Guilty Feminist on Triggernometry

I used to watch a lot of old Australian films, 70s and 80s vintage. My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember the fashions there always seemed to be about 10 to 15 years behind the rest of the world.

I suppose the equivalent would be Napoleon Dynamite. It came out in 2004, and has contemporary things like the internet and Backstreet Boys, but everyone looks more 80s or early 90s. But it was made in Idaho which is known for this time capsule effect, especially in the rural Mormon regions.

So that's a good point - a strict religious upbringing in Australia could lead to anybody feeling a bit out of time.

I meant more that she might not be familiar with contemporary tv and music.

Or maybe fashion was different in Australia?

There was a time in about 1982 when it seemed that short layered hair was pretty much universal - partly influence of punk, partly influence of Princess of Wales.

I stopped listening to the Guilty Feminist podcast years ago when DFW insisted TWAW. She said once that she has at least one trans identified male friend so it's very personal to her - she won't be swayed and goes through life with her confirmation bias filtering everything for her. Utterly infuriating how people still listen to her podcast, she's the ultimate guilty feminist.

JW women quite often have shortish hair. I wouldn't say it's the majority style, and they tend not to be in sync with the latest fashion, but they're not Amish.

"And she went on about short hair, being 'masc'."

According to wiki although she was born in 1967 her family became Jehovah's Witnesses when she was a teenager, so maybe eighties fashion passed her by?

I can't face watching all of this - initially, I wasn't going to watch any of it

Does anyone know roughly where the conversation about Venezuela takes place? thank you

what i found incredibly frustrating was that DFW seemed to be confusing her arguments. She seemed to think that proving gender nonconformity in indigenous populations was accepted as completely commonplace was THE SAME THING as proving trans women ARE women.

It's not. Trans women can wear what they like and that can be accepted in society but they ARE NOT women.

And she went on about short hair, being 'masc'. Well, so what? It's not long hair that makes you a woman, just as it's not a uniform that makes you a bus driver.

If that really is the foundation of her argument, then someone like Helen Joyce or Maya Forstater would absolutely rip her to shreds, but she wouldn't have them on The Guilty Feminist.

KK and FF are fantastic and i really enjoy their interviews, but I felt aggrieved that in two hours, they didn't bring up the Edinburgh rape crisis CEO that The Guilty Feminist not only had on, but celebrated. That's surely a conversation DFW would not want to have!

I feel she would just have carried on in the same vein though, insisting that being wary of Mirdal just because he wore a sari was a Western framework or something, but it wasn't why he shouldn't have been CEO of Edinburgh RC - it's because he is a MAN, advocating to give MEN access to vulnerable, abused women against their wishes!!!

Surely the bus driver analogy can work whatever way you want it to. Let’s say in the coming few months we start seeing a lot more TW playing on men’s football teams. At first you may think that’s odd, they may look a little different, but as you see it more often it becomes normalised.

Oh thanks for that, I'll enjoy listening. Maya, like Helen Joyce and Kathleen Stock, are so clear headed and logical, I always feel like it's a return to sanity when I hear them!😁

Maybe this is what has happened to pandas?

Yes, I haven’t read the book, but from the Triggernometry interview, it certainly seems like the same old “guys, guys, stop fighting - why can’t we all just be kind?” messaging that ignores the key concerns of both sides. It suggests she doesn’t really understand the arguments but simply wants all the fighting to stop.

I get the impression that she perhaps sees herself as sitting somewhere above all the silly TERFs and TRAs fighting this out, and feels that being in neither camp somehow makes her best-placed to bang our heads together and bring about world peace.

Just to confirm - I am agreeing with the poster who said the TRAs won't like the book. I ran out of time to edit my post to clarify my meaning.

'I suppose you have to give her credit for not just being content to preach to the converted.'
Yes, she had the hubris to give it a go on Triggernometry for sure!

If Johann Hari has a bright idea, one should probably do a sense check.

But I think this is true - listening to TRAs in my social circle, they really don't believe they're in an ideological bubble. They think their position is the one that any moderately intelligent and reasonable person would reach, and anyone who disagrees is an ideologue detached from reality.

I hear them talking about Mumsnetters as a kind of uninformed and unthinking mass who are just following misinformation from the Murdoch press and have never met a trans person or heard a TRA argument.

You might guess from this that they've never been on FWR. They also can't explain all those of us who started out from a "be kind" position and became more critical.

I think that's definitely an element behind DFW saying "if only I go on a podcast, my analogies will convince people who've never thought about the issue."

I suppose you have to give her credit for not just being content to preach to the converted.

Yes, an author should at least have a veto if they have a good reason to really hate the cover.

I don't think that the TRAs are going to like the book as suggested upthread. On Goodreads, currently, the written reviews are mostly positive and the book has a good score. However, there is also this review quoted below.

'This is a very white book written for white people, it's a decent start, but there's a lot missing. As an older (Gen X) nonbinary person, the conversation about trans and nonbinary people was about 80% right, but she dropped the ball suggesting TERF is a slur. It never has been, and will never become, a slur. Given the level of violence TERFS have and wish on trans and nonbinary people, the acronym will remain firmly in my lexicon.'

True, but I’d imagine she’d have veto rights against using ‘TERF’ colours if she’d objected to it.

I take your point that the cover design doesn’t necessarily indicate that this was her personal strategy, though.

That said, she did say that a fellow author (Johann Hari, that bastion of good judgement) suggested she approach Triggernometry and ask to be their guest, and she did say in that interview that she wanted to reach their audience.

How much input does an author have over the cover of the book these days?

I ask because I knew an author years ago and in the 1990s/2000s she regularly moaned about the awful covers that her books were given. I don't know if that is still the case, maybe it varies depending on the publisher or what the specific book deal is?

It does certainly feel like this book was specifically aimed at gender critical people and others who don’t agree with her.

There will be lots of gender ideology ideologues who are deterred by the cover mimicking the Suffragette flag, as they see that as a TERF emblem, and obviously the point of going on Triggernometry was to reach this wrongthinking audience too.

I guess the flag thing is to trick GC people into picking up the book and giving it a go, because she’s so confident that if she could just get a few minutes with a GC person to explain why they’re wrong, they’ll understand that TWAW after all.

The way it seems to work is that people like DFW start from the premise that trans = good and then have to find an argument to justify it. They can only do this by deploying completely ludicrous arguments and analogies (clown fish can change sex, therefore humans can change sex; clowns can be bus drivers, therefore men can be women). You could wear yourself out trying to reason with them - it's best not to attempt it.

It's probably only a matter of time before someone starts to argue that clown fish can be bus drivers and clowns can change sex, and this therefore proves a meaningful and profound idea or something...

This is an impressive attempt to make sense of it - well done - but the inescapable conclusion is that this woman is a moron. (I'm with Kath Stock on this: I can't be bothered trying to find excuses for why people come out with monumentally stupid arguments.)

The way it seems to work is that people like DFW start from the premise that trans = good and then have to find an argument to justify it. They can only do this by deploying completely ludicrous arguments and analogies (clown fish can change sex, therefore humans can change sex; clowns can be bus drivers, therefore men can be women). You could wear yourself out trying to reason with them - it's best not to attempt it.

I found this on Nitter. https://nitter.poast.org/bindelj/status/1918300625441296540#m

She seems quite naive to me and yes it's about superficial looks.
If bus drivers dressed as clowns 30% of the time you may not notice so much after a while, but you would still notice.
I can see John Lewis, M&S doing exactly this - using male or androgynous models for women's clothing 30% of the time in an attempt to normalise 'the look'. However I can't see it ever not looking ridiculous or ugly and of course she's forgetting that some of the clowns will not be just dressed as clowns but will be disguised as clowns and have nefarious intent.

Tbh, I don't think she has thought about all this at all!

I agree with Solrock that her arguments seemed merely about looks (trousers/hair/clowns) and whether we find those looks odd at first, but given time, we would not notice them.
Which, I guess, we agree - if all men started to wear dresses, in a few generations dresses would not be 'gendered'. But that is the end of that argument.

The other option, that we would get used to 'male women' does not really work, because biology is bigoted.

I’m watching this now. I keep losing concentration (look, I’m here on Mumsnet, I’m doing my online Tesco shopping!)
i find her manner really irritating, in fact she talks to them as though they are school children. I did have tickets for free when I think she was doing something at Kings X but now I’m kind of relieved as life is too short.
in fact I’m going to speed it to the end and watch for the drama.

You explain this really well. Thank you.

That's a strong analogy.

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