Are we a cult?

[CyclingSam]

I keep reading that sex realists, of which I am one, are a cult. Perhaps a genderist could be so kind as to explain what a cult is, and why we qualify. Sometimes one of us calls them a cult too. Who has a better case, hmmm?

Agree.

There's the standard "You're female!" kind, and now on top of that we apparently have the the almost entirely new "Are you female?" kind.

Great. Thanks for that.

Name changing means people can't easily validate it someone is in the good or bad team.

Be careful. There's a difference between simply "the other team" and a bad faith poster.

The former engages with arguments and moves the debate on, whether they agree or not. And when they bring a topic back, they will start with refering to the opposing arguments previously made and preempt them with (hopefully) well argued rebuttals so the conversation starts there instead of just ending up there again. It progresses.

Whereas the latter just pops up again and again with a different username but the same assertions as if they had not been discussed before. The arguments they know perfectly well can be made (even if they disagree) are not referred to, and groundhog day starts all over again.

It is the latter type that tends to be called out as a well known poster with a retread because they are not here in good faith, they are here for their own reasons that have nothing to do with moving forwards.

I think implying that the people here care because they need to know who is on the "wrong team" to know how to treat them is quite dismissive and insuting actually.

'Pile-ons' are a feature of social media, but I don't think they are worse on this board than other MN boards. People also have strong opinions on private schools, sleep training, breastfeeding, religion, abortion, a few years ago Brexit, Trump and dog training, to say nothing of children at weddings.

The difference is that, whether or not I agree with them, I have seen people make impassioned but well argued cases on all these topics that represent a range of views.

This topic is different because I have never heard a coherent argument that explains why e.g. the Supreme Court decision was wrong or why women don't need sex specific rights.

This is an interesting response thank you, although I do think it showcases some of the things I listed out. It reads like you're essential saying the board operates as an exclusive in-group where regulars feel justified in assuming bad faith simply because they're tired of repeat topics. If regulars have discussed a point ad nauseam, the normal response on any public forum is to simply scroll past.
Anyone coming to a Sex and Gender board is already open and interested in the topic. Forcing an immediate 'friend or foe' binary on newcomers instead of letting people learn, ask questions, or land somewhere in the middle turns an open space into a hostile echo chamber. I think this siege mentality you're describing is exactly the kind of cult group think that some people don't enjoy.along with framing hostility as some kind of righteous resistance and flattening any nuance into more terminating cliches where anyone who posts outside a certain spec is expecting kids gloves, be kind or are wide eyed. I find where this mentality has gotten more common, we have less new comers and more random disagreements or incorrect accusations made against regulars who may have NC or not posted in a while because some people come on MN hungry for a righteous battle against a "TRA" and will look to find them anywhere.

I disagree I find them more common on this board and on CITME and it makes threads largely bogged down with people repeating the same question and accusations that someone has "run off" sometimes within 30 minutes of their last post I also mentioned dogpiling within a wider context of behaviour which I don't see on AIBU or every social media corner.

I disagree, and I think expecting any new poster to have read the lore or canon and previous threads or a board before posting or otherwise assumed to be in bad faith and open to hostility an exceptionally high bar for engaging on an internet forum, and is just adding to the idea there is an "in group". Unless you're an admin or have a way of checking people's IPs you don't know any poster has been here before when NC and suggesting you psychically know it's the same poster popping up again and again in practice means any non conforming view is treated with suspicion. And then shifting to being morally offended at any behaviours being described as akin to a high pressure group when your responses are demonstrating that...

Unless you're an admin or have a way of checking people's IPs you don't know any poster has been here before when NC

When somebody uses the same argument and phrases over and over again, (and in some cases obviously repeatedly posts from the same time zone) it's not difficult to spot that they have been here before.

"goodnews: 'routinely subjected to bodily scrutiny'."
I must have missed something. Who's been going on about bodily scrutiny?

How do you account for the existence of new posters [I was one myself!] who join this board and just get on with it?

I didn't do a training course on the 'lore or canon' of the Feminism: Sex and gender discussions board, I came across it by accident, started reading the posts, liked the pragmatic and pro-factual approach to the topic, loved the sense of humour, and yes I wondered WTF things like 'peaking' meant, but I quickly worked it out by context.

I make a point of explaining things like DARVO or The Denton's Document if I refer to them, for the very reason that I know there are new women [and some men] joining the discussion all the time who may also think WTF? like I did.

You are probably right about the reactions of some newcomers and I'm sorry they don't feel they want to stay; but lots of newcomers don't react like that , it feels welcoming and informative and sometimes wrong and sometimes downright silly and often challenging - and they like it and stay.

I know. I was that newcomer😀

Oh, I see I have missed something.
Women here speak about their own experience, and the other posters speak about other people's experience, using grandiose terms such as "by virtue of" and the all encompassing "we".

"anyone who posts outside a certain spec is expecting kids gloves, be kind or are wide eyed"

Interesting that that is how you interpreted my words. I say "if you do thing X, you can't expect certain treatments". You read it as "unless you do thing Y, you can't expect certain treatments". Did you realise you did that?

Weere you to search my username and read my posts from, ooo, let's say 5 years or so ago, it would tell you a lot about me, where I am coming from, and why your interpretation that I require "a certain spec" rather than simply honest engagement is wrong.

But overall, if you feel there are better, more effective ways to engage on FWR and you see yourself as one of the "we" you refer to, please step up. You are certainly welcome to be that change. The more honest, genuine voices and perspectives the better.

But for myself, having been there and done that for many years, I feel eventually one has to recognise that constantly dealing with the same misunderstandings and diversions is not in fact moving anything forward. In fact it is the opposite. It's allowing the naive, the misinformed and the bad faith to drive the agenda and set the tone about what matters and what does not.

More widely, if you have any long term experience of the internet (and I do, from usenet onwards) you will know this is the way fora often end up. Eventually, explaining the same things to newbies over and over again is simply not motivating enough for the community experts to continue to do. That's not a nasty women thing, or a FWR seige mentality thing, it's just a human thing.

In fact FWR probably gives more here than many other places exactly because the topic is so important that we are more prepared to explain the same thing again and again and again, for the benefit of other readers.

(Although if I did have a seige mentality - which I can of course choose to explore, being a person who can look at a scenario from many different perspectives rather than being locked into one - I'd think actually, there's a really clever tactic there. Bombard a board with bad faith name changing disrupters, and then have another poster pop up to call out the resulting "seige mentality" - ignoring that a sege mentality is a rational response to actually being under seige. Not that I am suggesting you are doing this of course. I just thought it was an interesting point.)

You must be reading different threads.

However, again, I think the main difference between this and other subjects is the lack of anyone presenting a logical opposing argument.

I don't visit the Conflict in the Middle East board, but I think there are people making coherent arguments with opposing views on this subject.

I have never heard anyone make a rational argument for why sex should not be defined in legislation, or why women don't need sex specific rights. If people on or off line are making this argument, please point me towards them.

Cor, you come across as absolutely boilingly furious ironically

A feminine presenting trans woman is obviously at risk in the men’s.

really, why?

and if mixed sex loos are obviously not safe, why are you promoting them?

also who decides what ‘feminine presenting’ means? Got any objective criteria for that?

so many questions —which will never get answered—

<dons bells and tassels for cult meeting>

Would you be prepared to acknowledge my son as my son? He's been my son for the whole of his life, whether he likes that fact or not. He didn't choose his father, and he can't choose whether or not he is my son, it is just a fact of his life. His story seems rather different from your child's story. I have not rejected him, but we do have different views on various matters. He is an adult, so he makes his own choices. I hugely regret that he is listening to voices that encourage him to cut himself off from anyone who disagrees with him (he appears to be resisting this, but it has had a profound impact) and encourage bodily modification (a euphemism for self harm, though I have not said as much to him).

I have to agree - my 13 year old is constantly mistaken for a girl due to long hair. He's been routinely using the mens for a few years now (interestingly, he prefers to use a cubicle) and the only issues he's had is with the continuously broken/filthy state of them. Other men haven't been an issue in the places a 13 year old finds themselves.

Toilets are generally pretty safe, no matter how you are dressed.

At work, this should surely be even more the case. If I was working with people who made me fear for my safety when I needed a wee just because of how I presented myself, I would expect my employer to do something about it. When I use the ladies toilets at work, it's because frankly, I prefer a bit of privacy when I'm in there, but since we have a lot of people, and so cubicle toilets are more space efficient, then culturally I feel better about that being around other women, than men.

Of course other facilities might be more dangerous - but that's because he's a child, not because he's a male with long hair (and generic dress-sense)

Interestingly, I have noticed we have over the past few months had more posters again (there was a lull for a while) directly claiming that the board is not just transphobic / anti trans / anti rights but making it clear that personal choices not to use language demanded by people with transgender identities is worthy of shaming and labelling others as ‘fundamental’ or extremists. This week we have even had a poster declare that any FWR poster who disagrees that male people should not be included in female single sex provisions should be made feel responsible if someone makes violent attacks on trans people.

I am sure anyone making comment about why there are less new people posting may have also noticed these interactions too.

However, in saying that, I have noticed plenty of new usernames who are reacting to posts. New people are reading.

And as with all social media platforms, seeing a range of different reactions to a post is useful for coming to or reevaluating an opinion on an issue. Posters also don’t have the onus to be orderly in counting the number of previous poster responses before adding their thoughts. This is a moderated board but it is not moderated for a ‘civil number of responses’.

All posters should be able to cope with the number of responses that their post generates as part of the expectation of posting on a thread. Just as all posters should accept that not one poster has to curate the tone of response to fit the requirements of a particular poster if the post is within the guidelines.

If a poster requires a heavily moderated platform where the responses are curated by moderators or posters on the board are expected to self moderate as a coordinated group, this type of publicly accessed forum may not work for their needs.

There are no coordinated ‘pile ons’. There are many many posters from around the world posting on this board and each has a different opinion or a different reaction that is perfectly valid for them to express within the guidelines.

@thegoodnews "You don't seem to be able to 'compute' that by virtue of making toilets single sex spaces its effectively facilitating bodily scrutiny…"

Toilets were always single sex. We did not make them single sex. Butch women would probably have occasionally got mistaken for men, and like Prof Kathleen Stock, handled it with good grace. It's not the end of the world. The term you use 'Bodily scrutiny' is hyperbolic - and pretty close to the suggestion that we want to do 'genital inspections'

In any case, this is DARVO is action -Trans Privilege Activists/ Colonisers enabled men to think they had a right to women's spaces; they made women more suspicious.

Edited for typos

LOL

You've never come across "UTFS"? Really?

If you genuinely haven't, I think your concerns about FWR are more your lack of experience of forums than anything specific to FWR.

And if you have - well, it's the same for FWR.

And please. If you genuinely think there aren't some very proific posters whose distinctive language, obsessions and phrasing make it 100% obvious who they are within three posts without an IP check needed, all that tells me is that you have jumped in to criticise without much knowledge of the context.

Yes indeed

my primary motivation for wanting single sex toilets at work is privacy, not safety

i find it extremely hard to believe that ‘feminine presenting men’ (whatever that means) are routinely in danger in the men’s toilets at their workplace

if they are that is an issue for their workplace to deal with

I still want privacy from such men when I use the toilet, because they’re men

I have an anecdote that you probably won’t appreciate. I was in my GP surgery ( middle class area, high proportion of retirees, higher than average education etc etc) and in front was a large display about “chest cancer”. Working in palliative care I was somewhat intrigued as there’s no such thing as “chest cancer” , were they trying to get the message out about lung cancer perhaps I thought? On closer inspection the whole display was about breast cancer without mentioning the word women or breast once. Now, from a health messaging perspective , EITHER sex can have breast cancer as we all have breast tissue - men get breast cancer too and can experience prejudice or ignorance from who don’t understand this. Women who have had double mastectomies still need to be aware of changes. So a display would be far far better to publicise this fact that if you are a she/ he or a they you might need to check yourself and seek help but because the powers that be consider that the word breast is so offensive and triggering to certain people, it means we have to compromise the important message that is being publicised. Who precisely is in this cult?

Before I start posting on a new forum I typically spend weeks or months reading it

I agree.

I would also be appalled if I saw that at my surgery. It's a multi-faith, multi-ethinic area with a large number of people with English as a second language. I was in there yesterday and the video screen on the wall was showing a film aimed primarily at Muslim parents, seeking to persuade them to give the MMR vaccine to their children, using a Muslim GP and an Iman as the talking heads.

The video was of course of use to Non-Muslims because it used science and clear language.

Imagine if my surgery had the poster you mention up? Completely undermining the basic principles of good communication and reach. Whatever happened to the Campaign for Plain English?

Same. Then again, I'm used to forums where obvious newbies asking the same old questions immediately get told to, "Lurk more!" in more or less polite ways. The fact that FWR doesn't do that, and in fact entertains every new post as worthy of being discussed all over again, no matter how many times the matter has been rehashed already, is still surprising to me.

When a space is provided as a single sex space, the other sex have no right to it, so balancing rights does not enter into the equation.

From childhood I was asked regularly if I was in the right toilets. This scrutiny has been always a way for female people to assess who is coming into a provision they expect to be female only.

This tactic to leveraging questioning people about whether they are in the right toilet and being scrutinised is really just throwing anything to see what sticks.

It is also a weak argument because those female people who are being asked are just as likely as the majority of female people in the UK to want female single sex provisions to fully exclude male people above about 8 years old.