Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian

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Essentially an appeal to build bridges. At least the argument is being acknowledged although it still appeals to the "be nice" by stating that But nobody should want trans people to feel unsafe or cast out, and barring a trans woman from women’s services seems the cruellest of personal repudiations.

It's that rohypnol again, it does sound cruel to ban "a trans woman from women's services". Words are powerful and we should use words more accurately.

Why the battle over trans rights is a minefield for Labour
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/15/trans-rights-labour-leadership-candidates?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I'm torn. Some of that article sounds roughly where I stood about 5 years ago and I think that, once you start asking questions, there's no going back. I'm also firmly of the view that we're only going to win this if people change their minds.

But then I remember the Cologne piece, which was when I seriously began wondering what was going on at the Guardian. That article went beyond 'can't we just be nice' and, if she's going to come back from that in my eyes, she's got a long way to travel.

So for now I'm just going to watch. It will be interesting to see if she gets a pile-on from the TWAW lobby and, if so, how she copes with it.

She identifies some of the issues but it's clear that she really, really doesn't want to take a side. Janice Turner she is not.

It's that rohypnol again, it does sound cruel to ban "a trans woman from women's services". Words are powerful and we should use words more accurately.

Yes. It's not cruel to ban all men from women's spaces. If you don't, they're no longer women's spaces, are they?
I understand this is difficult to understand if you work for the Guardian, where even Yaniv is a 'woman with male genitalia'.

*I don’t understand her comment about ‘two marginalised groups, each demanding protection from the other‘.
… Are transwomen demanding to be protected from women? *

Transwomen are demanding to be protected from the truth.

(It's not often one piece of writing would have me putting someone in the "nope, fuck off forever" category but seriously, did you read it?)
that's it. Couldn't have put it better

Don't wish to derail, but here is her article about Cologne from 8th Jan 2016, and one from Deborah Orr a day later.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/09/the-left-must-admit-the-truth-about-the-assaults-on-women-in-cologne

Nowadays, comments are hardly ever allowed on articles in the Guardian.

At the risk of giving clicks to The Guardian here is the Hinsliff article.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

Here is one from the late and now apparently sainted Deborah Orr (of whom I am not a fan) which isn't much better.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/09/the-left-must-admit-the-truth-about-the-assaults-on-women-in-cologne

In response to the initial lack of response on the night which Orr is making so much of, Edinburgh has been running New Year's Eve celebrations in the city centre involving 100,000s people with nothing like what happened in Cologne. Indeed public gatherings in most Scottish cities and towns on this night are a long standing tradition. The slowness to respond on the night was probably down to a sense of wtf is happening.

andyoldlabour

Sorry cross posted with you.

I am not being an apologist for anything but, but ... we do know that guardian is likely to have some pretty strong internal influencers the other way and possibly they hold sway in how and when trans issues are covered?
So maybe gentle encouragement to say more and think harder is worth a punt?
Hadley Freeman is obviously GC and doesn’t write on the subject any more. Why?

But nobody should want trans people to feel unsafe or cast out, and barring a trans woman from women’s services seems the cruellest of personal repudiations.

Surely nobody should want women to feel unsafe and cast out, and barring women from women's services seems the cruellest of personal repudiations too.

This is the inevitable result of making women's spaces into mixed spaces. The hypocrisy is remarkable.

Discussion and journalism on transwomen is simply lazy when it doesn’t refer to self-id. Hinsliff mentions transwomen accessing refuge shelters without the possibility occurring to her that it is fully intact male-presenting men who are the objection. The article makes a throw-away reference to self-id only in the context of criticising a Tory government, but it is the increase of men presenting as men and insisting they are women that is the real issue. How many trans people are there? A tiny minority. How many women born women are there? Half the world. The latter surely don’t have to persist their oppression or lose their (only recently-won) rights to accommodate the former, who are clearly nuts.

There's a specific issue around pupils in SEND schools / colleges that teach pupils with autism in particular.

A young female who identifies as male may need specific physical support in specific circumstances to either keep themselves safe or support them with intimate hygiene etc.

Why are vulnerable children like this being taught that they can choose their sex?

Why are ANY children being taught that you can be born in the wrong body? Or that it's possible to change sex?

This piece on Cologne - posting the para for anyone unaware of it:

'Young German women thankfully enjoy historically unprecedented economic and sexual freedom, with their expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want. The same isn’t always true of young male migrants exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women, '

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

Yeah, that's fucking cold.

Why are vulnerable children like this being taught that they can choose their sex?

Oh that's very mild compared to some advice... I wrote to the Scots government a long time ago now, having seen advice for special schools. We're talking very vulnerable, possibly non verbal children.

The advice (written of course by political lobby groups, I did ask what specialist educational qualifications and experience they held but the govt didn't answer) was that to non verbal children who may be delayed at very early stages of development, staff should present them with and treat them with heavily gender stereotyped toys, materials and clothes for one sex, and then after a period of time present the other set of stereotypical stuff and see which the child appeared to respond to. This was supposed to help staff identify the child's true sense of gender.

Where do you even start with something so utterly thoughtless, token and damaging to any child? The disrespect to anyone and anything other than the politics is beyond offensive.

KimikosDreamHouse

Less than 20 seconds in it

Oh, sorry, I must have missed p2 of this thread!

Is it that Hinsliff sees it as oppressed group v oppressed group and can't compute; is it that she's so locked into the 'oh, be nice' mindset she can't get out of it or is it something else?

Is it that Hinsliff sees it as oppressed group v oppressed group and can't compute; is it that she's so locked into the 'oh, be nice' mindset she can't get out of it or is it something else?

Internalised misogyny. This is from the Cologne article:

...young male migrants exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women...

Gaby thinks that all men are entitled to feel superior to at least some women and that men's feelings are more important than women's safety.

What's remarkable is that Gaby has been to at least one WPUK meeting, talked to gc feminists, read the Twitter threads and other articles and still doesn't get it. She talks about the conflict between trans women and women whereas this is really about the threat men pose to women. Women don't want men in their hospital wards, changing rooms, sports teams, toilets, prisons, refuges etc. The threat men pose to women in these situations is well-established, and in countries where self-ID has become law, there are examples of the way in which predatory men have taken advantage of the law.

This stuff really isn't difficult but Hinsliff seems clueless.

Even a person who poses no danger whatsoever can inadvertently frighten a traumatised person, if something about them - a sound a scent, a habit - triggers flashbacks.

Something about them ...... Gaby whatever do you mean?

Clumsy wording to avoid the elephant in the room: sex based violence.

How about:

Even a transwoman who poses no danger whatsoever can inadvertently frighten a traumatised woman, if something about them - the fact that they are male - triggers flashbacks.

Here's another empathetic article Gaby wrote about women's concerns:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3391208-it-may-be-a-while-before-older-women-stop-feeling-erased

Didn't Gaby ask on Twitter whether the trans issue would make anyone actually change their vote, and on being told by scores of people that would, drop the subject?

And yet another article from 2 years ago. I wonder if she has changed her views since this one?

I find it highly insulting that she thinks anyone other than women should be on all-women shortlists. It's designed to counter the imbalance in sex representation in parliament. If trans people are under represented in politics then that is a different issue.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/09/transgender-women-labour-shortlists-gender-discrimination