Janice Turner interview with Debbie Hayton in the Times

I think if we don’t want to have to use pronouns incorrectly in court or incorrectly in legal situations with spouses and family members etc then we can’t use them privately in everyday life. Sorry but that’s where it ultimately goes if unreasonable expectations are allowed to be met.

I was quite shocked about the fury HJ let out when talking about ‘the [correct sex] pronoun police’. Yes it is annoying when people interrupt and correct someone, spoiling their flow, but does it deserve that kind of fury?

I agree that's how I remember hearing HJ talk about pronouns. That we need to have discussions and it's more useful to allow everyone to speak how they see fit.

You could be right, but that interpretation did not occur to me. I thought in that video clip she was demonstrating frustration with those that absolutely insist on sex based pronouns especially as it was at the Genspect conference.

I love HJ, but this is the problem with value judgements over who deserves preferred pronouns or not. We all saw the video of HJ criticising the ‘pronoun police’.

I may be very wrong. I thought HJ was commenting on the sort of people who continually disrupt a conversation, not with a germane point, but only to police the tone or pronoun use of others.

Is the issue simply that the women who use pronouns sometimes are trying to push back from trans extremists, and in doing so are trying to appear 'reasonable'. The only thing they can genuinely compromise on is language.

They can't accept men in women's spaces, or unnecessary medication for children. Their only bargaining tool to avoid seeming 'extreme' is to call some men 'she'.

I love HJ, but this is the problem with value judgements over who deserves preferred pronouns or not. We all saw the video of HJ criticising the ‘pronoun police’. She tweeted today about a man who threatened her and her objection to him being called ‘she’ - rightly so, women have taken issue. I’ll repeat what I said before, if you use preferred pronouns, that’s on you, but I don’t think you can complain when someone with different value judgements does the same, language is everything and it’s a slippery slope. https://twitter.com/hjoycegender/status/1755862505220419712?s=46&t=g7UjjEa2S2y82o-tbjyL_g

Yes, indeed. That's the context.

depends on the context

I would have thought the dependency is whether anyone else involved consents (informed consent, mind) or not, if they choose to act upon the urge.

Well. I am trying to parse it out.

What you're saying is that men have sexual urges. And they want to act on their urges. Sure.

That does not logically mean a coercive act would be the next step; depends on the context.

Coercing children to call you ‘miss’ when they you know you are a man is not rape, but it is still sexual coercion.

Absolutely agree on that point!

In my post above, I clarify that I am talking about a whole host of urges and acts, not just intercourse.

Coercing children to call you ‘miss’ when they you know you are a man is not rape, but it is still sexual coercion.

If it is helpful for me to clarify what I consider to come under socially unacceptable sexual urges men have which are not the urge to rape.

• The urge to stare at a woman’s breast as she is breastfeeding
• The urge to grab a woman’s bum or other body part.
• The urge to smell a woman’s hair.

^^ These are all urges that are involuntary, that men need to avoid acting upon, because it would be socially unacceptable to express them openly. They are on the milder, far short of rape, end and its obviously not an exhaustive list.

With these kinds of urges there three choices - suppression, sublimation or expression.

Since I am saying there are three choices here, it logically follows that acting upon urges is not inevitable, so I don’t understand why you seem to suggest that I am saying this it is.

However, if they are acted upon, they would be coercive and abusive, if the woman acted upon doesn’t consent. A lack of consent doesn’t stop the urge though, does it?

Maybe it's the word coerce?

And whether or not you think coercive sex constitutes rape?

Honestly I can’t actually understand what you are reading into what I said.

You are the one who used the word ‘rapey’ - in a way that distorted what I was saying.
You are the one weighing up whether things equate with rape, not me.
You are the one talking about a propensity to rape.

Is it okay if you shoehorn the word rape back out of what I said, and then tell me exactly, using my own words, not your mis-paraphrasing, what you are disagreeing with. At the moment you are disagreeing with me about things you said I said, not what I said.

'The coerciveness I am talking about is the fact that men tend to have sexual urges which would be socially unacceptable to express freely. They have three choices, suppress, sublimate or express it whether socially acceptable or not (coerce).

This doesn’t mean that ‘all men’ or ‘all males’ sexuality’ is expressed coercively, but the urges underpinning the expression whether consensually or coercively is a component part of male sexuality. Some men do have a lower drive, but I don’t think that makes them better people.'

Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. The 'urges' you talk about are just sexual urges. That doesn't equate to rape. Having a sexual urge doesnt' mean someone is going to rape. Of course males have sexual urges, just as women do. Having a high sex drive doesn't correlate to propensity to rape.

wrt lists, I can't escape the feeling that this is recurrent.

There are women who are willing to give up the rights of other women in order to budge up and accommodate. This may well be grounded in a wide range of beliefs, motivations, and allegiances.

There are women who recognise the women who are excluded by budging up and therefore put retain a perspective that defends the rights for all women, including the ones that oppose/loathe or even abjure them. I find it easier to set this out as a simpler, "I support women, children and safeguarding. We don't live in societies where we can lessen support for these, we need to strengthen them".

Stella really needs to wind her neck in.

My reaction to the idea that Stellas List has been upset is "good". Maybe they are listening, after all.

This was my view point. I have felt like I have been scolded by the great and the good. If it wasn’t for the thousands of anonymous women stood behind them, ready and willing to put their hand in their pocket for crowd funders and the like, we would not be having the conversations we are and the great and the good would not be able to speak so candidly on the subject.

I feel like a great deal of damage has been done over the last few days. A great divide has being created which may result in less support for those with a big platform to speak - will that mean they will speak out less or with less controversy? I also thought we were getting somewhere on reclaiming language, I think some of that progress has been given away.

With regard to Stella O’Malley’s list, as well as various big namers scolding women for wanting too much in their criticism of these people in the public eye, I jotted down a few thoughts.

• On the list, quite a few of the names are people who weren’t truly critical of gender stereotypes but were actually in favour of the concept of true trans. They could agree up to a point with GC feminists but then would insist that them living out, or agreeing with others living out, sexist stereotypes was necessary for 'good' mental health (I’m thinking Orlander, Tyrell, Yardley, Kimberley, Harrison, Hayton, Linehan, O’Malley, Bailey, Cantor, Zucker as examples in this category).
• There are names with whom I have differed in opinion or approach and it was a fundamental difference of opinion so I felt I could no longer support them or their work any further (Helen Pluckrose, Benjamin Boyce, Jane Claire Jones, WPUK would be examples of that for me).
• There are names with whom I have differed in opinion, but it wasn’t always serious enough that I couldn’t continue to support them in their work or campaigning (Stock, Bindel, Fair Play for Women, Jenny Watson, possibly also James Esses and Sarah Phillimore)

Maybe I’m wrong in this interpretation, but it seems to me that a lot of these people believe they achieved a useful position in this debate by sheer force of will alone, and the anonymity of a lot of their supporters is something they don’t genuinely respect. I can see why someone who puts themselves forward is brave but they were helped in this brave stance by our support and, like politicians, we don’t owe them our support or a living - we can disagree and withdraw support if they begin to espouse ideas or things we disagree with.

We’re not a bottomless pit or an unthinking mob, we can be strategic in who or what we support in the fight to protect the rights of women, children and gay people and we are the type of people who make our feelings known if we feel someone has behaved in a disappointing way.

Perhaps I’m being a bit uncharitable because I’m fed up of the Twitter scolding but I’m never going to support fetish in public spaces or around children, and to the detriment of women/their families, and I’m never going to give someone a pass on dodgy behaviour because they’re considered a mate or an ally. Women have to hold the line because if we don’t the boundary becomes porous and we end up in a place that does no-one any good.

Well, they might, until someone actually asks him.

You can shift the Overton window all you like, but if you're actually completely upfront that you've got a public fetish? In a school?

I wonder if they are confident that #nodebate has moved the Overton window far enough in that direction that the papers wouldn’t dare print a headline like “Loony Left Supports Sex Perverts in Schools” any more.

I know! Really, how do they think that's going to go?!

It's never, ever going to fly.

He says it's a fetish everyone now knows it's a fetish.

And what's that about?

Is it just something he now feels like talking about for his own reasons?

Is it a realisation in some back room that after years of frantic deletions here and trying to deny and hide it that it won't stay in its box and risks making Labour look batshit, so lets get it out, celebrate it and try brazening it out?

I do think its, in part, party political rather than wanting to find the line of authenticity between Kayla Lemieux and Hayton.

Its odd that, in their attempts to brand ultras as right wing, homophobic, ideological, whatever, they havent seen that its going to label them as wanting to impose this onto school children.