Longer, balanced Guardian article

Thanks, RoyalCorgi. Peter Tatchell used to be one of my heroes. He's an intelligent man and I believe he understands the issues. So it's painful to hear him repeating anti-women statements that he cannot believe to be true.

As for why any veteran gay-rights campaigner would still support Stonewall, which is now actively hostile to lesbians -- I suppose queer politics is more important to them than the rights of lesbians, who after all are only women.

ThinkingaboutLangCleg - cracking post. And the question I ask is this: are Peter Tatchell and so really so stupid that they believe the gender critical position is to "demonise all trans women as predators"? Or do they know that it's a lie and just repeat it anyway? Because god only knows we have said over and over again that the reason for excluding trans women is because they are men, and we exclude men legitimately not because they are all predators but because some might be.

My hunch is that they're knowingly lying.

Given that so little has been written about the issue n the Guardian and given the obvious forces there pulling in the opposite direction or at least hoping no one will touch the SW clangers, then it might be that the reporter is only just getting to grips with the issues. I know for very many the guardian is a lost cause but equally the DM and DT are speaking to the converted. The centre left and beyond will still get their steer from the Guardian and vice versa. All valid criticism above may find more receptive desks and ears from guardian journalists than they did before. There are GC people - the usual suspects - and I guess they are hoping that the two pieces today are real movement to more appearing. What was once no debate and no coverage seems to have moved to coverage at least

I'm not getting too excited. Notice how the Guardian quotes the same people repeating the same old distortions, without question.

In the newspaper itself (replaced by a different quote in the online version), Peter Tatchell says Many trans-critical feminists demonise all trans women as predators and an existential threat to women. This is as wrong as demonising all Muslims for the terror attacks of a tiny unrepresentative minority.

How many times do we have to repeat that we don't demonise all trans women as predators and an existential threat to women?

Obviously feminists have a variety of opinions. But most of us object to the presence of male-bodied people in women's and girls' spaces because any single one could be a predator. Or because, for many women and girls, the presence of even the most harmless man in a place where we are undressing causes stress and discomfort -- worse for many women in whom it cold trigger a panic reaction.

And despite Tatchell's stated concern for Muslims, he doesn't mind the presence of male-bodied people excluding Muslim women from swimming pools, gyms etc. Maybe female Muslims don't count.

We have always had the right to single-sex spaces, and no one asked if we minded giving that up.

Of Akua Reindorf's independent report into Essex University, the Guardian says Stonewall appeared not to have picked up on the university’s “incorrect summary of the law”. That makes it sound as if it was the university's misinterpretation, whereas the university was following the guidelines given by Stonewall!

Reindorf said the mistake was that the policy said “gender identity or trans status” are protected under the law, whereas it is only gender reassignment that is protected. Yes, a massive "mistake"' that, by also ignoring women's protection under the Equality Act, effectively removes women's right to single-sex spaces!

Sorry about the exclamation marks. It's just breathtaking that Stonewall's Nancy Kelley has the cheek to say the distinction was semantics. And even worse that the Guardian reporter didn't pick her up on that.

Anyhow, these are people we are talking about. Treat everyone how they are and how you would like to be treated - with respect and equality.

You are trying to be funny are you MishyJDI? That statement is a bit rich.

Also, Tatchell says:

Bans and no-platforms suppress bigoted views but don’t challenge and change them. Bad ideas are most effectively rebutted by good ideas that show why they are wrong, marshalling counter-arguments and evidence.

Yes, of course. I completely agree. But then he goes on:

However, there are double standards on race and trans issues. Why do many people who support the cancelling of racist speakers oppose the cancelling of those who hold similar prejudiced opinions about trans people?

Let's remember this. I thought the party line on race and sex was that they weren't similar. There's a sleight of hand going on here - a misrepresenting of the promotion of women's sex based rights as being nothing but anti trans bigotry. The "women" bit of it seems to disappear like water off a duck's back. It's just not there.

Of course, this bit of conjuring depends on the pretence that there is no sex other than as irrelevant biology, and that what people really mean is gender. Does Tatchell really believe that debate won't open up this nonsense to scrutiny? Does he realise he's playing with fire here?

And this, from Tatchell's own website.

www.petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/age_of_consent/im-14-im-gay-i-want-a-boyfriend/

Peter Tatchell seems to get a lot of column inches, there.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3419275-Paedophile-Apologist-Book-including-chapter-by-Peter-Tatchell

It is fairly typical of the Guardian that they would give more weight to Tatchell's views - a man, as others have pointed out, who once wrote to the paper expressing sympathy with the idea of adult-child sexual relations - than those of a highly-respected professor of philosophy.

Still, it's a start. The paper has belatedly realised it can't continue ignoring this issue so it has to say something. Interesting that they've used a writer who doesn't normally write on this topic rather than any of the usual bunch.

Am feeling no little pleasure at the thought of Talcum X exploding in rage at the Guardian deigning to consider both sides of the argument. But he can't resign in fury because no one else will have him.

Anyhow, these are people we are talking about. Treat everyone how they are and how you would like to be treated - with respect and equality.

As I always say do, if so inclined, send messages of thanks and also contact the readers editor re Marsha P Johnson. They do correct things and every piece of misinformation corrected is a good thing.

Tatchell’s interpretation also completely ignores the problem that sex is patently obvious to most women and we shouldn’t be forced to share with men, based only on their feelings, as that wholly ignores our feelings on the matter.

That would be grossly unfair to the vast majority of trans women who never have, and never will, pose a threat to other women.

By campaigning for the right to be affirmed as a different gender on Monday and Tuesday, (rise up the Diversity charts with multiple ID cards for employees! - MI5 presumably have a head start), Stonewall completely undermine the idea that a trans woman is just another woman.

Well, I think that suspecting all men of being sexual predators is grossly unfair to the vast majority of men who never would hurt women or girls. However, for safeguarding purposes, men as a class are treated differently compared to women.

Ongoing perpetuation of the lie Marsha P Johnson was trans 🙄. He called himself gay and had sex with men. If he was gay, and a transwoman, by Stonewall logic that would make him a lesbian and he would be having sex with women. Why can’t they just accept he was a gay man who liked to do drag? The slide on the the Oxford Uni submission had drag outside of the trans umbrella, so how come for Johnson he gets scooped up under the umbrella long after he died?

And as for Tatchell and safeguarding, always worth remembering what he wrote in a letter to the Guardian in 1997:

“The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends - gay and straight, male and female - had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

”While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.”

Guardian preparing for an embarrassing reverse ferret, possibly?

I just posted this on the other Guardian thread:

In the good old days, this wouldn’t need to be called “balanced reporting” it would just be called “reporting”. How sad it is that a news organisation is being damned with faint praise for reporting an incident without its usual propaganda. In no way should the Guardian be lauded, however lightly, for unbiased reporting, or for seemingly shifting towards a non-ideological position on reporting such events; that’s the basic tenet of journalism, it’s not exceptionalism.

Alternatively: newspaper finally does its job properly shocker.

Peter Tatchell really, really isn’t the right spokesperson to talk about safeguarding.

Cross posted with Betty!

Agree! The vast majority of teachers/youth workers etc. never have and never would harm children. Doesn’t mean that we just let them get on with it, with no safeguarding procedures.

Peter Tatchel is wrong, wrong, wrong when he says “you cannot base trans policies on the actions of a handful of bad apples” - that is exactly how safeguarding policies and measures work. As others have pointed out, everyone wanting to work with children or vulnerable adults has a DBS check. Single sex spaces and services are effectively a safeguarding measure, so scepticism and care about who accesses them is entirely justified.