Guardian on 'Toxic Trans Debate'

The new argument seems to be that trans rights activists have tried to engage in respectful debate on these issue

When was that? I must have missed it.

The likes of Whittle are far more canny and always knew the score. They created the smoke and mirrors. They will be regrouping to create a new narrative that may wash better with the public.

A couple of weeks ago a narrative was 'feminists should be spending time and money on more pressing concerns eg funding for refuge, rape support etc'

This is a new narrative (heard elsewhere), "these voices are making trans people look like the extremists."

Observer Sun 29 Apr 2018
"Violent misogyny is unfortunately not confined to the internet’s ‘incels’"
Catherine Bennett
(extract)
And further demonstrating that misogynistic tropes are by no means the monopoly of resentful male virgins, curators at San Francisco library are currently staging an exhibition featuring a display of dissident-silencing weaponry (axes and bats) and other hate-advertising artefacts.

Photographs of one vitrine, featuring a red bespattered T-shirt reading: “I punch terfs!” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists/women who disagree with me), may have struck a chord with anyone following the current UK debate about the government’s self-ID proposals. To date, threats, from one side, which echo, inescapably, some of those in the pro-Rodger playbook (“die in a fire terf scum”) have yet to generate comparably widespread concern, even after a woman was punched. Her assailant had earlier expressed the wish to “fuck up some terfs”.(continues)

concludes:
If sexism does not explain how rapidly the language employed against dissenting women (including some trans women) in the UK self-ID debate, degenerated, in some quarters, into generic-sounding obscenities (eg, to unco-operative lesbians, “choke on my ladydick”), perhaps it’s because social media has for so long facilitated the delusion that hate speech, as applied to women, is simply part of the landscape.

The very odiousness of the misogynist language that has become, according (pre-Rodger) to one academic, Emma Alice Jane, “a lingua franca in many sectors of the cybersphere”, may help explain, she argues, why the “ethical and material implications” of this form of hate speech have been so under-studied. Hate speech that persists unchallenged, by both – for their different reasons – reactionaries and progressives, is unlikely, anyway, to be corrected.

Maybe women should skim the Elliot Rodger plan for subjugating their sex, if only to appreciate that, once non-subservient women are expected to live with obscene online threats – and axe exhibitions and punching – at least some elements of his vision have surely been realised."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/29/violent-misogyny-not-confined-to-internet-incels

Those comments bu CursedE show just how removed many TRAs are from understanding widespread public opinion. The controlling/stifling/preventing debate has enabled many to labour under the misapprehension that those, like the Guardian, who spouted TWAW actually believed there were no differences between TW and women.
The likes of Whittle are far more canny and always knew the score. They created the smoke and mirrors. They will be regrouping to create a new narrative that may wash better with the public.
I expect to see lots of in fighting and factionalism occurring amounts TRAs as some will become distraught that their narratives are openly dismissed whilst others will distance themselves from those who are losing the plot in order to try and put forth something that might fly.

Also in the Guardian:
"The far right: ‘Lone-wolf’ terrorists and domestic violence: it’s time to start joining the dots"
Suzanne Moore

(concludes)
"The left is losing this battle because, as ever, it has more important ones to fight. The woke boys of Twitter get their knickers in a twist flashing their feminist credentials about sex work or anything that caters to the needs of men. Meanwhile, lists of instructions about how to fight fascism have been published since a fascist was elected in Brazil. Here is a racist man, openly anti-gay, anti-women and pro-torture, yet again there is little understanding of how feminism is central to fighting this. By failing to understand how power operates through gender and race, as well as economics, the left fragments in the face of populist discourse that emphasises all that some men have lost.

This is the “alt-right” taking power; there is a crisis of social democracy and a crisis of liberalism. But the thread that weaves through all these far-right movements? Name it. These are movements of men who want to turn the clock back to a time when women had few rights. This movement is global: look at Russia partly decriminalising domestic violence.

For the left to fight this, it must pay attention. Jewish people have been saying they feel under threat for a long time, yet this was questioned. Feminists have analysed male violence for decades, but this is somehow old-fashioned in the new struggles about the use of changing rooms.

We talk of gender as a construct precisely because we think there can be new forms of masculinity as well as femininity, new ways of organising ourselves that don’t depend on brute force. That may be optimistic as Jair Bolsonaro comes to power alongside Trump, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Mohammed bin Salman.

The point is that not one of these men had to actively radicalise their followers. That is what patriarchy does as it bubbles away under the surface, demonising whatever it deems different. Welcome to the new hatred, same as the old hatred. Without understanding this, the left is impotent."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/29/lone-wolf-terrorists-and-domestic-violence-its-time-to-start-joining-the-dots

True oldcrone

But I will never forgive the BBC, the Guardian, the Labour Party, the sorry remains of the LIbDems, all the corporate sycophants who signed up to Stonewall's demonisation of women, most of our MPs, and most of our universities.

What about if we include transmen?

From the same article:

And I know, there’s someone out there reading this thinking, “well I can’t be anti-trans, I support trans men because they’re female and therefore women, and I’m pro-women!” This is also an anti-trans statement to make because you’re denying the lived trans experience of that person.

If you assert that you’re pro-women, but don’t include trans women in that then by definition you are anti-trans. There’s no two ways about that.

What about if we include transmen?

That medium article is from someone who seems to live on twitter, and just shows exactly what the activists want. You must agree that someone is a woman if they say they are, otherwise you are "anti-trans".

I agree, MsBeaujangles. It would be unhelpful if we ended up just having a debate about who had silenced the original debate.

efferlunt and sceptical woman - this reminds me strongly of tactics used when I was involved in a campaign against a major development, ages ago. The developers' PR company described the campaign group as hysterical, unrepresentative etc and repeatedly used disparaging words and snappy phrases so they were used in headlines in the local newspaper. They also set hares running by saying "there's a rumour going round that..." and off it went.

Hence the "toxic debate" phrase and other quotable quotes which have been picked up by the media.

There's quite a lot of clever PR here.

Medium on the Guardian's stance - complete, oddly, with an illustration from Sandy Draws Badly

Following the Guardian statement on trans rights recently, where they took the party line that in essence trans rights and acceptance were oppositional or ignorant towards women’s rights, I did a quick poll...

A bunch of trans exclusionary radical feminists got together and started politically organising against trans rights; and one of their go to ways to attempt to emotionally manipulate people is to pit trans women’s rights against cis women’s rights...

Because the very premise baked into the statement they are making when they say “I’m not anti-trans, I’m pro-women” is very much an anti-trans sentiment. As the entire argument being had is “do trans women count as “women” or not?” If you assert that you’re pro-women, but don’t include trans women in that then by definition you are anti-trans. There’s no two ways about that.

medium.com/@notCursedE/im-not-anti-trans-i-m-pro-women-5044147df4f5

That vampire’s castle stuff is really good. Not seen that before. But written before Owen Jones went where he’s gone now. He’s now master of the castle isn’t he ?

Whilst the 'oh, we've been so reasonable' suggestions are frustrating, the key thing is for debate to happen and the reasoned arguments to be heard.
Debating whether people were/weren't silenced and whose fault it is serves as a distraction and could be the emergency strategy about to be employed to deflect debate away from the real debate to be had!

I've been thinking about Mark Fisher (RIP k-punk) a lot lately, arranfan.

Reading Prof. Whittle's faux concern about the lack of a reasoned discussion with GC academics and how Trans academics have mostly tried really hard not to accuse puts me in mind of Mark Fisher (a lengthy read and I don't share the sympathy for Owen Jones but maybe he did do more for raising class issues than I recall):

The Vampires’ Castle feeds on the energy and anxieties and vulnerabilities of young students, but most of all it lives by converting the suffering of particular groups – the more ‘marginal’ the better – into academic capital. The most lauded figures in the Vampires’ Castle are those who have spotted a new market in suffering – those who can find a group more oppressed and subjugated than any previously exploited will find themselves promoted through the ranks very quickly.
...
The bourgeois-identitarian left knows how to propagate guilt and conduct a witch hunt, but it doesn’t know how to make converts. But that, after all, is not the point. The aim is not to popularise a leftist position, or to win people over to it, but to remain in a position of elite superiority, but now with class superiority redoubled by moral superiority too. ‘How dare you talk – it’s we who speak for those who suffer!’

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

it's not a bad article considering what paper it's in

last word to Whittle and Stonewall, but the carefully evidenced article above really contradicts what they say

I really don't see how anyone could walk away from that article thinking

1. that academics aren't being silenced OR
2. that the silencing of academics in this way is OK

academic worker, comparative gender historian, queer phenomenologist, Hegelian Marxist, and Londoner.

Well, colour me shocked.

Stephen Whittle gets the last word but I don’t think that’s as significant in a written article where people often stop reading before the end. Rosa Freedman, Kathleen Stock and 3 other academics get their say first. I think it’s a pretty good piece and while I’m tempted to be curmudgeonly because it’s the Guardian, I’m going to resist because I want to win this.

Some are not happy about The Grauniad's apparent new direction:
newsocialist.org.uk/on-the-guardians-transphobic-centrism/

By the way - still way too little, way too late, Grauniad.

I still won't be giving you a fiver a month. I will still avoid clicking onto any of your pages and providing you with advertising income unless the article is a topic of discussion hereabouts.

You'll have to try much harder to get any business from me.

Trans academics have mostly tried really hard not to accuse

ORLY, Stephen?

Agree this is much more balanced than the Guardian has been previously. But the Stephen Whittle quote is somewhat misleading. Talking about 'gender reassignment' will make most people think this is about people having major changes to their bodies to make them resemble the opposite sex. Not about fully intact males signing a declaration to make them legally female.

NotBadConsidering it was on the front page when I clicked on to the Guardian website about 20 mins ago.

I only scan the Guardian these days so I wouldn't have seen it had it been buried. I'm also quite pleased to see a more 'balanced' article for once. I wonder if the Guardian is starting to realise that they are alienating some of their core readership.

As well as many abusive comments on Twitter, she has been shown a written request from an academic at another university asking for her to be blacklisted from giving any papers or attending events in their law school.

Earlier this month Freedman gave a talk on the United Nations Human Rights Council at Essex University. Prior to it, students there called for her to be barred from campus and her talk cancelled.

How can they argue that it's feminists who are shutting down the debate, while they are the ones who are no platforming the feminists? #translogic