Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian

I am not being an apologist for anything but, but ... we do know that guardian is likely to have some pretty strong internal influencers the other way and possibly they hold sway in how and when trans issues are covered?
So maybe gentle encouragement to say more and think harder is worth a punt?
Hadley Freeman is obviously GC and doesn’t write on the subject any more. Why?

andyoldlabour

Sorry cross posted with you.

At the risk of giving clicks to The Guardian here is the Hinsliff article.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

Here is one from the late and now apparently sainted Deborah Orr (of whom I am not a fan) which isn't much better.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/09/the-left-must-admit-the-truth-about-the-assaults-on-women-in-cologne

In response to the initial lack of response on the night which Orr is making so much of, Edinburgh has been running New Year's Eve celebrations in the city centre involving 100,000s people with nothing like what happened in Cologne. Indeed public gatherings in most Scottish cities and towns on this night are a long standing tradition. The slowness to respond on the night was probably down to a sense of wtf is happening.

Nowadays, comments are hardly ever allowed on articles in the Guardian.

Don't wish to derail, but here is her article about Cologne from 8th Jan 2016, and one from Deborah Orr a day later.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/09/the-left-must-admit-the-truth-about-the-assaults-on-women-in-cologne

(It's not often one piece of writing would have me putting someone in the "nope, fuck off forever" category but seriously, did you read it?)
that's it. Couldn't have put it better

*I don’t understand her comment about ‘two marginalised groups, each demanding protection from the other‘.
… Are transwomen demanding to be protected from women? *

Transwomen are demanding to be protected from the truth.

It's that rohypnol again, it does sound cruel to ban "a trans woman from women's services". Words are powerful and we should use words more accurately.

Yes. It's not cruel to ban all men from women's spaces. If you don't, they're no longer women's spaces, are they?
I understand this is difficult to understand if you work for the Guardian, where even Yaniv is a 'woman with male genitalia'.

She identifies some of the issues but it's clear that she really, really doesn't want to take a side. Janice Turner she is not.

I'm torn. Some of that article sounds roughly where I stood about 5 years ago and I think that, once you start asking questions, there's no going back. I'm also firmly of the view that we're only going to win this if people change their minds.

But then I remember the Cologne piece, which was when I seriously began wondering what was going on at the Guardian. That article went beyond 'can't we just be nice' and, if she's going to come back from that in my eyes, she's got a long way to travel.

So for now I'm just going to watch. It will be interesting to see if she gets a pile-on from the TWAW lobby and, if so, how she copes with it.

I think many Guardian columinists have a tone of contempt for ordinary people, on this issue they can't just dismiss the views as 'stupid' as there are so many intelligent women speaking out about it.

Irefuse to click on anything Gaby “they deserved it because they own mobile phones” hynchcliff writes. I want nothing to do with her internal misogyny

Me too. She is an idiot of the first order.

Also never forgiven her for the "poor marginalised men taking revenge on those young women having a night out in their own town with expensive mobile phones, how could they not commit mass organised rape and sexual assault?" Cologne column.

Fuck off Gaby. I don't read the Guardian anymore and you're one of the reasons why.

It's a puff piece - saying yes there should be a debate but hey the outcome should absolutely be that trans women be allowed in women's spaces , except maybe if pushed a Karen White type who may possibly be stopped by a risk assessment.

Thank you Gaby it is now ok for women to exclude transwomen from the spaces in exceptional circumstances. Fuck off - this sop isn’t worth anything. Single sex spaces are that - single sex.

The thing that annoys me most about Hinsliff is she’s either really stupid, or thinks all the people who reads her articles are really stupid. SunsetBeech can find these articles on a regular basis and updates the “This Never Happens” thread.

mobile.twitter.com/WNTTgra/status/1228347809298092033?s=19

So either Hinsliff is too stupid, as a journalist, to believe there are occurrences where children at schools are being placed in untenable positions, OR Hinsliff thinks we are all too stupid to find out about these sorts of things ourselves.

I do agree though that this sort of "both sides!" nonsense is about as much as can realistically be expected from The Guardian at this point. Watching them realize that they may have committed to a position that the general public views as absurd, after having spent years lecturing everyone about how abhorrent it is not to share that position, is grimly amusing.

There's a specific issue around pupils in SEND schools / colleges that teach pupils with autism in particular.

A young female who identifies as male may need specific physical support in specific circumstances to either keep themselves safe or support them with intimate hygiene etc.

In these situations a clear sex policy must be adopted in order to both protect her and staff; it would not be appropriate for a a male staff member to be dealing with the young person in a number of circumstances and vice versa.

They would also need to understand the sex based reasons behind this to maintain relationships with staff and understand situations in a debrief, and so an institution blurring the boundaries of sex and gender and having affirming policies across teaching and general practice opens themselves up to all sort of complex safeguarding issues.

Bluntly, what the Cologne piece told me is that Gaby has absolutely terrible judgement, a truckload of internalized misogyny, and no apparent backbone. So there is nothing surprising about the fact that she can't bring herself to say "maybe women have a right to object to being forced to accept random cock in spaces where we're naked" without then going "oh but that would be so cruel! how low can I limbo in order to prove that I'm a good girl who would hate to ever come across as thinking I deserve any rights? is this low enough? because I can go further, and other women bloody well better do the same if they know what's good for them".

“To ban a man from teenage girls’ changing rooms seems like the cruellest of repudiations”.

I remember the Cologne piece in The Guardian and being stunned (not in a good way) by it.

She comes close. She identifies that politicians and don’t want to speak out, don’t want to take a position, don’t understand why they don’t want to be heard. Then she fails to go the last step and point out why: because they are abused, cancelled, shouted down, and threatened with violence. This failure is then reflected in the later part where she thinks children don’t have problems at school.

It’s like a big dot-to-dot article and someone took Gaby’s chunky crayons away so it was left unfinished.

I don’t understand her comment about ‘two marginalised groups, each demanding protection from the other‘.

Women are asking for single-sex facilities and sports, protected from male intrusion, yes.

But are transwomen demanding to be protected from women? Seems more common to demand to be with women than protected from them.

Gaby also fails to mention the potential dangers in allowing any man who self ids into female only spaces, simply, it is open to exploitation. And any women pointing this out are no longer welcome in the Labour Party according to some of the leadership candidates.