Philosopher responds to Jane Clare Jones et al

One of my "friends" who is an academic has posted it too. I didn't click on it. She also seems to be pushing the why are feminists being so horrible line on this. She's led a fairly charmed life so it pisses me off as someone who has experienced years of male abuse, the effects I will never recover from, that she's trying to take away my safe spaces. Anyway I'm pleased to hear the article is a load of shit!

In part one he says that transitioning is nothing to do with stereotypes. In part two he talks about 'transitioning socially'. Isn't 'social transition' all about stereotypes?

Why not ask them which bits in particular they found persuasive? As you found it very difficult to pick out any meaning from the waffle.

I read a spot on "corrected it for you" of this article on twitter yesterday, but I'll be damned if I can find it now.

The Lara Adams Miller article NotAtMyAge cites is very good. And she can write.

Except that it ain't Shakespeare .

Good grief. He’s just proved the old saying about monkeys and typewriters hasn’t he?

Goodness me, he’s a bit waffly, isn’t he? Is he a real philosopher? The reason it’s so long-winded is that it is basically tautology after tautology, which is the one thing I remember being slammed for doing when I took an introductory philosophy module at Uni. Can’t back up your reasoning? Just make the same point in different words over and over and over again instead.

That article is shit, I can't imagine an academic philosopher writing anything like that. Even ones I think are dumb-asses. It was so poorly written, and shows such a lack of knowledge of basic argumentation, it's really almost unreadable.

But as far as the women on FB, I would ask them, what is it about this that you really find compelling, and then talk about what they are seeing. I would not say anything about handmaidens, it's patronising to tell people they only agree with something because they are too biased toward men to think for themselves, and it's no different from telling feminists they are biased by hating men. In any case, if they are biased, it's as likely toward progressive politics.

Not by a philosopher, but this article is so clearly and powerfully written it might be worth posting it in response to your colleague. I couldn't get to the end of the the word salad from the philosopher in Berlin.

medium.com/@LaraAdamsMiller/speaking-truth-to-power-in-the-era-of-trans-rights-activism-16a557a7c1cf

I also just want to point out that it's a philosophical fallacy to appeal to consensus.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

As is his appeal to motive (saying women are hateful)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive

Really, this is pretty embarrassing for a philosopher.

I've just read "Part 1: Do Trans People Reinforce Gender Stereotypes?" in the hope he would explain what 'being trans' is. He doesn't answer it, just says:

"most cis people are all too ready to dismiss a motivation for transition that they can’t relate to, and substitute something more familiar or more satisfying (like ‘they want to conform to stereotypes’, or ‘they’re deluded’ or ‘it’s a sexual thing’ or something even worse)."

So what is the motivation if it's not one of these things?

He says "One way to ask ‘what is gender identity’ is as a question about the nature of something whose existence is clear and uncontroversial."
If it's really that 'clear and uncontroversial', you'd think he'd be able to explain what it is.

So both "gender identity" and what it means to "be trans" are totally undefinable, but their existence is 'clear and uncontroversial'. He can explain what they're not, but not what they are.

A good link re stereotypes might be DT in the Telegraph. The prepubescent breasts article is vomit inducing and the funeral one is all about him and his clothes dilema.

AGP so clear with his fantasies.

Kristen the ex Leeds GIDS employee wrote a great piece about treatment.

Also Michael Biggs article re blockers.

My goodness that's verbose, isn't it?

As far as I can see, it boils down to three points.

1. It's not about stereotypes or "born in the wrong body" - these are just metaphors to explain as best one can to the "cis" [sic] world what it is to be trans.

OK mate, you're the philosopher. If these are not what "being trans" is, tell me what it is. In a way that isn't circular and doesn't resort to stereotypes.

2. No-one is pushed into being trans because they're gender non-conforming.

Straightforwardly false. We have clinicians resigning from the Tavistock, the UK's leading gender clinic, over this issue.

3. Trans people in women's spaces don't make women less safe.

J Yaniv, Karen White, Davina Ayrton, the Sheffield rapist on the run described to the public as a "woman who may be wearing men's clothes" (i.e. a man who likes cross dressing, who's gone back to wearing stereotypically male clothes so as not to draw attention to himself).

Oh, and that good old appeal to female socialisation: we must accept TWAW because not to do so would have terrible, awful consequences (and fuck the terrible awful consequences for women in prison, women's sports, women who want freedom of association, women who want a female HCP to perform intimate exams, women who want to know that when they go into an open-plan, single sex changing room, it actually is single sex...)

This blogpost is absolutely nonsense.
I think the key issue here is the cognitive dissonance. People, especially "academic" ones, just don't want to admit they have been taken in by a completely nonsensical ideology... And they really want the social props of being seen to be "inclusive."

Just linking directly to a useful article about common arguments by Kathleen Stock, Jane Clare Jones, Sophie Allen, Holly Lawford-Smith, Mary Leng, and Rebecca Reilly-Cooper

medium.com/@kathleenstock/doing-better-in-arguments-about-sex-and-gender-3bec3fc4bdb6

Good grief -couldn't get past the first paragraph. Apparently he's into panpsychism so not really a big surprise he swallows trans ideology.

'A lot of my work has been about panpsychism, the idea that (roughly) everything is conscious. More carefully put, modern panpsychism is the idea that some incredibly simple version of our own conscious experience is one of the fundamental properties of our universe’s matter, just like mass, charge, and spin, and that human beings inherit our complex consciousness from the intricately-related consciousness of our many material parts.'
I should ask your contact what they found so persuasive.

The best argument against this piece would just be to link to that Stanford professor's Ted talk advocating early medical intervention.

She talks about a 'baby girl with a penis'. Should deal nicely with "Part 2: Are People Being Pressured to Transition? (No)"

Thread here.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3661402-Horrifying-TED-talk-on-trans-children-by-paediatric-endocrinologist

Point 1 - bollocks. The whole GRC process is based on adherence to stereotypes (aka RLT). To get a GRC you literally have to prove you adhere to stereotypes. And frankly, I would add AGP into the mix here. Middle aged men getting a boner from inhabiting stereotypes. Plus any article written about passing and how sexy it is to be a woman and great to be cat-called, plus any gross Twitter comment denigrating GC women/ lesbians for not inhabiting feminine stereotypes.
The whole article is a pile of self-important bilge. What a tosser.

"It's a pompous piece of intellectual wankery which negates the reality of women's concerns and experiences."
Perfectly expressed Iminthewrongstory.

I think this is all you probably need thatdamnwoman. Succinct and to the point. Better than my "it's a load of waffling old shite".

I think you should stick to NotTerfNorCis post point 3, and the Equality Act.
There are several articles about the risks to women in mixed sex wards and the cost to the NHS of compensation, you could post those.

The phrase "trans and non-trans women" is a dead giveaway.

Reagrds philosophy, it's yer bleedin Wittgenstein, innit?

The only genuine propositions that we can use to make assertions about reality are contingent (‘empirical’) propositions, which are true if they agree with reality and false otherwise. From this it follows that all other apparent propositions are pseudo-propositions of various types and that all other uses of ‘true’ and ‘truth’ deviate markedly from the truth-by-correspondence (or agreement) that contingent propositions have in relation to reality.

In plain language, a cat that barks is not a fucking dog, alright?