Women's rights general conversations - Thread 4

Well done and thanks, Kuc!

How to Kill your Family is such fun, and much more worthwhile than Ms Butler.

Sorry for the wrong alignments. @Kucinghitam please can we have a new thread before I fill this one with too many words to say very little indeed.

I'm going to read the Gender/spectrum/prison article in full later. I started and I was enjoying it but my head hurt after the Judith Butler article. Two things about Judith Butler from my perspective.

1. I was confused for a while about all the negative stuff about her and also confused about the whole thing about her allegedly talking about gender. Why? Because, well, she was front and centre for the repeal of the contagious diseases acts, worked for the abolition of prostitution and so on and so on. This was because,

Judith. Oh dear, dear me, Judith. I wonder if she's just trolling the world with her absolute bullshit. The sentence that won her worst writing in the world ever award ... if that wasn't written to deliberately mess with people then she is an even worse person than I think she is and I think she's a pretty shitty person. Some of that, to be fair, is not her fault. I'm probably more annoyed with the people who worship at her temple and ignore the work of the women who went before her who were actually articulate, passionate, and had something new and important to say. I am now going to read How to Kill Your Family as a nice mind cleanser after the neverending bullshit of the wrong Butler.

@Kucinghitam - I think this general/"summary" thread has been very useful. This is such a huge topic that I can't keep up with all the threads but this one has sent me to a few interesting ones. Please do start another.

Just came across this:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Philip K. Dick

Have we a new thread yet?

There was someone in TOP who claimed to understand what Butler was talking about, IIRC. Sadly for us he kept his knowledge to himself.

Well, as you know, there's a lot of repetition of old ignorances at the old place.

This is the other one for the old standards playlist you mentioned, in case anyone fancies a listen.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

That has been discussed (at the old place) on a few occasions and is 24 years old - but it's always worth a reread. I would say that article and Rebecca Reilly-Cooper's Gender is not a Spectrum probably have probably attained the status of old standards in this debate 😉

Doh!

https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody

Got a link there for us, angelico?

Don'tknow if this has been previously posted. It's a fascinating view of Bulterian feminism. Bottom line: she advocates (according to this author) a sly, sardonic, knowing undermining of norms (including rape and oppresssion) as the best way forward. Yes, completely see that. Fucking not.

Thank you @Britinme

@CryptoFascistMadameCholet Oh no!

Nice!

I’ve developed a proper parasocial friendship with Alasdair Gunn (aka ‘Angus Fox’) of Genspect. His writing on the mothers of new wave of teen boys ‘coming out’ as trans (largely autistic, hugely socially awkward, gamers and weebs) is very supportive be moving. His announcement re: having a terminal illness (hence dropping the nom de plume) made me bawl
my eyes out.

There are a few men working in and/or writing about this subject area who I suspect had really excellent relationships with their mothers - Alasdair is one of them, Brendan O’Neill another.

Makes a good contrast to the intrinsic mother -hating present in trans ideology.

There are three letters under that heading. Unlike articles, there's no copyright issue with publicly printed letters so I think it's OK to paste them here:

Hadley Freeman spoke to doctors concerned that the word “woman” had been deleted from some NHS website pages about women’s health (“Welcome to the doctors’ resistance”, Comment, last week). Curious, I checked out the site’s section on ovarian cancer. Sure enough, there is no mention of women or even females on the first page; only a note that “anyone with ovaries” can get ovarian cancer. If you click through to page 3, this is eventually spelt out as “women, trans men, non-binary people and intersex people with ovaries”.
I then looked at the section on prostate cancer. By contrast, this acknowledges on the first page that it is a disease of the male reproductive system. Men are mentioned repeatedly on that page and throughout the following pages. Trans women, who also have a prostate gland, are never mentioned.
Why is there no need to talk about “anyone with a prostate” in discussing prostate cancer? Why don’t men need to be inclusive? The whole thing is simply misogyny.
Rebecca Chandler-Wilde, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

Captured college
Freeman writes that the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) rebuked its members for questioning the statement that biological sex was “socially contrived”. She goes on to report that the RCP has received a gold award from the destructive organisation Stonewall. This makes me proud to say I am not a member of the RCP.

Having qualified as a doctor in England but trained as a psychiatrist in the US, I remain a distinguished life member of the American Psychiatric Organisation. However, this is having its own internal conflicts over gender ideology.

Those of us who have worked in clinical practice throughout our careers in psychotherapy have been aware for a long time that the public, and those in authority, are being badly misled by highly prejudiced, ideologically driven, non-scientific sources.
Joseph Berger, psychiatrist, Netanya, Israel

Medics’ intervention
I was heartened by Freeman’s piece about the medical professionals group the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG). It’s good to see this thorny subject tackled with compassion and heart.

Like CAN-SG, we are concerned about the culture of fear created by spurious accusations of transphobia. The fact is, the medicalised approach to gender care is not working. It is time to consider alternatives. This group can bring experience and integrity to a sector in crisis. We’re lucky to have it.
Alasdair Gunn, vice-director, Genspect, Tipperary

The Sunday Times has printed this letter

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inclusive-language-is-misogyny-in-disguise-kr8068xz2

I don't know if you can have share tokens for letters, but if you can I'd love to read it.

I read the Lemkin piece too and I am really disappointed that they are conflating the views of Michael Knowles with gender critical ideas. One could argue that he was talking in good faith because there is a radical element to transgenderism and while I doubt they want to wipe out individuals who identify as trans, it's dodgy language. The gender critical movement, if in fact there is a movement, is not transphobic and going back to faith, it is a bad faith move to pretend otherwise.

@Kucinghitam is spot on with the thinking of TRSOH people. More and more I have to remind myself that they truly believe what they read, hear, say. They're generally not bastards, they're just wrong and a lot of them will one day, when the tide turns, pretend that they never believed it at all. My own personal "cognitive dissonance" (although that is the wrong phrase) is developing more understanding and empathy for the misguided but decent TRSOH types, whilst becoming ever angrier with the radicals. It's quite hard when you are being personally verbally attacked and called a fascist (or fascist adjacent, which is sort of amusing), to hold onto understanding.

I'm so thankful for this small safe place to not only speak freely but to learn more.

Well that was unexpected. Man announcing the Eurovision Austrian jury vote added a call for equal pay for women.

Was going to put this on the SFW Australia tour thread but it's full, so

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/13/neo-nazis-clash-with-police-and-counter-protesters-at-anti-immigration-rally-in-melbourne

The only reason I'm bothering is because of this bit, if anyone knows how to complain to the Guardian (and can be arsed) please do. And ask them if there are no conflicts between women's rights and trans privileges right, why do they always call women's rights talks 'anti-trans'?

Ditto!

Thanks for the heads up!