Bristol Law Professor Joanne Conaghan weighs in on the Gender Debate

I don't think I am ever going to understand it, but Tommy Cooper is brill

This takes me back to my university days of trying to understand postmodernism and deconstruction by translating it into plain English and then finding the emperor was stark bollock naked.

I think this is Humpty Dumpty philosophy. A word means what you want it to mean, neither more nor less - the question is who is to be master.

Urgh, that piece reads as if it's trying to be cleverer than it really is (not sure why - the author must be clever, surely?)

Just to play devil's advocate a little with something OldCrone said upthread: "Why should the rest of society have to agree to a major change in a person's legal status because they have made a lifestyle choice?"

Arguably marriage is a lifestyle choice, which the rest of society has to accept and to which certain status and benefits are awarded.

However, society also gets to make the rules about what constitutes a legal marriage (and this varies immensely from culture to culture, country to country) and anyone who tried to say "but I'm a wife because I say I am!" would be laughed at not pandered to.

Thats a brilliant sketch. The joke he plays on is that Jack is the slang name for Royal Navy sailors.

It was funny when Tommy Cooper did it pissed.

Tommy Cooper was non-binary before it was trendy.

I heart Jane Clare Jones

Jane Clare Jones's fisking:

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1075783838217973760

Just because we can think how the interact doesn't mean we are going to think the male sex is the same as the female sex. This trick has been tried already.

Its the Tommy Cooper trick of bottle glass, glass bottle, bottle bottle, glass glass.

It was funny when Tommy Cooper did it pissed.

www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tommy+cooper+bottle+glass+trick&view=detail&mid=31D8585482D31D711D9B31D8585482D31D711D9B&FORM=VIRE

This bit is new to me:

“There is a conceptual error here... I would say that the 'sex' and 'gender' are analytically distinct... that is, we can usefully think them separately, and then also, because we can think them separately, we can also think how they interact. To think that having a sex/
gender distinction means that you think there there is no meaningful relation or interaction between them is just to misunderstand what such a distinction is. As is to think that understanding that they interact, and are both, in fact, mediated by each other, in some way
·undermines such a distinction.
Bodies exist, they are mediated by culture, and culture is also, mediated by bodies. “

“I think this will always be the case when law attempts to incorporate ideology rather than material fact”

Yes. Did you notice she said there is “evidence” of the whole anthropological lots-of-sexes stuff but didn’t identify it?

The excellent Jane Clare Jones (aka @LadyPrincesexual ) has commented on the piece in the OP in an extensive Twitter thread:

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1075783838217973760

As ever, the whole is worth reading.

Bristol used to be very highly regarded for law. If I met anyone thinking of studying law at Bristol I would certainly say "are you sure?" Wilst other academics can probably be avoided, the Head of a School is likely to set the tone. And I honestly failed to understand the article.

I think this will always be the case when law attempts to incorporate ideology rather than material fact. And when careers depend upon doing it.

It's clearer and clearer that some academics writing on this are so far behind the curve that it's embarrassing to read.

It's absolutely the case. And not just in academia but in the entire mediating class of politics, institutions, third sector and media, with a few honourable exceptions. It's embarrassing, really, especially when you consider what they're trying to prop up is jelly baby brains aligning with jelly baby bodies.

It would be a game changer for me if, as a parent, I was going to send my child to study law at that University.

So 'hmmm' away, but my support and money counts at the end of the day.

Joanne Conaghan's argument is based on the nebulous ideological premise that trans women are women.

Hence it's a non starter. And everything else that follows is based on assumptions following on from that ideological viewpoint.

It's poor and lacks intellectual weight.

Only a saint would have been able to resist such a name-change....

It’s from The Princess Bride:

"What about marginalised groups like the female prisoners sexually assaulted by Karen White. What are they? Collateral damage to this wonderful new brand of feminism"

yep, I hadn't thought of that.

I don’t teach my daughter to “be kind” indiscriminately

Good point. When it's put like that, you see it start to wander into all kinds of meanings, some of which are patronising (be kind to that group) or which encourage surrender of normal boundaries (girls saying they are uncomfortable to shower with a male should be reminded to be kind.) It also gets used to guilt women into self sacrifice without desire for reciprocation - an old fashioned virtue, but one that mostly modern feminism and most people have a problem with.

What's the quote? 'You keep using that word - I do not think you know what it means.'

Waterparc - thank you, that is helpful. I read the article again (slooooowly) with what you said in mind.

She's just wagging a finger at the gender critical feminists who don't think a penis is a female body part and so are not doing feminism properly.

She talks about marginalized groups enriching feminism. What about marginalised groups like the female prisoners sexually assaulted by Karen White. What are they? Collateral damage to this wonderful new brand of feminism.

a feminism...that invokes an exclusionary definition of womanhood

What utter claptrap. It's nonsense. Horses aren't women. Cups aren't women. Fields aren't women. Word definitions are not 'inclusive' or meant to be, they can't be without losing any meaning.

They're behind the curve because things are happening in the real world and they are now, after the event, trying to retrofit an intellectual framework to explain why it's all OK.

We've seen what's going on, we've seen that the justifications for it are gobsmackingly bogus, and we're now tackling this in the real world. While academics like Conaghan have developed a keen interest in their own fundament.

Same old same old. I do like annandale pointing out that we may perhaps have thought of these things already.

It's clearer and clearer that some academics writing on this are so far behind the curve that it's embarrassing to read. Surely they have an impreative to try to say something new and not just resort to posting that they don't like women that are unbelievers.

I get that they're desperate to try to shore up a shaky legal situation for their pals but it's so blatantly biased any objectivity has gone out the window. Be kind...………..unless of course you are a believer then you can just point and say, I don't like those people.