Jon Ronson is so anti GC now

[Doyoumind]

I have been a fan of Jon Ronson for a long time. We're talking 25 years or so. I know not everyone knows who he is, though he's been mentioned on here before.

I always thought of him as a sensible and fair person. I started having doubts around the whole porn thing but he doesn't come down definitively for or against it.

Previously he didn't want to discuss the issues around trans and women's rights. Lately, since his spat with previous friend Glinner, he has become very, very anti GC and rigid in his stance. He won't engage in any debate and follows and interacts with a lot of TRAs on Twitter.

I can't understand where he is coming from. It feels like he has picked his side and is going to stick with it whatever anyone says, where usually, as a journalist, he is quite balanced and fair, a bit like Louis Theroux.

I wonder if part if it is because he now lives in America where the debate is very much positioned as between the Left and the Right. If he was here more, would he feel differently?

I think I'm going to unfollow him on Twitter because I'm starting to really dislike him for not even investigating fully before joining in with the condemnation of GC feminists.

I've only recently started reading him and find it hard to reconcile his books and his ill informed tribal position on this issue. Not sure who his audience has been but it can't be the irredeemably woke surely.

He has always seemed easily swayed and not good at logic to me. I remember him stockpiling Tamiflu for the Sars virus years ago. Surprised he's not hiding in a bunker from Coronavirus

Yes, I remember him worrying about getting hold of Tamiflu. He's a fairly sensitive and anxious person. Perhaps his anxiety pushes him towards a safe rather than a challenging stance.

If he's American he won't know any openly GC women. If it's bad here, it's far, far worse there. They had no Mumsnet to hold the line, and allow open discussion on a hugely popular site. No women's orgs who weren't captured early, either, and nowhere to discuss creation of new ones. And it's also a far more inherently misogynist society, despite the wokery, and also a far more consumerist society, with a massive - really rather terrifying - focus on how you look, and on conformity (even if your tribe is ostensibly not conformist) so the idea of gender identity fits really well. They pride themselves on the rights of the individual, too. The needs and rights of a collective are looked on with suspicion. You shop in the marketplace of ideas for who you are, and then dress, act, and pursue medical care accordingly. All privatised and heavily advertised. Huge profit motive. Loads of cash to be made from white middle aged males transitioning, as well as from affluent parents with dysphoric kids. And a pre-cut set of ideas to follow that prove your worth and value as a human being. It's a religion of sorts, and that is a much more religious country, too.

I don't blame him. If you don't have the facts laid out for you, you believe what you're told. I only became GC because I started researching in order to prove GC people were wrong, and transwomen no more risk than other women, and massively more at risk of murder, and so much more likely to be suicidal, and that the evidence was clear on brain differences, and sport, and yadda yadda yadda. You all know what I found. Thing is, when you're confronted with facts that comprehensively disprove your position, you change your mind, if you have any sort of intellectual honesty. But you do need to find those facts. And most people don't know about them.

You can't form a reasoned view if you don't have all the facts. Which is, of course, why there has been such huge effort made to deplatform and shut down any debate, so the contra facts aren't often in the public domain.

Yes, what wellbehavedwoman said. Yet another reason I find the US such a terrifying country.

He's actually Welsh.

And he's a kind of an investigative journalist so it's far from beyond him to seek out the facts.

He's actually Welsh

Thought he was Mancunian?

It’s a great shame he’s gone anti-GC. He’s spent so much of his working life chronicling the thoughts of anti-scientific nutters.

He's pushing back against Twitter DMs telling him to stop following Glinner. Maybe this will be his lightbulb moment.

That is so dissonant with his usual approach to things, I almost wonder whether there is a personal aspect to it.

He could have been struggling with internal conflict for a while for that reason. Just a hunch.

Doesn't he live in the States, though?

Being an investigative journalist only helps if you realise something needs investigation, or that the facts you're being given do. You believe what you're told, otherwise, and if all you're told is Stonewall approved, you have no idea that that's not the real story. I only stumbled on the reality because I went to disprove GC facts, only to find that I couldn't. That's why our speaking out is so key. Silencing the unpalatable facts is what #nodebate was for.

That is so dissonant with his usual approach to things, I almost wonder whether there is a personal aspect to it.

If he has a trans loved one then of course that affects how he sees things. It's hard to separate out what a loved one desperately wants for affirmative validation, and what those required to provide that validation against their consent also have a right to do and say. And being told that transwomen commit offences at male rates is presented as "all transwomen are predators" which is obviously bullshit. Not true, and not what those stats mean. Just that male people are a preventable risk for female people, and that's why we have single sex spaces.

Our arguments are blown up and lied about so the straw men can be burned. As proxies for us, one assumes. But those straw man arguments are the ones I often find myself dealing with. People really find it hard to accept that those aren't arguments any gender critical women (any I know, anyway) make. Our misrepresentation is necessary, of course. It shuts down debate in all ways - means our views are misrepresented, while we aren't afforded a platform to explain as much. So people like Ronson assume they're the reality.

Bless all the GC women who held the line while the rest of us were still sleeping. We owe you so very much.

What a pity. I’ve enjoyed his books a lot. Was pretty disappointed with the series on porn though, where he managed to get through the whole thing without ever considering a feminist viewpoint.

Pretty common for right-on men to fail to grasp anything but the most superficial kind of feminism, though, so he’s on a well trod path.

I wouldn't say he's pushing back much - People DMing me to ask me to unfollow glner: please stop asking me. I feel the same way you do about his crusade but I don’t tell you what to do in your lives so please don’t tell me. Just because you’ve decided the new law is a follow = an endorsement, it doesn’t make it true.

I like him on other things, but this is just weird. But yep, as PP have said, if you are very close to a transperson, you do feel that the movement is an attack on them as an individual and not a questioning of the ideology.

If he has a trans loved one then of course that affects how he sees things.

I have a trans loved one. Doesn't mean I believe that 2+2=5. Some people have basic intellectual honesty

I find Ronson's take on this unfathomably out of character. The TRAs are everything that he has spent his life railing against. I have no explanation for it.

He really should just unfollow Glinner. He's currently discussing the issue with a starred-out version of Glinner's name, as if Glinner is Voldemort. How childish. If I was Glinner, I'd tell him to do one.

It has made me re-evaluate everything I've heard him say on the subject of porn. I deleted all his podcasts after I found out the other week that he was behaving in such a despicable fashion. I will never listen to another word he says.

Bless all the GC women who held the line while the rest of us were still sleeping. We owe you so very much.

Amen sister!

Childish is the word. The way he’s digging his heels in and refusing to even say Glinner’s name... ridiculous.

I have been a very big fan of Ronson's, but there has been stuff that has made me pause slightly, even before this.

One is the sheer irresponsibility of the fact that he smuggled Alex Jones into bohemian grove just so he could write an amusing story about it. This played a major role in launching Jones's career, and he's been a horrific menace ever since.

Another is that in Publicly Shamed Ronson confessed to having played a part in some pretty nasty shaming incidents himself. He did it in a way that made it sound like he was playing up how bad he was so you would think that he was exaggerating it out of modesty. I don't think that he was exaggerating. I think he did that stuff.

Also, while I do enjoy his stuff, there is no denying that his early career largely involved spending a lot of time getting to know people and gaining their trust, in order to ridicule them in print. Many of them deserved it, and maybe that is just journalism. But also - maybe the kind of person who chooses to do that for a living is a certain type of person.

I’ve met him a few times and talked about some interesting things
I find it quite sinister tbh.

He’s pro-porn. He isn’t a supporter of women.

It seems out of character to me too. But you can't always tell what people are like from their public persona. If this whole business has taught me anything, it's that stupidity and misogyny can be found in the most unexpected of places - and equally that intelligence and courage can be found where you'd least expect them too.

Purity spiral, innit?

I am so disappointed in him. I challenged him a while back regarding his neutral stance on porn. He seemed willfully blind to the unequal power dynamics. Willful being the operative word. He RT'd me and got upset by the feminists being so 'unkind' regarding his position. He needs to be seen as the 'good guy.' That's his prime directive .