Flora Gill - annoying article in The Times

[Theluggage15]

Article on cancel culture. Read the first bit then there was this paragraph:

‘ For example, for my generation — I’m 29 — the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality. If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans, instead of the real threat faced by trans women now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of woman you don’t value.’

Want to go to sleep but feeling really angry. So depressing reading this, I feel worse for some reason when this sort of view comes from intelligent young women.

Ah, the delightful Amber Rudd who responded to my letter to my MP years ago, where I raised concerns about self ID (he passed my letter to her) with 'your constituent is mistaken, this would never happen' and said I should educate myself on the struggles of the poor transwomen.

Also she is wrong. My daughter is also 29. She went to both independent and public schools, and to Uni, in the UK from the age of 10 until she was 26, before moving abroad (she's not British). She definitely did not grow up with the understanding that TWAW. She had no idea about the whole trans thing; it was I who introduced her to the ideology about two years ago and she used her brains and thought it was ridiculous from the start. She still does.
The same applies to my son who is 35.

It's an awful article. But I am happy it's in The Times. The Times tries to have a plurality of voices and opinions. This is how it should be. Hopefully anyone reading this alongside Janice Turner and Laura Dodsworth's photo essay will come to their own conclusions.

I'm her generation.
What arrogance that she speaks for everyone her age! She doesn't speak for me.

Also I get annoyed by the self-infantalising some do when talking about "millenials".

Late twenties/early thirties is sometimes spoken about as though it's just out of adolescence! It's not even new to adulthood.
It's real, proper adulthood for most of us. Most of us have already spent many years living as independent adults, struggling to establish a career and support ourselves financially. (Unless you live in a very rare and privileged bubble like Flora...)

Has anyone got a share token, please?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-generation-arent-the-bullies-we-just-defend-the-weak-cjwrzwlk7?shareToken=25461c9f75a1a34b760b5064c48f41b0

I'm glad they published this. It shows the absolute weakness of a position built on lies and hyperbole

While I agree the piece is drivel, actually I am 100% behind the Times for publishing it.

Oh me too - I imagine it represents the views of a lot of people who think they are great, compassionate activists for saying "Silence, TERF!" on Twitter.

The mistake is very much hers - she's put out a sloppy opinion piece and every point in it was robustly countered yesterday by a writer in the same paper who is leagues above her.

I'm also her generation - two years older than her. She really is in a bubble.

The comments are great ranging from the humorous to the outraged with many calling out the entitled arrogance and deep ignorance about what free speech actually means.
Another one pleased that it's published. This is what free speech looks like.

the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality

Er... she completely missed that gender reassignment IS and will continue to be protected.

Convenient that she didn’t reference ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic. Neatly forgetting this is what is at risk for 51% of the population.

Also I get annoyed by the self-infantalising some do when talking about "millenials".

The word 'millennial' has become lazy shorthand for 'young person'. The oldest millennials were born in the early 80s and are now in their late thirties. I know, because I am an old millennial!

If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be raped or assaulted by men, instead of the real threat faced by men now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of man you don’t value.

That's what she's wrote.

I agree with others that this is The Sunday Times wanting to be seen to be putting forward the trans ally side. But they're being liberal in letting very critical comments stay up, and overall Flora Gill with her "be nice or you're bigots" and shallow understanding looks clueless.

Isn't it weird how essential it is for the young to be seen to be a trans ally? I realise it goes into the portfolio with anti-racism and other antis, but taking it on board means having to rely on fabricated statistics and disregarding much of what the real world consequences might be. It means being very vocal while quelling any urge to look behind the curtain. The less you understand/examine, the stronger is your faith.

Titania McGrath could have written that!

Most people would agree that certain opinions don’t deserve a platform

And that right there is Flora's first mistake.

The comments under the article are excellent. I’m sure she’ll read them. Hopefully she might take something away from them, I’m assuming she lives in an echo chamber of trans women are women so they may give her some food for thought.

My 23 year old daughter doesn’t think like Flora thank goodness, but it worries me how many young women have been sucked in by this dangerous mindset. They seem to think it’s a feminist act, standing up for trans women as they are the most vulnerable ‘type of woman’.

In the actual paper, Flora Gill's piece is next to an article by Philip Collins arguing the opposite point of view. Maybe they wanted to show both sides?

What I don't get - apart from the predictable misogyny - is why women are always the bad guys in this recurring narrative. The words may fly around, but if a transwoman is actually attacked and harmed or even murdered, it's not women doing it. Male violence is the real problem; everything else is flak, distraction and obfuscation.

I always want to know how many girls and women being assaulted, raped or even murdered - by predatory violent men - in what were once women-only spaces are seen as acceptable collateral damage in this push for access all areas. How many will it take before someone says this was not a good idea and we need to put things back as they were?

Are we talking 10s? 100s? We need this to made clear before legislation is passed. If there is no ceiling, we need to be told that, too, so we know how expendable and unimportant we all really are in comparison to this tiny special interest group.

Are we talking 10s? 100s? We need this to made clear before legislation is passed. If there is no ceiling, we need to be told that, too, so we know how expendable and unimportant we all really are in comparison to this tiny special interest group.

I’ve posted this a few times.

The number of women and girls assaulted before TRAs admit there is a concern = the actual number of women and girls assaulted + 1.

It’s always an unattainable number.

In the first days of the Coalition, Nick Clegg had people scratching their heads when one of his first pronouncements was against nepotism. It fizzled out but it had Times writers like Giles Coren, Victoria Coren-Mitchell and Hugo Rifkind looking at the ground and shuffling their feet fir a while.

Looks like nothing much had changed (even though I think it's the least worst paper right now).

Note the use of standardised language:
"cancel culture doesn't exist", it's only "accountability"
"trans rights" is effectively the same thing as anti-racism
those with means enough not to buckle under the pressure, like JKR, prove that cancel culture doesn't exist (the nobodies who lost their jobs is an inconvenient detail and is to be ignored)

Thank you, Clymene.

Is that really the best argument that the woke side can come up with? ‘You’re all nasty women, if you’re not prepared to sacrifice females in order to protect the male bodied people who don’t want to share the toilets with others of the same sex as them.’

It’s obvious she’s talking from a very privileged background. She’s never going to be in the typical high street shops, with lines of curtained off cubicles or with nice phone friendly gaps at the top/bottom of the walls. She’s not going to be in the council swimming pools, with similar setups or open plan changing rooms. With her privilege, she can afford to shop in the more select shops, with their nice, private changing rooms and private sports centres, which will be policed more rigorously and well staffed.

She’s never going to be homeless or afraid to leave a violent partner because she has no money, support or safe place to go.

It’s easy to preach to women that they have to give up their rights to safety, dignity and privacy to a group of people who are of the section of humanity, that commits most of the sexual and physical violence. MEN, when it doesn’t affect her. she is the epitome of privilege.

I am very glad that this has been published in the Times alongside all the other pieces. Sunlight and a chance for all to put their arguments and reasoning out there. And see how well it all stands up - from the comments, not many people are buying it

Has anyone got a share token for the Philip Collins article that stands beside this one?

Those comments are an absolute joy. The article is irrelevant as it just encourages sunlight to shine from the comments.