Guardian on 'Toxic Trans Debate'

[MawkishTwaddle]

Guardian

Ends with Stephen Whittle telling a sob story about his man feelz, which is a straw man argument imo, but still - good to see it covered in The Guardian.

Even if I had to read it under a bus.

At least they are finally presenting the other side: That women are being abused for expressing concerns about their rights.

It’s buried on the Education page though, not linked from the front page, like the Anonymous opinion piece was. This is just their way of saying they’re doing their bit for balance without actually doing their bit.

The new argument seems to be that trans rights activists have tried to engage in respectful debate on these issue but the hysterical response from womens’ groips is ‘turning the debate toxic’

proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act that would make it easier for trans people to have their preferred gender legally recognised.

I wish the media would be more honest about the GRA. It's not about 'gender', it's about changing legal sex.

They say they would welcome a properly evidenced discussion but that feminists such as Freedman are unfairly trying to position them as extremists, which “will have the effect of shutting down the debate”.

What happened to #nodebate?

It's about being able to lie about your birth certificate.

supposedly feminist backlash.

It is evident that the Guardian (and the BBC) have finally been shamed into having to report this issue in a more balanced way - ie by acknowledging the GC view. That's a reasonable article. We'll know when they have finally reached a balanced and honest reporting position when they openly report and condemn the violence, harassment , threats and intimidation that come only from trans activists.

The Times are continuing their consistent coverage with this article today:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lecturer-s-job-fear-after-raising-trans-concerns-dstp8p7zz?shareToken=e0a51506027e6fa386bb230f51807948 today

As well as many abusive comments on Twitter, she has been shown a written request from an academic at another university asking for her to be blacklisted from giving any papers or attending events in their law school.

Earlier this month Freedman gave a talk on the United Nations Human Rights Council at Essex University. Prior to it, students there called for her to be barred from campus and her talk cancelled.

How can they argue that it's feminists who are shutting down the debate, while they are the ones who are no platforming the feminists? #translogic

NotBadConsidering it was on the front page when I clicked on to the Guardian website about 20 mins ago.

I only scan the Guardian these days so I wouldn't have seen it had it been buried. I'm also quite pleased to see a more 'balanced' article for once. I wonder if the Guardian is starting to realise that they are alienating some of their core readership.

Agree this is much more balanced than the Guardian has been previously. But the Stephen Whittle quote is somewhat misleading. Talking about 'gender reassignment' will make most people think this is about people having major changes to their bodies to make them resemble the opposite sex. Not about fully intact males signing a declaration to make them legally female.

Trans academics have mostly tried really hard not to accuse

ORLY, Stephen?

By the way - still way too little, way too late, Grauniad.

I still won't be giving you a fiver a month. I will still avoid clicking onto any of your pages and providing you with advertising income unless the article is a topic of discussion hereabouts.

You'll have to try much harder to get any business from me.

Some are not happy about The Grauniad's apparent new direction:
newsocialist.org.uk/on-the-guardians-transphobic-centrism/

Stephen Whittle gets the last word but I don’t think that’s as significant in a written article where people often stop reading before the end. Rosa Freedman, Kathleen Stock and 3 other academics get their say first. I think it’s a pretty good piece and while I’m tempted to be curmudgeonly because it’s the Guardian, I’m going to resist because I want to win this.

academic worker, comparative gender historian, queer phenomenologist, Hegelian Marxist, and Londoner.

Well, colour me shocked.

it's not a bad article considering what paper it's in

last word to Whittle and Stonewall, but the carefully evidenced article above really contradicts what they say

I really don't see how anyone could walk away from that article thinking

1. that academics aren't being silenced OR
2. that the silencing of academics in this way is OK

Reading Prof. Whittle's faux concern about the lack of a reasoned discussion with GC academics and how Trans academics have mostly tried really hard not to accuse puts me in mind of Mark Fisher (a lengthy read and I don't share the sympathy for Owen Jones but maybe he did do more for raising class issues than I recall):

The Vampires’ Castle feeds on the energy and anxieties and vulnerabilities of young students, but most of all it lives by converting the suffering of particular groups – the more ‘marginal’ the better – into academic capital. The most lauded figures in the Vampires’ Castle are those who have spotted a new market in suffering – those who can find a group more oppressed and subjugated than any previously exploited will find themselves promoted through the ranks very quickly.
...
The bourgeois-identitarian left knows how to propagate guilt and conduct a witch hunt, but it doesn’t know how to make converts. But that, after all, is not the point. The aim is not to popularise a leftist position, or to win people over to it, but to remain in a position of elite superiority, but now with class superiority redoubled by moral superiority too. ‘How dare you talk – it’s we who speak for those who suffer!’

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

I've been thinking about Mark Fisher (RIP k-punk) a lot lately, arranfan.

Whilst the 'oh, we've been so reasonable' suggestions are frustrating, the key thing is for debate to happen and the reasoned arguments to be heard.
Debating whether people were/weren't silenced and whose fault it is serves as a distraction and could be the emergency strategy about to be employed to deflect debate away from the real debate to be had!

That vampire’s castle stuff is really good. Not seen that before. But written before Owen Jones went where he’s gone now. He’s now master of the castle isn’t he ?

Medium on the Guardian's stance - complete, oddly, with an illustration from Sandy Draws Badly

Following the Guardian statement on trans rights recently, where they took the party line that in essence trans rights and acceptance were oppositional or ignorant towards women’s rights, I did a quick poll...

A bunch of trans exclusionary radical feminists got together and started politically organising against trans rights; and one of their go to ways to attempt to emotionally manipulate people is to pit trans women’s rights against cis women’s rights...

Because the very premise baked into the statement they are making when they say “I’m not anti-trans, I’m pro-women” is very much an anti-trans sentiment. As the entire argument being had is “do trans women count as “women” or not?” If you assert that you’re pro-women, but don’t include trans women in that then by definition you are anti-trans. There’s no two ways about that.

medium.com/@notCursedE/im-not-anti-trans-i-m-pro-women-5044147df4f5

efferlunt and sceptical woman - this reminds me strongly of tactics used when I was involved in a campaign against a major development, ages ago. The developers' PR company described the campaign group as hysterical, unrepresentative etc and repeatedly used disparaging words and snappy phrases so they were used in headlines in the local newspaper. They also set hares running by saying "there's a rumour going round that..." and off it went.

Hence the "toxic debate" phrase and other quotable quotes which have been picked up by the media.

There's quite a lot of clever PR here.

I agree, MsBeaujangles. It would be unhelpful if we ended up just having a debate about who had silenced the original debate.

That medium article is from someone who seems to live on twitter, and just shows exactly what the activists want. You must agree that someone is a woman if they say they are, otherwise you are "anti-trans".