[News] [UK] Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts: Transgender activists try to curb free speech on site
16 views
Skip to first unread message
Stephanie Stevens
Apr 16, 2018, 8:35:50 AM4/16/18
to transgen...@googlegroups.com, Transge...@transgendernews.groups.io, transge...@yahoogroups.com, eurotra...@yahoogroups.com, EuroTrans...@transgendernews.groups.io
The Times, UK
Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts: Transgender activists try to curb free speech on site
Andrew Gilligan
The founder of Mumsnet says transgender “thought police” are pressurising advertisers to withdraw from Britain’s most popular parenting website because it allows the discussion of trans topics.
Justine Roberts said she had been approached by three significant advertisers who had been threatened by trans groups.
“Transgender activists have contacted Mumsnet advertisers and said they will be organising a boycott of their products if they don’t remove their advertising from Mumsnet,” Roberts said.
The website had told the advertisers that it “works hard to keep the discussions civil” and was determined to let them continue.
“What’s worrying to me is the thought-police action around speech and the shutting down of the right to be able to disagree and immediately labelling it as transphobic,” Roberts said.
The threats are the latest move in a campaign by transgender activists to inhibit discussion of potential legal changes that would allow people born male to self-identify as women.
Feminists say the plans threaten women’s rights and protected spaces. Trans activists say that to oppose them is bigotry. They have pressurised dozens of venues into cancelling meetings on the subject.
One meeting that went ahead at the House of Commons led to a complaint to the parliamentary standards commissioner against David Davies, the MP who organised it.
Trans activists bombarded the Commons authorities with demands that the meeting be cancelled with one, Ariel Moss, boasting on Twitter that she “rang them three times today under different voices and phones”.
Sometimes attempts to break up meetings have turned violent. Last week a trans activist, Tara Wolf, was convicted of assaulting a feminist who was attending a rally against the proposals.
Mumsnet, which has 12m monthly users but does not hold physical meetings, has become a prominent online forum for debate on trans subjects. A recent discussion about whether self-identified trans women should be allowed to use female-only cabins on the Caledonian Sleeper train made national news.
Roberts said: “A significant minority of our users feel very strongly about women’s rights and very uneasy [about the proposals]. This is an issue that needs to be discussed and that’s why we’re prepared to take any potential advertising hit.”
Mumsnet reported pre-tax profits of £2.1m on a turnover of £7.2m last year.
Roberts said no advertiser had yet pulled out. “There is a section of the hardline trans side which thinks that any discussion at all is by definition transphobic, but we’ve explained we’re working very hard to keep it civil,” she said.
Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts: Transgender activists try to curb free speech on site
Andrew Gilligan
April 15 2018, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
[Photo: Roberts: ‘threat to freedom’]
The founder of Mumsnet says transgender “thought police” are pressurising advertisers to withdraw from Britain’s most popular parenting website because it allows the discussion of trans topics.
Justine Roberts said she had been approached by three significant advertisers who had been threatened by trans groups.
“Transgender activists have contacted Mumsnet advertisers and said they will be organising a boycott of their products if they don’t remove their advertising from Mumsnet,” Roberts said.
The website had told the advertisers that it “works hard to keep the discussions civil” and was determined to let them continue.
“What’s worrying to me is the thought-police action around speech and the shutting down of the right to be able to disagree and immediately labelling it as transphobic,” Roberts said.
The threats are the latest move in a campaign by transgender activists to inhibit discussion of potential legal changes that would allow people born male to self-identify as women.
Feminists say the plans threaten women’s rights and protected spaces. Trans activists say that to oppose them is bigotry. They have pressurised dozens of venues into cancelling meetings on the subject.
One meeting that went ahead at the House of Commons led to a complaint to the parliamentary standards commissioner against David Davies, the MP who organised it.
Trans activists bombarded the Commons authorities with demands that the meeting be cancelled with one, Ariel Moss, boasting on Twitter that she “rang them three times today under different voices and phones”.
Sometimes attempts to break up meetings have turned violent. Last week a trans activist, Tara Wolf, was convicted of assaulting a feminist who was attending a rally against the proposals.
Mumsnet, which has 12m monthly users but does not hold physical meetings, has become a prominent online forum for debate on trans subjects. A recent discussion about whether self-identified trans women should be allowed to use female-only cabins on the Caledonian Sleeper train made national news.
Roberts said: “A significant minority of our users feel very strongly about women’s rights and very uneasy [about the proposals]. This is an issue that needs to be discussed and that’s why we’re prepared to take any potential advertising hit.”
Mumsnet reported pre-tax profits of £2.1m on a turnover of £7.2m last year.
Roberts said no advertiser had yet pulled out. “There is a section of the hardline trans side which thinks that any discussion at all is by definition transphobic, but we’ve explained we’re working very hard to keep it civil,” she said.
“We have some guidelines, we keep people within [them], we ban anyone that’s persistently mean and that’s the way we’re handling it for now. Hopefully we’ll be able to hold that line because we think it’s important.”
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages