The Mumsnet Trap
British TERFs recruit by lying to women on the verge of a breakthrough. It’s happening here, too.
So help me, I did not intend to spend part of my week pitying the TERFs on Mumsnet, but, thanks to a truly fantastic article by Katie J.M. Baker at Lux Magazine, that’s where I wound up.
Mumsnet, which began as a parenting forum twenty years ago, has become the premier digital hub of the British TERF movement. Checking in on the “women’s rights” forum on a Saturday afternoon reveals users railing against trans people being allowed to donate blood (“haemoglobins won’t change if someone just identifies as a different gender”), or police reports identifying trans people by their correct genders (“rape suspects” will “choose to self-identify as female”). One of the most popular threads, with 270 comments and counting, objects to the concept of pronouns. Its title — “Why do we need pronouns when we have names?” — uses the pronoun “we.” Twice.
The first reasonable response is bafflement. Here are a bunch of well-off, mostly-white British women who logged on to discuss sleep training or milk pumps and wound up mounting a crusade against the English language. How did they get sucked in? The answer, Baker suggests, is simple: Being a new mom really, really blows.
These women log on in…
