Another Mermaid statement: about Good Morning Britain and Caroline Farrow

The reason Susie Green doesn't like the word castration is because the whole world knows it means cutting your genitals off. It will make men everywhere wince.

Because it's extreme. It's not the word, it's the action!

The issue is whether castration is a clarifying term or a obfuscating term.

I absolutely love it when a few words assist people to think clearly about a complex issue.

The above post is a good example.

Alan Turing consented to Castration rather than imprisonment

Its not consent if its under duress and threat...

Of course it's loaded, this is just silly.

Can you explain why you think it's a loaded term? The dictionary definition has already been posted in this thread. I can't see what is 'loaded' about using a word to mean its correct dictionary definition.

I think we understand each other now.

nauticant said it a lot more succinctly than me....

Of course it's loaded, this is just silly.

Caroline is a journalist. She used a brutal term that comes loaded with connotations of lack of consent because she thinks it is a brutal act and one that a 15 year old can't consent to. That's the point! If she didn't think that, she wouldn't have been worrying about exposing it, she'd be writing about Brexit or whatever.

This is why we use the term "mutilation" instead of "cutting". We use a brutal term because we expose a brutal act. We don't pretend it's neutral.

language is not neutral

Everything is a loaded term. The issue is whether castration is a clarifying term or a obfuscating term.

"Can the discussion about trans children please now become less toxic and abusive"

Sure! But what makes a "trans child"? Is it a the scorn of homophobic parent, or pressure from an overly-woke parent? What about parents who are transing their children to fufill their own psychological need? What about ROGD, a rise in the number of girls identifying as boys. Then there's the problem of giving offlabel meds to minors, irreparable physical damage caused by binders and surgeries. Not to mention the impact of all this on other children, who are losing access to single sex spaces and being told up means down. We're here, waiting patiently for a civilised talk about trans children. Are you ready to join us at the table?

Many of us appreciate R0wantrees' contextual posts.

Just skim past them if they don't interest you.

BorsetshireBlew

The discussion is currently about LGBT+ rights and Alan Turing.
I have included two carefully selected extracts from an article which has relevence to both points.

This is how I post.
Maybe you're new?

There are current attempts by monitors to prevent this which you may or not be aware of.

If you are going to argue using figures from history, please at at the very least read their Wikipedia page to get an idea of what you are talking about.

What does Alan Turing have to do with this situation? Why all that c&p rowantrees?

April 2016 Independent:
'GCHQ apologises for 'horrifying' treatment of Alan Turing and discrimination against other LGBT people'

(extract)
"Robert Hannigan is the director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the successor to the Government Code and Cypher School which first employed and then summarily fired Mr Turing.

LGBT individuals were banned from joining the espionage organisation until the 1990s, because of what Mr Hannigan referred to as "completely archaic rules on sexuality".

Speaking at a conference hosted by gay rights charity Stonewall, he said he had been asked to apologise and added: "I am happy to that today and to say how sorry I am that he and so many others were treated in this way, right up until the 1990s when the policy was rightly changed.

"The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the Cold War, but it does not make it any less wrong and we should apologise for it.

"Their suffering was our loss, and it was the nation's loss too, because we cannot know what [those] who were dismissed would have gone on to do and achieve. We did not learn our lesson from Turing." (continues)

However, in 1952 [Turing] pled guilty to a charge of public indecency, admitting he was in a homosexual relationship with Arnold Murray. Offered the choice between prison and libido-reducing injections, he opted for the latter.

The chemical castration rendered him impotent, and he is believed to have killed himself in 1954 by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

Stonewall chief executive Ruth Hunt said: "It’s vital that we leave no stone unturned to ensure that every single lesbian, gay, bi and trans person feels able to bring their whole self to work and is accepted without exception." (continues)

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gchq-apology-horrifying-treatment-alan-turing-lgbt-people-a6987021.html

Funny how you bring up the ill's of one kind of hormonal treatment while arguing for another....

Alan Turing consented to Castration rather than imprisonment.

Castration is something done to someone without their consent.

Nope.

The definition of castration is:
the removal of the testicles of a male animal or man.

Which is what happened.

No idea what Alan Turing has to do with this?

What would you call it, if not castration?

I don't think it's loaded, I think it's just not a euphemism. What are the alternatives?

orchidectomy - not many people know what that means
bottom surgery - a twee euphemism that invisiblises what's involved
removal of the testes - 'oh, you mean castration'

We should absolutely be questioning how many children are set on a path to permanent medical and surgical transition who would otherwise just turn out to be gay. A lot of it looks like the same old gay conversion therapy to me, just with added unicorns and glitter and a heap of dishonesty.

for her, the act is not neutral.

When can the removal of a child's gonads, and so their ability to reproduce, ever be a neutral act? Even when absolutely necessary to preserve life it's not neutral. It's a huge thing to do.

Show me a dictionary definition of castration which mentions consent.

Susannah Reid said 'so it wasn't illegal in the place where it was done. So to call it illegal is not true because it happened under the law in that country'

FGM is legal in the countries where it is carried out too. Taking a child from the UK for that is a crime

here's a tweet in response to Chris Packham's campaign to nominate Alan Turing as the greatest person of the 20th Century:

"Morning Chris I feel a shamed the way our country treated Alan Turing he was an absolute genius who helped end world war two at least to early. Because he was homosexual he was chemically castrated after the war and ended up poisoning himself with a red apple take care."

Castration is something done to someone without their consent.

Caroline believes the 15 year old in question was not capable of giving consent to the proposed operation, that's why she uses the term.

All language is loaded.

It's illegal to take your female child abroad for FGM even if FGM is legal in the destination country.
That's not an excuse.

don't be silly of course it's a loaded term.