Paris Lees on “What makes us human” R2 Jeremy Vine

[NoSquirrels]

Coming up later, apparently.

generational!

I thought it was a good essay, and an interesting interview. On a human level I am extremely sympathetic to the predicament PL is in - a terrible childhood, certainly gender dysphoria, happily now transitioned and living as the opposite sex. I am a bit confused though that you can just “stop talking” about being trans - and require everyone else not to find it remarkable, whilst still campaigning for trans issues to do with children etc.

I’m extremely happy to consider PL. a campaigning trans woman. But it’s the “always a woman”, “is a woman” part that I struggle with.

I’m all for acceptance. PL is a trans woman. I hope she’ll continue to campaign as a trans woman and drop any “we’re all just women” rhetoric.

Me and my mum didn't hear that part of Paris's story. I'm obviously very sorry to hear that.

We are of different generations though and disagree about lots of thing, but not about what a woman is.

There have been a number of comments by some TRAs that this is a genderational thing and that 40+ people don't understand diversity.

Yes, it's trotted out a lot, because ageism is seemingly perfectly acceptable. ('The Olds are too stupid/busy clutching their pearls to understand.') It misses the point that the obvious explanation for the generational divide is that older people have more life experience, tend to be more widely read, are better at seeing through propaganda, are far less swayed by peer pressure to conform and less afraid of speaking the truth.

(I think you may have coined a new term in 'generational'!)

I'm a millennial, lots of us get it.

I was much more accepting in my 20s, and into my 30s.

Then I had children and a lot of previously ‘hidden’ (i.e. I’d not been looking until I slammed into it) sexism and misogyny became blindingly obvious to me.

No trans woman will ever experience that. So in many ways it’s understandable that they can’t appreciate the viewpoint of gender critical biological women on Mumsnet who are generationally older...

They’ll have experienced different misogyny and sexism, and probably have more in common with the 20-somethings generation.

Fab new word Absinthe.

Yes, ageism completely acceptable to try and dismiss our opinions - nice one. My feelz are hurt about that. Will I define it as hate speech, nah, just ignorance.

Sorry it was ROwan who coined genderational.

Not that I am suggesting you have to be a parent to get it. Just that was the tipping point for me and that’s a common experience for a lot of other women, I believe.

WichBitch It was an interesting mis-type!

What a ridiculous soft interview that was. If Jeremy Vine is unaware of the aggressive and even violent sidelining and shutting down of women to make way for trans rights then he does not deserve his £750,000 salary. Well, he doesn't deserve it anyway imo but that's another story.

Paris Lees is a very engaging and persuasive speaker, I was interested to hear that her degree was English Language and Literature. So was mine.
Its often worth re listening to interviews and focussing on the actual words that are used and to what effect.

PL is a keen journalist campaigning for the decriminalisation of sex workers.

Failing to mention that means pimps as wrll as prostitutes.....

Vine mentioned some of the praise via the Twitterati.

So inspirational.....

There is, I think, some contradiction to Paris Lees' assertions in today's interview with Jeremy Vine and her comments in the Guardian article in 2013:

www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

(extract)
"In 25 years, Barrett has seen trans people become "a networked bunch" – more so than other people, he thinks – thanks to the internet. Lees, who also works for Trans Media Action, says social media is the "essential catalyst" for the transformation of trans people in society. "Society is in transition and we've woken up from the operation and there's no going back. We can't pretend that trans people don't exist any more," she says. "People have been taking the piss out of trans people for 60 years. The narrative on trans issues has been controlled by people who have no understanding of them. Social media is about us grabbing the narrative back and telling our own stories – this is our reality, this is what we go through and this is what matters to us. We're here, we're in your face, we definitely exist. That's the most important thing – realising we exist." (continues)

Not sure someone who cannot even coherently express what a woman is should be considering this question.

Accidental maybe ROwan but a great word nonetheless.

The genderational generation. My contribution to the new lexicon was ACRONYMerf but then ACRONYM got banned .

thank goodness my mistype wasn't genderirrational!

Are arf!

Actually that's a bloody good word too - keep up the good work ROwan.

genderirrational

@Pratchet - WTF are you on about "Vine is a cyclist"? I'm a bloody cyclist and I understand science, can think for myself, have got XX chromosomes, etc.

And there's no point in being liberal if you're only liberal about people like yourself. And coming on here and getting on your moral high horse day after day when it turns out you're happy to resort to a bit of lazy prejudice against a vulnerable out-group just doesn't ring true.

I mean male cyclists. It's a generalisation but only going on personal experience of male cyclists I know. I don't know if I'd describe myself as liberal - I'm a feminist but I don't know if that counts as 'liberal'.

I didn't realise acronym was banned. I was doing until someone said it might look like a vagine.

Square vagine

The same number of cyclists are killed on our roads every week as women are killed by violent men. And we suffer from victim-blaming in exactly the same way: we're blamed for being vulnerable. We're blamed for being weaker than the bullies. We're told that if bad things happen to us it's because of what we're wearing.
Cyclists are the women of the road, except that the dominant group - drivers - don't even need us for sex and housework. If feminists sneer and grouse about us, they're basically picking up on the internalised prejudice of society.

Sorry for going off it @Pratchet. I will concede that some male cyclists behave as badly as some male drivers.