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.

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.

What about if we include transmen?

What about if we include transmen?

From the same article:

And I know, there’s someone out there reading this thinking, “well I can’t be anti-trans, I support trans men because they’re female and therefore women, and I’m pro-women!” This is also an anti-trans statement to make because you’re denying the lived trans experience of that person.

True oldcrone

But I will never forgive the BBC, the Guardian, the Labour Party, the sorry remains of the LIbDems, all the corporate sycophants who signed up to Stonewall's demonisation of women, most of our MPs, and most of our universities.

Also in the Guardian:
"The far right: ‘Lone-wolf’ terrorists and domestic violence: it’s time to start joining the dots"
Suzanne Moore

(concludes)
"The left is losing this battle because, as ever, it has more important ones to fight. The woke boys of Twitter get their knickers in a twist flashing their feminist credentials about sex work or anything that caters to the needs of men. Meanwhile, lists of instructions about how to fight fascism have been published since a fascist was elected in Brazil. Here is a racist man, openly anti-gay, anti-women and pro-torture, yet again there is little understanding of how feminism is central to fighting this. By failing to understand how power operates through gender and race, as well as economics, the left fragments in the face of populist discourse that emphasises all that some men have lost.

This is the “alt-right” taking power; there is a crisis of social democracy and a crisis of liberalism. But the thread that weaves through all these far-right movements? Name it. These are movements of men who want to turn the clock back to a time when women had few rights. This movement is global: look at Russia partly decriminalising domestic violence.

For the left to fight this, it must pay attention. Jewish people have been saying they feel under threat for a long time, yet this was questioned. Feminists have analysed male violence for decades, but this is somehow old-fashioned in the new struggles about the use of changing rooms.

We talk of gender as a construct precisely because we think there can be new forms of masculinity as well as femininity, new ways of organising ourselves that don’t depend on brute force. That may be optimistic as Jair Bolsonaro comes to power alongside Trump, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Mohammed bin Salman.

The point is that not one of these men had to actively radicalise their followers. That is what patriarchy does as it bubbles away under the surface, demonising whatever it deems different. Welcome to the new hatred, same as the old hatred. Without understanding this, the left is impotent."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/29/lone-wolf-terrorists-and-domestic-violence-its-time-to-start-joining-the-dots

Those comments bu CursedE show just how removed many TRAs are from understanding widespread public opinion. The controlling/stifling/preventing debate has enabled many to labour under the misapprehension that those, like the Guardian, who spouted TWAW actually believed there were no differences between TW and women.
The likes of Whittle are far more canny and always knew the score. They created the smoke and mirrors. They will be regrouping to create a new narrative that may wash better with the public.
I expect to see lots of in fighting and factionalism occurring amounts TRAs as some will become distraught that their narratives are openly dismissed whilst others will distance themselves from those who are losing the plot in order to try and put forth something that might fly.

Observer Sun 29 Apr 2018
"Violent misogyny is unfortunately not confined to the internet’s ‘incels’"
Catherine Bennett
(extract)
And further demonstrating that misogynistic tropes are by no means the monopoly of resentful male virgins, curators at San Francisco library are currently staging an exhibition featuring a display of dissident-silencing weaponry (axes and bats) and other hate-advertising artefacts.

Photographs of one vitrine, featuring a red bespattered T-shirt reading: “I punch terfs!” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists/women who disagree with me), may have struck a chord with anyone following the current UK debate about the government’s self-ID proposals. To date, threats, from one side, which echo, inescapably, some of those in the pro-Rodger playbook (“die in a fire terf scum”) have yet to generate comparably widespread concern, even after a woman was punched. Her assailant had earlier expressed the wish to “fuck up some terfs”.(continues)

concludes:
If sexism does not explain how rapidly the language employed against dissenting women (including some trans women) in the UK self-ID debate, degenerated, in some quarters, into generic-sounding obscenities (eg, to unco-operative lesbians, “choke on my ladydick”), perhaps it’s because social media has for so long facilitated the delusion that hate speech, as applied to women, is simply part of the landscape.

The very odiousness of the misogynist language that has become, according (pre-Rodger) to one academic, Emma Alice Jane, “a lingua franca in many sectors of the cybersphere”, may help explain, she argues, why the “ethical and material implications” of this form of hate speech have been so under-studied. Hate speech that persists unchallenged, by both – for their different reasons – reactionaries and progressives, is unlikely, anyway, to be corrected.

Maybe women should skim the Elliot Rodger plan for subjugating their sex, if only to appreciate that, once non-subservient women are expected to live with obscene online threats – and axe exhibitions and punching – at least some elements of his vision have surely been realised."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/29/violent-misogyny-not-confined-to-internet-incels

The likes of Whittle are far more canny and always knew the score. They created the smoke and mirrors. They will be regrouping to create a new narrative that may wash better with the public.

A couple of weeks ago a narrative was 'feminists should be spending time and money on more pressing concerns eg funding for refuge, rape support etc'

This is a new narrative (heard elsewhere), "these voices are making trans people look like the extremists."

The new argument seems to be that trans rights activists have tried to engage in respectful debate on these issue

When was that? I must have missed it.

I thought the article was great; TRAs stating that they weren't extremists...followed by numerous examples of their extremist and misogynist behaviour.

And examples of feminist abusive behaviour towards trans people was notable by its absence.

The likes of Whittle are far more canny and always knew the score. They created the smoke and mirrors. They will be regrouping to create a new narrative that may wash better with the public.

I absolutely agree with this.

I expect to see lots of in fighting and factionalism occurring amounts TRAs

Me too. And the canny ones, such as Whittle above, will have no hesitation in jettisoning the liabilities. They were only ever cannon fodder after all.

And I know, there’s someone out there reading this thinking, “well I can’t be anti-trans, I support trans men because they’re female and therefore women, and I’m pro-women!” This is also an anti-trans statement to make because you’re denying the lived trans experience of that person.

And yet they can't see how anti-women it is to say that men can be women if they say they are. To say that men can be women is to deny the lived experience of women.

Lovely bit of DARVO there from our friend Stephen Whittle:-

“Trans academics have mostly tried really hard not to accuse, and certainly not to ‘no platform’ anybody. Yet these voices are making trans people look like the extremists. Sadly, it will have the effect of shutting down the debate.”

The reason the article is in the Education section is that the editor of that section has a good deal of independence and can commission topics she’s interested in.

I thought it was good to see so many gender-critical voices in the piece, but it would have seemed confusing to people who weren’t already aware of the debate.

The likes of Whittle are far more canny and always knew the score. They created the smoke and mirrors.

What I don't understand is why people like Whittle are siding with the self-id transactivists rather than the fully transitioned transsexuals.

What I don't understand is why people like Whittle are siding with the self-id transactivists rather than the fully transitioned transsexuals.

Prioritisation of 'gender identity' over 'sex'

The Guardian nailed its colours to the mast a long time ago. That article is a bit of a sop thrown to the GC but does not change the fundamental nature of that rag's editorial policy.

The Guardian cannot die a horrible painful flaming financial death - taking the journalistic career of Wee Owen with it - soon enough.

I stopped my membership to the guardian over this. And I won’t buy it again - although I do read the on line version.
I don’t understand why gender and sex aren’t seperated so there is no confusion.
I feel we are becoming an increasingly religious and belief led society. Science is ignored.
Do you want laws based on facts or opinions?

Prioritisation of 'gender identity' over 'sex'

Telegraph 27 Jun 2014
'Facebook's 71 gender options come to UK users'
(extract)
Facebook worked with UK groups Press for Change and Gendered Intelligence to add 21 new options to ensure the list best reflected the ways UK users may choose to describe themselves.

"Gender identities are complex and for many people, describing themselves as just a man or just a woman has always been inadequate," said Professor Stephen Whittle, vice-president at Press for Change. The European Court of Human Rights has upheld the right to develop our gender identity, as key to our personal autonomy.

"By challenging the gender binary, Facebook will finally allow thousands of people to describe themselves as they are now and it will allow future generation of kids to become truly comfortable in their own skins."

Ensuring users feel comfortable being their true selves while using the network is a priority, said Simon Milner, Policy Director, UK Middle East & Africa at Facebook.

"An important part of this is the expression of gender especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just ‘male’ or ‘female.’ (continues)

www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10930654/Facebooks-71-gender-options-come-to-UK-users.html

The reason the article is in the Education section is that the editor of that section has a good deal of independence and can commission topics she’s interested in.

article Tue 15 May 2018
'Schools pulled into row over helping transgender children'
(extract)
"[Stephanie] Davies-Arai [Transgender Trend] says she took an interest in the subject because as a child she had felt herself to be a boy, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to label children like her as transgender because she believes that in some cases, these feelings resolve naturally by the end of adolescence.

While the Allsorts advice states that “trans pupils or students should have access to the changing room that corresponds to their gender identity” and that in PE lessons, students “should be enabled to participate in the activity which corresponds to their gender identity if this is what they request”, Davies-Arai argues that shared changing rooms present difficulties for some girls. Few teenage girls will be willing to admit that they feel uncomfortable sharing a changing room with a biologically male student, she says.

She points out that the technical guidance on the Equality Act for schools suggests offering students “private changing facilities, such as the staff changing room or another suitable space” – the approach taken at Miles’s school.

Susie Green, CEO of the charity Mermaids, disagrees, saying the debate about single-sex toilets seems “engineered to whip up fear” and is equivalent to “arguing people of colour shouldn’t be allowed to use the same toilets as white people in case they make them dirty”.(continues)

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/15/transgender-row-teachers-afraid-challenge-breast-binding

The Guardian bleating about the ‘toxic’ trans debate is like BP crying over oil-drenched cormorants.

Whittle wants sex as a category to be abandoned. This would eradicate the pesky problem of the EA exceptions and suggestions that TWANW etc.
He has been handed his arse on a plate a couple of times on MN spouting that s

.....spouting that sex is nebulous and do difficult to pin down that it is not a valid category!

By challenging the gender binary, Facebook will finally allow thousands of people to describe themselves as they are now and it will allow future generation of kids to become truly comfortable in their own skins."

Isn't there a fair amount of social psychology research that mentions people are overwhelmed by choices and appreciate having some of this narrowed down - so they are better off satisficing rather than optimising every possible choice? I realise this is typically applied to economics but I can't avoid the sense that this pervades every aspect of this, to some extent - that and political/social subjugation.

blog.shrm.org/blog/satisficing-versus-optimizing-making-your-choice

We don't need gender, sex is sufficient. Live as you wish, dress as you wish, don't startle the horses: don't confuse inclusion, intrusion, and invasion.

I cannot believe that the Guardian have quoted Wittle again after his hugely-irresponsible comments on suicide.

Isn't there a fair amount of social psychology research that mentions people are overwhelmed by choices and appreciate having some of this narrowed down - so they are better off satisficing rather than optimising every possible choice?

Also, Parenting 101! We learn as soon as our kids start speaking that you don't say "What would you like to wear today?" because they say "my swimming costume" when it's snowing. You say, "Would you like to wear the red jumper or the green jumper?"