Women's rights general conversations - Thread 4

I just think to say her opinions are wrong (and explain/evidence why) is fine. But to say they're unpleasant is monstering. It's not unpleasant to have one opinion and pleasant to have another. Are your opinions pleasant? Do they make you a nice person? Is that what's important? What about the truth?

Fwiw I agree with JHB that the people traffickers are to blame and when people are in France they shouldn't be getting into boats to the UK and risking their children's lives in the process. I assume you think that makes me unpleasant, but I don't find your moral judgement to be relevant. Logic and evidence leads me to that conclusion. If someone can show my logic and evidence are faulty, then I'll accept I'm wrong and think again.

Can we not just leave the moralising and monstering out of it?

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/radio-host-claims-migrants-that-drowned-in-the-channel-were-not-desperate-184726601.html?

I don't think anyone has said the JHB has no right to a voice, or that everybody should ignore her. But she does have some pretty unpleasant opinions.

She has the right to express them, and I have the right to say they are wrong.

I just think it should be about ideas and opinions and we should use evidence to support what we say.

I personally despise Owen Jones and I'm well aware that it's personal. But if you asked me about his ideas, I'd be able to discuss them using evidence, and I'd be willing to change my mind if someone was able to convince me with evidence. He is the worst person I can think of in terms of public punditry but I don't think he should simply be called names and everyone be expected to agree to ignore him. He has a right to his voice. The answer is to keep talking back.

I feel it's even more important when we are talking about women not to monster them as this leads to their being silenced and unheard.

As Voltaire apparently didn't say: I may not agree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it. That goes double for women.

You're not supposed to do anything. Like her, hate her, I don't care. But if you're going to attack her on a public forum, then expect pushback from women who are sick of seeing us get lied about and targeted.

Personally I think it's fair to discuss and debate her ideas. But focusing on your personal feelings of dislike, and using that as a basis to try to discredit a woman - well, it's a witch trial, isn't it? You accuse her of "hate hate hate" and all manner of hateful things, but you clearly don't listen to her show or follow her interviews to know what you're talking about.

She's been on Brendan O'Neill's podcast at least once - why don't you listen to that and if you still hate her at least you'll be able to base it on something real.

Any woman who dares to have a mind of her own is on the list!

Among other things JHB was/is a columnist. If disliking her makes me persona non grata then so be it but it has fuck all to do with misogyny.

Genuine question. Am I supposed to admire her and if so, why?

Suella Braverman, Sarah Vine and Katie Hopkins probably. Allison Pearson and Jan Moir as an outside bet. Hope the odds are good.

It’s not misogynistic to disagree with or criticise women in the public eye especially when they make a living from airing opinions which are intended to provoke. From what I know of JHB she’s nothing if not robust, she’s not afraid to put it about a bit, and she wouldn’t whinge or complain or cry misogyny just because someone dislikes her. She’s successful, she has an audience by being controversial. There’s no need on her account to browbeat the people she winds up and who dislike her into either staying silent or pretending to admire her. I very much doubt that’s her style. She’s not a fraud.

It's really good Winterborne.
She is a fantastic interviewer- employs her therapist listening skills to draw out the interviewee exquisitely.

Anyone running a book on which women will be next week's target for slurs and put downs? who haven't they targeted for a while?

Also, I'm not saying JHB and KJK are similar (I think they are, in many ways, but that's not my point.) What I'm saying is that you are treating JHB the way people treat KJK - as though her ordinary ideas are beyond the pale, her opinions are hateful, that she has nothing of substance to say, that she is far right, etc etc. It's not true of KJK and it's not true of JHB.

I'm so sick of this monstering of women and yes of course it's misogynistic.

If she's all about hate hate hate where's the evidence? There isn't any, because this is just a monstering.

JHB isn't a columnist and she isn't all about hate hate hate. She doesn't play the player, either - she talks about issues and ideas.

You clearly don't know anything about her @NotDrowningJustCrowing You're entitled to your opinion but it's obviously not based on anything except prejudice. It's a shame that you are not prepared to do more than keep entrenching yourself in your existing beliefs. JHB is very good at debating ideas and you could learn a lot from her.

I suspect that ‘transition’ was very minimal - perhaps online only?

Everyone interviewed in the press (police, neighbours, family friends) have used female name and pronouns.

I see that I got a post deleted and can only assume it was for misgendering but given that the media were, by TRA standards, misgendering then I ... well I don't know.

I'm interested in why the media are going with the shooter's sex and not doing the usual regendering. I get that it's a very serious crime but so is rape and no one was allowed to call Isla Bryson Adam Graham.

Women are allowed to have opinions and sometimes those opinions, or a pretence of opinions are intended to make people angry or to get a negative response because it's all about a certain type of clickbait. I'm not convinced that JHB would be up for quiet discussion because that's not what her public persona is. She may well agree with you but she won't change her persona because that's what brings her income. I think she's deeply unpleasant and I'm happy to stand with that. I don't interact with her or read much of what she has to say because I know the model of it now and it's not worth wasting valuable energy on someone so unworthy of my attention. I've written here because people have been told that it's misogynist to call her vile. My question was why? To all intents and purposes she fits that description. I don't use that word for her, mostly because she's not worth it in the same way that, as previously used as an example, Rod Liddle isn't worth it, or Owen Jones, or ... This is not a woman thing, it is a columnist with a certain style which is all about hate, hate, hate and playing the man or woman, not the ball. It's not about monstering, it's about real dislike and that's fine.

KJK is a totally different person and the attacks on her are totally different. Clearly, she is not like any of the above people. She may have views that I don't agree with, but she also has plenty I do agree with, she is not hateful, she is not setting out to demonise people or to spread hate, and she's not trying to make money through hate clickbait. Comparing her to JHB in any way is so wide of the mark. The only thing that they have in common is that they're women. KJK may or may not be right wing, so maybe they have that in common, but that's all.

So, yes, we need to learn to engage with people we disagree with but we also need to acknowledge that some people won't engage with us or at the very least won't engage with us in good judgement.

I’ll have a listen to that. I remember seeing her interviewed before and finding her thought provoking, but it was some time ago and I’ve forgotten the details. I also follow Stephanie Winn on Twitter but haven’t got round to listening to her show yet.

Wonderful discussion on this Nepeta and Kutchitam (growth in society of good and bad splitting/projecting evil onto others) in this podcast. Amy Gallagher (psychotherapist) has a current case against the NHS (Tavistick- not GIDS) re discrimination against belief (she is a Christian and objected to some critical race theory training).
They discuss how the psychotherapy profession is moving towards 'educating' clients and focussing on group identity and perfection seeking, rather than working with people as imperfect, complex, and unique individuals.
Wide ranging and deeply thoughtful discussion that goes well beyond Amy's case situation.
Highly recommend this! (The whole series is good. She talks to James Esses as well)

This is true even more generally in social media now. People are seen as either all good or all evil, in some intrinsic sense. A bundle of opinions goes with each moral and ethical assessment.

If a person previously judged as good writes something from the 'bad' bundle, then that person must either go through a protracted process of debasement, apology-seeking and abject surrender, or be kicked out into the deep darkness forevermore.

The problem is in that focus on people innately either good or bad, in the lack of all nuance, and in the assumption that it's not necessary to go through the 'good' and 'bad' bundles of opinions to see if they might be more complicated and not necessarily always inherently good or bad in themselves.

The worse outcomes, to me, is that we are losing sight of economic deprivation, poverty and the suffering it causes, the lack of resources for the vast masses and the tiny minority which actually owns most of the world. We are also losing sight of how women end up economically stripped, due to other truly material issues having to do with who it is who reproduces the next generation etc.

When everything is just about Right Speech or Right Thoughts, the most unscrupulous will take over. Because most of us are both bad and good, most of us are driven by incentives which could be changed, and most of us respond best to respectful dialogue, and we are not getting that.

Surely there's a job waiting for you as leader writer for the Guardian, Winterborne! 😃

Good points.

Absolutely infuriating to me. So weaselly. Afraid to look to closely at the behaviour and beliefs of TRAs because they want to stay in the self-appointed Good People gang, too instinctively, reflexively sexist to listen to women.

Since someone told me that a man could become a woman

The reasonable middle between the violent and the victims of violence. “They (the victims) do themselves no favours you know. I absolutely deplore violence of course, but it could all have been avoided if the cold-hearted bitches had been as empathetic as me. I don’t actually find anything specific on which I disagree with them, but they are so unlikeable I feel the need to differentiate myself from them and extend sympathy to the aggressors because I am so much more agreeable”