GC and the extreme right etc etc

[lionheart]

In case you were wondering ...

transsafety.network/posts/gcs-and-the-right/

'In an unfortunate development, in the last few months we have seen a rapid increase in the rate at which practical crossovers are happening between so-called "Gender Critical" feminist groups (which seek to abolish transition healthcare and trans civil rights) and the traditional far right.'

Graham Linehan in the Lords referred to 'a small group of men in Silicon Valley' - where did he say '99%'?

I'm not seeing a poll on trans equality in sports with that figure, can you link? Though I can well imagine that a poll question saying 'Do you support trans people having full access to sporting opportunities like their peers?' or something like that would get well over 70% support, including mine.

@Zinco

The materials posted were from "Posie Parker" famous for T-shirts, her own consistent links to the far right and calling for men with guns to harass anyone they thought might be trans and in a women's toilet.

That was a fairly recent controversy over that comment from her. From what I remember, it wasn't anything like a call for violence against people.

If you can show an actual quote calling for aggressive violence, then please provide it.

I have the video clip myself but don't know how to post it to Mumsnet.

As it's literally calling for violence against a minority group, it should be immediately removed by MNHQ anyway.

If you want to find the original, you can but I'm not going to link to that for the same reason that I'm not going to post it here.

In either case; it unequivocally is calling for armed aggression and violence against all people suspected of being trans.

Fairplayforwomen poll - so the question they reported asking was 'Should transwomen take part in women's sporting events?'

Is that a misleading question?
Are you suggesting that these poll results were influenced by past, unnamed, misleading questions?
Are you saying something much more plausible, which is that there was additional information given to people being questioned in the poll which is not obviously being reported?

@PermanentTemporary

That Martine Rothblatt is a major leader and funder in transgender circles, and also writes about transhumanist ideas, which are deeply weird and quite worrying? That isn't an antisemitic conspiracy theory in itself. Rothblatt is an amazing person and I'd agree her achievements are incredible. She transitioned aged 40. It is infuriating when she is described as a female CEO. It's infuriating when creating a robot wife into which she plans to download her actual wife is described in any other way than 'this is completely batshit misogyny'.

I do think that British people who aren't necessarily actively antisemitic themselves are particularly bad at spotting antisemitism, which is nonetheless deeply endemic in British culture, due to the history of British Jewish communities trying to protect themselves by 'keeping their heads down'. I come from a family that I had no idea was antisemitic until I married a Jewish man; then I found out. I hope that's changing. (I'm not sure Corbyn started out as antisemitic but he ended up there or as an enabler of antisemitism, and he's quite symbolic of the problem.) So I'm conscious that I may not see it and I will look further.

There's a lot I agree with in what you've posted but there are a couple of key things:

1. Martine Rothblatt isn't a major trans thought leader. The claim that she is, comes from this conspiracy theory which fails to notice that others have been saying things (which she's agreed with, repeated and taken her own way) earlier and in greater detail.

1. Although I'm not an expert by any means, a lot of the impact of Judith Butler's work was credited to MR by a transphobic writer trying to reverse engineer an understanding and mistakenly attributing it.

1. Why? Because Jane Claire Jones appears to have based her report on Jennifer Bilek's antisemitic conspiracy theory (either knowingly or unknowingly).

@PermanentTemporary

Graham Linehan in the Lords referred to 'a small group of men in Silicon Valley' - where did he say '99%'?

I'm not seeing a poll on trans equality in sports with that figure, can you link? Though I can well imagine that a poll question saying 'Do you support trans people having full access to sporting opportunities like their peers?' or something like that would get well over 70% support, including mine.

He claimed that the position in Silicon Valley was the reverse of the rest of the world.

In the rest of the world, trans people are 1% of the the population...

So logically the reverse is 99%...

In any event, it's a conspiracy theory, unsupported by any evidence. You can pretend he meant a smaller group of a lower percentage but anyone claiming to see no antisemitic tropes in a lie about a tiny secret group made up of a repressed and tiny minority controlling the world...

Needs to do some thinking.

@PermanentTemporary

Fairplayforwomen poll - so the question they reported asking was 'Should transwomen take part in women's sporting events?'

Is that a misleading question?
Are you suggesting that these poll results were influenced by past, unnamed, misleading questions?
Are you saying something much more plausible, which is that there was additional information given to people being questioned in the poll which is not obviously being reported?

I pointed out the history of the group and why a neutral observer would be wise to be concerned.

I do think there's a great deal wrong with the question but can already see that you are unlikely to agree with me so I'm not going enter into a semantic argument about wording for a follow up that may well never happen.

@PermanentTemporary

The key driver to the passing of the GRA was the Goodwin case which was about privacy, that people who had had genital surgery shouldn't have to have documents that didn't match their target sex, with a secondary factor of making sure that there was a way of marrying as their target sex too. It's a strange Act with its exemptions for inheritance of titles and the big argument was that it would only ever apply to a small number of people, which in fact appears to be right as about the predicted numbers have taken out a GRC.

The legal landscape is entirely different now, as is the picture of who now identifies as trans. But yes, I understand why most trans people, including those usually mentioned as linking with GC views, would be very much against repealing the GRA.

"Genital Surgery" was never a requirement under the Gender Recognition Act.

That it was needed and that this is somehow changing is often repeated (famously by JK Rowling) so I looked it up. It's not there at all.

@PermanentTemporary

Repealing the GRA - I think eventually the GRA will become a completely dead letter. It's already largely irrelevant to most trans people because the legal and social landscape is so different. I hope that's a better process than repealing it.

There needs to be a law to allow trans people to change their legal gender of their rights are being taken away.

Again; there's been no "new" laws or changes in this in a decade and that change; the Equality Act didn't seem to actually change much.

Why do you think there's been a change?

No there was never a requirement for genital surgery under the GRA, but it was an element of the 2002 Goodwin case, which is what I said. That's because the judges felt that people should be able to have identity documents that matched what other people could see of their bodies, and not have to out themselves having gone to such measures.

The biggest single change in the legal landscape has been access to same sex marriage and perhaps also to civil partnership for all. That it's joyously normal for anyone of either sex to refer to their wife or their husband and whether they are perceived as male or female makes no difference to their access to that.

That "source" is an anti trans campaign group with a history of asking misleading questions. I would suggest that, while they very clearly want to make the case for trans exclusion, they're not actually a reputable place for an insight into public opinion.

As far as I know, they aren't connected to the polling at all.

I guess in theory they could have commissioned it, but even then I don't see it as a big deal, unless you want to get into detail as to what is wrong with the specifc questions asked.

There is no doubt that if you are completely sure that transwomen are women in every possible way, then of course they should be able to compete in women's sport. I don't agree and I can't imagine a situation in which I would, so of course the Fair Play poll makes sense to me. I don't regard the International Olympic Committee as an objective organisation with integrity or real concern for women; I think they are quite malign and I have lost any remnants of romantic feeling about the Olympics, which is probably a good thing. Therefore I feel the influence of their rule changes in 2004 and 2015 are not positive for women's sport. Having competed in women's sport in the past I know how little any man cares about it, and a lot of women don't care either. But I do.

This debate is raging in the US right now and they're facing the same questions as the U.K. Trans equality in sports? Over 70% support.

Your poll for that level of support? Reference?

Quoting:

www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nearly-75-percent-republicans-support-transgender-sports-ban

"More than 70% of Republicans support banning transgender female athletes from competing in women’s athletics.

Seventy-four percent of Republicans surveyed in a Politico/Morning Consult poll support such a ban, while 15% oppose it."

"The Democratic respondents were more divided on whether such a ban should be implemented. Forty percent of Democrats said transgender women should be banned from participating in sports with biological women, while 42% oppose it."

[End quote]

So from this source, it would be perfectly mainstream to be concerned about this issue, whether just in general, or even specifically in the Democrat Party.

bigotry have you read the Keira Bell case? Because if you had points 1 and 2 are easily proven too be false

What is this antisemitic conspiracy theory? Sounds like I've missed something huge

The GRA is the way the U.K. chose to put effect to what the case of Goodwin raised as human rights (marriage, pension) for a particular group of transsexuals. The GRA goes much further than was required in Goodwin. The legislation itself is not the human right, even though it does address the human rights points. The human rights aspects have also since been addressed by equalisation of pensions and the introduction of same sex marriage. The fact that so many trans activists are seeking to reform the GRA shows that it is perfectly reasonable to want to change the legislative framework if it is not working for trans people. If it is not working for women then that might be another reason to change the legislative framework. That is not the same as saying that the human rights of trans people should not be dealt with in legislation.

It is evident from looking at Hansard that when considering the gender recognition bill the effects on sex based rights were not given prominence or considered particularly important when viewed next to the plight of people like Ms Goodwin. That seems mostly to be because trans people were a tiny minority and were considered only to be transsexuals. That position has now changed. If legislation isn’t working or is having unintended negative consequences then it must be repealed or amended and new legislation put in place.

1. Children are, in general, not permitted to make permanent changes to their bodies in the U.K. due to gender dysphoria; the treatments are limited to social transition and puberty blockers which can be reversed.

Almost all children who start blockers go onto cross sex hormones etc. Most kids who don't start blockers desist. Now this could be that these clinics (even the illegal ones) are so shit hot at spotting the 'truly trans' kids that they nail it every time. Or it could be that when you affirm a child by starting them on off label drugs which essentially stop their pubertal brain development and keep them in a perpetual mental state of whatever age they started the blockers, as well as keeping their body in a pre pubescent state as well, they are far more likely to go on to other 'treatments' than if you allow a child's body and brain to develop normally.

2. There is decades of evidence as to the efficacy and safety of the treatment. The first "children" who received these treatments are now in their 40s and 50s. The success rates remain over 99%. Those stories aren't reported in the U.K. but have been subject to rigorous international studies, all of which are supportive.

The Keira Bell case showed that Mermaids, Tavistock etc do not have any data about this. Why not? Have you got links to the 'rigorous International studies'?

For the record, Posie Parker did not encourage people with guns to harass trans people in toilets. She said men (she did say 'who carry') should start using womens toilets to make a point about self id. She didnt say anything about harassing trans people.

Just pointing out for lurkers that puberty blockers can no longer legally be described as "reversible."

Thanks for the link to the statement by the Women’s Human Rights Campaign:
committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/17510/pdf/

It nowhere calls for the removal of all trans people’s existing human rights and legal protections and an ending of healthcare except where it limits access to any remaining legal rights.

Why make up such silly accusations, when they’re easily disproved by reading the statement?

It calls for repeal of the GRA, which is a reasonable stance given the damage that misconceived legislation has done. Trans people had full human rights and healthcare before the GRA and still would if it was repealed.

They would just lose the right to the extra privileges the GRA bestows. The right to change legal documents such as your birth certificate. The right to use all single-sex facilities instead of those made only for their own sex. The right to have any crimes they commit, including rape, recorded as being by the opposite sex. And so on.

Other people do not have these extra rights, and should not.

Rothblatt is certainly heavily present in the Appendix to The Political Erasure of Sex (I assume that's Dr Jones' report that you reference). The justification for including her work is:

'Rothblatt’s 1994 presentations are the earliest formulation I have encountered in trans activism of what we could call the ‘sex denialist’ aspect of contemporary trans ideology; that is, the claim not only that ‘psychic sex’ or ‘gender identity’ should take precedence over biological sex, but the claim that the division of humans into male and female types is in some sense not a material reality.'

That's the justification Dr Jones uses. Martine Rothblatt wrote The Apartheid of Sex in 1995 and made the presentations referred to around the same time. I agree it's not that early, but it's reasonably early in context; I made a speech about transgender rights to marry at my wedding in 1995, and it obviously wasn't a new idea, though I thought myself tremendously progressive in saying it at the time.

Oh look another one of these threads trying to apply American theories to the UK population.

In the UK the majority of people believe that sex is real, mammals can't change sex. Gender non-conformity is normal here. Religious extremism is unusual. Unlike America we have strong anti-discrimination law. We are not as homophobic as America.

We are religiously tolerant. We had a very bad time with the Tudors and Cromwell and we decided to avoid telling people what to believe thereafter.

Creationism, anti-abortion, every politician going on about god: those are not things in the UK. Our right wing would be seen as left wing in the US.

You will find that British people will be very tolerant of people cross dressing and/or being gender non-conforming.

You will not find British people to be tolerant of being told they have to pretend to believe humans can change sex.

You will not find the British people to be tolerant of the NHS continuing to offer experimental body modification to troubled children when longer term data became available showing it to be an ineffective and even harmful treatment in the long term. We like evidence based medicine. We like First Do No Harm.

You want to believe women can have the souls of men and vice versa? Go ahead. We are religiously tolerant here. Don't expect me to believe it too. I won't support any attempts to make gendered soul belief more important than biological sex for practical purposes. So fine if a man believes himself to be a woman. Not fine for him to be put in a women's prison or a women's rugby team or a breast-feeding support group.

Your American right wing stuff simply isn't a thing here. Stop trying to make it a thing. We'll just laugh at you.

@bigotryisbad You are breath of fresh air in this echo chamber. Thank you 🥰

Oh so antisemitism in thos context means 'Criticism of a person who happens to be Jewish'? Figures.

[quote Skyliner001]@bigotryisbad You are breath of fresh air in this echo chamber. Thank you 🥰[/quote]
Well yes, it is a breath of fresh air that @bigotryisbad is at least making some point and arguments on the thread, rather than just plopping in to say how bigoted everyone is and then leaving again.

This thread and that article (you do know that Julie Burchil is not Julie Bindel, right? I don't recall Burchill calling herself GC. And we definitely had a thread calling Burchill for her remarks on here) of reaching

Hundreds of death threats, homophobic remarks and real-life incidents of violence and threats of violence:

"Not all TRAs!"

A handful of horrible people glomp onto some GC hastags and memes etc (how can we stop them, exactly?)

"You're all in bed with the far right!"

2/10