'Toxic' debate

[pombear]

When the fuck did the debate get termed this?

Just listening to Question Time. Claire Fox flying the flag (thank god).

But I've heard this word about three times on the BBC today and Dimbleby has just said 'everyone is agreed that it's a toxic debate'.

From trans activists over the last couple of years it's been no-platforming, harrassing of women, doxxing of women, harrasing their employers, #nodebate, 'suck my cock', T**f insults, violence, blocking of people wishing to discuss changes to the law.

Toxic applies only to one aspect of this debate. I'm furious that every voice, including those transwomen and transmen, women, any one who wishes to disagree with the statement 'transwomen are women' is also smeared with the word 'toxic'.

It is toxic to us to participate because of the way we're demonised but that isn't the way that it's meant.

Trump was allowed to get away with "fine people on both sides" post-Charlottesville.

I'd have hope our standard of debate was better here. I'm very obviously wrong.

Yes it's toxic because of the behaviour of TRAs. Feminists have been very restrained by comparison.

For a general listener, who hasn't followed this in detail, the BBC's labelling of it as a 'toxic' debate implies strongly that it's toxic from all angles.

As arran and Not say, the toxicity comes from one place, but if you were naive to the discussion, and heard it today on various programmes you'd assume that it came from all angles.

And yet, 'toxicity' applied to those who speak out with concerns about the consultation is that if you say "I don't think transwomen are women, even though I think trans rights are important, we need to consider women and girls' privacy, dignity and safety" = 'toxicity.

Almost as if Penny Mordaunt's starting place of 'transwomen are women' means anyone who disagrees contributes to 'toxicity'.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-45894686/gender-recognition-act-women-from-both-sides-of-debate-feel-silenced

It was ever thus. I still remember Bernadette Devlin, campaigning for "one man, one vote" in Northern Ireland, being referred to as if she were the equivalent of Ian Paisley who bloody started the war with his hate speeches against Catholics.

Who is more disgusting? The women who are serious about child protection and fighting against male access to vulnerable children and women?
Or the middle-aged men who are seeking to dismantle women's boundaries and to obliterate children's boundaries? Are these men, reallly the victims, here!?

Whole thing now has the look of a psy ops campaign harnessed and funded by the extreme right to take down feminism and divide the left.

Bannon has stated that as an aim.

Those who control the means of media production and state provision get to define 'toxicity' . So our voices are silenced.

Devlin is a good parallel, and what the british state did then to silence human rights activists in the north of Ireland.

I've noticed this and find it infuriating. It's like telling a woman who has fought off an assailant that "You're as bad as each other."

It's the same logic that gets women sent to jail for a long time for killing their abusive partners in self-defense.

woman11017
Well, people here seem to be switching away from the Left as it exists right now but it seems to be more the case because the Trans issue is getting better coverage in the Right's news outlets (Times, Speccie) and from their MPs (David Davies, even bizarrely, Philip Davies).

The mirror image to your proposal is that it's part of a Hard Left effort to break down society as it exists so that they can female it, but, in the end, maybe it's just Radicals looking for the next cause to back. The heavy lifting has been done (though not complete) for black and women's rights so Trans rights was the next cause up.

female it! Should read 'remake it'.

Doh! I need more coffee.

The calm rationality of the GC advocates was one of the first things that made me sit up and listen, particularly in contrast to the shouting and lack of empathy from the other side. I see no toxicity in the GC campaign. Unless they deem "TW are not W" to be toxic. But that would be a lack of basic understanding that other people can hold different beliefs to you.

Why would men like Philip and David Davies, a rabid opponents of Human Rights suddenly side with feminists?

Free Speech and safeguarding.

What's toxic is the idea that we are having to justify and negotiate female spaces.

Male prisoners should not be housed in female prison; teenage girls should not have to undress with male people; ill, vulnerable women need to be in separate wards to men.

The reasons are obvious. But saying why has be labelled by some as toxic.

Though I agree that these are strange times.

I'm pretty gender critical, but TBF, neither side has the monopoly on toxicity, though I agree that being GC has been made more taboo than being pro trans on every level.

Both sides have found the worst examples of the other and waved them about saying 'This is what TRAs/TERF are/believe!!!'

Though I do wonder if it's because it involves women and female-identified people that it's called 'toxic' rather than 'robust' debate.

A free society does not shut down debate because of a value laden term such as 'toxicity'.

Whole thing now has the look of a psy ops campaign harnessed and funded by the extreme right to take down feminism and divide the left.

I admit it does look a bit like that, but feminist opposition to trans ideology has been going on since the early seventies. It seems this is one thing radical feminists and conservatives can agree on - it's impossible to change sex. Where feminists and conservatives differ is that the conservatives agree with trans thinking that there are male and female brains, and an inner gender essence. Trans ideologues have taken it a step further to say that this gender essence is often independent of biology. Conservatives draw the line at that.

NotTerfNorCis
Thanks for that - I hadn't quite got there in my own ponderings and I think that's a fair summary.

It is toxic though- it has so many dynamics of narcissistic abuse. Including, unfortunately, some fuzziness and blurred boundaries about who is abusing whom.

Yes, it's toxic, there is a big expectation that women will be "nice" about men taking over their spaces again, and threatening women's safety, privacy, dignity, and general fairness in life.
Women are not supposed to protest....our spaces.

Fuck that. WE are women, we are protesting, and we are saying a clear NO to men in

I think thay the problem is some transwomen find it incredibly offensive to be told they are not women, whereas the gender critical side, with a biological definition of "women " find this a trivial statement of fact.

To them the continual statement that "transwoman are men" or definition of woman that excludes them is toxic.

Some TRAs clearly are deliberate stirrers but I think there are a number who honestly believe gender identity is so much more important than biological sex and find the "biological essentialist" position as absurd as I do there's. These people earnestly believe we are toxic, and disagreeing with someone's self perspective is saying we don't think should exist.

I frequently hear people describe relationships as "toxic" that are clearly one-sidedly abusive, and the "toxicity" from the victim is just a set of normal reactions to abuse.

The same thing is happening here.

The same way that "cis" gets used to create a false equivalence between male and female social status, "toxic" is used to create a false equivalence between abusive males and females who are standing up for themselves.

I'm of the opinion that it tends to be hard right types supporting the GC side because they are obviously not motivated by being "nice" and empathetic. They are not afraid to speak out against the crowd.
The average "nice" and empathetic supporter of the GC side is still too afraid to speak out. In general. So it looks like the GC side are aligned with the right - because they are the only ones currently being vocal in support