Discussion yesterday on TalkRadio between LGB Alliance and Benjamin Butterworth

Absolute cracker

Doesn't he also identify as black?

Yes, for NUS LGBT conference.

twitter.com/JoLippers/status/1184089718939639809/photo/1

We do know that's not his name right? Just checking.

Meh. He does know that JKR hasn't made derogatory tweets about transgender people but isn't troubled by facts.

It did amuse me when George Galloway called him Benjamin Button yesterday on GMB. We do know that's not his name right? Just checking.

Inclusive in the Tweets, exclusive between the sheets

It’s interesting how Mr Button and his accolades are all for TMAM until it becomes personal......

Weirdly, watching that, I saw Benjamin Button as Boris Johnson in a bad wig. Just me?

Well Ben has just outed himself as transphobic. By all the Stonewall definitions and activist YouTube rants genital preference (to 'male physicality' if you're prudish) Is transphobic.

So that's Benjamin Button, Adrian Haddock, and little OJ all agreed: women - have sex with who we tell you to, meanwhile we'll stick with what we like.

Bev was great but one thing I do notice is that the women often seem far more nervous than the men and I think this tends to detract from what they’re saying. BB is aggressive and interrupts, rude and unpleasant but it means his voice is heard. Piers Morgan matches him for aggression but I think that’s what is needed. There are such strong points here - sex is immutable, biological, observed at birth. It’s very very important in medicine. Gender - a set of beliefs, assumptions, social norms about how the sexes present, behave, speak. Culturally defined and changes over time. People can change their gender presentation as often as they want - it doesn’t change their sex. It’s arguable whether the government should have ANY role in certifying something so ephemeral. Present how you like, don’t be discriminated against for it, but when sex matters, it matters, and that never changes.

Bev was brilliant- constantly distinguishing between biological sex and gender. This needs to happen over and over again until there is clarity.

In some ways I can understand the BMA trying to distance themselves from the gender recognition process... it was a binary vote they took and doesnt necessarily mean individual voters dont think bio sex is important- they probably want this gender nonsense off their hands. But because of the conflation of gender/sex in the general debate the implication is that the BMA think it's fine to keep medical records with gender only, not sex, for example. Which I'm sure they don't. So hopefully Bev's clarity and sunlight will force them into clarifying their own position. Which I really hope isnt 'biological sex doesnt matter'. It can't be, surely?

I took his comment about “how to say this in the middle of the afternoon [chuckle] I’m attracted to male physicalities” to mean he likes cock. It was the innuendo in his tone. He’s expressing a genital preference and same sex attraction, ergo by Stonewall definition (who define it as same gender attraction) and Twitter history, he is actually transphobic.

Disappointing, Ben.

Even BB admits sex matters when it comes to sexual relationships.

Yes. Curious isn’t it!

Also think it’s interesting that BB said he was attracted to “male physicality”.

He was so clearly struggling to find a way to say he prefers biological males but couldn’t bring himself to say it otherwise the whole edifice would come crashing down.

I wish someone had pointed out that trans people already have all the rights BB thinks they are being denied at present.

What he is really saying is he wants trans people to have the right to be included in a sex class that they will never biologically be part of, no matter what steps they take to transition.

Looks like Benjamin does understand biological sexed bodies and same sex attraction (he's attracted to 'male physicality' - presenter asked if he would date a trans man. Wonder if this will be picked up on twitter. He said it was on an 'individual level' and tried to say Bev was suggesting lesbians were being raped - when she had said no such thing at all and was completely measured and calm.

Great posts DonkeySkin

The reason the host didn't interrogate the 'born in the wrong body' stuff is because he, like almost everyone else, takes the phrase as a metaphor for feeling dissociation from one's sexed body.

It is a real phenomenon and there are many reasons a person might feel that way - this is particularly true WRT to the unprecedented numbers of girls and young women who are now presenting as being 'in the wrong body'. I don't see what good it would do getting into a metaphysical discussion about souls and bodies when the real discussion should be about the varied and complex psychological conditions that underlie 'gender dysphoria' in both sexes.

Trans activists are presenting 'gender dysphoria' as a straightforward biological phenomenon that is an ahistorical and natural part of the human condition. Nothing could be further from the truth. We need to somehow find a way to change the framing of the media discussion around this phenomenon, upon which children's bodies are being irrevocably altered and civil rights demands are being made:

4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

I agree too

Rights are not just something you make up as you go along.

Gay people fought for the right to marry and equal age of consent.

It was obvious that there was discrimination

When they got these rights it did not effect anyone else

This is not about rights but imposing an ideology

Nowhere in these arguments does anyone get to the nub of the issue, which is that no one should have the 'right' to be legally recognised as a sex which they are not. It is not a 'right', but an unreasonable demand. This demand is contra to reality, infringes on the rights of women in particular, and is ultimately socially unworkable on a large scale.

Completely agree with this. Thanks for your critical response, I think BB came across really badly compared to Bev, but it's always good to question how others see it.

Does anyone else get the feeling that doctors just want nothing to do with this?

Does he believe in souls then?

Does he believe in a God that puts souls into bodies but occasionally makes mistakes.

This is why the host should have picked it up, it is risible.

Bev made some great points about gay and lesbian rights and the importance of biological sex, but I thought Benjamin ultimately presented the stronger case on 'self ID'.

He did very well bringing everything back to the mental anguish of people who wish to be legally recognised as the opposite sex.

This framing is what has won the trans movement the right to falsify legal sex in the first place - long before 'self ID' was ever on the table. The argument goes: we desperately want to be the other sex, so much so that we will kill ourselves if society won't play along with this, and doctors agree this is a real thing.

It takes some chutzpah to argue that trans is not a mental illness, while at the same time using mental illness as the reason why trans demands must be met immediately and without question, but it has been a very successful strategy so far and will probably work to win 'self-ID' too.

It reaches people's most basic sympathies: most people think that it must be awful to feel like you were 'born in the wrong body', and thus when trans activists say 'these are the legal and social measures we need to alleviate that suffering', it seems reasonable to many people, especially when they haven't thought about the detail of how this will work in practice.

The problem for the 'gender critical' position is that the 'trans rights' framing means that they are essentially reduced to arguing for more red tape around a legal fiction that, we are told, is necessary because it is a medical emergency (suicide risk).

Benjamin: let people be legally recognised as a sex which they are not immediately, it's cruel to make them wait two years when they are in an emergency mental health situation.

Bev: it's important that people be legally recognised as a sex which they are not, but have a doctor sign off on it and make them wait two years first.

Nowhere in these arguments does anyone get to the nub of the issue, which is that no one should have the 'right' to be legally recognised as a sex which they are not. It is not a 'right', but an unreasonable demand. This demand is contra to reality, infringes on the rights of women in particular, and is ultimately socially unworkable on a large scale.

This is the case that needs to be made, strongly and unapologetically. If feminists keep framing it as 'trans rights vs women's rights', 'trans rights' will win every time, because trans-identified people are perceived to be the more vulnerable group, owing to their mental anguish and purported suicide risk.