Article on the funding behind transgender lobbying organisations

[TerfyTheCuntingTerf]

Not sure what the reputation of the source is like, but I found this article very interesting. If in doubt, follow the money...

thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/

From the article:

These men and others, including pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. government, are sending millions of dollars to LGBT causes. Overall reported global spending on LGBT is now estimated at $424 million. From 2003-2013, reported funding for transgender issues increased more than eightfold, growing at threefold the increase of LGBTQ funding overall, which quadrupled from 2003 to 2012. This huge spike in funding happened at the same time transgenderism began gaining traction in American culture.

$424 million is a lot of money. Is it enough to change laws, uproot language and force new speech on the public, to censor, to create an atmosphere of threat for those who do not comply with gender identity ideology?

[CapnHaddock]

Oh it's not sudden Perking. They've published quite a few articles questioning the transborg.

[CapnHaddock]

The trans issue has made me question a lot of my usual political alliances. I used to be a dedicated Guardian reader and now I have a sub to the Times. The liberal left no longer speaks to, or for, me or women.

[PerkingFaintly]

It's not the magazine's publication of trans issues I'm describing as sudden.

It's their deciding a lesbian feminist's voice is important. What do you think the chances are of them publishing a fully pro-choice article by the same author?

The OP was about who is supporting various trans agendas. I broadly agree with HairyBallTheorem above, that there are many different interests converging to form a perfect storm (though I wouldn't confine it to "lefty": dudes of all shades are enjoying this).

But I'm concerned there's an additional interest: to amplify transactivism in order to paralyse and distract feminist action. Possibly also to cause division with feminist allies.

And I think it's working. Even just on MN, how much time bandwidth do we spend talking about the things we used to BEFORE trans? Remember those days?

So when a magazine that does not usually have women's welfare at heart is suddenly all over trans issues, and selectively offering a platform to someone whose other work is anathema to them, I'm not convinced they're doing so primarily to benefit women.

Sup with a long spoon.

[squishysquirmy]

There are certainly people making money from this. And I expect a number of them are doing so cynically and unscrupulously. They are simultaneously exploiting a situation, and in doing so pushing it further.
But that is not proof of a grand, big conspiracy.

The idea that population control is behind this is particularly ridiculous; if you wanted to limit population growth, there are far more effective, more efficient, less complicated ways to go about it than targeting a small percentage of a demographic that typically doesn't have large families anyway, within countries where small families are the norm.

The main reason why big, complex conspiracy theories often collapse when I look at them closely is not because I doubt the capacity of humans to have sinister/evil aims, its because they always seem like a ridiculously difficult means to that aim.

The world is so complex, and it consists of so many interconnecting, complicated systems. Plus, those systems are shifting all the time.
It is almost impossible to predict how a particular action on one part of the system (say funding a TRA group) will have on another (say, population growth). However, it is (comparatively) easy to stir up shit- because you don't need to know exactly what effect your shit stirring will cause, you just need to know it will cause a bit of chaos.

So I think there is a bit of that happening on social media. There are also some unscrupulous individuals who have spotted a great way to make money, some attention seeking people who have found a great way to be in the public eye, some power/popularity seekers who think they are aligning themselves with public opinion, some sexual predators who have spotted a great way to access what they want/a literal get out of jail card, some people who think they are supporting a just cause, some people with MH difficulties who think transition is a panacea to their problems, some misogynists who instinctively sympathise with pink-brain-blue-brain-bollocks, some who aren't yet really fully aware of what they are supporting, and some people who are just thick.
This rag tag mob may not be very large relative to the population, but they are disproportionately loud and some of them are influential/powerful.

Couple them with the majority of the population who are as yet unaware of what is going on/don't care/too scared of potential repurcussions to not tow the line, and you get this weird situation which appeared to spring up out of nowhere overnight (I don't think it did- mouldy apples and all that).

If you want an analogy for how this took hold so fast, I think that previous civil rights movements are the wrong analogy. Look instead to cults, and even social awareness over issues like veganism, plastic waste etc, which can grow from a small base to a large one very quickly - there's a sort of positive feedback loop at play sometimes. Sometimes this is positive (pubic awareness over plastic etc) and sometimes negative (cults etc).

[PerkingFaintly]

The trans issue has made me question a lot of my usual political alliances

And... that would be the point.

I've posted this before, but I took a screenshot from a fake "antifa" Twitter account, "BostonAntifa". They had their location set at Vladivostok. It's now been suggested that too was fake and they've been outed as right-wing trolls.
thinkprogress.org/boston-antifa-russia-tweet-adb3b2ab4918/

I agree with posters above that transactivism is more likely to be lots of converging separate interests, than a single conspiracy.

But there's certainly some crazy shit going on among people who are benefitting from the stirring.

[CapnHaddock]

Interesting Perking - that's very odd.

I've just reread Hairy's post again and yes I agree about the Perfect Storm.

I think with Pritzker, there's a lot of self-affirmation behind the funding.

[Ereshkigal]

I've just reread Hairy's post again and yes I agree about the Perfect Storm.

So do I.

[ALunerExplorer]

So I googled 'Hands Across the Aisle', and yes, found the website -

First impressions: if cosying up to people who want to make the world look like your average white supremacist, Christofascists' wet dream, and you don't mind throwing black people, people of colour, Jews, Muslims, every disabled person, most of the LGB community and their allies under the damn bus and believe that's a price worth paying to eradicate trans people - well, history is littered with these things.

Second impression: it looks extremely slick and well funded. Any ideas as to whose bank rolling this at all?

[hackmum]

smithsinarazz: "in a private medical system, a completely unnecessary surgical procedure is gold, if you can kid people they need it."

I know this comment was made a couple of pages ago but it's absolutely spot on. And the article is fascinating.

[Ouchbirthhurted]

But re the question of "who's pushing this", I'm finding it interesting that a homophobic, anti-feminist publication should suddenly decide it's important to hear the voice of a lesbian feminist. Selectively.

I have thought a lot about this. I think the more interesting question is why some lesbian feminists are suddenly finding much of the LBGT press and the Guardian so at odds with issues that concern their rights and safety that papers such as the federalist now have more of a positive view of their rights than the likes of Pink News and the Guardian.

Women have seen the Guardian give positive coverage to trans prisoners wanting to move to women's jails, while leaving out details of sex-related crimes for example.

[Ouchbirthhurted]

Lesbians do not tend to be homophobic bigots. Nor do most mumsnetters I've encountered. So what is the overlap between someone most lesbians and mumsnetters might think is a homophobic bigot, and the views of the former?

I can see two things:

1. Biology is not bigotry. Many LGBT publications and now seemingly the Guardian totally ignore the concerns about self Id ignoring biological differences between men and women. They start the debate from the point of view that transwomen are women. The federalist, lesbians and mumsnet are aware that penises in places females are naked and/or vulnerable is a problem what ever language you use to describe it. This is basic reality so not surprising that these groups agree. What is surprising and slightly disturbing is that Pink News and the Guardian seem not to.
   
2. Federalist readers, mumsnetters and lesbians are all objecting to the bits where trans ideology is telling them that their lives should be changed by others beliefs. Beliefs they do not share. It is not bigoted not to want to do this.

[PerkingFaintly]

The Federalist doesn't have a more positive view of the rights of lesbian feminists. Not in the articles I've read on it.

It's not pro-woman. It's not pro-gay rights.

But it is anti-trans.

I think this encapsulates one of the things I'm concerned about. Particularly in single-issue politics, it's easy to slip into feeling like "my enemy's enemy is my friend".

I don't think it's wrong to seek out issues of common ground, or to work with people on one issue when you disagree with them on another (thought depends on the disagreement).

But I also don't think one shouldn't take one's eye off the ball, or forget that other people may be aiming for a different destination.

[PerkingFaintly]

don't think one should n't take one's eye off the ball

[PerkingFaintly]

Actually I want to put that much more strongly.

I think it's actively right to seek out issues of common ground, and to work together with people, even when we may disagree with them on some issues.

But it does depend how profoundly we disagree with them, and on things like whether we're unwittingly appearing to endorse them. And even when disagreements are small, it's still good advice not to take one's eye off the ball.

[ALunerExplorer]

Lesbians do not tend to be homophobic bigots

Are you suggesting that being a lesbian automatically precludes lesbians from the human foibles of prejudice and bigotry? I've never met anyone - myself included - who hasn't internalised some of the many facets of patriarchal oppression. I've only people who are more, or less, honest about that and more - or less - prepared to confront that.

Biology isn't bigotry

Charles Darwin found out how bigoted biology could be when Christian Victorian White Patriarchy reacted to Darwin, just as [Catholic] Christianity reacted to Galileo. At least until Darwin's cousin came up with that great wheeze known as eugenics, when biology could be used to do all kinds of bigoted shit.

Of course biology can be bigoted. You are using [outdated, pathologising] science/biology to paint a whole community of people as delusional members of a cult. You can repeat 'biology isn't bigoted' until you're blue in the face, but science has been used by politicians and bigots since science began so that dominant groups could maintain their dominance, and most especially when dominant groups think they're under threat.

But then, if you think that 'not agreeing' with the bits of white supremacy that you can't excuse is all it takes to absolve you of any complicity with the out workings of those 'less salubrious' aspects... well, again, history leaves you some huge clues there.

Most recently, the 66% of white women who got Trump into the White House.

Look, those Christian/white supremacists are still misogynists to the core and they hate every single feminist with just as much virulence as they did a decade ago when they were denouncing you and me both as the spawn of Satan.

They haven't magically changed their minds about that. And when their done throwing the people you hate too, and everyone else, under the bus, you can bet your sweet arse they'll come for you too. Because they are never ever going to agree to bodily autonomy for any of us.

It's never going to happen.

[HairyBallTheorem]

A lot of us on here are research scientists in a variety of fields and are well aware of what happens when science gets politicised (for some of us it forms the backdrop to our working lives). It seems to me pretty obvious that appropriating the experiences of a tiny proportion of the human race who happen to be intersex, and cherry picking the biology of species which display sequential hermaphroditism (clown fish) in order to prop up a political ideology (trans rights activism) is a prime example of precisely this sort of distortion of science by political ideology.

[ALunerExplorer]

Can I just clarify - were you demonstrating what cherry picking is with your response, because that's being pretty picky there yourself, isn't it?

The consensus in the medical community was, until recently, that being trans should be treated as a mental health issue/disorder. That is the politics and agenda that had held sway, until recently.

Because the collated research and evidence now indicates that it is inappropriate to treat being trans as a mental health issue primarily, because there is, in fact, a good deal of evidence now to show that gender - not just sex - has a biological underpinning. Or do you think that The Endocrine Society has been bought off by the trans lobby?

www.endocrine.org/advocacy/priorities-and-positions/transgender-health

New information is coming to light - because science is never static is it? There was a day when people thought that sickness was brought on by an imbalance of the humours, and that we needed leeches to be stuck on sick people. But then we learned better and moved on.

We once thought people with mental health conditions were possessed by evil. But we learnt better, and stopped treating a group of people like a threat. Well... to some extent.

As a society we used to force left handed people to write with their right hands. We stopped doing that: and there aren't any more or less left handed people now than there was before we stopped forcing 'right handed conversion therapy' on them.

We just don't treat them like their defective. We treat them like human beings, in fact.

It is not 'trans politics' that have held sway in the medical and scientific community - its the Blanchard's, and the Zucker's and the McHugh's of the world, whose upright conservative 'moral agenda' had to be maintained. That's why the right wing, alt-right, white supremacists want a bloody alliance with you guys: and if this little unholy alliance gets even half of what it wants, they will come for every single woman next.

Or at least will stop pretending that they'd stopped coming after us in the first place.

You think the alt-right, white supremacist men are ever going to give you bodily autonomy?

What did they add to that kool aid anyway?

Vodka?

[MsBeaujangles]

Lunar. The bottom line is, whatever gender is or isn’t, sex matters and inequality exists because of sex. Therefore, we need to protect the right, in very limited circumstances, to differentiate according to sex not gender.

We also need to break down ridiculous societal expectations relating to gender conformity. There should be no such thing as being gender non conforming because notions linking all things deemed to be feminine to females and all things masculine to males is just nonsense. Medical labels should not be given to people who do not conform to gender stereotypes/ expectations.

People who are distressed with their sexed bodies to the point that it effects their well being should be diagnosed as dysphoric and receive support to alleviate symptoms.

[HairyBallTheorem]

Since you seem to have missed the point, the appropriation of intersex conditions and attempts to muddy the waters by talking about the biology of species very far removed from our own are examples of bad science practised by the trans lobby.

As for the underpinning explanation of trans, from what I've read it's probably partially biological and partially social, in that neurological/endocrine factors may well explain feelings of discomfort with one's sexed body, but they don't fully explain why any given individual then chooses to make the further step of conceptualising their feelings of discomfort in terms of"having been born in the wrong body" rather than being an atypical member of one's birth sex. The anthropological observation that third gender categories are more prevalent in societies with rigid gender roles (in the old fashioned social sciences 101 sense of gender) suggests that social factors are part of the explanation.

Note that the endocrine/neurological factors may explain feelings of gender dysphoria but they don't establish the conclusion that because of this the person is actually a member of the opposite sex.

As for the unholy alliance with the hard right, I can't speak for others but I have pretty consistently spoken out against using far right sources. I didn't mention it on this thread because that had been extensively discussed and the thread had moved on. I see it in terms of the three way split I've seen suggested: your behaviour doesn't match the expected behaviour of people of your biological sex? Trans answer: fix your body. Far right answer: fix your behaviour. Rad from answer: it doesn't matter - you can dress and act however you want.

[PerkingFaintly]

Trans answer: fix your body. Far right answer: fix your behaviour. Rad fem answer: it doesn't matter - you can dress and act however you want.

This.

[PerkingFaintly]

(Assuming I've correctly got the meaning of your typo, Hairy. Apologies if I've wrongly put a word in your mouth.)

[HairyBallTheorem]

No correct correction Perking Was typing with frozen fingers on touch line at rugby.

[PerkingFaintly]

In these temperatures after nightfall? You're a braver woman than I am!

[HairyBallTheorem]

The things we do for our offspring. I have thawed out now.

[TheRagingGirl]

I'm of the cock-up rather than conspiracy frame of mind

Actually, I ted to agree HairyB - but there must be an element of big money midicine in there - if not big pharma, certainly surgeons-who-think-they're-God There's a thread on Twitter if you do Twitter, which gives (anecdotal) evidence of this.

It is the perfect storm:

• of young people wanting to rebel against their mothers hence the hatred of older feminists
  
• of progressive politicos wanting to find the next "I'm more right on than you" cause
  
• badly digested po-mo Butler stuff most of the TRAs haven't read - I doubt they have the intellect, focus, or concentration necessary (and I'll put my hands up to teaching Queer theory - BUT I teach it from a feminist point of view, and it's possible to do that: feminist Queer is about NOT putting people in boxes, but wanting to get rid of the boxes entirely, ie feminism)