Prof Stock on Woman's Hour today

[Bittermints]

Is this the week they're doing a lot of stuff on gender? Anyway, saw a tweet earlier from Professor Stock that she is on WH this morning. Don't know what time. Should be worth a listen. She is so clear and cogent.

And I was happy to do the transcript. I'm a bit odd in that I actually enjoy transcribing

There's always the Bob Withers interviews with Sarah Brown, India Willoughby and Munroe Bergdorf yesterday should you ever seek more enjoyment.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3427836-Bob-Withers-on-GMB-and-This-Morning-today

Great transcript Orchid!

I'd have to look at their faces tho :D

Today's segment is focussing on the 'toxic' nature of the 'debate'.
Does anyone know who the guest speakers are?

Thanks for that Orchid . It meant I’ve managed to read the transcript while doing breakfast for 4 noisy children. There’s no way I’d have been able to follow it with the racket going on here!

I haven't seen this on mumsnet, though I may have missed it. It's a piece by some academics explaining a project whereby the wrote a series of essentially nonsense articles around gender and similar issues, and got several of them accepted in peer reviewed journals.

areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

It is a long read, but a good one

Sorry but that whole study is a red herring and the people involved are fairly radical libertarian provocateurs: and as close as dammit to right-wing TRump fantasists as you might get and still be regarded as having a brain. I had a ding dong with one of them (Helen Pluckrose) on Twitter once when she & her mates all piled in to tell me that there was no gender pay gap & I was stupid.

So such people are really not friends of GC feminists.

Just a friendly warning from a GS academic feminist.

They really cling to intersex as a way of validating their argument, don't they? This bit from the WH interview:

"So what that’s doing is arguing that someone is making a decision – a presumption – about what sex that baby is. And as we’ve seen with intersex, that’s clearly not always the case."

Now she uses intersex as if it's a single example of how sex isn't binary, as if there are others. But there aren't any others. Basically you have males and you have females and you have a tiny minority of people who are intersex, because something has gone slightly wrong. That's it. The existence of intersex people doesn't tell us anything at all about the experience or reality of the 99% people who aren't.

Well thanks for your concern for my intellectual purity, and I appreciate that only academics should really be allowed out, but I find myself astonishingly able to read and enjoy work by someone whose ideas I might not agree without rushing out to buy a MAGA hat.

I agree and also dislike Helen Pluckrose. But think it's a fascinating demonstration of just how silly and Emperors New Clothes a lot of academic enquiry has become.

Hackmum I know
The whole argument rests in a very rare occurrence
The thinking annoys me no end

Orchid great work thanks for doing that
Going to read in a mo

Emperors new clothes and academics. It’s because ££££, they need to justify their jobs and existence.

It seems that instead of standing on the shoulder of giants and extending the limits of knowledge by building on previous knowledge, that is too difficult, so some are undermining established knowledge instead, because it is easier. It seems new, in a way, and that’s how they justify their funding and existence.

The result is regression not progression.

We need ethics in academia we really do.

Thanks for the transcript Orchid

My favourite bit was when Jane Garvey said " many of our listeners have had tough lives for one reason or another and that they may now – still – be facilitating the lives of others. Possibly they’ve done nothing but that for the last 50 years. And it’s hardly surprising that some of those women are feeling that their hard won rights are somewhat vulnerable at the moment" it was moving to hear her stick up for women like that, and moved me again reading it.

Jane Garvey

There's always the Bob Withers interviews with Sarah Brown, India Willoughby and Munroe Bergdorf yesterday should you ever seek more enjoyment.

If you did have the time Orchid that would be amazing. To read what happened so quickly, the way IW, MB and SB all callously brushed aside extreme concerns about safeguarding, unnecessary mutilating surgeries and children, especially autistic children would be illuminating but make people's hair stand on end. Make no mistake, these people do not give a flying fuck about our kids.

Missed a this yesterday, need to catch up...

Whatsthecomingoverthehill
What I don't understand about the "sex is a spectrum" arguments, is that even if it were (it's not) you still can't change along the spectrum.
I have come to the conclusion that 'sex is a spectrum' is important because it helps the claim that binary sex has been a social construct. That we put sexed bodies in two categories because that matched our two gender roles, but all along sex was actually a spectrum and the sex binary had been produced through culture and language. (The sex spectrum will also be a social construct produced through knowledge...….)
That will help in the project to downplay the importance of sex, in favour of self identity.

In the short term it only helps in a vague way - 'well you can say I'm male but the whole idea of male and female is just made up anyway ...'

The inter-sex arguments are clung to because it is deeply important; one might even say, essential, that the trans ideology have a scientific, natural validity. There will be lots of money sloshing around various university departments in this pursuit.

Well first thoughts; The cognitive dissonance within Sally is mind boggling.

Sorry I'm so late to this!

Why don't we hear much from trans men?

BOOM!!!

Much as I dislike Melvyn Bragg's arrogance, he would eat SH for breakfast.

That I would like to see - he is the Chancellor of Leeds University

Well done Kathleen and for Jane

Pleasingfungusbeatle
If nearly two percent of the population was genuinely neither biologically male nor female, as they try to claim... That would mean that there would be an awful lot of people around who socially we treat as male and female for all intents and purposes, when they aren't really. So why not add a few more?
Yes that really explains why they keep referring to intersex. I hadn't thought of it like that.

Hierarchy of difference

Not all doctorates are created equal, for sure.

Excellent work by WH and Dr Stock.

This is about a tweet Dr Stock posted about day of trans remembrance

twitter.com/sally_hines/status/1064874023371329536

Sally Hines
‏*@sally*_hines
Replying to @sistersinead
How begrudging, bitter and utterly passive aggressive KS’S tweet is. 😮

This is about a tweet Dr Stock posted about day of trans remembrance

Tangential to that, examine the Matt Lodder comment, specifically his Harrop-esque use of Prof. Stock's first name and the gotcha challenge that he doesn't seem to realise rebounds on him so spectacularly:

Now show us the suicide numbers, Kathleen.

The intellectual dishonesty and bad faith here is kind of astonishing...

But, it did make me think...as per the crime statistics, what would any such suicides be classed as? Would they be recorded as female? Would any such statistics exist - particularly ones that normalise for any co-morbid health conditions, relationship break-ups (thinking of trans widows escape committee style break-ups) and other pertinent life events etc.?