Mumsnet has been forced to introduce tough new rules over the discussion of transgender issues on its forums, after the parenting website found itself at the centre of a cultural battle around trans rights.
Transgender activists have repeatedly challenged the site for allowing users to post anti-trans content and earlier this year organised a protest against Mumsnet, contacting companies who advertise with the site and threatening to boycott their products.
Mumsnet has continually defended users’ rights to discuss “changing opinions around gender and sex” but now accepts that it has received criticism “for allowing posts that some trans people find offensive, even hateful”.
“Mumsnet will always stand in solidarity with vulnerable or oppressed minorities,” said founder Justine Roberts. “Mumsnet is also committed to freedom of speech. Sometimes these two issues come into conflict, rarely more so than in the recent debate about what is acceptable to say, or not to say, about trans people.”
As a result the site has now published a list of principles spelling out how discussion of transgender issues will be moderated, banning negative generalisations about any group and introducing a policy of zero tolerance on rude or aggressive behaviour towards Mumsnet’s moderation team, who have been tested “to the absolute limit” by the debate.
As part of the new policy Mumsnet moderators are now likely to delete potentially “hurtful” comments that use trans people’s former names, posts which use pronouns they have consciously rejected, or mention the term “Trans-Identified Male”.
In return, the Mumsnet moderators are likely to delete terms such as “cis” or “Terf” (Trans-exclusionary radical feminist) which will “make civil debate less likely” on the basis that they are are “affront” to many feminists.
In April Roberts warned that “thought-police action” around discussion of the topic was resulting in the shutting down of the “right to be able to disagree and immediately labelling it as transphobic”. Speaking with the Sunday Times, she said: “A significant minority of our users feel very strongly about women’s rights. This is an issue that needs to be discussed and that’s why we’re prepared to take any potential advertising hit.”
Last month a group of women broke into a men-only swimming pool in north London in protest at proposed changes to gender identification laws, following a campaign that originated on the Mumsnet forums. The protestors, who insisted that they self-identified as male, claimed the changes enable predatory men to target women in single-sex facilities.
Earlier this year a former Mumsnet intern tweeted the IP addresses of forum users who dispute transgender rights, claiming the “vast majority” of discussions of trans issues on the site “descend into scaremongering” and staff concerns were often dismissed.
Nick Baker, outreach and communications manager of Hero, a LGBQT rights organisation, broadly welcomed the change in moderation policies: “The forums on gender at Mumsnet have for a long time been a horrible place for anyone who advocates for LGBTQ+ rights.”
“Mumsnet have at last recognised this issue and the damaging effect it has on trans people and that sweeping negative generalisations about any group will not be tolerated. However, the proposed policy to also moderate terms such as cisgender [identifying with the gender one has at birth] show that the forums may not be set up to enable balanced discussion on gender identity.”