Piers Morgan with Lisa Nandy on Good Morning Britain

It's not that we're not aware, goose, it's the observation that it doesn't focus on the women. As soon as you focus on the women, the bias becomes apparent.

And it's a massive bias.

Noting that women and well as men have it is an observation of the characteristics of a patriarchy.

Most women here are all too well aware of how some women will disadvantage other women by focusing on the men.

I think that's something to keep in mind, as there is a bit of a tendency on these boards to speak as if the views here represent all women.

You can't be unaware of the numerous posts talking about women who do not share these views, surely? And indeed entire threads about why that is?

Not really Goose & I think it was only you who claimed knowledge of what 'most' women would be happy with.

Oh, ffs.

As I asked yesterday, who designates such a judgement?

The same people who decide for men's events, maybe? Or I am sure if you think about it for three minutes you could think of something. Who do you like to decide which events you can go to, or which you daughters if you have any, could go to? If you had an issue with such a decision who would you go to about it?

Look, it's become impossible to talk to you because you are so set on focusing on something that is so very unrelated to what I wanted to say in the first place, which is only partly my own view anyway, and you don't seem to actually want to engage. I've got limited interest and time in spelling out the details of things I've already said and which you could probably see what the implications might be if you thought about it for two minutes which is exactly what I have to do to answer you.

Anyway, I'm off to work.

I think that's something to keep in mind, as there is a bit of a tendency on these boards to speak as if the views here represent all women.

Not really Goose & I think it was only you who claimed knowledge of what 'most' women would be happy with.

R0wantrees

Like all threads it talks about a lot of things. My comment which you objected to so much was largely an aside, noting - not even arguing but noting - that I suspect many women, members of the public, take a particular view. I think that's something to keep in mind, as there is a bit of a tendency on these boards to speak as if the views here represent all women. That's simply not accurate and in a discussion of politics, on the ground politics, that's important to realise. Nandy looks like a numpty to everyone, that's in large part because she's been in such a bubble on this issue. You can't operate from a bubble in the political sphere and GC feminists are no different, remaining unaware will not serve them in making their argument. More than that, people aren't wrong to want to take a wider view in terms of political solutions, a limited one will inevitably fail - that's the failure of identity politics and it's worthwhile being conscious that identity politics in part grew out of feminism.

Yes, I think that's certainly something to be addressed. It was patient focused in a way that failed to consider the larger picture of the people impacted.

It impacted/impacts women & girls.

Because most of those events are not events that have to be female only in any case.

As I asked yesterday, who designates such a judgement?

Whilst many saw the doctors role as 'gatekeepers' of desired surgery/medical intervention, the doctors also acted unilaterally as gatekeepers to women's spaces & services. They opened the gate without women's consent.

Yes, I think that's certainly something to be addressed. It was patient focused in a way that failed to consider the larger picture of the people impacted.

But I didn't say that feminists shouldn't think about it or state their opinion. What I am suggesting is that we don't end a public discussion about things like rights, or customs, or beliefs, based on any kind of centring of one group

The thread is focussed on Piers Morgan's interview with Lisa Nandy.
He asked about whether some males should compete in women's sport. He also stated he had no problem in viewing someone like India Willoughby as a woman.

Women & girls' sports do not 'need' to integrate some males.
This is an issue of fairness & Safeguarding whilst being in the context of women historically being excluded/limited from sports participation due to their sex.

Feminism by definition centres women & girls.

Piers Morgan's wish to extend the definition of 'woman' to include some males who have had extensive therapy & surgeries represents a barrier to the reassertion of women's sex-based rights & Safeguarding.

Why would specifically female-only social events be offered up as potentially therapeutic benefit for a small group of males?

Because most of those events are not events that have to be female only in any case. Just as women have asked men as a group to consider very carefully whether their men-only social events really need to be men only or of they could open to women who would like to join them. Given that in this situation we would be talking about a very small group, it's not likely to mean a huge influx or take-over.

I suspect that is where a lot of women will come from. They themselves want, and not only want but very much expect, groups of all kinds to be open to women unless there is a clear reason they are inherently focused on males. And their sense of what is just is going to tell them that they should extend the same consideration they expect themselves. I think convincing them that they should not would probably involve changing that larger expectation. Which IMO would be an uphill battle.

We need to be mindful that the doctors who offered 'transition' to sex-dysphoric men required them to use female spaces & services for two years as part of their 'test'.
Gender doctors provided letters of authorisation for males during this time in case they were questioned.
Whilst many saw the doctors role as 'gatekeepers' of desired surgery/medical intervention, the doctors also acted unilaterally as gatekeepers to women's spaces & services. They opened the gate without women's consent.

So just because most women currently see transsexualism as harmless, or as a distinct phenomenon to transgenderism, doesn't mean that this view is correct, much less that feminists should reinforce it. Rather, it makes more sense for us to debunk it.

Yes, of course it doesn't mean that is correct. And in general I think it is a good idea to look at issue from the perspective of groups who will be affected in an isolated way. It reveals problems that aren't always obvious otherwise.

But I didn't say that feminists shouldn't think about it or state their opinion. What I am suggesting is that we don't end a public discussion about things like rights, or customs, or beliefs, based on any kind of centring of one group - that's a problematic approach that leads to the kind of hierarchical dominance of one group, it has to because it leads to an attitude where no integration is possible. Far from this inner hatred of women or capitulation or be nice stuff, integration is the only way to avoid creating a hierarchy of dominance, it's a good and necessary quality. Being "strong" and squashing any inclinations to consider how our own needs and realities fit in with those of other groups is not a good approach.

The check on this isn't around being kind or not kind, it's around the reality of the situation - this is why something like the GRC could cause so much trouble. Something that in the minds of many people was meant to be a minor administrative fudge to solve a limited problem was based on the creation of a fiction which potentially had much larger implications.

In any discussion of how to treat transsexual persons I think it must start from material reality. Not, these people are now the other sex. But, these are women and men who are in an unusual situation so where do we place them?

Why would specifically female-only social events be offered up as potentially therapeutic benefit for a small group of males?

And there it is again.

Woman - adult, human service

My inclination would be to say that people in that situation would be admitted to social types of things, and possibly public toilets in certain instances though I'd prefer a third option, but not much else.

So the proposal is that some men, who even with significant therapy struggle with sex dysphoria, be admitted to social types of things, and possibly public toilets in certain instances?

I would think this would be very confusing for people with deep seated issues & likely unhelpful in the context of seeking effective talking therapy.

Most social situations are mixed sex.
Why would specifically female-only social events be offered up as potentially therapeutic benefit for a small group of males?

DonkeySkin

I think it's right that very many women don't feel particularly hard line. Because it hasn't affected them. And because they're not seeing this through the eyes of the women who it does affect, which was my point, really.

As we have noted on here, numerous times, women who identify as men, who one would have thought would play a huge role in the discourse of TruTrans advocacy, are never mentioned in it.

Perhaps one's inner Beryl makes it harder to be able to focus on women - particularly when you have a man/woman choice of focus. I don't think it's unusual, but when it's pointed out and one realises, really realises, it's often a bit of a shock.

For me, seeing all this through the eyes of feminism makes it much clearer. One of the things one has to do if talking to people in real life, is try and get them to put on some feminist glasses before you explain. Which, for obvious reasons, isn't always easy. And why things like sports and experimenting on children, resonate with more people. You don't need to be a feminist to see the unfairness in one, and the irresponsibility in the other.

Explaining the power dynamic behind the whole issue of the blurring of the sexes, and making woman dirty word, is harder. But once the focus is solely on the women, it becomes very much clearer.

Oh wow.
Unexpectedly massive nerdy post written on tiny phone

We’re on day 1 of limited social contact due to littlest DD’s life threatening immune disorder, we’re not in complete isolation but are mostly going to be stuck indoors (due to a suspected COVOID 19 case relating directly to school).

That’s my excuse, anyway!

This is public discourse. I've stated the pros and cons of treating post operative transsexuals as women above. What are your thoughts on it?

My own opinion? I generally agree with your pros and cons. I am very disinclined to create a situation where people are very encouraged to do something as extreme as transition with all the medical risks that entails.

However, I also think that there seem to be a very small number of people who even with significant therapy struggle with sex dysphoria, who find some relief, potentially, with transition. I would like to see that as a last ditch solution and better solutions sought, but I don't really think I or anyone here is in a position to say that should never ever be done in any individual case.

My inclination would be to say that people in that situation would be admitted to social types of things, and possibly public toilets in certain instances though I'd prefer a third option, but not much else. Certainly they'd not count as women with regards to statistics or as women's officers or anything like that, and prisons would be right out IMO.

I don't think "vetted through significant psychoanalysis" represents the norm for trans people in any country.

Agree. I think a few doctors probably had a pretty tight reign on the patients they chose to take on between the 50s and 90s but there have always been people who have transitioned without any proper supervision, using black market hormones etc.
Look at all the trans people who where hanging around Andy Warhol’s factory, as an obvious example.

The website a ‘Gender Variance Who’s Who’ is a giant compilation of trans stories and gender doctors and it’s chock full of stories of transitioners bypassing or gaming the psychiatric ‘gatekeeping’ system.
It’s compiled by a TS called ‘Zagria’, who describes being rejected by the ‘Clarke Institute’ in the 80s and then accepted by Russell Reid in 87 (Reid was later found guilty of ‘serious professional misconduct’ by the GMC but was allowed to continue practicing - WTF? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Reid ).

Zagria is startlingly and unfashionably frank about the peculiarity of trans history and the website is perhaps unintentionally revealing, Zagria describes it as an ‘encyclopaedia’, and it is certainly an ambitious attempt at a comprehensive record - but it’s also full of the authors scathing personal opinions on other trans people, doctors and critics of transgenderism.

(see the review of Christine Burns’ ‘TransBritain’ as an example. Interestingly both Burns and Whittle appear on the index but both links lead to a ‘page not available’ notice. Perhaps someone filed a take down request, as it seems weird that an ‘encyclopaedia of gender variance’ would omit biographies of such prominent activists?

zagria.blogspot.com/p/index.html?m=1

Elizabeth Coffey (from the ‘transsexual flashes back at flasher’ scene in John Water’s career making film, Pink Flamingos) talks about turning up at John Hopkins hospital in the 70s already socially transitioned and telling the doctors ‘I don’t want a shrink, I just want a plumber’:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=RAmODy8MujE

Coffey describes the process of convincing the doctors to operate as year and half long audition. Reminds me of the kind of things people currently complain about re: the GRC panel (despite that not being an in-person process, which makes me think the complaints have actually been appropriated from TS history, either by accident via cultural memory or deliberate disingenuous manipulation).

Seems to me that any historic or contemporary psychiatric ‘gatekeeping’ has been motivated by doctors wanting to override nature and ‘change a patients sex’ for the sake of their own egos (in the early days they wouldn’t transition anyone who didn’t have ‘passing potential’, which kept a lot of AGPs out) and by questionable surgeons who just want to avoid getting sued.

Psychiatric gatekeeping does not seem to me to be at all motivated by ensuring a person is ‘truly transsexual’, and it certainly isn’t a safety net that ensures that men who are cosmetically made over to look like women are going to behave benevolently towards actual women.

What women want, need, or indeed, have an actual human right to have, doesn’t seem to come into it AT ALL.

A couple of long-ago transitioned TS posters who used to post here (and left intending to take the debate to their own side, rather than stay here and lecture women!) have described their own experiences, both went through old fashioned ‘Harry Benjamin’ rules via the NHS, and both do seem a lot more reasonable than today’s transitioners.

www.genderpsychology.org/transsexual/hbsoc_2001.html

(HB Standards date from 1979 and have since revised 7 times, including being renamed as ‘World Professional Association for Transgender Health’ in 2006. Now there is a move away from WPATH towards ‘informed consent’ ie, no psychiatric diagnostic element at all journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/informed-consent-medical-care-transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients/2016-11
Funnily enough, the name changed happened under the jurisdiction of the first ever non-medical-professional-actual-trans-person president of the ‘Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’, our old ‘friend’ Stephen Whittle, who was President Elect from 05-07 and President from 07-09. Must’ve been the next project on Swhittle’s list after ticking off the GRA in 2004.)

Anyway, I wonder if that reasonableness is more to do with the underlying reasons that led them to believe they were trans, rather than anything medical professionals did or didn’t do (a homophobic society, internalised homophobia, difficult parental relationships and undiagnosed autism being my best guesses) combined with largely successful blending attempts and thus actually being treated as women for decades (as opposed to the special stunning and brave penis-women of present day).

Will try and dig up some of their posts later.

——————-

Oh, and Harry Benjamin seems like a peculiar character, too btw. He’s often denounced by current day transactivists as a gatekeeper but he championed the cause of medical and surgical condition when almost no one else did, so WTF more do they want?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Benjamin

I think the trans lobby are desperate to muddy the waters around self ID and the tiny number of what some people consider to be genuine transsexuals - the ones who have had hormones and surgery. I have difficulty explaining the difference to people who are educated scientists, teachers, etc. I can't understand why it isn't obvious, but it seems to be a conflation that is being reinforced constantly.
As has been said before, this all started back in the 70s and that was the thin end of the wedge.
I think when people assume it won't affect them personally, they can't be bothered to think it through.

The problem with Nandy is not that she is capitulating to her inner Beryl. It's actually her job to consider all of the people she represents anyway, not just women.

The problem is that she doesn't make sense. What she is proposing is not a matter of looking at what is just and right for everyone, nor is it about what is true. And figuring out the former, which can be difficult at times, depends on a very clear vision of the latter.

A woman asking for a female to do her smear test wants exactly that. She doesn't give a toss if the male showing up is showing up because it turns him on, he has a mental condition, is requiring her to validate him, or thinks she should be ok because he has been 'vetted through significant psychoanalysis'.

In this equation, what the man wants is irrelevant.

Yes, Datun. I know this is a hardline stance, but IMO it is the only rational and coherent one for feminists to take. We can (and should) support laws to protect people from discrimination on the basis of sex-role presentation, but supporting the idea of 'true transsexualism' is a political dead end. It looks like a reasonable compromise, but in reality would suit almost no one.

There is also little point in trying to get the government or anyone else to enforce a medical standard on who gets to be 'trans'. Most doctors in this field are operating outside of all normal standards of evidence and ethics, and will 'trans' anyone and sign off on anything, as we are seeing with children. They need to be exposed too, not invested with further authority.

I don't think that a firm stance that no man can become a woman, and that women have the right to draw boundaries on the basis of sex, will be alienating to most women, as long as we put the case clearly and respectfully and without defensiveness. It might well be the first time they have ever heard or considered our arguments, but since they make sense, there's no reason for us to be ashamed to state them, and for governments and institutions to try to work around THAT demand, instead of the demands of trans activists.

The key is to get enough women behind the idea. I think Goosefoot is right that most women at this point DON'T feel particularly hardline about this - many may well be simply undecided about what is the best position to take. IMO the best way to convince other women is not to argue about what is 'true' ('Men can't be women!' 'Yes, they can be!') but to get women to think more deeply about the premises we are being expected to accept.

Are people who identify as trans truly the most vulnerable people in society? Should their demands come before the needs of other vulnerable groups, such as abused women, children and the elderly? Was it a good idea for governments to create the legal fiction of 'sex change' in the first place? Is it really hateful for women to ask for our biology to be recognised in certain circumstances (e.g., prisons, sport)? Are trans activist demands actually reasonable, or can society reasonably refuse them? Are men who identify as women really 'on the side of women', and if so, why are they obsessed with harnessing the force of the state to ensure we can't say 'no' to any male who says he's a woman? Who will benefit if their demands are fully realised, and single-sex provision, female sports and accurate crime statistics are eliminated - will women benefit? Are these the political goals of people who truly identify WITH (not 'as') women and are on our side? Is it incumbent on women to show compassion and concern towards people who demonstrate so little for us?

Yet we are often subjected to the concept that what a man wants should, automatically, inform the women he wants it from.

This is also the sort of thing I mean when I say we need to be challenging the underlying premises that inform this debate. What are the (often unconsciously held) views that are influencing people's, especially women's, stance on this?

The number of women who actively want males in their spaces is tiny.

Yes. When you focus on what women actually want, rather than what they are being guilted into.

So just because most women currently see transsexualism as harmless, or as a distinct phenomenon to transgenderism, doesn't mean that this view is correct, much less that feminists should reinforce it. Rather, it makes more sense for us to debunk it.

Preach.

And let's also remember that most women who say they might be happy with some males in their spaces, providing those males are sans penis, would be equally happy were there to be no males at all in their spaces. They'd also be equally happy to support male-led campaigns to make all males, whatever their identity, safe and welcome in male spaces.

The number of women who actively want males in their spaces is tiny. The Woke clique might well have captured organisations and institutions but it hasn't captured the public and it never will.

Yet we are often subjected to the concept that what a man wants should, automatically, inform the women he wants it from.

Centring women & girls being the antidote to this.

That pathological altruism entry from Wiki is fascinating - it's not a concept I had come across before. Neither had I heard of "animal hoarding" though now I know what it is I can think of examples. I wonder if it's a bit similar to the phenomenon of those celebrities who adopt lots of children from deprived backgrounds but are unable to care for them properly (Mia Farrow being an example).

And yes, people like Nandy are textbook examples. Doing a lot of harm while imagining they are being "kind". Zoe Williams too.