Sally Hines on Twitter re Woman's Hour

[Silentlyobserving]

This tweet is not going as well as she perhaps expected: twitter.com/sally_hines/status/1064473613049442304

Oi do you mind?

I worked really hard for my accolades. I had to type my name change on a really really small phone screen and everything 😭boo hoo

That quick switch to all victim at the first verbal challenge suggests you probably are top notch gifted.

That reference to "in Western culture" (erm, Catholic or Protestant? French secular or Germanicist? Even lumping it all all together shows a lip-service to anti-colonialism, while being totally Anglocentric) makes me immediately think that she likes the affirming approach they have in Iran (*sarcasm)

Surely the western culture based on Christianity - is actually ME culture then?

Thames & Hudson
twitter.com/thamesandhudson/status/1064830201891307520

Oh dear, Thames and Hudson. You neglected to listen to that interview, didn't you? Be honest.

I would respect Prof Hines if she were even to tweet that she's reflected on her own performance and realises that she failed to communicate to the audience of Woman's Hour despite some strong hints from Jane Garvey.

I'm interested in the indigenous cultures with multiple gender identities. Is there any socio-anthropological evidence? I know there are communities where there is a name for effeminate men - not a 3rd gender exactly but certainly distinct from "ordinary" men and women. My understanding is that they are usually low status men. Interesting that women don't seem to be able to identify into high status male roles....

There are the Albanian sworn virgins, BertrandRussell.

Although the custom seems closely linked to patriarchal structures.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_sworn_virgins

I'd really rather people kept their gender fluid to themselves if it's all the same to them...

You basically have it, Bertrand. In the societies where it exists it's a category for effeminate gay men, created because they can't fit into a very sexually differentiated society no matter how hard they try and so that the men who shag them can kid themselves that doing so doesn't make them gay. In none of those cultures are the third gender group treated as if they're the same as women, and in all of those cultures people are still very much aware of how babby is formed and that trans males are not in the potentially baby having demographic.

Wait, what has the person at the GMC done to offend the somewhat unhinged individual shouting about her?

You basically have it, Bertrand. In the societies where it exists it's a category for effeminate gay men, created because they can't fit into a very sexually differentiated society no matter how hard they try and so that the men who shag them can kid themselves that doing so doesn't make them gay.

This. Third genders are not as presented by transactivists. Mind you, what is as presented by transactivists? Nothing.

As feminists we’ve got to move away from a politics which is based around perceptions of realness.

Indeed, as feminists we really ought to be focusing on unrealness, and that's why I've decided that my next big feminist project is going to be a mission to deliver a thousand units of DepoProvera to the struggling nonmen of Alpha Centauri, who definitely exist even if we have no proof of them doing so and who will be delighted to humbly accept my gift of contraceptives designed for humans, and will respond by making me their Empress.

See? Far better to move firmly away from a focus on realness. Partly because in the event that anyone recovers from their confusion enough to ask whether your feminist project was successful there's no need to give them a real answer, since we've already established the fact that reality is problematic.

I think we’re going through a crazy period, like tulipomania.

I was pondering recently what this period may be called in the future.

Age of Unreason?

Antonyms for enlightenment?
ignorance
stupidity
destruction
bewilderment
confusion
puzzlement
(Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus)

Imagine trying to explain it to people in the distant future. Once there was a time when people in multiple different countries decided that many children are just born wrong and need to have their puberty prevented, after which they must take heavy doses of medication designed to mimic an entirely different sort of puberty, a process which will only be completed when their genitalia is radically altered via surgery. People believed this was wonderful and progressive and marvelously accepting, rather than being a brutal rejection of children who displayed gender atypical behavioral traits. The governments of these countries happily played along, as did the mainstream medical organizations. People who raised concerns were publicly shamed and in many cases lost their jobs. This was seen as a good thing.

Future generations are going to wonder how so many people all lost their damn minds at once.

Yeah its an argument which doesn't prove what they think it proves. Doesn't prove that humans can change sex, doesn't prove you're born with a gender identity and can only be 'assigned' sex at birth.

What it shows is that different cultures have different sets of gender rules, social and legal. Many cultures include situations where gender rules can be broken, temporarily in rituals or artistic performance, or more permanently in a concept of a 'third sex'.

So in our society we can have a concept of trans people. How that's defined, what it means socially and legally is something our society needs to decide.