I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article

[Stopmakingsense]

This one picks up in particular the huge rise in women identifying as men, and the increasing inability of anyone being able to question it:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/even-asking-questions-is-now-transphobic-ztk3rlrfk?shareToken=1f64a5116171eb54a9a866590e6432ec

Love Robert Webb

Love Janice Turner

It's a phrase that gets used too much IMHO but that decision about the university research is truly chilling

Bath Spa don't come out of that looking good. Although I don't imagine they would have been the only university to go that route. Another great article from Janice.

I bought this, and it says there is an interview with Helen Webberly - and I just realised I don't have the magazine section! I presume the interview is in there?
I cannot find a number to phone to get my magazine and as DC asleep, I cannot go back to shop to ask.
Annoyed

But yes, good article, although I think I had heard of the Bath ethics issue before, cannot remember where.

Interview with Webberley was earlier this week, not today.

it's a pity st paul's has been dragged into this. it has a reputation for girls with issues these days.
I don't know what is going on with British teens these days.
this sort of nonsense isn't accepted in cultural groups where they have better things to worry about, like getting a job.

I am so grateful to Janice for sticking her neck out . I have pretty much stopped reading the Guardian and read the Times far more because they seem to be the only paper tackling this. They do tend to get the best journalists.

Thanks, I found the Webberley interview. She sounds delusionally rational or rationally delusional- not sure how best to phrase it.

it's a pity st paul's has been dragged into this. it has a reputation for girls with issues these days.

It is a pity but I don't know what you mean with your second sentence here.

It's a shame so many of those who have commented here haven't fact-checked the article -- and even more of a shame that Janice turner didn't fact-check it herself!

James Caspian is perfectly within his rights to research this topic if he wants to: I don't think anyone has prevented him from doing so. But it is at least the third time he has tried to persuade the university to approve a thesis on this subject. The main stumbling block for the previous two is that he simply couldn't find enough "de-transitioners" to make it a valid piece of scientific research!

That's not terribly surprising, really, given the psychiatric hoops that transsexuals have to jump through before they get HRT, and the compulsory "Real Life Test" (at least a year, usually two or more) living in their new gender but with the wrong "bits" before they get referred for surgery. There can't be many that make it all the way through the painful, expensive and embarrassing 4-5 year process only to change their minds afterwards!

Of the tiny number who do "detransition", it is likely that a significant proportion do so because of the constant barrage of transphobia to which they are subjected -- whipped up by columnists such as Janice Turner herself and by organisations such as the so-called "Christian Concern".

It may be significant that the university didn't specify where they expected the hate mail to come from. Ms Turner implied that it was from trans-activists, but I suspect it is more likely to come from the anti-trans faction. They are much more vociferous than the pro-trans activists, and would certainly not like an academic study to reveal the immense harm that they do!

Still back to fact-checking she claims that "Trans activists are lobbying hard to change an NHS policy document called the “memorandum of understanding”: they want to extend a ban on gay “conversion therapy” to include gender identity." But that is simply wrong! Why would they? It already does include gender identity!

And the MoU is not just an NHS document: as well as NHS England and NHS Scotland, it also carries the signatures of all the major professional bodies - more than a dozen of them - that represent psychiatrists, counsellors, and doctors. They agreed that conversion therapy of homosexuals was unethical back in 2014, and extended the MoU to include gender identity nearly a year ago.

And in July this year General Synod of the Church of England supported all these professional organisations, by calling on the Government to make conversion therapy illegal.

Please don't take my word for it: just google "Memorandum of understanding" "conversion therapy".

StrangeAdventure could you please define what a woman is?

Dr Webberley has saved the sanity and probably the lives of hundreds of adult transsexuals by prescribing low doses of HRT to "tide them over" while they are stuck in the year-or-more waiting lists for appointments at NHS gender clinics.
She is one of very few GPs in the UK with any specialist knowledge of this complex condition, but is still extremely cautious -- and is even more so when dealing with teenagers.
She made it clear in the earlier Times interview that she prescribed HRT to one 12 year-old, who was an exceptional case not, as Janice Turner would have you believe that she hands out Progynova like Smarties to any twelve year old who asks for it!,

Please tell me what a woman is?

No, I'm afraid I can't.
Can you?

Who is benefitting? Easy answer: people such as Germain Greer, Sarah Ditum, Julie Bindel, Jenni Murray, Stephanie Davis-Arai -- all the people who fill column inches and chat-show airtime complaining about being "no-platformed" (!)

I can.............it's defined by biology.

Defined by biology?
Which bit? Brain biology? or Genital biology?
Brain structures develop at a different stage of pregnancy than genital structures, and there is solid scientific evidence that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level) that are more like those of cis-gendered women than cis-gendered men.

Hormones?
Did you know that the average pre-menopausal woman has more testosterone in her bloodstream than oestrogen?

I am not cis. I am female because I have female biology - I have a female body. I have breasts, I have periods. My brothers are different from me because they are MALE, they do not have periods, they do not have my body, they do not suffer street harassment, they just do not have the life experiences I do. No boy/man ever could no matter what HE thinks he is experiencing. I am not, nor ever will be, "CIS".

No, I'm afraid I can't.
Can you?

Adult female human. We are a sexually dimorphic species. As with other sexually dimorphic species, “female” is the sex that bear soffspring, or produces gametes which are fertilised by male gametes.

I know, I know. That seems mean and exclusionary. I too used to be lost in the liberal feminist world of “it means anything and nothing!” But no, no it doesn’t.

solid scientific evidence that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level) that are more like those of cis-gendered women than cis-gendered men.

So you’re saying that women are a biologically distinct group, but that difference lies in the biology of our brains, not our genitals? So my brain is more female than my uterus? Hmmmm. Sounds a bit not-very-feminist to me, tbh - I was always in the “your sex doesn’t determine your personality, intelligence or skill-set” camp.

@StrangeAdventure can you point me to the evidence that shows that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level) that are more like those of cis-gendered women than cis-gendered men please?

Good article. There is not enough in-depth debate about transgender issues. There is so much lip service paid to it as a social issue when it is a relatively new phenomenon and only affects a tiny number of people (unlike homosexuality which has been accepted as a fact of life for millennia and viewed differently by different cultures over time). I'm entirely open-minded on the idea of transgender issues and genuinely have empathy for people who find themselves struggling with complex identity issues but surely something so significant and questioning of fundamental social values is at least worthy of open debate?

For me the difficulty lies in an inability to hold two contradictory values at the heart of society at the same time:

1. Gender is a social construct that is 'performed' and has no biological basis. There is no fundamental difference between boys and girls and their natural interests and aptitudes

1. Some people are 'born in the wrong bodies' and do not feel comfortable with the gender roles society assigns to them and so the only answer to this is to transition physically to the other gender. The answer is not to blow apart social convention and freely allow men to wear dresses and women to shave their hair off if they want to. The answer is to force everyone into ever narrower confines of some imagined biologically determined gender identity.

These two ideas don't match up at all.

Fundamentally, the root cause of most transgender issues is misogyny. It's pretty easy these days for a woman to live, dress, love and act in an identical way to a man. Women are even admired for doing so. It is still a major social barrier for men, however, to live their lives within the confines of a stereotyped female role e.g. wearing dresses, make-up, staying home with kids, prioritizing empathy and emotions, nurturing infants form birth. That speaks more to the deep level of misogyny at the heart of our society than any rigid gender identities or social oppression of transgender individuals. As feminists, we should be focused on fighting that rigid base of misogyny that underlies society rather than getting lost in battles over 'transphobia' with activists who represent a tiny minority of society.

Brain structures develop at a different stage of pregnancy than genital structures, and there is solid scientific evidence that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level)

If you make a claim like this one you absolutely have to back it up with credible evidence if you want to be taken seriously.

There is no solid evidence of a pre-natal difference, the solid evidence is that the brain is plastic and can change with behaviour.

Embracing and protecting people who defy cultural stereotypes in their gender expression is where we should be heading, not denying biology.

If you make a claim like this one you absolutely have to back it up with credible evidence if you want to be taken seriously.

I suspect that people who make these kind of arguments consider 'research says' to be more than sufficient. And the people they generally talk to require nothing more.

I meant St. Paul's seems to be well known for girls with issues mental health problems.
I was told by friends who attended that there was neglect from parents there (wealthy and with little spare time) and that didn't help.
Girls public schools are known to have an increased risk of anorexia but I have no idea why. My dd goes to one but it is a prep so I am not expecting issues just yet but it makes me nervous.

It may be significant that the university didn't specify where they expected the hate mail to come from. Ms Turner implied that it was from trans-activists, but I suspect it is more likely to come from the anti-trans faction

That's your credibility shot to bits then.

The reasons for identifying as trans are multi layered and varied. And men transition for different reasons to women. Sexual orientation plays a part.

So yes, it would be very useful to identify the reasons and how gender stereotypes playing to them.

But terms of women's rights, despite there being absolutely no scientific consensus, it doesn't actually matter about brain structures.

Men commit 98% of sexual violent crime. Transwomen are no different.

We segregate on the basis of sex.

A violent rapist who uses his penis to attack women can have the brain of a unicorn, for all I care. What on earth difference does it make?

And how does your theory fit in with autogynephiles? Being turned on by imagining yourself as a woman is an exclusively male fetish.

Are you seriously suggesting that a man who fetishises women and their biology is actually a woman?

The definition of the word woman, as a basis for sex segregation, means a man who fetishises them?

It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so misogynistic and dangerous.