Prosecco Stormfront [split topic]

[Kankurette]

It's the terminally online in an echo chamber. If you spend a lot of time on the internet and going to places that blast you with the same view all the time (and you're a bit dim) you'll start accepting it. Before long you'll start repeating it too. It doesn't have to have any basis in reality.

This would explain why someone started a thread on Craicnet (the Irish sub forum on Mumsnet) asking if Ireland was 'woke' and said that the US was 'very much (woke), especially in Democrat areas'. Isn't there a massive crackdown on trans kids and their parents going on in some states? How terminally online do you have to be to assume the US is 100% trans friendly?

[Dr Rock]

A mumsnet thread, excellent.

[Kankurette]

Poem for context, from the Glinner thread. Basically: Mumsnet poster writes shitty poem about how she can't vote for any of the major parties because they care more about pronouns than poverty. Four verses about trans stuff and one half-arsed 'well the Tories cut loads of funding to services and are in bed with Putin so they're bad too I guess' verse.

I'll see if I can stick it behind a Spoiler tag now I'm on desktop:

Spoiler alert

A poem for the politically homeless
[Username]


First-time poster, long-time lurker.
Inspired by recent posts, and with the local elections coming up, I've written a poem about the dilemma some of us left-leaning voters are facing at the moment. Hope its ok to post it here, I've no idea where else it would go, and to be honest most of its content was inspired by the brilliant, knowledgeable posters here.

Who the X will I vote for?

I haven't got a clue where I should place my voter's X
The Right is led by sociopaths, the Left disregards my sex
Women fought and lost their lives to give me a louder voice
But looking at my options I don't see a viable choice

Our PM's a compulsive liar with contempt for Queen and nation
Bought by one-percenters, Russian oligarchs and tax-dodging corporations
The Tories lack morality and destroy everything by stealth
Their only ideology is to accumulate more wealth
Self-serving Etonians, indifferent to the rules
They sell off all our assets and under-fund our hospitals and schools
They are seemingly immune to our cost-of-living crisis
Hence their lack of motivation to control our food and energy prices

You'd think the lies and corruption would leave an open goal
For the opposition party to regain some firm control
But Labour as it stands, is sadly no place for me
It's too busy stifling free speech to fight inequality
It's sad to see the party that once sought justice for the poor
Hijacked by extremists and their ideological culture war

The Left, what a sad indictment, a testament of our time
That despite record child poverty, mis-gendering is perceived a bigger crime
It's full of hate for women who politely disagree
that penises belong in female-only spaces and are opposed to Self ID
They call us Nazi bigots who should shut our TERFy mouths
Or lose our jobs and die in fires should we bravely dare speak out

To the Greens I am a "non-man" so I'm afraid they can't be trusted
As their poor grasp of reality suggests they are easily corrupted
Those who fight for sex-based rights are harassed, purged and dismissed
The environment, social justice and animal welfare seem way down on their list
Upholding women's rights, the Greens fail to understand
Doesn't equate to transphobia and wrong-think to be banned

The Lib Dems' shoddy safeguarding leaves me rather nervous
To vote for them, I'd be doing the young and vulnerable a considerable disservice
They are "firmly in favour of self-ID, trans rights, and non-binary recognition"
And don't welcome independent thinkers, by their own admission
Plus by hiking student fees, they helped create this dystopian situation
Where our bastions of free speech now indulge their "customers" #nodebates and temper tantrums

Divide and conquer, left and right, to stop us looking up
We need a new, independent party that's not rotten or corrupt
We need adults at the helm to say no, enough's enough
To halt this post-truth carnival; get real, compassionate but tough

So who the X will I vote for, when push comes to shove?
I have to concede defeat here and say none of the above

[close]

[Pink Gregory]

Love how a forum about parenting tips and supporting new mothers has become an incubator for far right politics.

[Kankurette]

I used to post on there because I liked the threads for a kids' book series I'm a massive fan of (not Harry cunting Potter, btw). I got banned a couple of years ago, can't remember why, but it was for the best because that site is fucking toxic. It's liberal on the surface - very pro-Remain, lots of threads moaning about Johnson - but deeply conservative underneath and it's getting much worse nowadays.

One major example; there's a subforum for black women and the poster who campaigned for it got tons of abuse from white posters. Even now, white posters keep showing up on there to complain about how 'Karen' is as bad as the n-word and have a go at black women for feeling alienated by the modern feminist movement and how dare they be so UNGRATEFUL. One thing that does crop up on BMN is the hyperfocus on trans people, coupled with Mumsnetters' willingness to support awful misogynistic men who are often racist to boot. FWR (Feminism and Women's Rights) is very bad for this. I've seen people in there support Lawrence Fox, Tucker Carlson, Trump, all sorts. If a man says something anti-trans, he's one of the good guys. Boris Johnson got a thread praising him when he made an anti-trans statement recently. There is actually a Sex and Gender Debate subforum but, surprise surprise, transphobia gets everywhere.

There's also been an increase in anti-abortion and homophobic threads. It's not as supportive of lesbians as it thinks. And, of course, posters are OBSESSED with calling everything 'woke'. 'Wokeness' to Mumsnet means thinking trans women are women and not men in dresses (and black people on their tellies, but it's mainly about trans people).

[Catalogue Trousers]

Poem for context, from the Glinner thread. Basically: Mumsnet poster writes shitty poem about how she can't vote for any of the major parties because they care more about pronouns than poverty. Four verses about trans stuff and one half-arsed 'well the Tories cut loads of funding to services and are in bed with Putin so they're bad too I guess' verse.

'Situation' rhymed with 'tantrums', a complete disregard for metre and rhythm, the whole thing smacks of some self-appointed office wit/'I'm mad, me!' type at their self-deluding, self-important worst.

Oh, and it's a hell of a lot of words to say REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, pardner.

[Better Midlands]

Ace.

MN is what it is, but FWR is something else - truely one of the nastiest, most toxic places on the internet. The transphobic content is bad enough but to (to paraphrase @Kankurette) Mean Girls bullying attitude from the mainly 50+ women in there is disgraceful.

The rings they run in to justify supporting Tucker Carslon, Caroline Farrow, Baroness Nicholson etc are astonishing.

For example.



Like, this poster must have lived through all this happening to her community but is willing to ignore defend Nicolson because she hates the trans.

[Better Midlands]

Also the way that FWR raids BMN and whitesplains Karen (in their world it originated from a white divorced man's post about his ex-wife on Reddit) is disgusting.

[Kankurette]

'Situation' rhymed with 'tantrums', a complete disregard for metre and rhythm, the whole thing smacks of some self-appointed office wit/'I'm mad, me!' type at their self-deluding, self-important worst.

Oh, and it's a hell of a lot of words to say REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, pardner.

Isn't 'reeee' a term for mocking autistic people ('ree' = the sound we make when we have meltdowns)?

Mumsnet humour is incredibly cringey. They're never as funny as they think they are and they love doing threads with autocorrects that totally happened, honest (like 'shall I call my baby Bin' when she means 'Ben', even though 'Ben' does not autocorrect to 'Bin', I tried it). FWR regulars get very defensive if you point out their willingness to defend misogynistic men, but they really do. And yes, it may have lesbians but it is overwhelmingly straight.

As for 'it's fascinating to think people should agree on everything', that doesn't apply to trans rights in the minds of Mumsnetters. How is voting against women marrying other women, or cutting down abortion time limits, protecting our rights again?

ETA: while I don't like how 'Karen' has come to mean 'any woman who makes a complaint' especially when used by white men, the white women on MN treat it as though it's a slur on a par with 'n*****'. And they've got a nasty habit of defending white women who try to get black people into trouble deliberately because white women can't be racist or something, which is news to Emmett Till's mum.

[Better Midlands]

Managed to find a racism that stuck my head from FWR (only the callout).

The original post was proceeded by something along the lines of "if a man wears a dress and puts on a wig and that makes him a woman then if..."



Six pages and only one poster called it out.

[Kankurette]

Yeah, they think being like Rachel Dolezal is the same as being trans. And whenever there's a cultural appropriation thread in AIBU, it never ends well. Loads of 'but Beyonce has blonde/straight hair' and not realising why that might be and the double standards about black women's hair.

[Elfking]

Love how a forum about parenting tips and supporting new mothers has become an incubator for far right politics.

In some ways it can make sense. New mums stuck at home all day, husbands at work, they're only company a lot of the time is the baby/small child. You want to share experiences, join a community of people experiencing the same situations so you go online. You talk with people and have a good time when something like transphobia comes up.

What do you do now?

You're lonely during the day and desperately want to talk to people your own age who, as previously stated, no how hard it can be to be a mother. You have to either cut off these potential new friends who were so welcoming when you talked about your child or you have to smile and nod. You see more people saying these things and it starts to sink in. They start making sense with their skewed facts and numbers, you're probably not going to go off to do your own research, besides you like these people.

Soon enough you become part of the crowd spreading the poison to the next mum in the same situation as yourself.

Of course any responsible admin would never have let things on their site get to that stage. Unfortunately if you let these people poison the well it will spread and soon it feels like everyone is saying it and it's "common sense." Then your website has the reputation of being this right-wing place and starts attracting people of that persuasion to push the conversation even further right.

It is like a combination of an echo chamber and vulnerable people plus bad faith actors and poor admin.

This isn't meant to absolve the users there at all. At the end of the day they are their own people and are responsible for themselves but it's easy to see how a place like that spreads these far right ideas more than other places.

[Kankurette]

The moderating on Mumsnet is terrible, and it's badly run in general. They've recently upgraded the site and it's diabolical, there have been loads of complaints about how it doesn't work, threads keep popping up twice etc. It's also full of ads. They were trying to push the Premium version but it doesn't seem to have attracted a lot of people, not helped by Justine encouraging people to sign up during lockown because their financial situation was a bit shaky. Never mind the number of posters who'd lost jobs or were furloughed or just struggling in general. Way to not read the room.

It's also an open secret that tabloid journalists regularly trawl Mumsnet for stories, I've seen a few articles along the lines of 'Mum says she accidentally put fat balls for birds in little Jimmy's lunchbox' or whatever. Which of course means extra clicks for the site. There's a few Teflon posters there and it makes me wonder if they're plants or socks for the mods because they get away with so much.

[bgmnts]

I like that THE LEFT is one big glob of shared ideology, like the CaB hive mind.

Presumably there are shit loads of left wingers who arent arsed about transrights.

Plus as we know throughout history, the left fight both the centrist and the right wingers, who invariably align on enough issues that they are almost one in the same to me now. So if you're a centrist mumsnetter who wants to see transwomen (but not transmen? I dunno) thrown into a woodchipper, then vote tory i suppose.

[H-O-W-L]

There is actually a Sex and Gender Debate subforum but, surprise surprise, transphobia gets everywhere.

Bit like piss really.

[Better Midlands]

We're on to snooker now

[Huxleys Babkins]

Loving the blind presumption that there must be a good reason for segregating male and female competitors, even though they can't really think of one.

Ignore your own instincts and trust in the patriarchy, you can't go wrong.

[Blue Jam]

Helen Penisbeakerland

[bgmnts]

Loving the blind presumption that there must be a good reason for segregating male and female competitors, even though they can't really think of one.

Ignore your own instincts and trust in the patriarchy, you can't go wrong.

Darts would fuck these lot right up.

[Blue Jam]

We're on to snooker now

Serious answer: While there is a Women's World Snooker Tour, and it does serve to help players qualify for the main (mixed sex) tour, the women-only snooker tournaments aren't ranking events and mainly serve to raise the profile of the women's game and encourage more women to take up the sport. Ditto for the World Disability Snooker and Billiards Association, which aims to encourage disabled players and would-be players.

As for physical advantages like height and reach, none of that matters when you can play with the rest and extended cues, spiders etc- and using those isn't cheating, being handy with the rest is actually a huge advantage as it's far easier to cue over one's bridge hand. Height isn't really an advantage- Ken Doherty has won the world championship FFS, and six-time winner Ronnie O'Sullivan ain't that tall. Being a wheelchair user is no barrier either. Snooker is actually one of the most egalitarian sports in that regard. The main issue is that snooker clubs are often pretty scary and less than welcoming places- and I doubt being trans would be a good way to feel less intimidated at the prospect of walking into one.

This is just another example of TERFs suddenly pretending they give a fuck about sports they don't care about or understand at all.

[Blue Jam]

Just looked up Jamie Hunter and it seems she's actually crowdfunding for the funds to enter more snooker tournaments and take a shot at getting on the main tour. Hardly sounds like someone who transitioned to make some easy money- and in fact that's the reality for a lot of the medium-to-lower-ranked players on the main tour, a lot really struggled to make ends meet during lockdown (and we're talking about the top 128 in the world here). The women's tour only has two pros at present, hardly a way to make bank.

I also note Hunter is from

Spoiler alert

Widnes

[close]

and on those grounds alone I have to support her.

[imitationleather]

Surely no one gets into snooker for the money. Unless you have the exceptional talent to reach the very pinnacle of the sport you're probably going to be earning not much more than what the average UK salary is, and with the added ballache of having to be on the road for nearly the entire year.

I'd wager that MumsNet poster hasn't watched a snooker match in her life.

[Blue Jam]

Surely no one gets into snooker for the money.

Ditto for any sport really.

FYI, the current rankings for snooker, based on prize money:

https://wst.tv/rankings/

Note the singular million + prize money earner there. If you're not in the top 80 in the world you'd make more money managing a branch of Lidl.

[Kankurette]

Mumsnet has a sports forum but barely anyone posts there. The majority of them only give a shit about sport when they can whine about trans people. They freely admit they don't actually care about sport. I've certainly never seen them talk about snooker.

I mean, it's snooker. We're not talking about a contact sport so they can't pull the 'big strong men and tiny fragile women' card.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I've mentioned this on here before but I used to read the Mumsnet covid subforum and it was fill of people with utter contempt for the concerns of CV and CEV people and moaned about people who were still wearing masks. They would literally shout down the concerns of CEV and CV people posting on the same site. They also seemed to hate teachers and got annoyed at any concerns teachers had about having to be in a room full of 30 children.

I wonder if any of them are Garrison fans.

[Kankurette]

They hate social workers as well. They had an absolute field day with the Arthur Labinjo-Hughes case, lots of ranting about the evils of social workers for failing him, same with Logan Mwangi. Teachers do get short shrift as well and anyone who points out that teachers' jobs aren't that easy gets 'oh, you think teachers are saints, do you?'

The COVID section has a strong Us4Them/antivaxx contingent.

[Blue Jam]

Secondary school teacher would be my nightmare job. I'd honestly rather work in a call centre again. Do none of these people remember school?

As for social workers, either they're too judgemental and heavy-handed or they're too hands-off. Who'd be one eh?

[Zero Gravitas]

Ken MacLeod's most recent novel has a firewall protecting Scotland from meme diseases like these.

Jolly good idea I'd think too!

[greencalx]

There was a brief period that I was active on MN. I was peripherally aware of the site, but didn't visit until my "DW" mentioned she'd found a few entertaining threads and disabused me of the prejudice that it would be stuffed full of LOUD parenting types who LOUDLY and EARNESTLY educate their children so that onlookers can admire how good a job they are doing of parenting, then to be rewarded with one of those "it's just such hard work isn't it?" smiles that somehow manages to convey that they think you look like shit warmed up. My first impression was that it was quite a lot like here, with plenty of swearing and people just saying what they think rather than playing up to some supermum image.

Mostly I just scanned Active Conversations and dipped into frivolous threads while out and about with the wee one before he was old enough to hold a conversation. We did pick up some good tips around the toddler stage, dealing with tantrums and stuff. But other than that most of the "advice" and "support" on there was pretty useless - basically people just assuming that what worked for them would work for you, whereas I've come to realise that most things sort themselves out if you're patient (at least so far; who knows what the teen years will bring).

I used to have a laugh on some of the education boards and the unrealistic expectations that some parents seem to have of their children. I particularly enjoyed the threads whinging about the fact that nothing gets taught in the last two weeks of the year. I remember constantly thinking:

Do none of these people remember school?

The end-of-year wind-down was one of the best bits for me, and having seen how knackered the kids get towards the end, it's obvious that there's not much point in doing anything too intensive with them because it's not going to stick. May as well let your hair down and do some other stuff instead. Also, a big part of primary school is learning how to interact with other people: learning doesn't just happen when someone's teaching (indeed, it's never happening when I'm teaching...). A lot of them seemed to have a very Govean view of what education should be about, and as noted, not a huge amount of respect for teachers...

...and then inevitably you'd get a few days into the school holidays, and there'd be threads full of people going on about how hard it is to keep the kids amused all day, every day. And I'd be thinking: just imagine if you had 30 of these for 200 days a year, and none of them were your own children. I helped out a couple of times at the local nursery, once on the premises and once on a forest school excursion, and both times I was absolutely knackered after just a couple of hours. I realised that the kind of thing I take for granted - like being able to nip off for a cup of tea more or less when I want one - are basically impossible in this line of work. I guess the staff get used to it with practice, but it is surprisingly demanding.

I mentioned before the thread split that you'd get endless threads arguing about private vs state schools, with people going on about how they'd much rather have their kid go to the local comp, but it's just not quite right for them, when you know full well they never had any intention of ever using that school and have their kids mixing with the riff-raff from the neighbourhood. But they're never going to admit that - like I said before, I would have respected the honesty of someone who said "We moved here even though the local school is crap because we knew the money we saved on the house is less than the school fees" rather than inventing bizarre reasons around the right kind of homework or the specific shade of blazer their dull kids are made to wear. This is, of course, the same kind of thing that we see in the "genuine concerns" and discussions about sport, although it's become much less entertaining.

I bailed out before all the anti-trans stuff really took hold, although it was a "genuine concern" – and indeed, a comment that "you can say goodbye to competitive women's sport" like that was the slam-dunk debate winner – that led me to leave and delete my account. At that time, the obsession was with celebrity rapists, which I guess is more justified what with them being actual convicted rapists (as opposed to being assumed to be a rapist just because of how they express their gender identity), but there was an air of vigilantism about the whole thing that made me uncomfortable (although I do of course understand that many women have been victims of serious assault and the legal system has failed them).

Oh, and then to show it's "by parents for parents" there's a Dadsnet section. This comprises one thread about football, and a whole bunch of others started by women asking for a male opinion to justify their latest whinge about something that "DH" had just done (or not done). Again, I remember thinking, y'know, if I was criticised like that when I tried helping out around the house / with the kids, I'd probably be right down the pubs with my mates. Needless to say, I never tried expressing that "male opinion" (and in any case in our household it's me that does most of the housework and other domestic chores).

Sorry, that got a bit long. I needed the catharsis, clearly!

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

My niece celebrated her First Communion last September and I spent most of the afternoon in my parents' garden running around after niece, nephew, and their cousins on their dad's side while they played. I was knackered. Four kids aged 3 - 9. And I work out.