Helen Joyce on Triggernometry

Necessary 😂🤪

How about we just stick to ‘men’, then.

Or ‘men who pretend they’re women’. Because that’s entirely accurate - it is just a pretence. But they won’t like that!

But the group we're worried about are different - they're "men who expect you to pretend they're women".

And there's not full overlap - some men who pretend won't want you to pretend. And some men who obviously don't pretend at all want you to pretend.

Or ‘men who pretend they’re women’. Because that’s entirely accurate - it is just a pretence. But they won’t like that!

Men who say they are women.

As it is just words they say.

Two categories - men who claim to be women, and men who believe they are women. Actually, three categories, because some men who transition to relieve extreme dysphoria don't actually claim to be women.

Men who claim to be women?

Because we know they make the claim but can’t tell how sincere or otherwise they may be.

I never want to hear the word "gender" again as long as I live.

Same, it really is problematic because it means different things to different people.

Some use it to mean sex (male/female), some refer to their inner gendered soul, or their gender identity. We really do need a new word/s with specific definitions.

*men

"me who want to be women" is funny because although I am a woman, I don't always like it.

I often use "me who want to be women." But "men who believe they are women", "men who think they are women" or "men who try to act like they are women" also work.

I find the phrase "men who think they're women" to be both kind and truthful. I find the phrase "trans women are women" unkind, untrue and deeply offensive. I am a woman though and we all know many people will disregard my opinion based solely on that fact.

I liked Hadley Freeman's reality based feminist.
Saw someone using it recently be told that was offensive 😵‍💫

I never want to hear the word "gender" again as long as I live.

I so agree. It has too many meanings and has caused havoc. It never should have been moved from a grammar description in foreign languages.

So you can be a sex realist, like 99% of the world, but not be GC. I do agree that a better name is needed, though. I never want to hear the word "gender" again as long as I live.

Gender critical is not the same as sex realist. Sex realism is knowing that there are two and only two sexes, that sex is fixed at conception and is immutable.

Being gender critical is disbelief in innate gender, seeing it as a social construct and - if you are a feminist - seeing it as the means of oppressing women.

So sorry something went wrong there.
A few months ago either one said ‘TWAW’ or it was thought to be transphobic.

Only months ago either TWAW or it was transphobic.
Keir Starmer said about TWAW, ‘It’s the law’.

If on mumsnet lots of posters begin referring to ‘Men who think they are women’, I wonder if they would be reported and deleted?

I really like Helen Joyce's formulation of "men who think they're women" - I think it's actually both accurate and kind. And as she points out, it's a very different proposition to say, "transwomen should be allowed in women's sports," compared to, "men who think they're women should be allowed in women's sports." It makes it all so clear without being offensive to either women or men who think they're women. And it holds to reality.

Unfortunately, I think many 'men who think they're women' would find this term very offensive. What makes you think they wouldn't @beastlyslumber?

Lisa Selin Davis also talking about mental health and resilience in children. lisaselindavis.substack.com/p/my-fear-5b3
And yet schools and governments seem intent on bolstering the idea that children and young people are rife with vulnerability and an inability to cope with life. Chicken and egg.

My children did a summer school transition programme for high school transfer. At the workshops there were sessions (multiple) on mental health, anxiety, mindfulness etc and some of the youth workers wore t shirts saying "I have anxiety - come and talk to me about it" or similar.

Whilst I have no doubt that some very young children do have poor mental health and other issues prior to leaving primary, they are surely small in number but also require careful, professional, nuanced support and I would imagine are highly likely to have circumstances or experiences that contribute and also require careful handling.

It struck me as odd to almost insist to these 10/11 yr olds that poor mental health is almost inevitably in their future, that any nervousness about a new school is pathologised as "anxiety" and that they should be discussing a late teens/early twenties potentially self diagnosed/untreated issues with them.

100% - the most recent research showed that mindfulness is ineffective at best in a school setting. I believe most sensible providers will have paused while they work out better strategies.

"Helen Joyce, if you're reading, please come up with a better term for GC. Thank you."

She already has. She talks of being a "sex realist" or having sex-realist views, as opposed to sex-denialist views.

I think her point - as she says - is that TW may be vulnerable in the male estate, but

• they are not uniquely vulnerable - there are other vulnerable men (and she lists some).

AND...

• the prison system has (or had) experience and systems for accommodating them without using women in the prison system as human shields.

So what changed? And why are women’s prisons supposed to solve the problem of managing men!

Is ‘men who think/believe they are women’ - which is so much clearer- a description allowed here? Only recently it would have been called transphobic.

‘Gender critical’ is very difficult to understand indeed.