Why did MNHQ think it knew enough about feminism to split FWR into two

[IwantToRetire]

Why did MNHQ decide that there are 2 types of feminism and that they should not be allowed to mix together so it split the Feminism and Women's Rights forum into 2. One for the nice girls who didn't want to discuss or even know that TW could be a threat to women's sex based rights, and one that tried to dumb down feminism into just discussing sex and gender but not related to feminism.

What was the point.

Oh sorry!

I was trying to see if MNHQ had done anything about its potty AI generated titles, and hadn't realised that it must have done. Or ... there is a way round it but it so not sure what it is.

As this thread got posted and this certainly wasn't the title that AI thought it should have.

Probably worth digging back into the archives and finding threads from the time. Anything posted now is likely to be less accurate based on a few memories.

But MN were under a lot of pressure not to host any gender chat and a few posters insisted that all the non-gender related discussion (I would say it's hard to discern what is meant by that) was being buried under gender stuff and they couldn't engage people in discussion of it was on the same board. Obviously once the board was split we saw the masses rush to post on the Feminism Chat board as they had been desperate to do.... oh no, we didn't.

The dichotomy wasn't supposed to be what you've characterised it as tbf.

The noisy posts about preserving the category of ‘woman’ were drowning out all the really interesting conversations about, I dunno, equal pay and maternity rights and all those other, erm, sex based rights.

When words and data aren’t reliable, you can’t have a conversation. Daft idea.

Yes, some posters were concerned that the other feminist threads were going unnoticed.

Whats weird is that mn decided that the sex and gender board is 'sex and gender discussions, feminist chat, theory and intersectional feminism." Whereas the sex one is for modern feminism and theory.

OP, i'm not quite sure what you mean by the comment about AI titles, but since I've been around here forever, I can say there was a long long period where Mumsnet was the only place where we could talk about the attacks on women's rights. It was so controversial and they were under such pressure to shut us down. It was a flawed compromise that they made, to split feminism women and women's rights into two in this way, but it was done at a time when they were under huge pressure from other commentators and from advertisers trying to stop them from allowing us to have conversations. I think most of the old hands, whilst thinking it didn't make sense, also understood exactly why they felt they needed to do it. As PP have said, feminism chat has never been very lively and the sex and gender board is still the place where the best politics, jokes and recipes continue to thrive. I remain ever grateful to MNHQ for allowing us the freedom and I know it came at great cost to them.

I think it was really just that there were a good number of posters who wanted it. I don't think it had anything at all to do with what they thought about feminism. So you need to look at why the posters wanted it, not MN HQ.

One arguments was, as the pp has said, that gender issues were overtaking the board - which was not entirely untrue - and some felt that other topics would get more traction if they were in a different space. This was the strongest argument, imo, though it has not in fact worked.

Some argued that they simply wanted to be able to talk about feminism without having to argue about gender all the time.

I think there were also some who were upset that people they deemed to be not left wing enough were discussing women's issues, and they wanted to isolate them on one part of the board. In fact I think that was a significant motivation among those who wanted the split.

Plus some wanted a place to isolate and discussion of gender topics.

It was apparently as a result of emails to MNHQ from posters insistent that they were simply desperate to start threads on FWR but were put off by the scary ladies and wanted a safe space, just for them. Several FWR regulars were told to 'fuck off back to your own board' once the boards were split.

Indeed. Although I always assumed those emails were most likely to be from TRA/MRA folk who didn’t have much to say about maternity rights and VAWG. Hence tumbleweed.

Yes, it was more like what @Waitwhat23 says. A few really strident posters wanting to shut down the conversation about sex and gender. They must have misplayed though, as effectively the few strident posters were hived off to a quiet byway and the rest of us carried on as normal but with a different name.

edited as tagged wrong poster.

Yes, it was totally ineffective at achieving anything. I think it would make sense for the other board to be dropped, it's almost totally dead.

Especially as there are increasing number of threads here that are nothing to do with trans.

FWIW i think that mn handled a sensitive situation very well, and i am grateful that they provided a space for posters to discuss these issues when there were precious few spaces around.

Agreed @Sausagenbacon
they were in a very hard place and managed to keep us going

I agree with this. At the time it happened, most of us didn't know how much grief MNHQ was getting for allowing even censored expressions of the sex realist viewpoint. I arrived just before the split, and Mumsnet was the only public space in which other people were saying what I was thinking.

Well there was a man in charge of the mods at the time.

I never thought it was a huge issue, they handled it fairly, and it came out fine in the wash.

I'm not really sure what the big issue about it is, to make a thread?

Yes - that is my memory.

And some who stayed on FWR even said they supported it but at the same time started reporting threads on FWR and saying MNHQ should move them to "chat" again without consultation or asking if the person who had started the thread agreed.

This led to a whole discussion who had the "copyright" on a post (it is the poster) and so if they wanted it in the context of FWR that's where it should stay.

There was a lot of bitterness about it because it wasn't just outsiders attempting to disrupt FWR but also some on the thread going behind our backs and co-operating with the MNHQ over reaching themselves.

The whole thing was ridiculous. If you didn't want to read a there about trans issues just dont read it.

This arguement is as dumb as the one about MNHQ now saying because some women have difficulty creating the title for a thread, we should all be forced to use AI to create one.

My memory of that time was that a lot of the women who were feminist and had become involved in the trans pressure on the government and helped the discussions then left FWR because of this heavy handed editorial diktat.

And on one level they have achieved what all the nice ladies who like to chat want, which is to isolate discussing trans issues within the context of feminism and thinking this is a single issue forum. That's why every now and again someone goes why is this OP on FWR, because MNHQ heavy handed decision and its misnomer of this forum has allow some to think it is just about sex based rights, and no other topic is allowed. And equally meant that those who have no interest in feminism think it is possible to not care about feminism and just be anti trans and that this is a right wing forum.

So I totally disagree with it being handle well, it wasn't.

It was dictatorial and not an agreed solution to whatever the problem was, and effectively allowing a tiny minority to impose how they want things to be.

And on one level MNHQ it too proud to admit they made a mistake and return FWR to being the thread about feminism with no qualifying words as to what that feminism is.

But for me the worst part, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth is the under hand behaviour of some at the time.

Although on reflection the loss of the women who had a well rounded foundation in feminism that meant the issue of trans rights vs women's sex based rights was framed by that political analysis.

For those who are confused about the reference to AI MNHQ without notice imposed an AI generated title for new threads. See https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5502250-mnhq-ai-wont-let-me-title-my-thread

But it seems that across all forums this has not gone down well. So I got caught out thinking I would show them how crap the system was, but they already had abandoned it.

If I had thought this would be a thread, I would have taken more trouble with the wording of the OP!

I was going to ask them to delete the thread but as others have commentated whilst I got distracted by other things, it would be rude to do so now.

Thanks for responses.

So far - and more?!

I was quite new to MN when the split happened. It was forced and it was quite ridiculous. How can you talk about anything without it being sex-based!

The previous poster is correct that our posts kept getting moved from the sex and gender to the chat thread and vice versa.

The Chat was laughable in the early days then the transactivists complained it was too quiet and we were such meanies!

I think it was not long after that I first went on X after Elon bought it and I got consumed on there and only came back here to have a deep dive read but not comment.

I came back recently as X is getting really hard to see anything as it's pushing loads of crap at us!

I'm sure one thread turned up here which was nothing to do with feminism, & the OP acknowledged that & said she deliberately put it here because the people who post here know what's what, & she wanted their opinions/help!

Why are you so bothered, OP, so long after the event?
What outcome would you like to see happen?

It was dictatorial and not an agreed solution to whatever the problem was, and effectively allowing a tiny minority to impose how they want things to be.

Isn't that the nature of the beast? MN is dictatorial. It's not some kind of commune where we have a say in what happens.

To my mind in recent weeks all sorts of threads seem to be slipping in to 'Sex' and 'Gender', which to my mind dilute the purpose of this board.

As others have said it was created so that those who didn't want to talk about/or question trans ideology did not have to be confronted with those that did, and for whom that was the primary reason for coming to the board.

It used to be endless discussions about whether, and how, the topic should be discussed, if at all.

I honestly think that the main issue that MN has is that 80% posters post on AIBU, reagardless of what they're posting about.

Not quite. We told MN at the time they were being played. It was an attempt, as ever, to try and silence and control us.

There was a lot of crowing once they won 'their' chat board, and some of us were told we wernt to post on it.

I mean we can see how that panned out.