Author Naomi Wolf condemns UK's 'moral panic' on trans issues

[stumbledin]

Britain is in the grip of a “moral panic” about transgender issues, according to U.S. author Naomi Wolf, who said she was angry that trans women were being linked with predatory men having been a victim of rape herself. ...

“It’s always this mythology of a man dressed as a woman in ladies bathroom who’s going to rape a woman - which just doesn’t happen,” Wolf told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview, adding that women were far more at risk from men.

“Anyway there are already laws in place against you being molested by anyone in a bathroom.”

Wolf, 58, said every time she stood up for trans rights she was attacked online by “waves and waves of bots”.

And more like this at uk.reuters.com/article/britain-lgbt-history/interview-u-s-author-naomi-wolf-condemns-uks-moral-panic-on-trans-issues-idUSL8N2ID2IG

Just posting for information.

Not sure it is worth discussing, though needless to say she was an invited speaker at what should have been an event about Gay rights, but of course has been trans(formed) into a LGBTQ event.

Sigh.

Thanks @nauticant! I’m going to listen to it again now and laugh 😆

It was delicious! Wonder if it’s on BBC Sounds anywhere - I could do with a laugh. Weren’t the books pulled? Hope she returned her advance.

The safety in toilets issue relies on the idea that a magical transformation takes places when "a man transitions into a woman". Self-ID is an express denial that any transformation needs to take place. Like in many parts of the gender identity ideology, it is in conflict with itself.

But in any case, toilets are a minor part of the problem and is typically raised as a way of distracting from substantial issues.

Swearing?

We'll have no swearing here - this is a local website!

If you want to know what happened after the disastrous Radio 4 programme (have a listen at the link above), read this and have a laugh ThatIsNotMyUsername:

www.thecut.com/2019/10/naomi-wolfs-new-book-canceled-after-major-errors-discovered.html

@nauticant

The safety in toilets issue relies on the idea that a magical transformation takes places when "a man transitions into a woman". Self-ID is an express denial that any transformation needs to take place. Like in many parts of the gender identity ideology, it is in conflict with itself.

But in any case, toilets are a minor part of the problem and is typically raised as a way of distracting from substantial issues.

I prefer to use sport. Although now they have started saying that objections to men competing with women are racist (seemingly built on their own incredibly racist view that black women aren't real women).

@ nauticant why thank you - that’s my mid-morning coffee read sorted out!

@nauticant

From the posts above here's the moment when Wolf's reputation for scholarship fell to pieces live on Radio 4:

twitter.com/thymetikon/status/1131702577878503425

The very last words of the recording are particularly ouch-y.

What went wrong there was that rather than asking what the odd term "death recorded" might mean, she went with what she wanted it to mean. I'd say the same kind of thing is happening in her current intervention.

That’s a bum clenchingly awful listen 😬

I’m snickering like Muttley at it.

This isn’t the first time Wolf has been accused of being rather cavalier with facts. As the Times’ book critic Parul Sehgal notes in her review of Outrages, Wolf’s first book The Beauty Myth, published in 1990, “is well-known for exaggerating the number of women who died of anorexia (Wolf stated that anorexia kills 150,000 women annually; the actual figure at the time, in the mid-1990s, was said to be closer to 50 or 60).” Sehgal writes of her 2012 book Vagina that it, “so profoundly misrepresented the working of the brain, I’m not sure science writers have recovered.”

😆 😆 😂

I believe she tweeted a few weeks ago (I only saw a screenshot not the original tweet) insisting she was right about the deaths. Zero respect for her. She is not a scholar. I am quite glad she’s not on our side tbh, it would lose us credibility with old fashioned people who care about stuff like truth.

OvaHere

I haven't interacted with Wolf on twitter myself, but I have lurked on the arguments.

She certainly gets a lot of pushback on the trans issue, but I don't think they're bots, any more than MN posters on a fast moving AIBU about toilet brushes are.

Turns out that women can have opinions and post them. Who knew?

Who knew she thought so little about women? Woman with a large ego I think.

I think I’m beginning to understand. This is from a review of her 2012 book, Vagina:

It becomes "loopier as it goes on. We learn that women think and feel through their vagina, which can 'grieve' and feel insulted."

So actually it’s clear that she does think that biology is core to being a woman (albeit that her argument sounds insane). She is a ‘literal TERF’. This is a way that she can avoid the wrath of the TRA mob and score woke points. Yeah, okay, she’s gotta shit on other women in the process but a gal’s gotta do what she’s gotta do, right. The same with Margaret Atwood. She wrote a whole novel about the exploitation of women’s reproductive function but now denies that biology is a thing because otherwise she’d be a prime target, given that she’s old and white and all.

Hypocrites. I can understand them staying silent for fear of reprisals but this stuff is sickening where they throw other women on the (grease) fire to save their own skin.

I’ve enjoyed her books. I like to think if I sat down with a cuppa with her she would agree with me more than would appear here. I’ve yet to meet an adult woman who when I’ve calmly approached the issue hasn’t seen the need for some careful balancing of rights and needs (including vulnerable children who need to be protected from irreversible decisions). That’s all I want. I don’t have some underlying hatred of trans people.

And you are implying that others do?

But in any case, toilets are a minor part of the problem and is typically raised as a way of distracting from substantial issues.

Indeed. Let's keep a list of single-sex spaces, clubs and activities that we need to protect other than toilets:

Changing rooms
Prisons
Hospital wards
Domestic violence refuges
Rape crisis centres
Sports
Certain leisure facilities such as Hampstead ladies' pool or women-only gyms
Leisure activities (eg women-only sessions at the gym or municipal swimming pool)
Women-only organisations such as the WI
Jobs that only women can do or where a client can request a woman, e.g. mammogram sonographer, personal carer (eg someone providing intimate care to an elderly or disabled person)

Have I missed anything?

The point which Wolf fails to understand (or refuses to understand) is that once you have accepted the principle that men can be allowed into a single-sex space, organisation or activity, then that means there can be no more single-sex spaces, organisations or activities. They all disappear for ever. That means, for example, that if you are a woman with complex PTSD after being repeatedly raped or abused, you have to accept a man in your rape crisis centre. That if you are a profoundly disabled young woman in need of intimate care, you have to accept a male carer. That if you are the victim of domestic violence who finds yourself in gaol for a minor offence, you may find yourself sharing space with a convicted rapist.

How difficult is it to understand this? How come Wolf is so dim that she can't grasp what is obvious to most of us?

How difficult is it to understand this? How come Wolf is so dim that she can't grasp what is obvious to most of us?

I think that book interview gives some hint to how her brain works (ie not very well). Or maybe I should say vagina rather than brain, seeing that is what women use to think.

@persistentwoman

Naomi Wolf - who wrote a 'book' that had to be pulped by the publisher because it was full of errors /untruths /mistakes. That Naomi Wolf?

Precisely. Not exactly renowned for due diligence, is she?

Haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone said yet that IIUC the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts aren't expecting males to produce documentary evidence that they ID as being women, they are simply taking them at their word and recording crimes committed by males who ID as women as having been committed by women. Hence the big jump in the last few years of women committing rape - a crime which (in England) involves the use of a penis.

Also, always the magisterial wave of the hand - 'It's already against the law, you can call the police and report that you were sexually assaulted' - as if this makes everything all right and will always lead to the capture, conviction and incarceration of a sexual predator.

@ThatIsNotMyUsername

And you are implying that others do?

Was this directed at me? I’m sure some people do, but not the majority of people who have legitimate concerns. I think everyone can agree transphobia does exist. Trans people are beaten and verbally abused in the street. I (obviously) would intervene if safe to do so and would testify etc against someone doing that, as I’m sure any decent person would.

Also, always the magisterial wave of the hand - 'It's already against the law, you can call the police and report that you were sexually assaulted' - as if this makes everything all right and will always lead to the capture, conviction and incarceration of a sexual predator.

Of course. And we all know that even if the police do apprehend the perpetrator that this will totally erase the psychological trauma of being sexually assaulted. I mean, I think I’d much rather not be raped in the first place than see my attacker be punished

Precisely. Not exactly renowned for due diligence, is she?

She's not very bright but has managed to travel an extraordinary distance through the magic of being very good about self-publicity (by "very good" I mean "utterly shameless"). She seems to have completely lost the plot in recent years - see, for example, her tweet after our last general election in which she berated the BBC for publishing the results of its exit poll because it might influence the result. Dozens of people explained to her that the BBC only published the results of the exit poll after voting had ended but she didn't seem to understand.

Also, always the magisterial wave of the hand - 'It's already against the law, you can call the police and report that you were sexually assaulted' - as if this makes everything all right and will always lead to the capture, conviction and incarceration of a sexual predator.

It's disgraceful that a supposed feminist uses this argument. She can't even claim cultural ignorance, the situation for the many women who are sexually assaulted is the same in the US.

Plus as pp said that should surely apply to MTF trans people in the male toilets too. It's not as if they are after any special, overreaching rights after all, they just want to pee.

Thank you amazing posters. I am in awe of your breadth of knowledge. I had no idea about the deaths recorded verdicts.

This is one of my favourite quotes about Wolf, from the NY Times last year:

"Naomi Wolf’s long, ludicrous career has followed a simple formula. She audits herself for some speck of dissatisfaction, arrives at an epiphany — one that might contravene any number of natural laws — and then extrapolates a set of rules and recommendations for all women."