DEBATE NOT HATE: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GENDER

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Sorry if this is on here already but just seen it on twitter.

It's this Wednesday in Brighton which may be too short notice for me but you can book here. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/debate-not-hate-we-need-to-talk-about-gender-tickets-38129665857/amp

Some very amusing comments there. And she uses a prosthetic penis to urinate in men's urinals when she identifies as male...????

I mean- are we taking this seriously now?

I imagine they don't like anything that shows the general public the logical (?) conclusion of their push towards self-identification.

The majority of the comments are against this nonsense..thats a pleasant surprise.

Thing is, if everyone thought about it properly, near everyone is 'non-binary' so the term is just kind of pointless. And definitely not a reason to use a fake penis to use urinals..wtf.

I imagine a fair few people seeing that grew up in the 70s and 80s, and are struggling to see how a person who looks pretty much like they did as teenagers can be expressing some kind of ever-so-special 'gender'. It looks like just another youth subculture, and that is most certainly not what the self-identification brigade want. So, on reflection, I'm not surprised that many of them don't want to be associated with that person.

I completely agree. Gentle fluidity and non-binary completely undermines the premise that you just know you're the opposite sex. And they both reinforce gender stereotypes. Plus these people just look ridiculous and attention seeking. Trying to make something significant out of regular personality traits.

That's why I don't understand why the transgender lobby wants to include non-binary.

Unless it's so they can be a woman on a Saturday night and go back to being a man at work on Monday morning.

Neatly blurring the lines between gender fluidity, non-binary, and a part-time cross dresser.

I'm kind of interested in exactly why any attempt to express women's perspectives and experiences is experienced by many in the trans community as an attack.

Is it because within a patriarchal society, men tend to shout women down as soon as they open their mouths? Or is it because their position is so theoretically weak and nonsensical and dissolves as soon as it comes a into contact with reality that can't reply sensibly?

Or are some of the trans community so utterly self-absorbed that they can't think beyond their own dogma?

Or a mix? I continue to be surprised at how quickly any attempt to say, 'hang on minute, you've skipped a step in that argument', is shot down with cries of transphobia, TERF or 'cis priviledge'

It's so utterly batshit.

It's so utterly batshit.

Nailed.

It is a sign of the times that I heard the start of a charity TV advert today (I was in the next room so couldn't see the screen) that went "I was born a girl" and I immediately thought it was going to be a trans thing. It was of course for a charity supporting girls in countries where they don't go to school and get married off at 9. oppression because of their biological sex which we all know doesn't happen and biology is irrelevant
I bet those girls wish they could identify out of being girls/women

Lisa Marchiano has also just published an excellent journal article in Psychological Perspectives -

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804#.WdfQ3Bw_1hs.twitter

Great article TheWeeWitch Thanks for sharing it.

That's a very interesting and concerning article.

I especially agree with what she describes as the dangers of 'concretising' the realm of fantasy and imagination. We need to spend more time listening to children and helping them to reflect on and understand their fantasies, not immediately forcing them to be enacted.

christinarossetti I also agree. On a different thread a couple of us are talking about the need for teachers and parents to work together, to listen to children and to actually 'teach' and enable emotional intelligence, resilience, assertiveness, self confidence to children. It's no wonder young people are so vulnerable to the first fool who comes along telling them false news / fake facts and delusional ideas about sex and gender. We're not equipping them with the internal tools to reject fantasies and delusional thinking.

Yes, what current interventionalist practice is depriving children of, as well as the physical and psychological harm that it seems to be causing some (many?) children is very concerning.

It's something about playing the long game and supporting them to find their way through, rather than setting them on a path which, potentially, is surrounded by very high walls, preventing them from seeing other options.

They seem to use the more successful campaigns of other groups in a sort of pick and mix. So we have the force it through like gay marriage because people will go with it and it is just the same. We have the 'it's how people are born and they have always known it' thread of the 50 years since legalising homosexuality, and we have the early intervention books etc to explain it because brains are differently wired of the campaigning for help for children with autism related disorders.

What I find baffling is how a group of people who are supposedly the most fragile, vulnerable and persecuted in our society have been able to change that society so radically and so quickly.......

Some of it is similar to PIE in the 70s. There must be a lot of other well funded groups riding on the back of this.

A lot of the media campaign of normalising trans gender demands in society is what Stonewall did throughout the 90s and 00s. They must have picked up the suicide thing from somewhere else. Otherwise, why they are so intent on sticking with the bad statistics. Other responsible pressure groups would have had this thoroughly researched and would be careful as to the effects of publicising it.

That's something I keep wondering- cui bono?

Yes, indeed, Bertrand. Historically, when a marginalised group has attempted to bring about a specific change that brings them rights normally associated with the dominant group, it has involved decades of struggle and repression. Often the repression has been done physically, with the full force of the State. Civil rights in the US... apartheid in SA... suffragists in the UK... decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the UK... Yet all those groups have been a much bigger proportion of the population than trans people.

In all the above struggles, a marginalised group wanted to acquire rights and resources that already belonged to a dominant group. I wonder what the difference here might be?

Terrylene, those are some really interesting thoughts!

Yes, I was never that behind the some people just are gay (they were born like that and can't help it so leave them alone) line in the first place, even though it was effective from a legislative point of view. But as I think I said the other day, that stance itself removes the whole essential threat to the patriarchy that lesbian feminists and the gay liberation movement were on about in the dim and distant past. By making sexual orientation an innate and essential character, you remove the threat that things like political lesbianism posed (was there ever an equivalent idea amongst gay men does anyone know?). Which is kind of how PIE tried to get their foot in the door as well, by positing themselves as just another sexual orientation.......

Probably not a coincidence that Julie Bindel who in her previous book, as I recall, said she chose her lesbianism, also sees through the whole trans 'innate gender' nonsense.

www.samaritans.org/sites/default/files/kcfinder/files/Suicide_statistics_report_2017_Final.pdf

This is good reading if you need a good grounding in suicide statistics and how they are interpreted.

I am possibly becoming a mental old gimmer- but I am becoming to believe more and more strongly that this is an anti-gay/ pro conversion plot.

There was a great joke by a stand up - which basically said; 'Don't like me fancying men, Dad? I'll become transgender and shag all the hunky men I want!'.

I think it's also because I saw a programme on how gay men are treated in Iran- the country with the most ahem positive attitude towards trans surgery.

I'd also like to hear more from transmen. They seem to be the group missing from the debate

So far all I've heard from transmen has been the party line. There seems to be a fair bit of cognitive dissonance going on.

"What I find baffling is how a group of people who are supposedly the most fragile, vulnerable and persecuted in our society have been able to change that society so radically and so quickly."

Also, how few trans people there are.

Changing the subject, I wonder how many influential middle class, middle aged men are secret cross dressers.

I've wondered that to

*too