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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Civitas Report: The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology

39 replies

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 19/06/2020 08:51

www.civitas.org.uk/publications/the-corrosive-impact-of-transgender-ideology/

The blurb:

In less than two decades ‘transgender’ has gone from a term representing individuals and little used outside of specialist communities, to signifying a powerful political ideology driving significant social change. At the level of the individual, this shift has occurred through the separation of gender from sex, before reclaiming biology through an innate sense of ‘gender-identity’.

In this report, Joanna Williams argues that this return to biology allows for the formation of a distinct identity group, one that can stake a claim to being persecuted, and depends upon continual validation and confirmation from an external audience. All critical discussion is a threat to this public validation and is often effectively curtailed.

This ideology has meant that in 2019, the number of 11- and 13-year-olds referred to NHS specialist medical help with transitioning rose by 28 and 30 per cent, respectively, over the previous year. The youngest patients have been just three years old. Arrests and prosecutions have been made for ‘deliberately misgendering’ through the use of male pronouns. Transgender pupils have been free to use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender identity, previously intended only for members of the opposite sex. Reports of the attacks on women in prisons carried out by transgender inmates suggest that the feelings of transgender women are being placed above the safety of females. But why has this been allowed to happen?

Joanna Williams suggests that the move of transgenderism from niche to mainstream tells us more about the rest of society than it does about transgender individuals. People in positions of power within the realms of media, education, academia, police, social work, medicine, law, and local and national government have been prepared to coalesce behind the demands of a tiny transgender community. Previously authoritative institutions now lack confidence in their own ability to lead and look to the transgender community as a victimised group that can act as a source of moral authority. However, this, in turn, has not only eroded sex-based rights but undermined crucial areas of child protection.

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Abitofalark · 01/07/2020 14:27

To be fair, it's not well signposted. You have to scroll a long way, past other headings, to find it.

Datun · 01/07/2020 14:14

[quote Abitofalark]Datun, Civitas's web site has a section about how it is funded:

In part: "Our policy is to encourage donations from a wide variety of sources so that we are not unduly reliant on any one donor. So that authors can write without fear or favour, our publications are not sponsored. Many companies and charitable foundations like to focus their charitable giving on a specific project, such as a Saturday school, and so we do allow organisations to sponsor our supplementary schools. Philanthropic support for the education of children who are falling behind at school does not involve a potential conflict of interest.

We publish the names of donors who, on request, are willing to be identified. However, we respect the privacy of donors when they have a legal right to make charitable donations without being publicly identified. While transparency is an important value, there are also good reasons why some foundations and individuals prefer not to be identified. This might include modesty, personal security, or a desire to avoid being aggressively targeted for donations by other organisations. "
civitas.org.uk/about-us/[/quote]
Thank you!

I did have a read I didn't see that bit Blush.

Abitofalark · 01/07/2020 13:38

Datun, Civitas's web site has a section about how it is funded:

In part: "Our policy is to encourage donations from a wide variety of sources so that we are not unduly reliant on any one donor. So that authors can write without fear or favour, our publications are not sponsored. Many companies and charitable foundations like to focus their charitable giving on a specific project, such as a Saturday school, and so we do allow organisations to sponsor our supplementary schools. Philanthropic support for the education of children who are falling behind at school does not involve a potential conflict of interest.

We publish the names of donors who, on request, are willing to be identified. However, we respect the privacy of donors when they have a legal right to make charitable donations without being publicly identified. While transparency is an important value, there are also good reasons why some foundations and individuals prefer not to be identified. This might include modesty, personal security, or a desire to avoid being aggressively targeted for donations by other organisations. "
civitas.org.uk/about-us/

Datun · 01/07/2020 13:09

@Abitofalark

It wasn't commissioned, if you mean by some external party. Joanna Williams is Director of Civitas's Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood project. Before that, she was an academic and is a regular writer on Spiked online, writing mainly about education. Her academic subject was Higher Education.
Ok thank you. So it's funded by donations?

It doesn't get paid for these reports?

endofthelinefinally · 01/07/2020 12:55

You can buy it direct from Civitas. I would rather do that than support Amazon tbh.

Sexnotgender · 01/07/2020 12:35

@Thinkingabout1t

You can buy the paper book through Amazon! via the Civitas site: www.civitas.org.uk/

but I never use Amazon so I was pleased to get the download. Would have bought the book otherwise. (I’ll buy from Amazon when they start paying proper tax, and stop undermining bookshops, which probably = never.)

Leaving it around should spark some interesting debates!

And stop promoting mermaids 😏
Abitofalark · 01/07/2020 12:32

It wasn't commissioned, if you mean by some external party. Joanna Williams is Director of Civitas's Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood project. Before that, she was an academic and is a regular writer on Spiked online, writing mainly about education. Her academic subject was Higher Education.

SirSamuelVimesBlackboardMonito · 01/07/2020 08:03

I have a Tory MP who's voting record suggests he's to the right of the party. I will be sending him the report and the link to the telegraph article. If it's a think tank he would normally listen to / agree with it could be very a powerful tool.

The people in power are the people that matter here. We've probably got ten years of Tory rule ahead of us; the gains Starmer would need in order to create a labour win at the next election is just not credible. We need to work with what we have in government.

endofthelinefinally · 01/07/2020 07:51

Is Joanna Williams considered to be right wing?

StandUpStraight · 01/07/2020 06:59

It’s an interesting juxtaposition to the hatchet job they did on Glinner yesterday. They even used the same photo of him in the article.

Longtalljosie · 01/07/2020 06:50

Sorry I sounded a bit dismissive- dreadful nights sleep! Just counselling it’s not a shift for them. Unsurprising the Telegraph has picked it up - this is their favourite think tank.

Longtalljosie · 01/07/2020 06:48

Civitas is known to be a pretty right-wing think tank. It would be surprising if its views were different to this.

StandUpStraight · 01/07/2020 06:42

Picked up by The Telegraph last night and on their page this morning: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/30/niche-transgender-ideology-corrosive-society-says-report/
They don’t do share tokens but here’s first couple of paragraphs:

“Transgender ideology is leaving a “corrosive impact" on society, according to a new study calling for the scrapping of gender recognition reforms.

The report by the Civitas think tank accuses public institutions of being captivated by an "ideology of transgenderism" that is unable to defend the sex-based rights of women.“

The article mentions JKR and @Glinner and would be pretty eye opening reading for anyone new to the topic - it’s short but it covers what is happening to children, and the link between transgenderism and the institutional regulation of speech and behaviour. No weasel words that I can see (this early in the morning).

Datun · 01/07/2020 00:43

Does anyone know who commissioned the report?

zanahoria · 20/06/2020 19:58

^" Whereas the gay rights movement was
about demanding more freedom from the state for people
to determine their sex lives unconstrained by the law, the
transgender movement demands the opposite: it calls for
recognition and protection from the state in the form of
intervention to regulate the behaviour of those outside of
the identity group. Whereas in the past, to be radical was
to demand greater freedom from the state and institutional
authority, today to be radical is to demand restrictions on
free expression in the name of preventing offence."^

This is an excellent point, really skewers the superficial analysis from OJ and others who weren't even there

Thinkingabout1t · 20/06/2020 15:25

i agree with other PPs here. All recommendations good, except that one section of point 4. No one should use toilets or changing rooms intended for people of the other sex, full stop.

endofthelinefinally · 20/06/2020 12:13

Thanks wellbehaved and thinking.
I don't like Amazon either, but I would have to produce a "proper book" iyswim. Not "something off the internet". Sigh.
I did some googling and will phone them on Monday morning and see if I can buy direct.
I would happily pay for several copies tbh.

Pigeonfaces · 20/06/2020 11:57

It’s a really good resource.

But I think any suggestion that children at a school can use the facilities of the opposite sex subject to the consent of parents &/or other children is completely impractical. Apart from the obvious questions of coercion, pressure to ‘be kind’ etc, a school cohort is in constant flux with new children joining each year & throughout the year. The ‘agreement’ would need to be under constant review. It wouldn’t work.

Thinkingabout1t · 20/06/2020 11:54

why didn't anyone ask parents, when planning to indoctrinate their kids into a dogmatic belief system based on faith alone?

I enjoy fantasy and science fiction. But if someone had written a novel about the worldwide spread and acceptance of transgenderism I wouldn’t have bought it. I’d have thought “No - it’s got to be at least slightly plausible.”

Thinkingabout1t · 20/06/2020 11:49

You can buy the paper book through Amazon! via the Civitas site:
www.civitas.org.uk/

but I never use Amazon so I was pleased to get the download. Would have bought the book otherwise. (I’ll buy from Amazon when they start paying proper tax, and stop undermining bookshops, which probably = never.)

Leaving it around should spark some interesting debates!

wellbehavedwomen · 20/06/2020 11:23

@endofthelinefinally you could call them, and ask?

wellbehavedwomen · 20/06/2020 11:18

Teaching on transgender should not contradict the content of the science/biology curriculum.

This is the part that blows my mind. We know men and women are fundamentally different, right down to a cellular level. We know sex is binary - nobody goes, "Oh, I want a baby - how do I know which sort of human could create one with me?!" You need a man and a woman to create the egg and sperm - as a gay couple, you need a donor for one side. There's no third bloody option because sex is not a spectrum. (And there is also no overlap between people with Disorders of Sexual Development, and trans people, so that red herring is pointless.)

How on earth can schools allow something as unscientific as Mermaids's gender theories through the doors? It contradicts all their science teaching, and it's sexist and regressive in an extraordinary degree. How did this happen? Why was it allowed, far less encouraged and sanctioned?

Most shockingly of all, why didn't anyone ask parents, when planning to indoctrinate their kids into a dogmatic belief system based on faith alone?

endofthelinefinally · 20/06/2020 06:23

Is it possible to buy an actual book? So I can leave it casually around the house?
That would be so much easier than trying to persuade my family member to read something I have downloaded.
Even printing it out wouldn't be taken seriously, not to mention the amount of ink and paper.

OldCrone · 19/06/2020 22:27

Thanks for the link to the book Thinkingabout1t.

Thinkingabout1t · 19/06/2020 18:53

I have downloaded the whole book, free of charge, from civitas.org.uk/content/files/2454-A-The-Corrosive-Impact-of-TI-ppi-110-WEB.pdf

Joanna Williams writes clearly, makes sense and does proper research, so this is proving an informative read. I've just read about the recent invention of 'transgender children' -- necessary to support the adults' claim that trangenderism is natural and has always existed.

She quotes the wonderful children's author and special-needs teacher Rachel Rooney, who says "I don’t think there’s such a thing as a transgender child; there’s just a child with a mind that’s not yet fully developed."

Rooney also says "I don’t really understand how a four year old boy can have more of an understanding of gender than I do, because I do not know what it is to feel like a woman."

Nor do I! I don't believe anyone does, you just feel like yourself.

Back to the JW's book now.