derailing/trolls more frustrating than the trolls themselves. There have been a number of threads on FWR where the entire thread becomes an argument between well known trolls and a few posters.

Please, just take it into DMs if you want to debate. Otherwise the rest of us who are actually interested in the topic have to scroll through 20 pages of personal arguments to find relevant posts.

If it's the first time I've felt suspicious of a poster's intentions, I assume they're here in good faith.
The second time, I still give the benefit of the doubt.
After that, I conclude that what they're seeking is attention and I don't engage any further.

I've been guilty of that on some threads, for sure. I think we all have our lines of where we think it is/ isn't worth engaging. I can think of 2 I've genuinely tried with only to be insulted or they've given up, so I recognise those in future. But others might need to go through that process too...

I have to agree with you, I do unfortunately see quite a lot of this.

I don't engage as much as I used to on the "hotter" threads, because in my experience any hint that you are not totally aligned with the zeitgeist, or even if you are but you just take a more moderate stance, will tend to generate this kind of response, along with accusations of derailment / being a man etc.

In my personal opinion, I also think a lot of the accusations of "derailing" are less based in actual concern about the thread being derailed and more of a tactic to chase posters that you don't agree with off the thread; it saves the necessity of calling them a troll outright, which is against the rules.

I've seen plenty of deliberate derailment into recipe discussions by certain groups on here, who are rarely if ever accused of derailment - probably because they are on the 'right' side.

Its a great shame because I think FWR has become a little bit of an echo chamber, to its detriment. I've been following this debate on here since 2012 (under one name or another!) and I do think the general standard of posting has degraded somewhat over the years.

Yes exactly this. People are so ocmvicned that they are right, they think it is okay to essentially troll them off of the thread.

The trick, if you are going to engage, is to query the key point being made - ask the to elaborate and posture alternative views accordingly

That way you are both engaging respectively with someone who fully believes, teasing the ideas apart and challenging the thinking for other readers

There are a lot of irrational interpretations of some posters’ posts which end up as ad hominem attacks and only serve to disable the discussion rather than enable it.

I think that is another trend which seems new to me.

That a lot of the responses are more about publicly virtual signaling on FWR that you are a true sex is biology believer.

And threads just become a relentless roll call of just how much a lot of posters then go on and on about following the one true line.

So in the example given, which by the way many threads are about, having to not be confrontationaly at work, in the past it would be more likely to get responses along the lines of that must be hard to do, do others feel like you, how did this happen ie management decision.

I think this is what made me comment yesterday about the twitterisation of FWR.

It is thanks to MNHQ saying it was just to awful for nice feminists to have to share a forum with feminists who understand feminism based on women's sex based rights, that we were ostracised to our own bunker.

No one needs to relentless advertise this is their believe.

Do the trolls go and bother the nice feminists on "chat".

Depends what you mean! Many threads do have opposing view points which is completely ok, feminism doesn’t have singular views. If you mean people piling on an individual and making personal slurs that’s always wrong.

Not in the least.

Right wingers try to make out this is the case, but in most instances posters on FWR say they feel politically homeless.

And that in focusing on how left and liberal politicians are failing, is because they / we would have hoped they would support women's sex based rights.

Whilst if you take the population as a whole it seems it is superficial and we get swing politics, ie this lot failed so I'll try another brand, it was very obvious on the the threads during the election that most are much more thoughtful than that. ie non voting, spoiling ballot papers, or tactical voting.

So actually I think it is hard to not have realised that criticising for obvious reaons Labour etc., is totally inline with the feminist politics of FWR.

So hard too understand how anyone could have thought that.

But I do think the slur by Stonewall etc., of FWR and jokes about us being dinasours seems to make some who for whatever reason are right wing, share the politics of those posting on FWR.

And its not surprising.

The media as a whole makes out that believing in women's sex based rights is right wing.

Just as they always report about the Supreme court or whatever as an attack on trans people.

They never report it as a women's rights issue.

I'm not sure I totally get what you're saying but the trans issues are brought up in conversations all over the site. The people wanting to discuss if TWAW do not just stay in this group.

Is that a reply to my post.

I wasn't talking about pile ons. I was talking about instead of responding to someone saying what she as a GC employee had to do at work in the past the response would be to empathise, ask more about it.

Not a relentless roll call from everyone say how pure their GC beliefs are, when they are lucky enough to be in work where they dont have to deal with not just work but outside forces having transed your work place.

And as said, MNHQ has said that those who believe in sex based rights have to be hived off, so obviously the basis of this forum is for those who share this analysis of feminism.

If not then there is Chat.

If that is the basis of the forum, they should make it clearer because it doesnt say this is primarily for people who don't believe TWAW. I assumed it was the section to discuss issues that are related to sex and gender in the context of feminist theory.

If that is the case, then it makes sense that you'd assume anyone who said they are a midwife who uses trans inclusive language at work is distressed by having to. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to assume that.