Andrew Doyle And Gervais

[BovaryX]

Andrew Doyle interviews Gervais in Spectator. Gervais talks about Harry Miller, ‘hate speech’ and the threat to freedom. Good article

The new puritans aren’t 60-year-old women in twinsets and pearls, the Christian right trying to make us turn off our televisions because they don’t like it. It’s a younger crowd with trendy haircuts, who you’d think would have left-leaning liberal sensibilities, who have invented this new term “hate speech”.’

He will start tying himself in mental knots soon. Apart from anything else, I don’t know how he can reconcile his ardent atheism with TWAW.

I can’t make up my mind about him. And I’ve never understood why he’s so obsessed with making jokes about chemotherapy. I’m not offended. I just find it weird and creepy.

I agree Datun about it being a journey, but it's disappointing/confusing (delete as appropriate) that Ricky Gervais is making this distinction now because some of his earlier tweets, despite their sarcasm and satirical tone, give the impression he'd already made the full journey.

It's a journey. Almost everyone starts off making a distinction between genuine and not genuine. But you're soon realise that a) it doesn't matter, because you can't tell, and b) you still can't change sex.

I met Barraker at A Womens Place, in Liverpool last year when I was at that very point, and and she smiled enigmatically and said "Don't worry you'll get there..." I wasn't convinced at all...but logic eventually takes you to the only possible conclusion.

Can we please not police what others say on social media if it deviates even slightly from our own beliefs?

That’s what the TRAs do, and it’s controlling and weird.

I don’t mean so much on here. But there are people (on the feminist side) on Twitter calling RG “disappointing” and “cowardly” for this. Which is silly and unproductive imo.

I've just seen him doubling down on the 'I said men' thing. Men hiding under trans umbrella.

I think it's clear from several tweets that he knows TW are not biological women.

I think he's focusing on men because it simplifies a complex argument for twitter. It means the Genderists have to argue that men in women's spaces are no threat.

Can we please not police what others say on social media if it deviates even slightly from our own beliefs?

Also, this. Soo much this.

Sometimes we (on the feminist side) are our own worst enemy. Some are now dragging Ricky for this tweet (yes I despise the word c*s too). This type of thought policing only pushes people away.

There is nothing wrong with making a distinction between TW like Rose and Fionne on the one hand, and JY and KW on the other. And Ricky doesn’t owe us “allegiance.”

There is nothing wrong with making a distinction between TW like Rose and Fionne on the one hand, and JY and KW on the other.

Not if that distinction is a man saying which set of males (however different from one another they may, or may not, be) women must accept as women.

If that's what Ricky Gervais thinks, I'll tell him to fuck right off as much as I bloody well like.

Like this:

Ricky: if you think any XY person can ever be a woman - FUCK RIGHT OFF.

There is nothing wrong with making a distinction between TW like Rose and Fionne on the one hand, and JY and KW on the other.

The problem is that most women wouldn't know any of them from Adam. The distinction, if there is to be one, needs to make sense to all women and not just those who spend time on gc Twitter or have seen the mugs of KW and JY in a newspaper. Personal friendships and alliances are irrelevant to the debate.

But I agree that the hounding of RG is ridiculous. And bordering on dickpandering.

RG now doing the tiresome ‘extremists on both sides’ thing.... the comments are full of screenshots of horrendous TRA threats of violence against JKR though, you don’t have to read very far to see many examples of the one-sided nature of extremism at play here.

Anyway what actually drew my attention to this tweet of RG’s is that it was retweeted by Rory Stewart. Now he is a very clever and usually fairly measured and honest man, in my opinion. I wonder if he realises quite what he might be wading into, and if he would end up being drawn into making further comments on this issue, given he hopes to become mayor of London in a few months time.

As for RG - yeah, he’ll get there. He can see the dangers inherent in self-ID and is vocal in arguing against them. If he wants to pretend he also believes black is white then that’s up to him, personally don’t require his 100% agreement with my worldview. He is trying to fight for women and that’s a hell of a lot more than most people with his influence are doing.

I just don't want to be in any way like the TRAs though. Not in the cancel culture dogpile way. I think give him space.

I don't want to be like an extremist TRA either. But i disagree profoundly with any man (or woman) deciding exactly what sort of man women must be forced to accommodate.

No thanks.

The difference is I don't need to threaten violence or rape or shut down discussion due to having no argument.

I'll tell anyone who thinks women must accept that certain men are women and certain men aren't, exactly why they're one hundred percent wrong.

The law tells us someone with a GRC has more rights than someone without. So lawfully we do have to make a distinction, don’t we?

Yes, lawfully there is a distinction to be made. But on a practical level, given someone with no medical treatment or surgery, who has been living in prison, can get a GRC, it's not a category I put much stock in. Personally, if we had to allow some males in, I'd prefer the criteria was surgery and hormones and Gender Dysphoria, where, on a passing glance, a woman couldn't "tell".

But then, we can usually tell even after surgery and hormones, so that doesn't work as a category either.

So we still need to just say no. To all males.

I'll tell anyone who thinks women must accept that certain men are women and certain men aren't, exactly why they're one hundred percent wrong.

I'll ask anyone who thinks women must accept that certain men are women and certain men aren't, at exactly what point in their 'transition' they think a man becomes a woman.

The law tells us someone with a GRC has more rights than someone without. So lawfully we do have to make a distinction, don’t we?

Under self ID that distinction would disappear.

Yes I know it would go under self IID and it’s why I’m against it.

I don’t believe TWAW, they are TW. But when we don’t make a distinction between those with a GRC and those without, as the law stands, aren’t we breaking the law and taking away rights they have at the moment?

But when we don’t make a distinction between those with a GRC and those without, as the law stands, aren’t we breaking the law and taking away rights they have at the moment?

Yes, but it's not clear where the boundary is between the rights they have now to be treated as women, and women's lawful sex-based rights where they can be excluded, is.

I think the laws are incredibly poorly drafted. We're allowed to exclude where it's "proportionate", but as we now know, men will rarely think (their, or even less likely, TW's) exclusion is proportionate. We even have men arguing that women shouldn't be able to request a female doctor for intimate procedures (as in, not a man because that's sexist, apparently). And that's why we have the ability to exclude males (in general, and that decision should be women's to make, not men's, because (some/too many) men just don't understand why women might be uncomfortable in their presence.

So it's very clear that women should be the arbiters of when we think we need single-sex spaces, not men.

But when we don’t make a distinction between those with a GRC and those without, as the law stands, aren’t we breaking the law and taking away rights they have at the moment?

We're not breaking the law just by discussing this. We can't make a distinction between those who do or don't have a GRC because even services which are providing single sex spaces aren't supposed to ask to see one.

The law tells us someone with a GRC has more rights than someone without. So lawfully we do have to make a distinction, don’t we?

Yes. But here’s the rub, and it’s two-fold:

1. ‘We’ could make a distinction, and some of us do, but the other side is all about not making distinctions. Their argument is if you self-ID as a woman then you are one. The most staunch advocates live this in practice. They call themselves women and do things they arguable don’t have a legal right to do. Eg I saw a very high-profile TWAW without a GRC use the women’s toilets in an establishment that hadn’t labelled its toilets gender nob-specific.

1. TW who believe self-ID is enough convince others to go along with this. As if often the case, arrogant and categoric proclamations work. The people who go along with it then police others. Another personal example; a few years ago when on here under a different name, I got deleted by MNHQ because a TWAW without a GRC was offended by me posting asking otherMNers wether this person had a GRC. He reported me.

If this legal distinction held more weight in practice, I really don’t think we’d be at the point we are now. People asserting in effect that self-ID trumps the law is a massive problem.