The nerve of Jon Ronson

I think that more interesting than Ronson in today`s programme was the woman who was caught up in the extremist panic. She was very clear that many of the people who had believed in it, were often decent fairl minded people, and that using your brain and applying reason were a defence against this kind of hysteria. Which is why "no debate" was the best defence of the genderists.

He thinks that unfairness can be smoothed away by being kind. What he misses is when the unfairnesses are largely going just one way, and this is a structural feature because of sex, then the burden of kindness falls on women, and actually serves to enable some of the worst behaviour they're having to put up with.

I found the first 2 interesting, but I'm really not expecting much from the trans one. The impression he's given so far is that he's very much picked a side and hasn't made any effort to understand even the absolute basics of the GC/radfem position, maybe he'll surprise me but.. I'm expecting a lot of misrepresentation.

Yes. It's more likely that he's not a coward, but that he simply doesn't think women are important.

It’s this. I remember, because it was so outrageous to me, why he eventually decided he wasn’t on Glinner’s side.

It was a photo Glinner posted of a college basketball team; one seven-foot 50+ year old TW with a bunch of ~20 year old women.

The photo is very striking; if you’ve seen it you’ll know what photo I mean. The unfairness is so OBVIOUS; it’s angering. But Ronson didn’t register that; he seemed to think the point of posting it was to mock the male player for looking different from the female players, and that Glinner was just posting it to be mean.

The recurring message that Ronson seems to like is that there are people on the extremes and people in the middle, and in order to end a particular culture war you need to increase the understanding and kindness of those in the middle, and once you hit a critical mass of people being nice, the extremes become irrelevant and the conflict ends.

He's always been over-confident

His Psychopath book was an absolute shambles, universally denounced by anyone who knows anything about psychopathology, including Hare, the guy who Ronson 'quoted' a lot in his book - who went on to write many rebuttals to the claims Ronson makes in the book

Charlaton

I know what you mean about his voice Tulipomania.

Today's episode was about the moral panic in the US over the Satanic Abuse of children. A reminder how the authorities and people believing they're on the right side of history will, in certain circumstances, latch onto self-evidently insane ideas, sweep away evidence and critical thinking, do incredibly harmful things, and destroy anyone identified as a witch.

The structure of these programmes is standard: find an example of the culture going dysfunctional, find an individual who had an extraordinary experience in the midst of this, and present a story of them pitted against the dyfunctionality. It'll be interesting to see how this structure will be applied in the programme about the gender identity ideology. That looks like it'll be episode 6.

has the article gone? I can't find it.

tbh the last couple of articles I read from him, I couldn't follow them. It was the blah blah blah that Helen Joyce refers to, I guess.

Can't listen to his radio programme, his voice is so awful.

Which is a shame as it's probably quite interesting.

So far this series is pretty good. Heard the satanic panic one today. Really fascinating. Good interview with the radio evangelist who helped popularise the idea that ppl are in league with the devil doing ritual abuse, and a brilliant interview with the poor woman who served time in prison for crimes that didn't occur. She was able to laugh about some of the things she served time for because of the absurdity.
I wonder what the children who gave evidence now think, and their parents? And how the police and psychologists who made the case view it now.

Towards the end he was very keen on the angle that progressive, well off, intellectual types are capable of being fooled by a moral panic. I wonder where that's going.

Yup, I've lost all respect for him over the past couple of years.

A good one this morning, about an evangelist reaching across the cultural divide:

It’s the early 1980s and a hugely popular television evangelist is having a crisis of conscience. She wants Christian evangelism to be less bigoted. And so, to the horror of her peers, she invites a very unexpected guest onto her TV show…

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011sf7

Sounds to me like he could be leading up to something.

We know how things can be spun.

Today's was decent, about a campaign by reactionaries in 1960s America to ban indecent books. All the way through I was thinking that it would make sense to point out that in the current day banning "wrong" books is something that both extremes are keen to indulge in and in the final part of the programme Ronson gave a clear example of this.

The abortion program was absolutely fascinating and I recommend it.

Essentially, being anti-abortion was considered an irrelevant "Catholic thing" by evangelical Christians until an obscure film made it a rallying point and it mushroomed from there. The younger of the film-makers is now filled with regret and tells the story.

Re Johnson I hadn't realised his voice was so high-pitched. I genuinely thought it was Julian Clary presenting till the end.

I have listened to the first episode. It was really interesting, about the place of abortion in US culture wars, and the development if the pro life evangelical movement. He takes the story of some anti abortion films produced by the Schaeffers, a father and son team, and centres it around that.

It's interesting that in the 70s and early 80s the Southern Baptists were pro choice, and didn't want to touch anti abortion with a barge pole. Anti abortion was a Catholic position (as it still is mainly in the UK I think), but the Schaeffers basically campaigned to get evangelicals to take it up.

My criticisms are that it rather skimmed over and truncated the later history. I remember that George W Bush's republican party was influenced by pro life evangelicals, but that wasn't mentioned. Surely the unison of Dem with pro-choice, and Rep with pro-life is the essence of the culture wars? I suspect he's over emphasised the significance of the schaeffer films in the historical change, as that's his hook, and I always think there is likely to be a more complex context and other influences that produced the change, rather than just one actor. But I don't know. His delivery is a bit annoying (does he always talk like that?).

In general though it is good to have someone who tries to be outside the issue looking in. The moment he was most human and empathetic was when the film tour was going badly because they had booked stadiums but only filled half of the front row! He told it as history, and got good interviews from the people. We do need high decouplers to do this. I will be interested to hear the other episodes.

Indeed when you look at a lot of men in this debate, you can see they are genuinely bewildered that women complain about having to share their spaces with men. It's as if they think it's women's role to accommodate what men want, and when women refuse, it just doesn't compute.

Agreed. One of the most frustrating things about this whole saga is not just the ridiculous unreality being pushed on us, but that it has highlighted how much many men don't really care how women's lives are negatively affected by all this.

Even the ones who proffer themselves as 'good guys' who see themselves as such. They know it's all really bullshit, but just go along with the nonsense because it's trendy or whatever, and once again we are reminded that they don't give a shit. They just carry on regardless, safe in the knowledge that they protected from the worst of it. And clap themselves on the back at how progressive they are.

They don't give a shit, because they don't have to. Their spaces, their sports teams, their prisons, their language is unaffected. How nice for them!

And we are just supposed to shut up and take it - how dare we see ourselves as fully fledged human beings, and not just support bots to facilitate an easy life for them .

Yes RoyalCorgi I think you’re right.

Very sad thing to find out though.

Jon Ronson is pretty brave- he attended a KKK rally and when asked if he was a Jew he replied “yes”. That must have taken guts.

So it’s a shame he hasn’t been so brave on social media.

Of course he's promoting himself - his radio podcast came out this morning. This thread led me to it.
I will reserve judgement until I hear the trans episode but I did hear a Germaine Greer clip being used. Yes, he is playing it safe not to come down on one side and to present it as a debate - however, there are many of us struggling in that department... I agree that trans competitors in women's sport is unfair, that male-bodied inmates in female prisons is a potential danger, that any child on early meds is being placed on a pathway fraught with contra-indications, that one vulnerable person's right to protection should not override another's/ a woman's right to feel safe.
But I don't have an answer other than 'gender-neutral' spaces/a third space/a trans category for sports etc which I concede might feel ''othering''. Validation, however, comes with a cost to women, who have fought just as hard and are equally, if not more, vulnerable.
So there is no compromise position, is there?

That was a messy, poorly written article that conflated several issues and didn't seem to know what point it was trying to make, other than promoting Jon Ronson.

Jon Ronson is such a squirt. He’s the worst kind of hypocrite: he exploits people and their stories but stays ‘clean’ by staying above it all. He won’t get his hands dirty but he will make some cash inviting others to judgement. Same here. He sees a way to be part of the conversation as if be kind is a new initiative thanks Jon