Simon Jenkins - reliably wrong

I read the column earlier and came to see if anyone had started a thread on it. Thanks!

What absolute twaddle it is. I realise the Guardian has an agenda but Jenkins’s reasoning is just … non-existent? It makes no sense at all!

I think Simon Jenkins is a classic example of the man who's so clever, he doesn't realise how dumb he is.

It blows the mind that these supposedly intelligent people can support this level of nonsense.

So a man can be a woman 'sometimes' Simon? But not other times?

Jesus wept 🙄

That reliable trope, the "toxic debate", 🙄

Have you actually thought about any of this, Simon? The court cases and tribunals, the schools, the swimming pools, Sandie Peggie, etc?

Man goes to bat for other men
Plus ca change...

Sex as defined as biological sex should clearly apply to physical sports, but less so to most women’s clubs or job quotas or competitions or restaurant loos.

But why?
Can someone be "a little bit woman"? For some things, but not other things?
The definition should apply to physical sports, but not to competitions? (whatever competitions means here?)

This is just utter drivel that makes no logical sense at all.

But children at the age of three are already fully capable of identifying the sex of a stranger, and they are always right. And no-one calls these toddlers "fascist bio-essentialist reactionaries" for it. Even dogs seem to know who's woman or man, those grubby TERFS.

Heck, even I, who does not have a great sense of memory for faces, can always tell who the "transwoman" in any given photograph is, because there is something about men's eyes and gaze that they cannot seem to surgically change. Perhaps some guys lose this visual ability to clock sexes as they grow older because their hormones cook their brains. Or because the sum of lipstick + bolt-ons + pantomime of a weird submissive gaze that no female does in real life genuinely equals "womanhood" to them.

I don’t want men in women’s spaces, no matter how discreet they are they shouldn’t be in there. I also wonder if the definition of discreet involves a soft voice, a head tilt and a tinkly laugh.

Another misogynistic, bigoted left leaning man who thinks women should STFU and let men have whatever they want.

Colour me surprised. How many more of these cretins are going to reveal themselves? 🙄

also this.

It's so fucking boing. Average female columnist - even the ones I loathe - are generally competent, good at their job etc. Average male columnist? Often half of what they write is incomprehensible.

That phrase "give me the confidence of a mediocre white man" is often unfair, but seems deserved in this case. It's not just being white, of course, it's having the kind of privileged background where you learn to assume that you are cleverer and better-informed than everyone else, even if you have no experience of the topic at hand and even if you haven't bothered to research it or find out anything about it. You see it in people like Boris Johnson and David Cameron and, well, anyone from that kind of background, really. They've been told all their lives that they're special and it has never occurred to them that it might not be true.

Simon Jenkins has written several columns for the Guardian about why maths shouldn't be compulsory in school, because it doesn't have any use outside school. His absolute ignorance is no bar at all to his belief that he's right.

10 years ago, I think I would have agreed with this article. In large part becuase, like Simon, the only trans people I'd knowingly met or engaged wtih, or seen in media and popular culture were exacrly as he describes. And I would have felt sorry foor them and like it didn't impact me as a woman.

Now, I know that sadly, thats' simply not true. And that the transwomen he thinks (and I thought) were a) hugely hugely small nmbers and b) super discreet and deserviing of support are actually the minority even of the trans community. And that actually, way too many of the (not as small as I thought it was) community are actively out there to take away women's rights.

Meanwhile, this sentence always fill sme with dread: Trans people have a right to dignity and respect.
Of course they do. I don't dispute that at all. But why must I be the one who provides this? If they have that right, what are men going to do to make sure that trans people feel comfortable in THEIR spaces?

it will take time for many others to accept them for who they are

The problem is they are demanding others accept them for what they aren't.

I really hope someone shows this thread to Simon Jenkins! I am so tired of ‘nice’ men trying to soothe us into silence. Also, this patronising ’beeee kiiind’ nonsense seems less forgivable every time I hear it, as the years pass and the evidence mounts up against it.

I can easily believe Jan Morris was good company at dinner parties, I'm just not sure how that makes Simon Jenkins, or anyone else for that matter, an authority on single sex spaces.

I'd say that background is a perfect qualification for writing a column for the Guardian. It's a paper run by people who think that Sir Michael Palin (82) counts as an expert on the working class because he was born in Sheffield.

Simon Jenkins is 82 years old, very wealthy and lives in a very small media bubble in Kensington.

I don't understand why the Guardian continues to give him a column or what he could possibly advise the UK population on.

Ah I see, this is yet another tiresome example of "bros before hoes."

Off you fuck Simon, and take your c2018 TA talking points with you cause they won't wash now.

One wonders if this "commentator " has ever heard of Bash Back, seen the criminal damage caused by trans identifiedmen, seen any footage of let women speak meetings, etc etc. Given that the man known as Lyndsay Watson "transitioned" many years ago and so is, presumably, "true trans", then this chap needs to open his eyes and preferably close his mouth.

Yes this. Just compare it with his hot takes on how universities should work now, based on no apparent familiarity with this beyond his own experience at Oxford in 1987 or some such.

As I recall, Jan Morris's daughter didn't think he was very nice at all.

He’s reliably wrong on passports too. A letter from a doctor is one of the things that can be used if a person doesn’t have a GRC.

How likely is it that Jan Morris told friends about his fantasies, why he wants to be a woman and what he thinks of women.

I believe simon jenkins and stephen fry when they saw Morris as a good egg. He will have been to them.

These men say very different things on anonymous forums. Some of then will be old school trans.

Jan Morris was quite the piece of work. It always amazed me how certain male celebs would fawn over him. I think it was the combination of upper-class male arrogance and feminine mannerisms.

If Simon's argument boils down to "I know a few old-school transsexuals and they aren't like that" - well, so do I. So do many of us.

I often think of a couple of old friends who are, in old money, gay male transsexuals. One is that extremely rare thing, a transwoman who passes well. The other really doesn't. Both of them would go out of their way to avoid causing alarm or distress.

Do I think they should use female facilities? No. If I were only thinking of myself, I wouldn't be bothered, but I have to think of the rest of you, and you've only got my word for it that they're harmless.

And, unlike Simon Jenkins, I have noticed the fetishists and the activist loonies and the mentally distressed teenage girls. I don't extrapolate from the nice unassuming transwomen I know and assume they're the norm. I know and they know that they're not.

I feel sorry for my friends that TRA extremism fucked up the tolerance they depended on, but we gave an inch and the TRAs took a mile and we will have to take the whole mile back, and I am very relaxed about that making Simon Jenkins sad.

Reliably wrong sums it up. There’s no subject that he takes up that he isn’t both stupid and wrong about.