Webberley vs Gold

100%. But not only that....

We cannot be certain that gender identity exists (all we can be certain of is that some people claim to have a gender identity, and that it is possible that some are being honest when they make that claim) and if it does it is all but meaningless.

Gender cannot really be defined other than sex based stereotypes, and the "identity" is based on aspiration ("I am a man who wants to be seen as a woman") not reality ("I am a Brit who wants to be seen as British").

If a trans person has a wrong-sex gender identity then surely all that means is they have a sex-based stereotype aspiration, and society really isn't interested in people's aspirations (I need to hire a mechanic, not some who want to become one) or the ways that they meet or don't meet stereotypes (especially the stereotypes we try to teach our kids to pay no heed to).

I think I might have just realized what trans means (no idea where thing came from)....

Trying Really 'Ard to Negate Sex

I misread the title of this thread, and clicked on it thinking it was “Webberley vs God”.

I really need to book an eye examination…

Gold's interview has been up for a quarter the time the others have and got twice as many views already, they all add up to show how mad this all is

The most you can say is that some people describe their identity with reference to gender.

You could also talk about ‘class identity’ or star signs.

It makes me want to scream when she repeatedly says "so are you saying gender identity doesn't exist". Like it even matters! Who cares if gender identity exists. Sex definitely does exist and we segregate based on that so???

I will watch this later, so thanks for the heads up. I find AG very softly softly as an interviewer. He had Carol McGiffin on a couple of weeks ago and didn't really challenge any of the crackpot stuff she came out with - the pandemic was a hoax, the moon landings were a hoax, the government are paying people to come over in small boats 🙄 he said he disagreed with her, but didn't even attempt to get her to explain her reasoning, which was really frustrating

Of course, the stakes were a lot lower - Carol isn't prescribing puberty blockers to children - but it's good to hear that he was more robust with Webberley

I watched all 3 discussions (Joyce, Blindel & Gold). They were all different due to the slightly different formats and they revealed different things. Of the 3 I found the Gold one easiest to watch because he was able to put direct questions and attempt to pin her to an answer, whereas in the “debates” Webberly was even more slippery.

The part where she said someone could not identify as “Black” because “black is not white” (or similar phrase). I was desperate for Gold to ask why white and black are immutable while she thinks sex is not?!

Also why trans people should be listened to and helped, whereas Ritchie Herron and others were of no interest? Harsh on a humane level - not at all #BeKind - but shocking from a Doctor who should be interested in understanding outcomes to improve future practice.

in that vein - I had wanted Gold to ask what follow ups she’d done on the “thousands” of patients she’d treated? Especially given her limited/experimental treatment knowledge when she started out 10 years ago?

I would also like someone to really pin her down on exactly what she means when she asks “Do we believe that trans people really exist?”. Because regular people do agree that trans people exist - clearly they are present in the world - but the phrase clearly had a different/deeper meaning for her and seemed to be a foundational belief. I would like to get better insight into what she means by that - I suspect it will be unorthodox and useful for people to understand the language manipulation even further.

id love to know the real reason for her agreeing to these 3 discussions in close succession. That’s a big time investment so there’s got to be a benefit to her - others have suggested the timing coincides with the US launch of her clinics. Time will tell but while these shows may boost her client base, in the current climate I’m not sure whether it will be good long term for business to draw attention to her practice if private supply of cross sex hormones to minors…

Her psychopathy is highly visible on this one. Her misogyny also comes more to the fore - it is clear that she likes talking to a male person much more and is even flirtatious. Her story about coming across a trans person for the first time ten years ago and setting up GenderGP to help them despite not knowing anything about trans issues is highly highly implausible. Furthermore, if it were true, it would be alarming given that a doctor should only practice within their level of competence. For a specialist area of medicine she should have referred that patient to a specialist and undertaken specialist training herself. The moment that really showed her psychopathy though was her response to Ritchie Heron. Any doctor should be interested in patients who have had poor outcomes. Instead she mocks him, which is what she accuses others doing on X. Seeing a doctor mock someone who has experienced such trauma at the hands of the healthcare system is truly chilling. All the while making jokes about willies and dangly bits.

God I think I actually feel sorry for her. I think she actually believes it. There’s no way you can talk so consistently about such nonsense without actually believing it. It’s either incredible levels of intelligence to be doing such mental gymnastics with every single sentence, or very low levels of mental capacity that all words just mean all words. I can’t work out which way it is but either way it’s very sad.

I have tired of Andrew, and the other male podcasters, but this was helpful. He did a good job of letting her be charmed by him.

I hope he had a shower after

Personally, I feel Helen Joyce and Julie B did a better job.

But let's be honest Webberley is preaching to her choir for cash.

Dunno, one of my US acquaintances who avoids talking to me about gender caught the Times interview & was not impressed. Until now she's just bobbed along being affirming because "medical consensus" but hadn't a clue who these gender medics were. She's now tottering in the foothills of genuine disquiet, not least because she has experience of people with Personality Disorders & clocked Webberley's tactics as manipulation.

Edited for dyslexia.

"Why can’t I identify as black?"
The difference is that a person is born with their racial identity and a transgender identity is an innate and deeply felt sense of gender that doesn't require a change in racial background.

This makes no sense. You are not born with a "racial identity", in fact I don't think people are born with an identity at all. They're just babies, and it takes a while to even realise that they are people, that they have hands they can control, that they are related to other people. You are born with your genes, yes, but the environment around you - parents, friends, culture - has a massive effect.

"Why is anorexia a mental illness but gender confusion isn’t?"

Because identity & illness mean two different things.

"Why can’t I identify as black?"

The difference is that a person is born with their racial identity and a transgender identity is an innate and deeply felt sense of gender that doesn't require a change in racial background.

Yes, she doesn't care about parents of children with trans identities who see their children damaging themselves with GAC, all because of a maladaptive coping mechanism.

I'll definitely be tuning in for this.

Agreed. I really wanted AG to pull out some stats and see how she reacted to them.

We know Helen is a nice person because she keeps telling us she is.

She weaponises her assumed niceness: there's a bit at the end where Andrew is using Anorexia Nervosa as a comparator and HW objects because she's mindful of parents who may be watching who have an AN child & how this might be distressing for them. She does something similar earlier too.

You really can't make media shows while being overly sensitive that someone might be upset by the content. I know we've already gone a way down that road with 'trigger warnings' etc but she was being totally manipulative for her own purposes.

I couldn't bring myself to watch the whole thing, so I skipped about. The section at the end where she talked about men and how lovely they all are, completely ignoring/denying male violence horrified me. She's a horrible, dishoneast woman.

(Paraphrased)

HW: Anorexia is a mental illness. Trans identity is not a mental illness.
AG: Why?
HW: Because I'm a doctor and I say so.

AG: Do you want to do an arm wrestle?
HW: Oh, I always lose when I do that.

There’s just so much here. So much that is really shocking.

Notable that he has to coax her by gross flattery which anyone with normal social antennae would see through.

The whole ‘little girl’ thing- what kind of a doctor talks about ‘willies’? And ‘dangly bits’? I find it quite horrible to see a middle aged woman portraying imbecilic bug eyed ‘girlishness’ in this way.

At about minute 32, is she claiming by implication that homosexuality is a delusion resulting from socialisation?

I think all the noise about her 'advocacy' is designed to hide the thread that runs through all her activities - exploiting loopholes to sell drugs, with minimal care for patients.

She doesn't care about the contradictions. In the debate with Helen Joyce the moderator, on talking about puberty blockers, said to HW that she had described them as "a pause" which HW denied. When pressed she revised her statement to say she "hadn't said that today" 😑

This would have been just after she got involved in selling NHS drugs to the US.

https://archive.is/kEW9u

(link from OldCrone on the Webberley v. Joyce thread)

Kerching!

I think 'most marginalized' is sometimes code for 'people to whom we are prepared to cede some power because we don't consider them to be a threat'.