Article - 'The sadness of Sceptical Man' by Victoria Smith

That article and RoyalCorgi's comment upthread hit a fair few nails on the head.

Mmm. That article was like a crisp, tingly glass of iced lemonade on a baking hot day. Clear, refreshing, enjoyable, and satisfying — maybe no components that are strictly new to me, but all put together in a way that works beautifully to deliver exactly what I needed right now. Thanks for posting and thanks to Victoria Smith for writing. It was delicious

Brilliant. Though I disagree with her conclusion. These phoneys know full well their position is incoherent bollocks.

"Instead, you see them answering different questions from what was actually asked"

Indeed. This has happened on another thread this afternoon in fact.

I don't believe that people really fall for it though. It just confirms that those who do it are bad faith posters who have nothing really to contribute. Well... except to keep the threads bumped AND exposing the lack of evidence and those poorly formed arguments.

It does not actually help trans people to have posters like that say that they support trans people. Because if that is the level of dishonesty that is shown, then it is very counter productive for progressing the needs of trans people.

I suppose for me, having trans people in my life does make me conform to preferred pronouns. There's no way that I'm going to try and hurt a young woman who has asked her circle to use the words 'he' and 'him' when referring to her* - nor am I going to risk her cutting me off. So yes, I support trans rights I guess, if Jon Ronson came to see us he would no doubt think me an ally on his terms.

But that doesn't stop me analysing what is going on - seeing a whole clutch of young women, often neurodivergent, often bullied or excluded by girls and women, deciding that if sex is a choice and this is what women are, they aren't women. I see it as a feminist failure tbh, as these are exactly the women who we should support. There should be more work and thought about girls and women who experience current female culture as alien and damaging. And I can analyse what is going on in terms of a huge wedge of commercial health care finding a market. If I could slap the surgeon who performed a bilateral mastectomy on my 20 year old cousin, I fucking would.

I believe I am a trans ally, but on my terms.

It's about being on the "right side of history" TM. I heard someone say that Gary Lineker is not political at all, but he saw his position as a middle-aged white man under threat in the media and had to get political to make his job safe (to be protected from a political sacking).

These are all media people who need to say the same as the rest of the liberal media elite to keep their jobs.

Great article. I wonder if it will have any effect on its targets.

Some posters clearly care about "being seen to support" trans people on here and nothing else.

If they actually wanted to support by persuading GC people of the "right" position to take, they'd engage. Answer questions. Explain their actual position when asked.

Instead, you see them answering different questions from what was actually asked, in order to chuck out slogans we've already said don't make sense to us. That is a fine example of trying to "appear" to support rather than actually communicating their position in a way that actually engages with the conversation.

I wouldn't want anyone to support me by merely throwing out words they can't define then running away. It would weaken my position if that was the visibility of "support".

All the time you've spent here scolding posters and you haven't picked up on the reality that a substantial proportion do have friends and relatives whose rights we support across all of the protected characteristics and beyond.

Even bad faith is a fixed feature, it's still disappointing.

Always remember, if there's a time when you need to consider a golden bridge,—like so many others who discover they need to leave Kindland—you've already been exposed to the reality that you need.

Totally agree, I'm one of those people, treading a fine line in not alienating their young person while also not affirming them. But I was already very well-informed about the GC pov (thanks to MN). I can see how, if you're generally socially liberal, that it's easy to cheerlead your trans young person thinking that it's akin to supporting a gay person coming out.

DAMN. She's so sharp.

Interestingly, Andrea Long Chu defines trans children as "full members of society who would like to change their sex".

Ugh, talking as if children are adults, with an adult’s maturity and experience, so reminds me of the Paedophile Information Exchange of the 1970s. Pretending children had the same understanding of what was good or bad for them — and of course encouraging them to agree with those nice men who want them to ‘have fun’. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

On the other hand, there are many people who have trans identified loved ones who are devastated and disturbed by it. They don’t sport T shirts with ridiculous, brainless slogans promoting the ideology - to normalise and spread it even more comprehensively, or support harmful bills and practices. They tread on eggshells wanting to stop that person whilst avoiding being completely cut off.

All these people who pretend it’s not a load of nonsense to spare the feelings of their loved ones are shameful cowards at best.

Interestingly, Andrea Long Chu defines trans children as "full members of society who would like to change their sex".

Is that true? I thought they wanted to change gender. Not all want to change their sex, presumably because that requires believing a gender needs to be in a body of the "right" sex, which as we all know is transphobic.

I run in circles with some of these types.
Often decrying masculinity for men in one breath while conflating women and "feminine" in another. Self-analysis is totally lacking.

Needless to say another storming article by Victoria Smith. She's brilliant.

I feel like printing this out and sending it to a lot of men I know like this. I think I will. 😁

Victoria Smith is a fantastic writer. And her approach and use of language in this article, might, just might, make them squirm.

But really she’s giving them too much credit with this:

“On reflection, I think it’s because their genre — their way of presenting the world to others — has always found actual whistleblowers a bit cringe, a bit too impassioned, a bit ridiculous.”

The reason they’ve adopted this position: “pose as a clever person, looking down on the squabbling plebs, insisting they’re all as bad as each other”

is because they are:
intellectually lazy
self-absorbed
lying
cowards
who couldn’t care less about women and children
but who do care about their social status amongst their smug little clique

Because encouraging a troubled teenage girl to have her breasts amputated is soooo supportive.

Not "need to be seen to support" but actually do. People who have gay relatives and friends are much more likely to support gay rights, people who have disabled friends and relatives are much more likely to support rights for people with disabilties and people with transgender friends and relatives are more likely to support trans rights.

It's not complicated, nor is it a reason to recuse yourself from speaking about it.

I hurried back here to quote that paragraph. As Arabella got there first, here’s another direct hit:

For those whose brand values — rationality! curiosity! scepticism! — are quite incompatible with any serious engagement with what has been happening, it has been necessary to portray it as a “culture war” between two equally extremist sides.

There are the people who think sex isn’t binary, male people should be welcome in female-only spaces and sports, it’s fine to experiment on the bodies of children, JK Rowling is a terrorist.
And then there are the people who think that sex is immutable, women are definable as a class of human beings and that biological sex is socially and politically salient.

Both sides have to be treated as though they are equally irrational, in order to make it possible for self-styled voices of reason to shake their heads and performatively muse on what drives perfectly ordinary people to adopt such ludicrously polarised positions.

Can’t they find some middle ground? Like, experiment on half the number of kids? Let uterus havers and bleeders call themselves adult human females every other Tuesday?

Nail hit on head.

They're annoyed because feminists got their first.

I think this is a part of it.

I think they were too far behind the curve. They were too ready to take the side of middle aged cross dressers, and they just didnt see the children caught up in it all. I suspect before long, all of these men had family friends with trans children, so counldnt be objective. Criticism of TRA was seen as criticism of their social groups.

I think Helen Joyce also has a point about some of the most vocal people having a trans-identified young person in their family and they need to be seen to be supporting them. I know it's not the case, but it sometimes seems that everyone I know has one in their family/friends at the moment, it is so widespread.

She’s such a good writer, I wish I could write so clearly!

Ronson, Theroux, Bragg, Buxton have all shown how little regard they have for women. Their failure to call out nonsense when they see it can’t be stupidity, it must be wilful blindness.