Sandi Toksvig "doesn't get it", poor love....

But she's said "I don’t get it. It’s beyond me". She's admitted she doesn't understand what our arguments are about. Has she even tried to find out what they actually are?

From Wikipedia: She read law, archaeology and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree and receiving two prizes (The Raemakers and the Theresa Montefiore Awards) for outstanding achievement.

I don't believe she's too stupid to understand our arguments. She doesn't understand because she doesn't want to. The question is, why doesn't she want to? Claiming "it's beyond me" is bizarre from someone with her level of education.

Yes @Helleofabore. It is a recurring tactic. And an irritating one.

I doubt Sandi is interested in defending her position. She’s just presented it as emotively being about whether you’re a good person or not.

IME people whose main line of argument is to complain that anyone who disagrees is nasty and unkind is not going to be interested in examining the substance of their supposedly morally superior position.

I believe that there are those, they are few but they are out there, who try the dishonest thing of saying someone is anti-trans / transphobic/ bigoted is just stating facts. But that anyone who might even infer that supporting prioritising gender over sex or medicalisation of children is complicit in harming women is being abusive. That seems to be the degree of lack of proportionality. And it spills over onto these threads sometimes.

It is like recently a poster repeatedly stated that ‘all they were doing was pointing out transphobia’ and denying that it is abusive to the posters to be called transphobic when they are being falsely accused. It is fuckwittery driven by entrenched ideological beliefs. That same poster then quickly claimed to be the victim of bullying. It wasn’t done on just one thread. It was done on several.

But it is not just one poster who acts in this disproportionate way, there are others. Luckily it is only a few though.

I don’t want to silence Sandi at all, I want to hear her speak!

I do too. I want to hear why an educated woman has decided to espouse a wholly irrational ideology. Surely someone as articulate as Sandi can explain her position to those of us who don't agree with her? Perhaps if she explains it well enough, she will convince us.

I think we all suspect, however, that the reason Sandi doesn't defend her position is because she can't.

And claiming that Toksvig was talking about CofE bishops when she started name calling is also quite disingenuous.

She might only have explicitly used the word bigots to refer to the bishops in the House of Lords, but it’s very clear that she views anyone with what she refers to as ‘anti-trans’ beliefs falls into the same territory.

Regardless, it makes no difference that she was only calling bishops names.

She has said anti-trans feminists make her want to weep and she’d never want to exclude anyone as she’s been excluded herself.

This is the sort of sentence that makes me think she just doesn't have a clue, that she's in a bubble, receiving diluted information from TRAs, or TRA adjacent people who think they're progressive.

And not just because the sentence misrepresents the position, but because there is no way on earth she would even offer an opinion, if she knew what she was getting into.

Bloody hell. You really are determined to be obtuse about this.

A poster starting complaining that women on the thread weren’t being nice and were calling Sandi names.

So I pointed out that Sandi started out by calling people names in the media, so the name-calling genie was already out of the bottle.

But somehow you are utterly determined to pretend there is no difference between describing views and describing people. Calling a view bigoted is not a ‘fact’ as you claim, but an opinion (your opinion in this case). Regardless, it is a comment on the views.

Once you have started talking about ‘bigots’ though you’ve moved on to defining the people who hold the views you feel are bigotry entirely by their beliefs and are calling them a name that you absolutely believe yo be an insult.

No one talking about ‘bigots’ can complain about others calling them names.

I'd also love Sandi to explain what she plans to do with women of faith, BAME, other cultures, disabilities, traumas, women with CSA/DV/DA, PTSD.....?

And why she's not weeping for them? Or their exclusion? Or their needs?

I don’t want to silence Sandi at all, I want to hear her speak! But she needs to clarify her position. She has said anti-trans feminists make her want to weep and she’d never want to exclude anyone as she’s been excluded herself. How does she define anti-trans? How does she define exclusion?

In my opinion, an anti-trans viewpoint would be saying something like this:

”I hate all trans people and I want to exclude them from society.”

How many feminists are saying that, Sandi?

As a feminist who centres women, just like old-fashioned feminism used to, I’m saying that there is a conflict of interest between what trans people want and what women NEED.

Third spaces and categories are the answer, creating provision for everyone who needs it. That’s not hateful, that’s fair to all.

I’m discussing the CoE because a poster complained about Sandi Toksvig calling the CoE bigots.

I’m not sure why you think a bigoted view can’t be called bigoted if it’s also a religious view. And of course no one here has said people can’t hold bigoted beliefs. But others are also perfectly entitled to call them bigoted beliefs.

Lols. No-one forces people on who they choose to have sex with.

Wtf!!!! Tell me you're a man without telling me you're a man!

I always love the extreme end double standards rife in this movement.

GC women may not state what is wrong with the views of a woman behaving in an exceptionally silly way, because it's not nice.

But they scream death threats, kettle, set off smoke bombs, beat up, exclude and hold signs calling for the rape and execution of women they dislike the views of. And believe this is justified and fine.

These double standards are what Lundy Bancroft describes as the hallmark of a male abuser.

Disagreement and even argument is the opposite of silencing.

I suspect corgi that some of those ‘activists’ believe that we are the ones lacking the ability to see their tactics. They seem to generally believe that readers can’t see the tactics too.

Of course, Sandi will not be ‘cancelled’ by any feminists. Do women protest in front of the WEP meetings and conferences now? No. There is no symmetry in this particular’both sides’ argument.

Exactly. I am so sick of people claiming that we are trying to silence or even cancel Toksvig or others like her. There is a massive difference between robustly disagreeing with someone and trying to stop them from speaking.

As usual, I wonder whether trans activists are genuinely so stupid they can't tell the difference, or whether they are deliberately lying as a way of scoring points.

On past performance, neither would surprise me.

From what I can see Sandi hasn't said anything much beyond displaying her ignorance. Much like that other woman, Naomi....something?😁 If that's being silenced then all those bastards who've stopped me opining on rocket surgery, french polishing, tatting, setting up a reef tank....I will have my reckoning!

It is always the lack of symmetry that causes dissonance in my head porcelina. The hyperbole and over exaggeration to claim victim hood while actively dismissing some very serious activities from the side that declares they are the tolerant and righteous side.

Of course, Sandi will not be ‘cancelled’ by any feminists. Do women protest in front of the WEP meetings and conferences now? No. There is no symmetry in this particular’both sides’ argument.

I certainly don't want to shut down Sandi.

I'm predicting that she'll be self censoring due to TRAs in no time.

There are many on twitter saying GC people want to "let women speak" but want to shut down Sandi.

We will see if there are any violent protests against her from the GC side.

All the lesbian-only groups I know of nowadays have had to go underground to stop themselves being invaded or their venues cancelling.

Also Mishy, that sign in She is down to Gary Henshaw - he pushes trans ideology down everyone's throat in his venues, and it doesn't matter what is clientele think about it, but they just want to have a good time so take no notice, but I can tell you something, many don't like it but what are they going to do? Stop going? Of course not. His insistence on drag nights pisses people off too. It won't be long before She is a queer venue rather than a Lesbian venue. I think it's actually marketed as a queer venue if I'm not mistaken, these days.

I readily admit my knowledge of Danish 1960s feminist history is worse than scant.

Mind you the Danish women I've known have been fucking fierce.

I have sought clarification on Toksvig's timeline, using both her book and wikipedia as a source.

So, Sandi was born in Denmark in 1958, but her childhood was mostly in the US. Then she went to an English boarding school, followed by a degree at Cambridge. So I suppose that whatever happened to her in the 70s happened to her in the UK.

I believe Stephen Fry was also late to the table in coming out, but now has no problem presenting himself as if he were at the forefront of the gay rights movement.

I realise this is a thread about Sandi, so I apologise for bringing a man into the conversation, but I think the parallels that can be drawn between these two characters individuals is interesting.