Guardian on 'Toxic Trans Debate'

Whittle and others were probably hoping they could get the changes made without anyone noticing. Like they did with the original GRA.

A lot easier in 2004 before Youtube and Twitter.

If you want to change the law you have to persuade people it would be a good thing to do.

Whittle and others were probably hoping they could get the changes made without anyone noticing. Like they did with the original GRA.

So they figure if they pretend its feminists saying nodebate then people will go their way.

But then they'll actually have to have a debate.

Whittle on twitter is saying how much he does debate this. Shepherd says she didn't refuse to take part. A new narrative is being woven.
And we have always been at war with East Asia.

To be fair to them they have appeared in print alongside the opposing view. But this unwillingness to sit in a room and be questioned and challenged by the opposing view, and do the same in return. It won't result in good legislation. It's so infuriating. If you want to change the law you have to persuade people it would be a good thing to do.

The Guardian bleating about the ‘toxic’ trans debate is like BP crying over oil-drenched cormorants.

Oh yes. You are brilliant in your caustic observations.

Following extensive discussion with someone, I've decided to amend the latter to: don't confuse inclusion, intrusion, and invasion to

don't confuse inclusion, incursion, intrusion, and invasion.

Hope this is not too late for T-shirts, bags, or tattoos (this last would be very unfortunate tho' I'm open to arguments that it's now become too wordy for a tattoo).

Surely it’s a numbers game, alienating and demonizing women for saying women don’t have penises (let alone most men) makes them look like idiotic deniers of reality as well as stupid for chasing away sensible readers.

Someone must be waking up to some science and objective reality ones hopes.

The new argument seems to be that trans rights activists have tried to engage in respectful debate on these issue but the hysterical response from womens’ groips is ‘turning the debate toxic’

Yes, I have noticed this huge change in direction.

I wonder if this is because they have finally clicked on that their nodebate stance was actually turning more people GC. So they figure if they pretend its feminists saying nodebate then people will go their way. Except, that noone ever seems to go the opposite way,. its a one way street.

Anyone else get the feeling they’ve been TOLD to cover this in a more balanced way and are doing it rather like a five year old apologising with fingers crossed behind their back?

Yes. Which is why they'll still be getting no clicks from me on news or reviews or anything else unless we are discussing a particular article here.

We don't need gender, sex is sufficient. Live as you wish, dress as you wish, don't startle the horses: don't confuse inclusion, intrusion, and invasion.

THIS!! I want this in a T-shirt and a bag and as a tattoo.

Really I don’t care - but if you want to create laws that divide people by gender you need to explain why.

If the law is to be changed, the onus should be on those who want the change to show that the net benefit of the change would outweigh any risks.

And yes, why on earth should 'gender' be recognised in law at all?

One of Stephen Whittle's key legal battles was in respect of being recognised as father

Given that it is possible to have two women or two men on a birth certificate without any problem (nobody has ever had to prove that both parents on birth certificate are related to the child), is this still an issue?

changing it is relatively trivial, because 'gender' is simply about personality.

And yet nobody seems to be able to explain why gender needs to be recognised.

No Stephen Whittle I don’t have a clue why you thought you should have been a boy when you were 10. You are right, I don’t have the faintest idea how you feel and I don’t have the foggiest why you would feel that you aren’t female. Really I don’t care - but if you want to create laws that divide people by gender you need to explain why.

I've always thought that people know, fundamentally, which party needs sex-appropriate contraception in order for contraception to work.

Do you think Stephen Whittle knows how babies are made?

One of Stephen Whittle's key legal battles was in respect of being recognised as father:

Wiki
"The Whittles' efforts to gain recognition of Stephen as their children's legal father led to X, Y and Z v. The United Kingdom before the European Court of Human Rights in 1996. When the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force in April 2005, Whittle obtained a new, male birth certificate. He then married Sarah (née Rutherford) later that year. They had been cohabiting since 1979. They have four children by artificial insemination, the first of whom was born on 13 October 1992. In April 2006, they jointly adopted the children, making Whittle their legal father."

I think Whittle would say that both males and females can belong to the class that produce large gametes. He would say that sex is far more complex than gametes alone and that when all things were considered, gamete production alone is far to crude a measurement for all the incredible complexities.

Fortunately, it seems as though 85% of the population disagree and so his views will get aired if he continues to stick his head above the parapet and stick with the views. My money is on him changing his views to create some other subterfuge to try and stop people realising that gender and sex have been deliberately conflated and gender identity doesn't involve changing sexed bodies.

Exactly Crone. That’s the kind of misconception that phraseology is intended to provoke. It fits in with all the narrative about rights and having a right to be who you are and all those emotive slogans that sound as if they are being oppressed because people “won’t accept them as the person they are”. Well yes, we won’t, but that’s because you want to legally wipe out the sex you were born and create a fiction without any evidence to show it’s safe or even why you feel it’s needed.

What is the Guardian afraid of?

Reality.

Anyone else get the feeling they’ve been TOLD to cover this in a more balanced way and are doing it rather like a five year old apologising with fingers crossed behind their back? Articles buried in a disused lavatory with a sign saying beware of the leopard on? But in a few years when all this hits the fan they’ll be able to say oh yes we covered it.

Oil drenched cormorants indeed

It sounds harmless. If it stated that the aim was to make it easier for trans people to change the sex listed on their birth certificate. For those who wondered and read further it would be an enormous eye opener as to what is already happening with regard to passports and driving licenses and just how easy it is to change those already.

I'm going to copy over something I posted on another thread about this. It shows how far we have to go to get people talking about the real issue here.

What is happening now, is that (at least some) transactivists are insisting that gender and sex are different. Since government has conflated the terms in the GRA, they are framing the GRA as being about 'gender' and not about sex, so that changing it is relatively trivial, because 'gender' is simply about personality. Some people who are getting their information from transactivists are wondering what the fuss is about, because having your 'gender' recognised is just like having your sexuality recognised, and not being discriminated against as a minority.

In the responses from organisations to the Scottish consultation on GRA reform, one of the young people from A&B Hangouts, "an online group of trans and gender-questioning young people who live throughout Argyll & Bute" (aged between 15 and 23), said:

'Well, needing medical evidence for gender is equating it with sex. I mean, you can’t really say that your place in society can be sussed out by a doctor. So... I mean, it’s a much more personal thing and I’d say self-declaration would be the only respectful way to go.'

This person clearly has not understood that the GRA is about legal sex. It's not about putting labels on your personality. How many other people have this misconception?

No-one can really know someone's sex so, let's just abolish sex in favour of gender.

Do you think Stephen Whittle knows how babies are made?

Agreed, LangCleg - Fisher's one of the thinkers that seems to be constantly brought up for me whenever I read something that chimes with something he wrote or promoted.

From the Vampire Castle piece (again):

But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group.
...
The second law of the Vampires’ Castle is: make thought and action appear very, very difficult.

people are forming judgments without the faintest idea how we actually feel.

My eyes are rolling again. Your “feel” doesn’t not trump the reality of why we have sex segregation.

And like OldCrone (back on page 1), I’m frustrated with that phrase “make it easier for trans people to have their preferred gender legally recognised”

It sounds harmless. If it stated that the aim was to make it easier for trans people to change the sex listed on their birth certificate. For those who wondered and read further it would be an enormous eye opener as to what is already happening with regard to passports and driving licenses and just how easy it is to change those already.

I suspect their campaign won’t work in the long run, but I’m pretty sure in a few years, we’ll be looking at this period as those of us who are old enough look at PIE. So, so much has been done under the radar and they moved the Overton window so far that we’re having to drag it back through all their layers of obfuscation.

Look now at the suggestions: we’re ‘painting them as extremists’ and thus ‘preventing debate’. Those at the forefront are extremists (literally TWAW and nobody must argue is extremist) and only a couple of weeks ago, they were arguing that there was to be no debate.

Ultimately, the further they shift the agenda, the more shifty they’ll look. But watching it unfold makes me want to scream.

So the eradication of sex as a category also eradicates transgenderism, doesn't it? Or is there some nuance of #translogic that I've missed?

The eradication of sex means that the terms female and women can refer to gender identity. Whittle suggests that it is very, very easy to determine gender (because people know their own gender) but oh so very hard to determine sex because, well because of some very, strong sciency type facts that show that sex is very tricksy to work out.
Therefore, let's just say that people know if they are female or a women, because of their feelings. No-one can really know someone's sex so, let's just abolish sex in favour of gender.

I've sometimes seen comments which are nothing to do with the article they're attached to, because the article someone wanted to comment on didn't allow comments.

So you could make your comment about the trans debate on the Halloween costume article. Or somewhere else. See how long it stays up. I might start doing that.