'Nuanced' discussion: dangerous?

Can she give examples of nuance & flexibility from the trans ideology side? So you can see what kind of thing she means?

The requirement for 'nuance' seems intended to complicate and cloud

I would avoid assuming her intentions here as it's clear from this thread that there are many possible reasons she's holding onto her view.

I think, generally, the most compelling reason that allows people to defy logic is when they know someone lovely who's trans, so the logical arguments seem like a personal attack on poor Katie (or whoever). So my money's on that theory (combined with likely stonewall influence).

I've been on threads in the past on MN where people have said things to me like 'I see what you're doing', the implication being that I'm in league with TRAs, if I ask any question that challenges the GC position. It instantly disengages the accused from the debate if the assumption is wrong as it makes the accuser look paranoid in thinking the accused is part of the conspiracy, when they were merely playing devil's advocate or exploring their own thinking.

So while I agree that the requirement for nuance when voiced by TRAs and others with skin in the game has the intention of muddying the waters, I'd be wary of suggesting that intention is present when someone else has adopted this language as they probably don't appreciate its original intent.

She hasn’t as far as I have seen actually formally laid out a position. All she’s done is said “I can’t stand with gc feminists” which of course means by implication she stands with trans activists without such requirements re: nuance/kindness.

In a way she’s paying you a compliment in that she knows actually arguing her position would mean you’d trounce her in terms of evidence based principled discussion. All she is actually doing is acting like a frightened squid dumping the obscuring ink of sophistry in an attempt to confuse anyone who might be watching. It’s pretty low hanging fruit intellectually speaking. Please don’t be intimidated by her.

So it's basically an argument about how you're arguing, rather than actually arguing the matter in hand?

A common technique...

Have you found you're talking less and less about the actual facts of the debate itself?

People can choose to use a less safe space if they want and prefer. The important thing is they don't feel they have to.

In any case, any third space suggestions I have seen, (other than family change rooms which are meant for families and to solve a different problem), is self-contained.

Try some "I'm sure gender dysphoria is very unpleasant, but why should that mean women have to give up their single sex spaces to males? "

Basically, you acknowledge the possibility that the (usually unrelated) claim may be true, but then you go straight back to your original point or question.

Even from a GC perspective, there are different possibilities and disagreements about political and legal solutions. People have different ideas about how to think about different situations, medical or otherwise. People have different views about causes of gender identity problems.

It's difficult to know without knowing the substance of your disagreement, but it sounds a bit as if you are presenting one position as the GC or radfem position. If so, that might be what's bothering the person you are talking to.

Also I’m guessing this barrister is more involved in criminal law than civil?

Why does one side have to be “nuanced” and “accommodating” but not both? Also being kind is not synonymous with agreement. One can be kind to someone and yet still disagree.

I think you have got it in your last paragraph and would send something like that to her and then sign off.

It's also possible this person is just in the group to do some sea-lioning, or whatever the technical term is.

There's no nuance about the binary nature of biological sex.

It's pretty ironic that most of the useful idiots supporting this gaslighting are supposedly well educated people.

Are you sure this barrister is actually female?

As in, actually female. Not identifies as female, or has been granted the right to have a birth certificate changed from male to female.

There are lawyers and judges who are the opposite sex to me but consider themselves female. I'd say they too are incapable of treating women fairly or upholding the fundamental right of women to be recognised as a sex and exercise their sex based rights.

I think you care way too much about what this one woman thinks!

Are you a bit intimidated by her credentials, op?

Don't be. Life is full of highly qualified fence sitters. They're not better than you.

Have you ever watched The Good Place? One of the main characters - Chidi - is a philosophy professor who only really ended up in hell because of his complete inability to come to any firm conclusions or make important decisions. Not sure why your op reminded me of him!

It’s very simple. You tell her that her demand for nuance is not a neutral objective position, but is a chosen political starting point which already demands the solution involves compromise and negotiation. Her requirement that you be nuanced is already asking you to give something up. Tell her you don’t want to be nuanced and you reject it as a biased starting point for the discussion. You cannot be nuanced about women and girl’s rights, dignity and safety, to which we have a legal right and protection enshrined in law. If she wants to try and give other women’s rights away that is her choice to try, but you are not prepared to.

So there is no point in further discussion as your initial starting points are incompatible.

Beware these apparently moderate, reasonable people!

Martin Luther King would agree with this position!

Martin Luther King was regularly asked to condemn some activists for their impatience, transgressions, and failure to conform to societal restrictions. He was instructed to condemn those who practised violence or rioted. He was told it would be better to compromise and negotiate.

MLK argued that we need a plurality of voices and approaches, see, Letter from a Birmingham Jail :

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth....we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue. ...

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

I suspect she is being made uncomfortable by the unwillingness of other women to tell the lie she has chosen to tell. Your honesty contrasts uncomfortably with her own dishonesty.

Her arguments lack any reason. She isn't rationalising her stance that 2+2=5, because she can't. She knows she can't.
All she can do is praise those who make a 'concession' that 2+2=4.765, or even 2+2=
4.105, for being 'nuanced' and 'moderate' and condemn those who won't budge from 2+2=4 as being intransigent.

Don't let her sophistication fool you. She's no more able to rationalise her position than any twitter TRA can. She isn't even trying.

Do women have the right to be recognised as physically, biologically different from men?
Do we have the right to differentiate ourselves factually, truthfully?

She seems to have no difficulty granting some men a very questionable right to differentiate themselves from other men.

That she cannot extend that principle to the much more obvious right of women to distinguish themselves from men suggests to me that she's not in any way invested in what is fair, principled or reasonable.

Only in granting some select few people the fundamental right to declare who they are the same as, or different from, and forbidding all others from from doing the same.

but I don't think there's one killer argument that's suddenly going to change everyone's minds immediately, especially if they've bought into the cognitive dissonance. The drip drip drip of news articles on different topics affected by the issue will have its effect over time for many

Precisely! And why this is a longer term task. It is going to take many years, with mounting evidence; news reports; articles; push-back in other countries etc - as well as, of course, genuine, open public debate