"The era of “no debate” must end", Andrew Doyle, contains excellent live video of Chester Storyhouse’s “Women Weekend”, Where all GCs had been disinvited

What on earth are you talking about? The event wasn't closed down! Women who had been disinvited were handing out leaflets outside and had the police called on them, the woman inside was asked to leave for asking a question. What are you qualifications for spreading misinformation? The fact that you used to live locally?!

Agreed.

'Cancelling' and 'no platforming' in general have to end.

People should be allowed to have different views and debating is the way to put your point across, not censorship.

We have too many people who delight in being professionally offended...

It’s worth addressing donquixote because since LGBTQ+ has become welded together everyone accepts that wearing clothes of the opposite sex, having gender dysphoria, not feeling you meet the social constructs of your sex is the same as homo/bisexuality.

Once you start thinking about it it’s clear there’s very little in common.

I know Mishi doesn't engage in arguments he just plops, but I'll bite anyway:

Being trans and being gay/bi are merely behaviours. Being gay should not be subject to restrictions because its a behaviour that harms no one.

Being trans is much more complex. Where it just involves wearing particular clothes then (like being gay) it's no-one else's business.

Where it involves expecting people to use prescribed grammar and share toilets it's asking for a big societal change that requires consent and scrutiny.

Where it involves males in women's prisons, giving medication to children and the ending of women's sports the harms are large and obvious. There is no automatic right to engage in behaviour that harms others.

When people speak about genederism they are talking about a set of political beliefs, not the act of being trans. Belief and behaviour are different things. Many trans people don't subscribe to your ideology.

I cannot believe the emotional blackmailing is still in circulation after all the info and data that discredited it. 🥱

"I believe in freedom of speech unless you're being unkind (ie you don't share my opinion)" in other words you don't believe in freedom of speech. You can't have it both ways.

Mandy Clare spoke so eloquently and her questions were reasonable and relevant. It was shocking to watch her being asked / bullied to leave the venue; nobody watching the clip will think that the demand for her to leave was at all acceptable.

💐for Mandy for speaking out.

Until I see a gay couple insisting that they’re actually in a heterosexual relationship and anyone who disagrees is a nazi I’ll disagree with your badly thought out parallels Mishy.

Unless you’ve got an explanation how a women ends up in a man’s body and vice versa that doesn’t rely on “I believe..” or is actually an episode of Quantum Leap.

Mishy

Again and again we see the false equivalence with gay liberation.

LGB people wished only to be accepted as who they are. No one else's identity, relationships or sexual attraction had to be redefined to allow it - we just had to stop saying two people of the same sex can't feel a natural attraction and romatic/sexual love.

Trans people cannot be accepted as who they "are" without redefining the basis on which every single other person understands themselves. In order to accept TWAW, TMAM, every single other human has to acceed to indentifying themselves within a sexist and regressive gender-based order.

And even then, regardless of whether gender identity is a "belief system" or an innate human attribute, what it manifestly is not is the same thing as physical sex. And regardless of whether you define Woman and Man as sex classes or states of mind, sex in all its consequences continues to exist.

The fact are:

1. Female people exist
2. Female people suffer specific physical and social consequences because of their female bodies
3. Women's single sex rights and protections were created to mitigate the physical and social consequences of female bodies
4. Women's single sex rights and protections were envisioned without any expectation of the redfinition of Womanhood as a mixed-sex gender identity.

The lie at the heart of trans activism is not gender identity itself, it is that gender identity is "really" what makes a person a woman or a man, and therefore that the single sex protections that were in reality put in place in response to the needs and challanges of female people (of physically, natally female people, for the avoidance of doubt/fudgery) are morally entailed also upon male people who claim gender identity as women.

The push back against gender ideolody is not some paranoid fantasy of "a scourge on society", it is the entirely rational rejection of a movement that aims to remove women's single sex protections and impose upon all of us sexist and regressive stereotypes.

It's only just dawned on me that the Chester Storyhouse is the old ODEON cinema. Oh the memories of the back seats in there.

As you were.

Local Women were dis-invited from holding a stall after they declined an invitation to appear on a panel alongside renowned men's rights activist Patsy Stevenson. Chester Storyhouse advised that they may as well not participate in the event at all and that they had the wrong values.

Why did they decline the invitation to appear on the panel? It's usually the TRAs who do that.

The problem is the belief that some boys are not really actually properly boys, and some girls are not really actually properly girls is deeply misogynistic and homophobic. I don't reject it because it's progressive, I reject it because from my perspective it's deeply regressive. I reject it because it isn't nearly progressive enough.

People can of course believe things about themselves and the quality / gender of their soul spirit essence but conflating this with sex is genuinely problematic and causes unnecessary harm and conflict.

There’s no punching down from women to transpeople. The only punching thus far has come from transpeople.

Trans reality - where a man who simply says he's a woman is exactly the same as a biological female

Cis reality - where everyone knows he's a man and it's impossible for this to change

I am only just catching up on this and am shocked although not surprised.

I had hoped after the fiasco at Bristol last year and York(?) who both seem to have conceded for this year that having GC views is legal and "worthy of respect" that no group would attempt to exclude women who believe in sex based rights.

We need a resource web site where evidence of for instance excluding GC women is not acceptable.

It would be different if an event was advertised as being trans inclusive, but an event to celebrate women has to accept that that means biological females.

Northern Rad Fem network were protesting the event. Seems one male supporter in a wheelchair may have been arrested: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1763893291865485502

We don't need to talk about echoes and ghosts when we're talking about societies the world over and their treatment of women.

The same misogyny demands that a woman offer her body to validate a very particular type of male* / prevents a woman using social media in Afghanistan / allows spies to dececive women into bearing their children/ forces women to birth unwanted children in America. It is ALL based upon the belief that women are second class citizens who exist to service and support males.

• I don't buy for a second all transwomen would wish to knowingly violate women's boundaries. Women are not going to stop calling out those that do nor criticising the very regressive culture which enables it.

@MishyJDI this is about competing beliefs - the belief by a transwoman that he is a woman, and the belief of a vulnerable woman that he is a man.

We don't have to adjudicate on the rightness of either belief to decide on the right course of action. The woman is vulnerable. She shouldn't be forced into demeaning, threatening, intimate contact with someone she believes to be a man.

Since we know that he is actually a man, we also know that she could suffer real harm. But that is beside the point. The psychological harm is quite bad enough, compared to the lesser harm of telling the transwoman that, no, he can't intimately handle/strip search/share a cell with this woman.

And you've got to wonder why he would still insist on his right to do it, if it's going to distress her. Any ideas?

@MishyJDI I am interested in this part of your observation. 'Surely some of you must be able to see the echos' of time and ghosts of the past - the same tropes - being brought down on trans people being seen as today's scourge on society?'

I was around when Section 28 was a thing, still a child but around when homosexuality was illegal. Were you around then? If so I am genuinely perplexed about how you can make comparisons.

Here you go. This is the reason they were 'demonstrating.' This is from Mandy Clare's Youtube feed on the questions she asked before she was ejected.

Local Women were dis-invited from holding a stall after they declined an invitation to appear on a panel alongside renowned men's rights activist Patsy Stevenson. Chester Storyhouse advised that they may as well not participate in the event at all and that they had the wrong values.

Mandy Clare detailed what the women were wishing to campaign inside about:

The right for female people to request a female carer for intimate care and be confident of getting that female carer.

The right for female people to be strip and intimately searched by only a female person while in police custody.

And for female people who are rape victims to not have to call their rapists ‘she’ in court.

Can you please tell us exactly which of these three issues that the women were there to campaign about that you disagree with ?

And Mishy, please be very precise which of these issues was women 'punching down' on trans people?

Doesn't take long for them to come out of the woodwork, does it? 🙄Well done to that brave woman. And the rest of them outside in the rain.

Is it likely that the disciples of gender identity ideology genuinely believe that those who recognise the immutability of sex are evil? That disabled individuals who seek single-sex-care only do so out of a hatred of those who identify as transgender? That concerns about the state-sanctioned medicalisation and sterilisation of gay children are merely the latest manifestation of fascism?
All of this seems unlikely.

They do believe these things. Trans people believe them, and so do millennials and council employees, and do-gooders of every stripe. The panel member featured in that video clip believes it, and I'll wager it's not because she has a trans child or is thinking about keeping her job.

So why? Obviously there's money and glory in proselytising, 'training', and in medical treatment. But it doesn't really amount to a conspiracy. I think this is just an evolved idea with really high spreadability. A fast replicating meme, if you will. It has all the right attributes. An arcane concept that only the cognoscenti truly understand. Nobody important is hurt by it. Blasphemy rules prevent it from being critically examined.

So I disagree with the idea that there's a secret motive behind it, and would like to know what Doyle thinks it is.

The problem, Mishy, as you well know, is that reality does exist and while I can be persuaded that a man can love another man and a woman can love another woman, I have yet to be provided with any viable evidence that a man can be a woman.

The two things are not remotely comparable, even if the arguments look similar on the surface.

So if you can explain to me how a man can be a woman, and then explain why you believe we should change over from using the old definition of woman to the new one, then we can all go away and stop discussing it.

I would certainly be hugely relieved to know there was some actual evidence and that this is not simply a faith based argument. It certainly looks like it is right now.

Please stop using sexual orientation to prop up what actually IS a philosophical belief. A philosophical belief system may or may not reflect material reality. Considering gender identity is purely based on belief it is not supported by material reality at all. Otherwise there would be conclusive medical tests on body part that would show gender identity.

What I see is you, Mishy, continuing to try to leverage another group's oppression, those who are same sex attracted, to prop up your very poorly supported arguments.

No women are 'punching down' on trans people. You have also resorted to hyperbole.