GQ article by Matthew D'Ancona

[TimeLady]

Hoping this hasn't already been posted

Why has this issue become so fissile? Partly because the aggression of some trans women has often been pretty, well, masculine, encouraging many feminists to interpret the transgender agenda as just another variation of patriarchy: a project by men to colonise womanhood.

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/transgender-debate

Good to see it being discussed calmly in a men's magazine.

That's a pretty near perfect summing up.

I don't want men to "stay in their lane though"... and they are good at not doing that thing to be fair. Lol. I noted from the FPFW poll men accept the bullshit less than women! ARRGHHH.

Thanks for sharing this.

Pretty good. He wrote a much less good piece in the Evening Standard a while back - to the extent that I had him down as a wokebro. But could it be the ES editorial line that is the problem ? They didn’t cover the trans attack on the London Underground despite it being the perfect ES story. Is it George Osborne that’s the wokebro?

Pretty good. I disliked the unquestioning use of 'cis' but he got the main points across and clearly understood why women are concerned. TRAs are not going to be happy about it.

This is a very good article.
IMHO the writer could have done more to point out the aggression, violence and job losses experienced by those who question the trans agenda, but I guess that would have been too "heavy" so they went with stickers being investigated by the police.

It also didn't go into exactly why it is problematic for women when Caitlyn Jenner wins a "woman of the year" award.

I think most GQ-Mag readers will read it and think "not my problem" as to men it's still a fringe issue that doesn't touch them.

It makes me sad to think that the issue will get more action now some more men are on board. Good article though.

Good article.

Wow look at all the TW marching on the front line of their own parade in the cover photo!

Oh wait no, sorry. I meant, look at all the women they have got doing their donkey work for them.

Can't even be fucked to lead your own protest? Yeah, seems like a real "courage of your convictions" moment. The person in black might be a transman, but still, is a female.

Trans people face awful bigotry, stigma and (as a result) mental health issues. But natal or cis women have anxieties

Silly old women. All we have is "anxieties" while the poor trans folk really suffer.

It's pretty lightweight and I can't see any man who is new to it thinking it is a topic they must hurry away and do more research on. Hopefully D'Ancona was just deliberately easing in gently and will build on this.

Quite a superficial article but at least it's in GQ and might get the basics across to some more men.

"“Cis” men (that is, men who are not transitioning) are sternly advised to “stay in their lane”, while cis women and the trans lobby duke it out."

I've never seen such a suggestion from women - more often it's despair that men just don't understand what's going on, and don't care because their rights aren't being affected in the same way as women's are.

Fissile?

The 'stay in your lane' needn't mean apathy, though. Dh is a good feminist and accepts my concerns about the TA agenda, but is adamant that as a middle class, middle aged white male he is the least appropriate person in the world to speak out.

He has a horror of mansplaining, and I have to confess if he was disagreeing with me I would prob be telling him to stay in lane 😊

Not sure what the answer is though.

I've never seen such a suggestion from women.

Neither have I. In fact, whenever James Kirkup delivers one of his brilliant pieces, or Graham Linehan fights it out with the TRAs on Twitter, the response on here is universal delight. We're thrilled when a male writer actually gets it.

The tone of the article will have been pitched with the target audience in mind.....which to be fair, isn't MN FWR

Every little helps.

Fissile?

Interesting choice of word. I imagine he means ‘explosive’ rather than the actual meaning (capable of starting a nuclear chain reaction.)

Or maybe he does actually mean fissile...

A good article, but ruined by the "men stay in your lane" business.

Women concerned with the harm done to our interests by trans ideology want men to get involved. We know men's voices are more influential than ours.

I noted from the FPFW poll men accept the bullshit less than women! ARRGHHH.

When talking to people about Self ID I noticed that men got the potential for abuse almost instantly. It took women a little longer.

When I spoke to DB1 one of the first things he said was that any man who wants access to women only spaces is, by definition, the last type of man who should be allowed there.

I think men are more aware of how creepy other men can be. They don't have to have sexual obsessions to recognize them in others.

The abuse of language creates real problems for women in identifying the issue, I think. Sex stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in our brain - people still have trouble with the "surgeon riddle" because of the immediate image and associations evoked by the word "surgeon."

I notice even using the term "transwoman" instead of "men" to discuss creepy male predators affects how I think about them, because I have a set of stereotypes and associations with the word "woman" and attaching "trans" in front doesn't completely erase that, yet.

Whereas men understand instinctively that men can be dangerous to women because they've been socialised male and they have a much deeper understanding of how toxic masculinity works than we do. So they get the dangers implicit in self-ID straight away; they don't have to learn through experience or research that transwomen can be just as predatory as men.

tl;dr I think women are projecting their female socialisation onto transwomen, including self-ID'd transwomen, and men are projecting their male socialisation. The men are evaluating the situation more accurately.

“Cis” men (that is, men who are not transitioning) are sternly advised to “stay in their lane”, while cis women and the trans lobby duke it out.
This is bulls*, I haven't heard this once from women and I for one am almost ashamed at how grateful I am any time a man speaks up for women on this. The way I see it, men who don't get involved are using this as an excuse not to say anything, rationalising it as some big cat-fight, perhaps through internalised homophobia dissociating transwomen from themselves as men, when in fact the whole issue is about men: bullying, harassing and threatening to erode women's rights.

A good article, but in the Nicholas Matte quote (“It’s not correct that there is such a thing as biological sex”), d'Ancona should have mentioned that Matte is "a politically-conscious interdisciplinary historian who curates the Sexual Representation Collection and teaches in the Sexual Diversity Studies program". He is not an authority on biology.

Wow look at all the TW marching on the front line of their own parade in the cover photo!

The people marching with the drums at the front are Sheboom, a women's drumming collective. I'm pretty sure it will have been a Pride march, not a specifically trans rights one.

mobile.twitter.com/BritishGQ/status/1064037989876203520

Interestingly not much of a back lash.