Jolyon jumps the shark - is trans a cult?

Good post Rhinos.

In relation to professionals working in HE overlooking research...... what reliable data is there for them to review?

I don't think many are in the 'it never happens' camp, but there are accusations of both under and over playing significance.

Clearly, every single incident is one too many. However, it's difficult to analyse data when we don't have clear definitions with which to group people.

It is from Field of Dreams which, in turn, paraphrased a quotation from the Bible.

Is it a paraphrase? In Genesis, God just tells Noah to bring two, or seven, of each creature to the Ark.

It's a misquotation from Field of Dreams, apparently. The line in the film is "If you build it, he will come."

Ray Liotta spoke the words that Costner's character heard.

Oh, that was me. It is from Field of Dreams which, in turn, paraphrased a quotation from the Bible.

I think I should point out that I am not God lurking on Mumsnet, although if I were I would say 'Down with this sort of thing' and I would smite foxbashers.

Or maybe it was Ray Liotta. It was a ling time ago.

That’s a quote from the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams about an Iowa farmer who creates a baseball diamond in his maize field after a dream, then baseball players arrive.

If 'HE' in your post stands for Higher Education, and you are referring to academics, then surely research is the whole point of academia? In which case, shouldn't the people you refer to be naturally inclined to research all the effects and outcomes of espousing a biologically radical political position, before they espouse it? So not knowing about the outcomes is no excuse, and I think we can comfortably class that in the category of intellectual failing.

On a related note, I didn't go to Uni and I've always assumed that universities are placing full of learning and highly intelligent people. I STILL find it chilling that actually, it would seem, some unis are full of people who latch onto the latest fashionable thing in order to get into the in-crowd and don't do any actual research about it. I find it chilling that uni graduates and DOCTORS seem to think it's possible to change sex.

I'm not being facetious here, it genuinely upsets me. People with degrees tend to be treated with more respect in this country than people without. But if WE know more about the world than THEM, what the hell are we respecting them for and why the hell are we giving them the best paid jobs in business, government and education?

They don't believe the question is being asked in good faith. They don't have a good answer but they also don't think they need a good answer since anyone who would ask that question does not deserve to be answered anyway.

From the TRA perspective, asking how to distinguish between trans women and men with bad intentions is like someone told your their dear friend is dying of the most horrible bowel cancer and on top of everything else they now have to deal with being incontinent and your first reaction is "but what about the white sofa?" Ok yes, that is an issue, but what is wrong with you to think that is the most important thing to worry about here?

Plus, they think men with bad intentions toward women who would also willingly choose to claim to be women when they are not trans are incredibly rare. They genuinely seem to think that claiming to be a woman is so utterly awful and humiliating that only a man suffering deep deep genuine distress about his sex assigned at birth would ever do it. It's yet another of the underlying misogynies of the ideology - that for a man to identify as a woman is so debasing that anyone who does so must be genuine about it.

(And the fact that the venn diagram of "men who genuinely believe they are women because of something they feel that they believe to be how women feel" and "men with bad intentions towards women" has a somewhat large overlap is, I fear, beyond their comprehension.)

On a thread somewhere yesterday, I think, some one coined the phrase, 'if you build it, they will come'. If you provide a thoroughfare, through bad legislation or policy, bad actors will take advantage of it.

Or shriek "Transphobe!"

Alternate facts. In the TRAverse, gender ideology is not under reasonable scrutiny, it is under transphobic attack.

In the TRAverse, it is accepted fact that the Cass report is flawed and biased, that trans kids are already killing themselves from fear of puberty, that puberty blockers are safe because they are used for precocious puberty so the only reason they are banned for trans kids is because people hate that trans kids exist and believe banning pbs will force them to be cis, that Wes Streeting is throwing trans people under the bus to advance his own career and that Kier Starmer doesn't care about trans people because he has not thrown known transphobe Duffield out of Labour. In the TRAverse, challenging teaching gender ideology as fact in schools is no different to section 28. In the TRAverse they don't understand why people can't see this obviously transphobic agenda.

In the TRAverse they know people can't change sex, they just think sex isn't the thing that makes you a man or a woman.

(No, I have no idea why if sex isn't relevant to your gender identity it's also so important to transition/pass/be validated as the opposite sex.)

Whenever they've been directly asked, say how do you tell the difference between a man pretending to be a woman and man pretending to pretend to be a woman, they generally flounce, call us meanies and flounce, ignore the question, derail, or just vanish.

there are no questions in their heads. For that to happen you at least need to admit the possibility you might be mistaken. Do any of the grade "A" trans headbangers ever sound anything other than convinced of their own righteousness?

What I don’t understand is the increasing effort it must take for these people to ignore the very reasonable scrutiny that gender ideology is increasingly under

Thinking about conversations I've seen on here (or AIBU) - when nailed down, almost no one actively supports medicalising children, or men in women prisons, or even men in women's sports.

They just try to avoid the question mostly. Or if forced to face reality, present their position as totally different to those nasty GCs, somehow. Despite being exactly the same.

I think they must. The days when it could airily be put down to 'culture wars in the Torygraph' have long gone now.

I agree with what you’re saying and see this played out around me. What I don’t understand is the increasing effort it must take for these people to ignore the very reasonable scrutiny that gender ideology is increasingly under, eg since the report by Dr Cass. Do they just shut down the questions in their own heads?!

Yeah I think that's why I added the word prominently.

To me it's all but a gimmee that Jan Morris would be AGP. Heterosexual, late transitioner.

still, it's good that she's aware of it.

Jan Morris's travel books are incredibly disparaging about women who are not beautiful and well-groomed. It's very clear that he does not give women much thought beyond appearances.

Libby Purves specifically mentioned autogynephilia as one of the reasons underlying male transitioning on Times Radio last week so it's definitely on her radar. I just think she hasn't made the connection with Jan Morris yet.

My colleagues have swallowed a lot of TRA propaganda/thought-stopping cliches. They think they are kind, inclusive and progressive. I think the progressiveness is key - the TRA agenda has sold itself very effectively as a ‘left wing’ position and as the next frontier of inclusivity. There is a type of person who couldn’t bear to be seen as in some way right wing. In the workplace, it’s especially difficult to counter the TRA cliches because it seems provocative, especially in a captured sector. Nobody wants to be sacked or cancelled. So people like my colleagues are not challenged by anyone they know to be essentially left-leaning, and continue in their ‘right side of history’ echo chamber.

Another cult characteristic is the fear of being cast out or shunned which, when added to the sunk costs of having espoused the movement for a long time, must be frightening.

For anyone who hasn't seen it

Jan Morris was a trans pioneer — and a cruel parent
The reporter and travel writer’s gender reassignment caused a sensation in the 1970s, but at home she refused to answer her children’s questions. The Jan they knew was neglectful, bullying and sexist, writes her daughter Suki Morys
…
As I grew older, even more confusion took hold. I read Conundrum, Jan’s memoir, which was published in 1974 and serialised in The Sunday Times, and the story didn’t quite fit for me. Now I have read more of Jan’s books, I have come to the conclusion that, other than the portrayal of place, all her accounts are pretty much fantasy. More than a little artistic licence was used in all her articles and books. She romanticises anything that is remotely emotional, because she never talked about anything emotional. …
As I grew older, I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Jan wanted to be a “woman” when her view of “women” was totally the opposite of what she was. She wasn’t at all maternal; she struggled to even give her own children a hug, stiffening to a board when we tried. She couldn’t cook, I never saw her clean anything and she certainly didn’t want to stay at home and be with her family. She disliked the very idea of “family”. The honest fact is that she didn’t want to be a woman, at least not the way she saw women. And still I couldn’t talk to her about it all; I just got shut down.
…
https://archive.is/kWd8i

I’m not sure it’s just one of these two positions though. My colleagues won’t truly believe that TWAW, neither are they being fashionable or fear cancellation. They believe that they are being kind and inclusive. Naive possibly.

While I see what you're saying, this could be filed under a combo of moral / intellectual failing.

Society can't simply prioritise the cause du jour. We have to think about what is right for society as a whole. Being 'kind' to TW is hugely problematic for women's safety. It doesn't take much considered thought to figure that out.

That's where I believe people have gone wrong here. They're looking for the next 'human rights' cause, without scrutinising if this really is that. Or thinking about what's good for society at large.

It is hard to overestimate the persuasiveness of Morris's writing. People are in awe of it. At the time it was a novel viewpoint.

But it is only persuasive writing. He was just very good at it.

It is not my sort of thing. 🤷‍♀️

Also, now we know that the facts were not necessarily the point of the writing, it must be hard to unravel that when you are coming from the the point of having been charmed by it.

Either TRA sympathisers truly believed TWAW, in which case their intellect simply isn't as advanced as those who understand the importance of empirical evidence and scientific enquiry, and favour that over blind faith systems.
**
Or, TRA sympathisers don't believe TWAW but still said it to get ahead, be fashionable or from fear of cancellation. In which case then I'm afraid their moral code simply isn't as strong as those who, at best, were brave enough to either openly question it, or, at least, kept their heads down and refused to mouth the platitudes.

@CantDealwithChristmas I’m not sure it’s just one of these two positions though. My colleagues won’t truly believe that TWAW, neither are they being fashionable or fear cancellation. They believe that they are being kind and inclusive. Naive possibly. As feminists involved in many social justice issues, this is another one for them that falls under EDI.

It is somewhat unreflective in not thinking through the wider implications of this doctrine. But many many women (especially in a HE setting) are unaware of the examples and impacts raised in these threads. Not to mention the very limited reporting by MSM on the one hand and a very widespread propagation of the message that GI is part of EDI on the other. Though admittedly I come from a setting that is explicitly ’queered’.