The nerve of Jon Ronson

Agree, lifeissweet. I don't think he's going to be able to avoid it forever.

It doesn't really bother me what he decided to include and discuss in that one podcast episode.

What annoys me is the way he talks about this issue more generally. He didn't want to talk about that episode, because the issue scares him. He won't delve into it. He keeps saying he doesn't know enough about it to comment and that it's 'toxic on both sides'. It's cowardice.

If you have an interest in cancel culture, then this issue is front and centre. He doesn't necessarily need to give his own view - that's not really his thing. What he would do if he was rigorous and fearless is to examine it in detail and from all angles as he claims to do on all the issues he covers. He hasn't done that and is quite openly admitting that he doesn't want to go there.

I find the whole 'this debate is toxic and both sides argue in bad faith' take is completely unhelpful. How is anyone supposed to unpick the mess if no one has the balls to examine it properly?

He knows this matter to a huge number of people. He is friends with some 'TERFs' so he must be aware that it is not borne of bigotry. Why would anyone with that level of intellectual curiosity NOT want to understand that properly?

Ronson's program was about respectful debate, finding a way through heated differences. He ended it by disgracefully saying that Camp Trans was a part of that wider process. It was not. It was an attempt by men to intrude on a woman's space. To fail to mention the fact that one of its members went on to (allegedly, but probably, as you point out) murder one of the Michfest women amounts to journalistic fraud.

They did get back to it, in the last 25 minutes or so - she's a smart interviewer so allowed him to loosen up by talking about the stuff he was comfortable with before going "ok, now we're going to talk about this".

I wrote a big long post and lost it and now I am cross.

I get the impression the Jon Robson is famous enough that he employs researchers to tell him what to think gather material for his books, which could be why he hasn't been able to engage his brain on this - if he's been shielded from the facts by fluffy propaganda.

I must admit I gave up on the Megham Daum podcast episode as soon as he said he refused to talk about gender ideology. Did she push him? She is definitely a terven so I'm surprised if she let him away completely.

Just listening now and his main topic when talking about the T-RF episode he did was how he managed to essentially 'get away with it' and make it not attract too much criticism. But he also highlights that the focus was on how the term originated, which I guess is interesting in its own right but clearly ignores the massive elephant in the room.

I'm sure he'd rather look stupid, misogynistic or both, rather than a "transphobe".

'I haven't really thought about men and women and gender'

= everything is tickety boo for me when it comes to men and women and gender, I’m in the winning group, so why would I pull at that thread?

shows a lack of intellectual curiosity which somewhat undermines his USP, no?

I was so disappointed by his whole: 'I haven't really thought about men and women and gender' claim. I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve there.

It either suggests that he is well aware of it, but is too cowardly to comment (most likely, I think) or that he - a self-proclaimed expert on cancel culture and online shaming - has totally failed to notice in all that time, that women are most harshly cancelled and shamed. He just didn't see it. Oops.

Also, he has done work on porn and - of all subjects - to fail to recognise the power difference and implications for women inherent in that industry - means what? That he's too stupid to see it? Or that he does see it but thinks it's completely uninteresting or irrelevant.

He either looks stupid or misogynistic. He seems ok with that. Not sure why.

He mentions it around 16- 20 mins in where Meghan says she's going to ask about 3 points, and laughs it off saying if it's gender stuff he won't want to talk about it.

I'm 58 mins in and it's not come up properly yet but seems like it might shortly. Sorry, not much help!

can you tell me where the gender stuff starts as my heart rate won't take him being disingenuous for an hiour and a half

I think you could ask what it really means to protest, rather than respond.

Essentially a film like that is people making an ethical argument, just like people trying to argue abortion should be legal to the very end of the pregnancy, or that men should be allowed to self-identify as women, or that they shouldn't.

Which is to say, it's people in a democracy engaging in the questions that are important to them, and trying to convince people of their viewpoint.

I am increasingly of the view that protesting that, rather than making a reasoned response, leads right to things like Mermaids trying to have the LGB alliance delegitimized and their charitable status removed. It's not making an argument about any of the real ethical issues around abortion, it's just saying, anyone who thinks this must be a misogynist and don't listen to them or you are too.

Well we can now see what happens when that form of political engagement is the norm.

I am sure that is the case.

I'm halfway through the JR episode, having first listened to the Meghan Murphy one. Have to say the Jon Ronson podcast for the BBC sounds really interesting, so will give that a listen as well as the other Unspeakable ones.

Yes I agree, he's not particularly invested, just a bit cowardly, and he doesn't want to open a can of worms by actually looking into it in good faith, as that will pierce his shield of cognitive dissonance and might make him a wrongthinker like those "t**fs"

I’m gonna listen to this now.

here’s a link for the lazy: theunspeakablepodcast.libsyn.com/when-troubled-people-become-our-playthings-jon-ronson-on-shame-and-forgiveness

(no judgment, I love lazily following a link, me!)

I'm not sure I agree that he's an activist, if he was then he wouldn't be trying to avoid the issue as much as he is. He mentions in the Daum podcast that he wasn't keen on doing the episode and I guess had to find an angle that wouldn't put him in the cross hairs.

I think he genuinely just doesn't want to touch the issue publicly because he's scared that he'll lose his standing with the in-group, while a lot of his smart friends like Katie, Gia and Meghan are in the out-group (and of course he's had to throw some of them under the bus to maintain his in-group status). I'm just so disappointed in his cowardice, he just keeps saying "I don't know enough about it", even though he's got a bunch of smart women who have discussed it with him.

He says he's 'never thought about the whole men and women, gender thing', blaming his 'beta-cuckness' (I think the fact that he descibes himself as such shows he's thought about it a lot more than never) and thinks it's an avenue he wants to explore, so yeah. We'll see if we get the mea culpa that Tasteful outlined, but I suspect not until Ronson sees the tide turning.

People are exactly right when they say that Jon is an activist while pretending not to be. In his recent podcast on Michfest, his dismissal of second-wave feminism, coupled with the huge ommission of the triple murder that ended the festival, took my breath away, grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/jon-ronsons-insulting-michfest-revisionism

Every generation men like to redefine misogyny. They are too busy congratulating themselves on being feminist enough to allow women to work and terminate pregnancies, they don't see that they are stopping women from participating in everyday life and activities.

In short, they are so happy not to be their fathers, they've not realised they'd turned into their grandfathers.

Ofcourseshecan:

Yes. It is painful to realise this. They genuinely don’t consider the loss of women’s rights, even to such basic things as privacy or physical safety, to be of any importance. And they still see themselves as the nice guys.

I don’t like recognising this. But the alternative is to cling to a delusion that is, in its own way, as wrong as the delusion of changing sex.

This was hard for me to realise, and not just the part where wokebeards now feel free to be openly belittling about our humanity, but the way large chunks of social media are like that more generally, including apparently large numbers of young people of both sexes.

Some on Twitter recently ridiculed the very idea that misogyny might matter. They didn't deny it, but just didn't see anything wrong with it.