Janice Turner interview with Debbie Hayton in the Times

I can't deny that I'm beginning to feel this is the Deptford People Project playing out in a shifted sphere.

Excellent post but this bit really hit home. Yes. I think you're absolutely right.

That's great, if someone is equally willing to listen to women as to men. And give both women and men's opinions equal weight.

One of the things that I worry about with the language of JT and others, styling those with whom they disagree as "ultra," "extremist" etc.

How far away is it from Whittle styling Transgender Trend and Sex Matters as "anti-trans hate groups"?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5000605-maya-whittle-and-phoenix

I have DDs to organisations like Sex Matters. When will a bank think it's appropriate to cancel my accounts because of such accusations?

I know that they have to, but I am apprehensive that I'll leave my notifications on and be in work or with a colleague who'll see a bank or email notice of my DD (they come once a month) and it will be like the final scene from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

Datun it was 200 comments. Now 276 and that one is still too but with 335 votes. Still not going in JT's favour

If not naicely enabling happy penises is extreme, <shrug> colour me extreme, Jan. You do you.

And that's the point really. Those who want to enable - which is unfortunately involving yourself as a prop in a man's sex experiences - if you're an adult, you crack on. Knock yourself out. Informed consent, have a third space and pronoun and get your kit off all day.

It's those of us who do not consent that require a space free of all these games to just get on with our bloody lives in peace.

Has the article been commented on a lot, Rex? I hope you don't mind me asking, but I always find the comments very revealing.

And is the one you've posted, still the top comment?

I think what it comes down to, is that JT is uncomfortable with being blunt to someone face to face.

I get that, totally. It's ingrained in us to not walk around highlighting things that other people find uncomfortable. With good reason.

And if you are, say, working with someone, it's even more difficult.

But two things.

Firstly, it's not just about being blunt, it's about fear. I'd be more inclined to believe it was an act of courtesy, if women weren't fired for non-compliance, or arrested, or smacked. There's no real choice, here. So it's definitely going to produce people who will refuse to do it, purely on that basis alone.

And secondly, if she'd confined it to her private, real life situations, again, understandable. But she's not. She's telling everyone, in a newspaper, that they should be doing it, out of courtesy. And specifically about a man who is aroused by it.

And if you won't, you're extreme.

It's difficult to believe, really! She's actually telling people that if they won't call a man she, and participate in his fetish, they are the ones who are extreme!!

Oh Janice.

And I am aware even as I type that, and it's from direct and grim experience, that somewhere a bloke will be reading that post one handed and shivering with thrills at the scolding/humiliation and their knowledge that I'd be revolted by their response.

You cannot do anything with someone with this degree of sex addiction and dysfunction, all you can do is have rigid boundaries and consequences in law so that their ability to interfere with and use others is prevented.

It's the narcissists prayer isn't it?

Weve had tedious years of 'That didn't happen'.
(No it didn't, shutupshutupshutup delete all mentions)
(No I won't look at all that evidence, it's hate that anyone a) noticed it and b) didn't approve of it loudly to demonstrate their righteousness, so c) burn the witch)

We're now on to,
ok, so it IS a thing but it isn't that bad

Aka look, you women have to accept being abused a BIT , it's only fair.

No. Not at all. Not one woman. Fuck off. Not a walking bloody theme park or sex toy for a man with a problem I do not care about his problems. I really don't. They are not my problems to sort out for him or with him. Decent men do not behave like this. Decent people do not play sex games with non consenting strangers or use exhibitionism feeding off their shock, disgust, anger and fear. Decent men do not get excited by breaking the boundaries of those they feel in power over.

Because they don't try this shit on with big strapping blokes who wouldn't #bekind or even consider listening to today's eleventy billion reasons why it'ssosadandIcanthelpit. They wouldn't dare. And because they'd be on the wrong side of the power imbalance, there'd be no happy penis either.

This article was a piece of hypocrisy.

I think what it comes down to, is that JT is uncomfortable with being blunt to someone face to face. I understand that; so am I. And she extends that politeness to her articles about Hayton, again because to be bluntly honest would seem impolite. But she seems to be missing some of the consequences of elevating politeness over truth.

This thread has a recurrent theme about what indulging anyone in their non-falsifiable identities can get to. I've posted several links there to live streamed court hearings (some with analysis from a commentator) that are a mess because of multiple self-ids, not only into another sex but up to 26 health conditions.

These identities and protected characteristics are weaponised and used to obtain accommodations that courts and other bodies would never ordinarily accord to other people who have horrendously chaotic lives and circumstances.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5003873-wtf-have-i-just-read?

Identity politics can create horrific circumstances for other people. Fisher discussed this in Exiting the Vampires' Castle.

The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3413036-Class-and-Identity-Politics-Mark-Fishers-Exiting-the-Vampire-Castle

I admire the writing skills of JT, Burchill, Bindel, Stock et al. I can't deny that I'm beginning to feel this is the Deptford People Project playing out in a shifted sphere.

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3203804-The-Deptford-People-Project-and-the-impact-of-self-ID-and-transactivism-on-working-class-women

Yep

“I’m reminded of the New Atheists, who moved from merely not believing in God to aggressively denouncing anyone who did. I interviewed Christopher Hitchens about his unreadable harangue God Is Not Great, in which he called religion “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry”. I have no faith either and I’m a passionate secularist, but I’ve never seen the point in railing at an old lady lighting a church candle with “hey, loser, God doesn’t exist”!”

This doesn’t seem to be quite the right comparator at all.

I think a more accurate one would be the religions that call their congregation ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ such as ‘sister x’, Or who have titles such as ‘elder x’ where x is their name, teaching society that they should all use these labels outside of the congregation to respect those people. That is more accurate a comparator.

or does she honestly think that people should respect any title or label someone is given just to make a person feel ‘respected’ and ‘seen’? Regardless of whether you treat that person with respect in every other way?

FWIW, I respect her right to use whatever pronouns she wants. It is the framing of others who choose not to and who are saying why as ‘ultras’ and ‘extremists’ that I have an issue with.

Does she know that getting a doctors diagnosis of gender dysphoria was necessary, because men with AGP were not to be given a gender recognition certificate?

When this first kicked off, I read reams from men telling other men exactly what to say to doctors, because, 'if they knew we get turned on by silk panties', they wouldn't give us the certificate.

Honestly, women have worked so hard to make the authorities understand that this movement is driven by men's paraphilias, and now they do, they're fine with it!

Would you say most of the comments are in broad in agreement with us?

Yes. Overwhelmingly so as I type.

Are all the people who are buying the newspaper and reading Janice's articles, ultra, now, too?

I guess! 😂

You may think ach, this is just Twitter drama.

I agree. Except she didn't, and chose to write that article. I'll be polite and call it a dog's breakfast of a piece.

It's quite another to find your readers have similar views, albeit expressed more politely

Yes. This will sting. This one was to the point:

"This is the first time I've felt significant disappointment over one of Janice's articles."

(77 votes)

These two went on a tangent but falls into the same category:

"To describe Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great, as an 'unreadable harangue' is to do a great diservice to the memory of a seriously great man of letters."

"The last thing you can honestly say about Christopher Hitchens is that his writing was “unreadable”. You may not have enjoyed the experience or agreed with his opinion but as your own quote makes clear, he was a precise, lucid, juicy..."

Ah well now that reads like a party political broadcast doesn't it? Only GC bigots ultras would vote conservative!

This however blows my mind I will use female pronouns for some trans women. ......... But those who respect women, like Debbie Hayton, or those I meet in real life, I will respect.

How exactly is getting off on pretending to be a woman respectful?! & why does meeting someone IRL force you to respect anyone??? Weird

Got it thanks.

Would you say most of the comments are in broad in agreement with us?

Are all the people who are buying the newspaper and reading Janice's articles, ultra, now, too?

It's one thing to read on Twitter that people are calling you a liar, telling you you're an idiot for accommodating a fetish. You may think ach, this is just Twitter drama.

It's quite another to find your readers have similar views, albeit expressed more politely.

Apart from anything else, even if she disagrees with all the people who are commenting, it is they who are buying the paper.

Aren’t they?? It’s starting to feel that now it’s got out into the wider public consciousness, that some ppl feel a need to separate out those horrid “ultra extremist” GC women eg like people on here who’ve been fighting this for years and the nice acceptable mainstream GC women in the media who won’t scare the horses.

“I wonder what these women would like Hayton to do? Just disappear? They already believe the Gender Recognition Act — which allows trans people to change their birth certificates in limited circumstances involving a medical diagnosis — should be abolished for perpetuating a lie. Now it seems that they want to scrap employment protections for those who have undergone “gender reassignment” under the Equality Act too.”

This is interesting too.

She seems to think that some male people should be allowed to live a myth until the court system declares they have physically harmed a female person enough to be jailed. Does she understand just what she is saying here?

Has she said in the past that she believes removing the GRA is ‘extremist’ territory?

And there was that denigration again. ‘Ultra’ now ‘extreme’. Edie Wyatt pointed out the power differential of these journalists and academics compared to the women with limited or no platforms that they are scolding and denigrating. It is becoming clearer and clearer.

JT has complained that the women who she disagrees with are doing the cause ‘no good’. How hypocritical can you get? Denigrating those women in The Times and telling women to effectively ‘play nice’ or shut up is hardly doing this cause she declares to support any ‘good’ either. She may not have intended this, but this is very clearly what she is doing with this follow up scold.

Datun, yes I think they stopped people being able to see comments unless they subscribed, a while ago. But I can't remember when.

I would really like to know how much choice Hayton's pupils have in being "courteous".

The problem is, we haven't been able to talk about it. Even mentioning it would get you an instant deletion on here.

I still think Janice will get there in the end. I just hope she's not livid enough to stop listening.

My impression is that JT, Stella O'Malley are ever ready to tell us about their listening skills. It's not unrealistic to consider they may at sometime disengage in the Doyle way given the use of "extremist, ultra" and similar terms.

I wonder if a newspaper would ever consider giving Julia Long an opinion piece to lay out a position? Or KJK? Now KJK has founded a political party, is it feasible that we'll see her on Question Time? That would be a fair eye-opener for the nation. I should think the traffic on TwiX would be immense.