John Cleese defends JKR

[TheKrakening3]

Thanks mate. The more the merrier.

@ChattyLion

Agree this is an issue for everyone to speak up on if they safely can. Which particularly applies to men on Twitter.

And it's much easier and safer for men to speak up, which is obvious if you compare the responses to John Cleese and JK Rowling on twitter.

Has anyone told John Cleese to choke on a girl dick yet? Or die in a fire? Or issued any threats at all?

I think more people who don't understand gender should talk about it.

I dont hate anybody, I don't consider myself trans phobic at all. But I don't get it. At all.

And nobody has been able to explain it to me. Years ago I was friends with a trans woman but her views at the time (she considered herself a male with dysphoria who wanted to be seen as a woman, as opposed to actually biologically female) would be considered radical now.

I think it's more that people have different understanding about gender...internally felt or externally imposed being I think the main difference between transwomen and GC women

Ah, I remember when that scene in Life in Brian was just funny.

Hope he doesn't just cave and end up grovelling like lots do.

OMG! John Cleese knows exactly what he's doing. And how it could end.

I could cry, with JK and him opening more peoples eyes to this. Maybe this lunacy will end and my young daughter can actually grow up to be a woman, not a person who menstruates!!

Such brave people.

Has anyone told John Cleese to choke on a girl dick yet? Or die in a fire? Or issued any threats at all?

It's only been a couple of hours. I feel this issue is unravelling at a sedate, but satisfying pace.

I've been absolutely dumbstruck by discussing it with friends on facebook who were all TWAW. I presumed they had read up, examined evidence, and formed a reasonable opinion that differed to mine. I should maybe know better, but part of me is always wondering how on earth such nonsensical views have become so established, so quickly. I am always looking for the logic behind TWAW, thinking I must have missed something.

On questioning, it is very evident, very quickly, that the mantra is based on nothing but a vague idea that men = women and unicorns/ rainbows/magic/be kind. I asked people what they thought a woman was. They thought about it and said they could'nt define woman. I asked whether sex segregation should exist. They thought about it and said no, it was old fashioned to separate the sexes. These were people who had moments before berated JK Rowling for being 'uneducated'. They clearly don't have a clue. No data, no science, no reasoned arguments. No consideration of the practicalities or of the consequences of removing the definition of women, removing sex segregated spaces. Not a moment's thought had been given.

There's nothing behind it. It baffles me how this has passed for a 'debate', but then I remember Virginia Woolf:

'It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.'

@ScrimpshawTheSecond absolutely agree, a 25 year old who works for me suddenly started plastering Trans Lives matter all over her social media yesterday - I really want to ask her what she actually knows about it.

Yes, and I would add these people are not stupid, they're not uneducated. They're operating with good intentions. Just missing the application of logic due, it seems, to being sentimentally hijacked by TRA mantras.

Sunlight! More and more of it.

He's being v sophisticated in the way he's holding the debate - in which replies he's choosing to highlight and in what he says.

I love his approach to this. He is just asking questions. Asking for clarifications.

And it is amazing how many of the TRAs who just ask him to “stop” or “take it offline”.
Their rhetoric just doesn’t stand up to a basic discussion.

He asked if he might get pushback for saying he's a woman tomorrow.

He'll get pushback for even asking if he's going to get pushback!

Interestingly, I bet a lot of people who are challenging him have never even heard of that Loretta sketch. It was so prophetic.

Good for him tho.

I see no one has recommended he choke to death on their girl dick, criticised his genitalia, or threatened to rape and kill him.

I wonder what on earth the reason could be?

Bravo John.

This has seemed like a twitter spat until recently when in realised the implications for my teenage daughter. (I know, I know... I have sleepwalked through this 'debate').

She competes in women's sport at local/county level. It's hard enough to see my not particularly tall or strong girl move up from juniors to adults anyway. But the knowledge that she could be competing against men is horrifying. It's not technically a contact sport but she could easily break bones if a man ran into her on the pitch.
And the changing room situation...?

She loves her sport but she will drop out if it doesn't remain single sex, with my blessing

I read a couple of his psychology books in the 90s written in this question and answer style he's using here. He's definitely playing them.

I've been following this issue for years now, and it never ceases to amaze me how prophetic that Loretta sketch was. It's as though he could see into the future

I completely agree with Olive up thread. Where are the people who were already adults when they made Harry Potter ?
Not a peep.

Ahh thanks for the Loretta clip. Always love it.

Funnily enough, I was thinking of this clip when reading some of the threads this morning and the TRA approach to questions:

Oh MrsJamin that is the best thing I've seen in a long time

i think thats the thing I find hardest Scrimshaw, women waving away their own rights without a second thought because in most cases they literally havent given it a second thought because it never occured to them the full implications of "be kiiiiiiind" and let TW into your spaces

So many of them are where I was 2 years ago; life long LGB ally, totally on board with being kind, i mean after all how hard could it be to let them use the womans loo? we werent all pissing comunally right? its not as if anyone actually thinks Transwomen are women right? they know they're not, we're just being kind because lord knows it must be hard to live with gender dysphoria

and then the penny dropped that once we couldnt define woman to not include men then nothing at all could ever be solely for women again

and then there was no going back

Actually, I just realised that my dad used to do the same as John Cleese in certain meetings. He called it “the farmer from the countryside technique” (probably terribly non-PC, but those were different times).

Basically, my dad would pretend not to understand and repeatedly ask for (reasonable) clarifications. He used this when other parties were trying to use business jargon or trying to add a lot of complexity to draw the attention away from mistakes or poor procedures.

He could have entered into a very high level debate, but his concern was that a) it would distract from the actual issue and b) that a lot of decision makers wouldn’t understand that he had won the debate.

And it's much easier and safer for men to speak up

I think I understand why many don't. There has been a prevailing discourse over the last decade or so that people shouldn't speak about issues that they have no experience of, instead they should listen:
white people shouldn't speak about racism, they should listen to people of colour; heterosexuals shouldn't talk about homosexuality, they should listen to people who are LGB; men shouldn't talk about feminism, they should listen to women; authors should only write about the culture they come from ... I can see how many have got the idea that they shouldn't have opinions about trans, they should instead listen to transpeople.
It's clearly a stupid idea - how is anyone supposed to learn anything without discussing it? - but plenty of people have been stamped down for this.

There's nothing behind it. It baffles me how this has passed for a 'debate'

It hasn't. They've been saying 'no debate' for years, so the debate hasn't happened. Yet.

My worry is he will do an reverse ferret and say he was confused etc...

a reverse ferret... not 'an'

My worry is he will do an reverse ferret and say he was confused etc...

He might but he doesn't strike me at all as the type to be easily cancelled.