The Government is looking at Gender Stereotyping too. I'm suspicious about this bandwagon.

[theOtherPamAyres]

Hot on the heels of the Fawcett survey, the Women and Equalities Department announced today (17/05/19) that it would commissioning research into Body Image and gender stereotyping.

I was already getting a funny feeling about the drivers behind the Fawcett survey and today's announcement makes me even more suspicious about the ubiquity of 'gender stereotyping' in the public domain.

While completing the Fawcett survey, I got the feeling that there was a ready-made, quick win, unthreatening range of measures that was looking for a problem to solve.

The measures would require the Women and Equalities Department to bring together stakeholders, manufacturers and retailers of children's films, games, toy, clothes and shoes, to improve choice. .

Easy peasy quick wins, with some positive outcomes for government and businesses. Hurrah

Fair enough and good luck to you, Fawcett and W&E Department - but don't pretend that tackling 'gender stereotyping' in consumer goods is the reason why there is misogyny, violence against women, or sexist structures preventing women's participation in various walks of life.

Anyone else getting the feeling that the inclusive notion of 'gender stereotyping' is being viewed as a simplisitic silver bullet to tackle all our woes?

I am equally sudpicious of them looking into ‘body image’.

As if the only problem with objectification and sexualisation in imagery of women, is that the models, actresses etc are too skinny, and only considering how such imagery affects girls and young women.

It has to consider impacts on how all representations of women and men, girls and boys affects everyone, including how men treat women.

The trans lobby also say that they're against gender stereotyping. The solution for them is to change your body to match your 'gender'.

The trans lobby are against stereotyping in ways that does away with safeguarding.

Consider this example:

Old version:

A girl sees a man in the ladies' toilets. She knows this is wrong, and she leaves and tells someone there's a man in the toilet. Everyone knows he shouldn't be there. They ask the girl if she's OK, and someone goes to remove the man from the ladies' toilet/

New version combating "stereotypes", TRA style:

A girl sees a man in the ladies' toilets. She knows, due to "training" from Gendered Intelligence/Stonewall/Mermaids/Guides etc that even though this person looks like a man, dresses in a traditionally "male" way - it's only societies stereotypes that make her think that this is definitely a man. It could be, that this person is a woman. Clothes don't make you a man, or a woman, after all. This person could have an inner "gender essence" that's female. So, the girl quashes her instincts and feelings of discomfort. The male-looking person engages her in conversation about periods, asking her if she has a spare tampon and when she started her periods and how to insert a tampon. She feels a very uncomfortable. but understands that she must be nice to this person as she's learnt that transwomen need her kindness. She talks to them for a while about periods and inserting tampons, with increasing discomfort then dashes out of the toilet when another women comes in. She still feels uncomfortable about the whole encounter afterwards but can't explain why and feels bad that she let her internal prejudices get in the way of being comfortable with this person. She doesn't tell anyone as she doesn't want to be labelled transphobic.

(Anyone doubting this would happen - this is based on the online and real life behaviour of a well known Canadian transwoman who is - as far as we know - yet to face any charges).

I don't think there's much of a downside to looking into gender-stereo-typing, since it's been used for ever to stop girls and women from doing what they want to do - both in the playground and in the workforce. As far as toys and clothes manufacturers go, yes, they should be involved because it's the pink-blue thing and the stupid slogans on t-shirts that contributes to people thinking boys are good at one thing and girls are good at another. And that continues in the work place where women are given more office housework and do more of the emotional labour, neither of which contribute to promotion or are compensated.

I don't know. There's something up, but I don't know what. Something wrong, something's gone wrong somewhere. I don't think it's about trans people - "canary in the mine" was the phrase someone used the other day. I don't know what the game is, but something weird is happening. We need to start looking broader. I have a nasty feeling we're being distracted from something bigger. A lot of stuff is happening all over the world to woman's rights, it's happening really fast and all happening at the same time. It feels coordinated but I don't know why or how or by whom. Feel like I'm going crazy atm, like a paranoid tinfoil hat nutter.

I bet it will end up being about how women have to change how we think about themselves.

I don't think there's much of a downside to looking into gender-stereo-typing

Please read my post above. That's the downside of looking at gender stereotyping.

There is a massive push at the moment to use dehumanising language to describe women and particularly mothers. And this is tied up with ideas about stereotyping.

Also, there are LOADS of young / trendy parents bringing their DC up as gender neutral these days. On the surface it sounds great, they eschew gender stereptypes and bring their DC up to be whomever they want to be! Sounds brilliant!

But - I know loads of these parents and many of them are gaslighting their kids. They like to pretend that sex differences don't exist. So, when they're telling them about, for example, periods, they don't say women get periods. They say people with uteruses get periods, some of these are women, some are men.

They give their children the idea from a very young age that they can change sex if they want. Then get HUGE support and validation from their online communities if they decide their child is trans/gender fluid etc.

I've seen discussions on FB with them trying to work out how to deal with telling their kids about sex differences in the animal world. (In the end, they decided not to tell them that eg male bees are drones, the female bees are the workers. Just that there were drones and workers).

This kind of gaslighting is done in the name of breaking down stereotypes. But while we live in a world where men and the power to, fro example, outlaw abortion, and where rape is common and largely unpunished, this isn't breaking down stereotypes, it's hiding them under supposedly "inclusive" language, but will stop us from being able to talk about sexism, male violence, women's health issues.

There is a HUGE downside to what the TRAs mean by tackling stereotypes. It's not what we on the Left have meant by it for years, not at all. But because they're using the language of the left, everyone assumes we know what they're talking about. But you really need to scratch below the surface and examine what's actually being said, and to think about the real world implications, to understand what's going on here.

Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders expert Ray Blanchard says, in this interview

Educated people in general have a sympathy for the downtrodden or the unfortunate that’s built into liberal-arts education in the Western world — and I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a good thing that people should get some kind of built-in bias towards the underdog and towards the suffering.

But I think in this case, that tendency and that bias on the part of liberal media has been misused by trans activists to influence treatment of cases of those who would actually do better in the long term if they could simply accept their anatomic sex, and here I’m talking about the young kids, 60 to 80 percent of whom are going to normalize in gender identity even without any clinical intervention.

The same is happening here. TRAs are using language we think we recognise eg "tacking gender stereotypes* to push an agenda that's VERY different to what we assume is meant by the phrase.

ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving I totally agree. Can't put my finger on exactly what though, either. We need to keep our eyes on what's going on in the tech and biotech industries I think. The pace of technological development in the 20th century was astronomical - think of how much things changed in our grandparent' or great grandparents' lives, for example - both technologies and also in terms of social norms.

But this is the thing - the pace of change, driven by technology, is not only not slowing down, it's accelerating and by all accounts, it will continue to do so. The changes we see in our own lifetimes will be much greater than in our grandparents' time.

I was thinking of starting a thread about possible dystopias we're heading towards, just today as it happens (depressing shit). Might do that tomorrow...

Talking of tech and biotech industries, my son was telling me about a Joe Rogan interview with Jamie Metzl; I'm only a third of the way through but the implications of what he is saying is currently going on and where biotechnology is heading is quite concerning and questions whether we, as a society are ready for the changes the technology will bring.

Joe Rogan interview

Brief outline of the book
www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/press-releases/hacking-darwin-atlantic-council-s-jamie-metzl-has-a-new-guide-to-thriving-in-the-genetics-revolution

If you want dystopian, fill your boots on this future nightmare:

Why female sex robots are more dangerous than you think

A brief history of men who build female robots

Also here's a campaign against it

Looks like a few GC radfems are on board - Feminist Current, Nordic Model Now, and Kathleen Richardson at least.

Even without the dangers of it being used for the trans agenda, tackling gender (sex) stereotypes as the cause of women's inequality misses the point completely.

Feminisation, female subordination is caused by male violence, not by dressing little girls in pink and giving them dolls to play with. Dressing little girls in pink merely identifies more easily who men can attack.

The government needs to be commissioning research into male violence, particularly sexual violence and its effects on women and girls. At least that would be making a start.

The government needs to be commissioning research into male violence

But that would require pattern recognition skills and class analysis, maybe even the accurate recording of male crimes - these things are verboten .

Thank you for the Joe Rogan clip LeftHandDown. I hadn't seen it before nor heard of his book.

This confirms that one of the central things that ties everything together including

• the sexualisation of children
• transgender ideology
• queer theory
• the attempt to destroy all aspects of traditional sex roles

and so on

is the dramatic and audacious moves that science is making to redefine the human being. As the interviewee argues this is becoming a new international arms race as any country that falls behind in genetic improvement of its human resources will fall behind in every aspect of national development. China announced the birth of the first genetically modified children in October 2018 - I absolutely do not believe that this was the first time that this has happened nor that China were the first to do this.

Central to this is the dislocation between sex and procreation. The new human being will be increasingly a product of the laboratory.

Central to this is the destruction of the role of the woman as the bearer, nurturer and protector of children

Central to the role of this is the feeling of responsibility of the male to his own offspring.

We are not just looking at the erasure of lesbians or women - this is happening but is just a by-product of the erasure of the human being as it has been for thousands of years.

The human being will increasingly be the property of the state and the corporations that control them.

One of the first people to explore this for the popular audience was a young filmmaker called Aaron Franz - in his film The Age of Transitions he traces these moves back to the eugenics that was developed by the British elite. This film is now a few years old but you may find it interesting - he is not as optimistic as Rogan's interviewee.

theageoftransitions.com/video

The problem with "gender stereotyping" is that it's not just about pink/girls, blue/boys it now also means that assuming penis = male is gender stereotyping....

Thanks for the synopsis of the interview Clitheroe. I'll check out your link later today.

I found the interview and the implications of the way science/bio genetics is heading is quite chilling and cannot see it as a 'natural' progression of humanity, I also doubt humanities ability to come to any consensus regarding an ethical code on boundaries as there will always be investors or scientists willing to push beyond any boundaries and individuals willing to put themselves forward as guinea pigs regardless of the cost to themselves.

DS has ordered Metzl's book, hopefully it may answer some of the questions the interview left me with.

I'm going to buy the book as well LeftHandDown when I have the time (not sure when that will be exactly).

It's all pretty scary - but I'd sooner know the truth than bury my head in the sand.

By the way, your DS sounds like a pretty interesting person - you must have some great conversations!

Good luck to you both.

We really are heading for dystopia he'll. Metzl's book sounds like a must read.

On the subject of which, this was in the Metro last week:

metro.co.uk/2019/05/14/human-babies-born-using-an-artificial-womb-possible-in-a-decade-8156458/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

"With no baby of any species being fully brought to term without a live womb for now, how distant a prospect is this sort of technology?

‘We’re in the process of interacting with the [US Food And Drug Administration] FDA, so it’s not impossible that we could be doing a clinical trial one to two years from now,’ said Dr Alan Flake, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia which carried out the research using the biobag and the lambs.

And he’s not the only one who’s optimistic with timings:

‘It seems probable that we are only several years away from testing on human subjects,’ social ethics and policy academic Elizabeth Chloe Romanis wrote in the BMJ’s Journal Of Medical Ethics.

Dr Carlo Bulletti, associate professor at Yale University’s obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive science department, thinks that a fully functioning artificial womb could be a real thing within the next 10 years.

Does this mean that the mother/child bond will be severed for good?"

Yes, I think so. I watched the video Clitheroe linked to earlier and was wondering if men being able to gestate babies is somewhat of a red herring.

A man doesn't really have the room or the internal equipment to grow a baby, let alone to term, but what their bodies will do is provide a hostile environment for a foetus/baby, some men would probably volunteer to be guinea pigs, regardless of the harm/outcome to themselves. Once scientists can grow a number of cells to a degree of viability in a man's body, they'll have amassed significant data, which could allow them to adapt and refine any experimentation currently being undertaken on incubating babies external to a womb.

It seems far fetched, but science/medicine already allows us to fertalise an egg outside the womb and babies born at C25wks are increasingly able to thrive with n an incubator with the correct medical care. Theoretically it's only the period between fertilisation and 25 wks that is problematic.

Yes, I think male/transgender women gestation of foetuses will be less the issue. It will be used, as the transgender issue is currently being used, as a crowbar into the mass consciousness - to get people to think the previously unthinkable as, I think, Franz quotes Julian Huxley as saying.

One major problem is the lack of any real regulation. In the the UK the Human Genetics Commission was set up in 1999 in order to provide the Government with advice on the legal, ethical, social and economic implications of emerging healthcare technologies but by 2012 it was decided to bring this “arm’s length” body inside as a Departmental (of Health) Expert Committee named The Emerging Science and Bioethics Advisory Committee (ESBAC). It would seem that the Department then proceeded to ignore this body, and its panel of experts in social sciences, law and biotechnology. They were left twiddling their thumbs and were given no work to do at all. They sought to generate their own work and the whole committee was very disenchanted by 2013.

www.bionews.org.uk/page_397445.asp

This body is now defunct and I have not kept up to date with what happened after this.

The fact that the government did not seek their advice leads me to think that they had their own agenda that they were going to follow anyway. As Metzl said these technologies are coming anyway - the only question is, how they are going to foist them onto the general population with the least fuss possible.

Just getting on thread to make sure I read links later.

Have meanwhile.

ByGrab I found this review of a novel by a Dr Helen Sedgwick who is a physicist and bioengineer - written in 2017 and called The Growing Season. This is about a future uterus that is a fluid-filled pouch that can be worn on the stomach of either men or women. She sees this as a positive thing for equality.

www.bionews.org.uk/page_142629

Other than Hacking Darwin I am drawing a blank on good critical books that also explain current developments. I have a book that is quite old now which is a good general introduction called Brave New Worlds: Staying Human in the Genetic Future by Bryan Appleyard.

Genetic engineering is the ultimate way to smash all gender stereotypes as the human being is enabled to become whatever it wants to be. It seems to me that this is why gender fluidity is being pushed so hard by governments all over the world. This is where the virtual world of the avatar meets science. This is where the crude mutilation of the "sex change" is leading us.

I wonder if society is being socially engineered in order to provide a stream of medical subjects on whom to practice surgery on, gain data and psychological info; as individuals currently identifying as trans are disposable, though the information gained from them is invaluable and will help provide the info necessary for the medical/scientific community to push forward with implementing the various elements of 'transitions'.

Is this why we are expected to acknowledge somebody is trans if they say so, because people with a spectrum of psychological disorders are required in order to discover differences between how various groups react to current medication/surgeries, before the practices are refined, developed further and introduced more widely as safe, especially to the elite where you'd want to be able to offer some certainty.

We're currently supposed to believe that an individual will commit suicide if they don't get surgery/medication, yet transition/transhumanism is supposed to enable humans to remain on an earth scarce of resources, the elite, powerful and monied or those deemed as having relevant skills to offer will receive preferential access to reduced food resources and/or future technology, I can't see the suicidal children and AGP adults clamouring for today's treatments being able to fulfill the criteria.

Is the attack on women an unintended consequence, or a means of disrupting current society and diverting attention?