An excellent article in Sunday Times re SNP trans row

[gardenbird48]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/17027a3c-633a-11eb-a89f-ac2e7b8b7ae3?shareToken=7f3f1c8765c6e1160b5cdcdd99bb97ff

One of the clearest articles I’ve read - no punches pulled and absolute clarity on the issue facing the SNP.

There is another article on this exact subject today (unusual?) but I haven’t read that yet. Will check it out now.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fa2d82e8-634e-11eb-a89f-ac2e7b8b7ae3?shareToken=595ae37d55e186e1cc4d0b19f9addf37

Here’s #2 just reading it now.

Tensions rose to the point last week that Cherry, the SNP Westminster justice spokeswoman, blocked her parliamentary colleague Kirsty Blackman on Twitter after a row over her defence of an activist suspended from the social media site.

The second article is not quite as well sunlit with this rather weak paragraph - that should have read womens rights and freedom of speech activist when referring to Joanna’s support of Sarah Phillimore.

He also quotes Out for Indy which gives the commenters and excellent opportunities to mention one of the leading members of Out for Indy in particular who is a very unsavoury and abusive character.

Jo March was up early this morning.

I don't think Jo March ever sleeps.

There are some really good comments. Funny how well informed we're becoming about our sex

The first article is excellent — clear and helpful and has certainly enabled me to get a better idea of what's going on in Scotland.

The second article by John Boothman seems at times to be written in code. He makes an allusion to the problems with Out for Independence but leaves it to the reader to google and discover that Out for Independence's co-convenor is Leeze Lawrence, a transgender TRA who's been cosying up to Sturgeon and has called women 'ugly bints'.

Boothman further covers his arse by saying he accepts that TWAW if you accept the new definition of woman as being someone who identifies as female. I imagine a lot of people coming to his piece cold would end up confused if they didn't understand the underlying references.

Just as this debate has resulted in some fine journalism from people such as Janice Turner, it's produced some poor, self-serving stuff from the likes of Boothman. I'm really surprised the Times ran both.

I was with the first article until he said Most of the time and in most circumstances this distinction may not, as a practical matter, amount to much when referring to TWAW. To him, it might not amount to much, as he's not ever going to be the one in the changing room or the refuge or the AWSL or the breastfeeding support group. He did use the mother argument though, and I liked the rest of it.

Comments not loading for me at the moment but thanks for the share. It’s never not unbelievable how this issue comes to dominate and poison every discourse it barges in on, hurling facts and rationality out the window with it and demonising women for saying so.

There's another good 1 in the spectator as well. It would seem that the wheels are coming off the bus

Interesting that the comments are almost universally supportive of women. And most find it extraordinary that women's rights are now being deemed transphobic.

Thanks for posting. Yes, Datun agree.

Thank you for sharing these, depressing read though they are.

I honestly don't get why the SNP aren't bright enough to realise (you'd think Nicola would be at least) that running after this lobby apologising does nothing at all; you'll never be forgiven and it's a flat out admission that they're your masters. If the SNP had said "ok, you're decision, go well", they'd have the lobby running after them since at this point the lobby have damn all elsewhere to go. Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems are all in hock to this lobby, it's destroying their parties and one of the reasons Labour is unelectable in a time when the Conservatives are in power mostly only because they're not Labour or any other party too insane to vote for.

The SNP are apparently going to rush down the same drain.

And most find it extraordinary that women's rights are now being deemed transphobic.

And if you accept that women's rights are transphobic, doesn't that mean that 'trans rights', or at the very least the extra privileges being demanded by the trans lobby, are anti women?

How can anyone can say that women's rights are transphobic, but there is no conflict between trans rights and women's rights?

Helpful though that it's now being stated clearly in the national press, and demonstrated via evidence: you cannot even mention women having and needing rights without being transphobic.

Transphobia equals recognising the rights of people born female.

It's rapidly moving on the next step to: transphobia is not overtly signalling virtue by decrying/working against the interests of people born female.

As demonstrated by the interesting article this weekend that we're apparently not allowed to discuss despite it being placed in the public domain for public interest: the gloves are coming off on the active gynephobia and desire not to be one of but to replace. Where is the point in denying this?

*cross post Crone, sorry.

And I think you're right. We need to start using gynephobia a lot, in context. If women's rights are transphobic then by extension, mentioning trans rights must be gynephobic.

Logic.

If calling politicians silly names makes them run around like headless chickens then when in Rome....

If women's rights are transphobic then by extension, mentioning trans rights must be gynephobic.

Yep

The first article says "So, sure, “trans women are women”, but they aren’t women in quite the same way your mother is a woman."

Isn't there a line in The Hitch-hiker's Guide about something "flying, in just the way that a brick doesn't"? A 'transwoman' is a woman in just exactly the sense that anything'anyone else, not a woman, is a woman. That is; not at all.

Very good article, and heartening comments. I sometimes feel as if I'm going mad when reading twitter which amplifies the extreme TRA position.

Good article and some excellent comments. Disgusted of Manchester just supplies the comedy relief in the comment section at this point.

Disgusted of Manchester has to be a parody, surely? Every comment is pretty much 'A female did a bad thing once' as some kind of slam-dunk ontological position.

Can I just add this article to the list?

www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,taking-a-lead

But it is precisely because of the lack of leadership on this issue that now natural allies are tearing strips off each other, young people no longer feel safe within a party that has put equality at its heart, and some women – feminists to their core – have felt abandoned while exposed to abject misogyny, rooted in erroneous slurs, for simply raising questions emanating from this wider debate.

www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,taking-a-lead

The first article is by Alex Massie, a well-known Scottish political journalist columnist and editor. He writes columns for the Times and Sunday Times and the Spectator. He's Scottish based so he sees the politics within the SNP from close quarters.

Like so many commentators, he sees what's wrong with the fiction of the male bodied claims to be women but feels obliged not to be cruel to transgender people; hence the strange attempt to say that male transgender people are women but not quite women in the way that women are women.

@Abitofalark

The first article is by Alex Massie, a well-known Scottish political journalist columnist and editor. He writes columns for the Times and Sunday Times and the Spectator. He's Scottish based so he sees the politics within the SNP from close quarters.

Like so many commentators, he sees what's wrong with the fiction of the male bodied claims to be women but feels obliged not to be cruel to transgender people; hence the strange attempt to say that male transgender people are women but not quite women in the way that women are women.

Mandy Rhodes does this as well in the article that @ItsAllGoingToBeFine linked to. A really good article in the whole contains stuff like, '[This has been] Five years in which Sturgeon’s government could have addressed the heartbreaking issues that trans people really face trying to access relevant medical services'.

But Mandy Rhodes doesn't suggest that these services might significantly include CAMHS, or other mental health services, or ASD support services for young people, or therapies otherwise.

And indeed, a few lines later the waiting lists for 'gender identity clinics' are mentioned ... So it's not really sunlight after all. More of a faint and transient glow.

Agreed, Jiminy. She is very critical of the SNP and Sturgeon, listing numerous things they could have done and failed to do. I don't know who Mandy Rhodes is but obviously close to the action. As well as the sympathetic noises over long waits for gender clinics, I notice that she refers to teachers not having guidance for how to help 'trans pupils'. Hm, maybe they're just pupils who are confused, unhappy or have had a certain degree of influence or even just a lot of talk swirling around them.