Jane Clare Jones on Twitter, Trans Rights Totalitarianism, and the Erasure of Sex

[arranfan]

Please read this, and understand why proposed changes to Twitter's policies are designed to erase women.

You know that I have dedicated my entire adult life to thinking about injustice, and to analysing how mechanisms of domination function to destroy the lives of vast numbers of people, because of their sex, or sexual orientation, or socio-economic class, or race. You know I’ve never bothered much with accumulating civic or financial power, because I think we live in a bankrupt neoliberal patriarchal white supremacist environmentally suicidal clusterfuck of a society, and all I really care about is saying that over and over again. And you also know, I hope, that I do this, because I believe, deeply, that all human beings have the right to live meaningful lives in which they have a chance to fulfil their potential, and to be treated with dignity, respect, and social support. But that’s not what Twitter now potentially believes. Twitter believes that people who believe what I believe think something so inexcusable that we shouldn’t be allowed to participate in public political discourse. And this is the story of why that is so. ...

The proposed policy that Twitter announced yesterday would pass quietly under the nose of anyone who is not well-versed in this conflict, and in its ideological and rhetorical tropes. Despite the fact that Twitter has tolerated women being inundated with death and rape-threats – most famously in response to Caroline Criado-Perez having the temerity to campaign for there to be one woman left on a British banknote – Twitter has now decided its policy on policing hate-speech needs to be tightened up. It has decided that hate-speech is defined by dehumanizing language – fair enough – and then decided that there are two principle examples of this kind of dehumanizing speech. The first, uncontroversially, is comparing humans to animals or viruses (vermin, cockroaches, plagues etc.) So, no problem there – it’s an much-used and well-documented trope of othering groups of people, and it never goes anywhere good. The second – and this is where a MASSIVE alarm-bell starts ringing – is “reducing groups to their genitalia.” Something Twitter describes as a form of ‘mechanistic’ dehumanization.

janeclarejones.com/2018/09/26/twitter-trans-rights-totalitarianism-and-the-erasure-of-sex/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

If this goes ahead, gender critical people will be de-platformed on a global scale.

Twitter may be on the decline

text.npr.org/s.php?sId=633090205

The article is worth reading, in full. JCJ finishes with:

For those of you out there still sitting on the fence, or who still believe that I, and everyone opposing this ‘civil rights movement’, is just a nasty evil hate-mongering bigot, please, if you give one shit about women and the protection of women, wake-the-fuck-up. This is actually happening, it’s scary as shit, and we may well be running out of time. This is what woman-hating totalitarianism looks like. This is not a fucking drill.

What can I say?

She’s right. It’s terrifying.

That is scary.

And the whole of Twitter is fucking terrifying too, because it does have such political power yet it represents such nonsense. Wasn't it something like half of Donald Trump's followers were bots at some point? Programmed to tweet and retest?

It's a horrible tool which has been gamed for years and is still seen as a proper measure of public opinion by some people.

"As anyone versed in the rhetoric of the trans rights movement will immediately recognize, ‘reducing someone to their genitals’ is one of the used-like-clockwork phrases trans rights activists turn out when arguing about why it’s not okay to distinguish male from female humans, or why it’s ‘problematic’ to think the definition of ‘woman’ has something to do with being biologically female. It’s a totally bogus argument because it relies on collapsing the distinction between ‘something being defined by’ and ‘something being reduced to’ – to say that being a woman has something to do with having the sexual characteristics of a female is not to reduce a woman to being only those characteristics. And what’s more, the reason for arguing this is transparently not because the trans rights movement is unduly concerned about women being reduced to dehumanizing body parts or functions. In the name of inclusivity they have promoted the use of phrases like ‘uterus-havers,’ ‘cervix-havers,’ ‘menstruators’ and in one particularly charming example, ‘bleeders.’ The function of this argument, that is, is purely political. And it’s political function is to claim that it is morally reprehensible to distinguish male and female humans, in the service or arguing that no public policy, or organization of public space, can legitimately be made of the basis of that distinction. In the case of the Twitter policy here, this function is further amplified by the fact that Twitter apparently recognises that both ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ are acceptable ways of identifying a group. But it does not recognise that sex is. (That is, it will allow us to talk about ‘women’ and ‘men’ because the category of ‘women’ potentially includes male people who identify as women. But it will not allow us to talk about female people)."

DH has read this article and it's finally falling into place for him why I've been drawing parallels with what Arendt was warning about with , The Origins of Totalitarianism - she wasn't writing a manual.

Jane Clare Jones' Twitter thread about her post: twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1044984775029739520

Jane Clare Jones is so excellent in this, and SPOT ON.

I've just had the somewhat brain-melting experience of reading Humanists UK's response to the GRA consultation and their suggested answers for members filling in the forms.

Lizzie Streeter, Chair of LGBT Humanists writes of the consultation response, prepared by LGBT Humanists UK:

‘Humanists UK is an ethical movement for social and political change. We support the freedom of all people to make choices about their own lives to the extent that they do not harm others. In line with this, we have a longstanding commitment to supporting the human rights and dignity of transgender people and their equal treatment. This leads us to support proposals that will ease the lives of those who wish to have their gender legally re-assigned so that they can live their life recognised as that gender by public authorities and service providers.

‘We support this on the understanding that safeguards to ensure the genuine intent of applicants for legal reassignment will be in place, and that existing Equality Act protections on the grounds of sex will be maintained. All public authorities need to be aware of these, to prevent laws designed to liberate one set of people inadvertently risking the oppression of another, as has happened in at least one recent case.

‘These protections guarantee, for example, that single-sex services or facilities can continue to be restricted to people of one sex only, if such a restriction is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.’

humanism.org.uk/2018/09/25/lgbt-humanists-responds-to-gender-recognition-act-consultation/

Is it just me who fails to understand Humanists UK's blithe optimism that sex-based protections will won't continue to collapse, given the recent news about Karen White, Girl Guides etc.? That Anne Sinnott was correct that organisations are anticipating the law and breaching the EA already?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3376567-anne-sinnott-vindicated-she-was-right

This is what a failure to understand safeguarding, protection, and the seeming juggernaut of totalitarianism looks like.

Do these virtue-signalling fools not understand that it is the very definition of SEX that is being undermined by this legislation?

We support this on the understanding that safeguards to ensure the genuine intent of applicants for legal reassignment will be in place, and that existing Equality Act protections on the grounds of sex will be maintained.

There are no safeguards or ways to measure genuine intent. That is the POINT of SELF-ID. YOU CANNOT DISPROVE A GENDER IDENTITY ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN DISPROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. IT IS A FAITH BASED CLAIM!
Existing sex-based protections are failing, everyone is confused, women cannot even put up a goddamned billboard with a dictionary definition.
All of this will only be undermined further by the idiotic policy you are supporting.

I couldn't agree more, heresyandwitchcraft - I know these are smart and well-intentioned people so I just can not comprehend why we are poles apart on this. And why the juggernaut of totalitarianism is in Humanists UK's blindspot.

Yet again, I'm driven to quote Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail :

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

It's so telling now, isn't it, how much of this has actually been leaked by the trans activists in all of their rhetoric to us?
-You're invalidating our existence (women legally don't exist)
-We just want to use pee in peace (women can't have private spaces)
-We don't feel safe (women are at risk of physical violence)
-It's about freedom (women are not free to speak as they wish, keep their own identity or associate amongst only other women)
-Only paperwork (this change basically destroys the meaning of sex legally)
-Inclusion (liquidate all single-sex facilities to open them to males, center males in your political activism at all times, force lesbians to include penis in their sexual orientation)

This is such a good article, I just want everyone to read it!

Now we've just had This Morning instruct UK women that we have no right to object to being searched by an officer who identifies as a woman.

One hundred years after the forced searching and physical coercion of the Suffragettes outraged the public.

www.stylist.co.uk/visible-women/suffragettes-force-fed-imprisoned-uk-tactics-punishment-history/188085

JCJ couldn't be more right. This is not a drill.

Bumping this because of the discussion about the Humanist UK's response to GRA consultation.

Well, I’m glad I left Twitter. Fuck this shit.