Longer, balanced Guardian article

[InvisibleDragon]

Longer article about Stonewall and gender identity in the Guardian today:
www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/05/stonewall-trans-debate-toxic-gender-identity?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I'm quite impressed - coverage of the Essex review and Stonewall misinterpreting the law, plus long quotes from Kathleen Stock. Big change from their usual line.

Peter Tatchell is unfortunately prominent and gets a closing remark:

You cannot base trans policies on the actions of a handful of bad apples. That would be grossly unfair to the vast majority of trans women who never have, and never will, pose a threat to other women.

But even thus is good. A few bad apples is a long way from "this never happens" and opens the door to robust discussions about how safeguarding is supposed to work.

Very encouraging!

Very surprising fir the guardian as you say.

I think.that comment actually does us a favour in a way as unsay . Because safeguarding is based on worse case scenarios. By talking about it as a personal attack he has demonstrated how clueless he is. It costs him him credibility.

Good to see in the Guardian too

This article needs to be archived - I wonder if it will survive the inevitable LOJ-led tantrum.

Because safeguarding is based on worse case scenarios. By talking about it as a personal attack he has demonstrated how clueless he is. It costs him him credibility.

Completely agree. It's fine for our day to day interactions to assume good intent. But safeguarding policies need to be robust to bad intent and malicious exploitation. And people who work at the sharp end of safeguarding issues know this.

Peter Tatchel is wrong, wrong, wrong when he says “you cannot base trans policies on the actions of a handful of bad apples” - that is exactly how safeguarding policies and measures work. As others have pointed out, everyone wanting to work with children or vulnerable adults has a DBS check. Single sex spaces and services are effectively a safeguarding measure, so scepticism and care about who accesses them is entirely justified.

Agree! The vast majority of teachers/youth workers etc. never have and never would harm children. Doesn’t mean that we just let them get on with it, with no safeguarding procedures.

Here's a basic archived version:
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210605073822/www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/05/stonewall-trans-debate-toxic-gender-identity" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20210605073822/www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/05/stonewall-trans-debate-toxic-gender-identity

Cross posted with Betty!

Peter Tatchell really, really isn’t the right spokesperson to talk about safeguarding.

I just posted this on the other Guardian thread:

In the good old days, this wouldn’t need to be called “balanced reporting” it would just be called “reporting”. How sad it is that a news organisation is being damned with faint praise for reporting an incident without its usual propaganda. In no way should the Guardian be lauded, however lightly, for unbiased reporting, or for seemingly shifting towards a non-ideological position on reporting such events; that’s the basic tenet of journalism, it’s not exceptionalism.

Alternatively: newspaper finally does its job properly shocker.

Guardian preparing for an embarrassing reverse ferret, possibly?

Ongoing perpetuation of the lie Marsha P Johnson was trans 🙄. He called himself gay and had sex with men. If he was gay, and a transwoman, by Stonewall logic that would make him a lesbian and he would be having sex with women. Why can’t they just accept he was a gay man who liked to do drag? The slide on the the Oxford Uni submission had drag outside of the trans umbrella, so how come for Johnson he gets scooped up under the umbrella long after he died?

And as for Tatchell and safeguarding, always worth remembering what he wrote in a letter to the Guardian in 1997:

“The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends - gay and straight, male and female - had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

”While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.”

@xxyzz

Guardian preparing for an embarrassing reverse ferret, possibly?

My thoughts exactly. But still good to see!

Well, I think that suspecting all men of being sexual predators is grossly unfair to the vast majority of men who never would hurt women or girls. However, for safeguarding purposes, men as a class are treated differently compared to women.

That would be grossly unfair to the vast majority of trans women who never have, and never will, pose a threat to other women.

By campaigning for the right to be affirmed as a different gender on Monday and Tuesday, (rise up the Diversity charts with multiple ID cards for employees! - MI5 presumably have a head start), Stonewall completely undermine the idea that a trans woman is just another woman.

^
And as for Tatchell and safeguarding, always worth remembering what he wrote in a letter to the Guardian in 1997^

Indeed. He is the very last person anyone should want involved in developing safeguarding policy.

Tatchell’s interpretation also completely ignores the problem that sex is patently obvious to most women and we shouldn’t be forced to share with men, based only on their feelings, as that wholly ignores our feelings on the matter.

As I always say do, if so inclined, send messages of thanks and also contact the readers editor re Marsha P Johnson. They do correct things and every piece of misinformation corrected is a good thing.

@Whatwouldscullydo

Very surprising fir the guardian as you say.

I think.that comment actually does us a favour in a way as unsay . Because safeguarding is based on worse case scenarios. By talking about it as a personal attack he has demonstrated how clueless he is. It costs him him credibility.

I agree with this. Safeguarding is about the worst case scenario. Why is Tatchel always quoted in stuff like this ? The man who said that nine year olds having sex with adults is fine ?

@merrymouse

That would be grossly unfair to the vast majority of trans women who never have, and never will, pose a threat to other women.

By campaigning for the right to be affirmed as a different gender on Monday and Tuesday, (rise up the Diversity charts with multiple ID cards for employees! - MI5 presumably have a head start), Stonewall completely undermine the idea that a trans woman is just another woman.

People who switch identity describe themselves as gender fluid or non binary rather than transwomen. Your argument does not hold.

Anyhow, these are people we are talking about. Treat everyone how they are and how you would like to be treated - with respect and equality.

It is fairly typical of the Guardian that they would give more weight to Tatchell's views - a man, as others have pointed out, who once wrote to the paper expressing sympathy with the idea of adult-child sexual relations - than those of a highly-respected professor of philosophy.

Still, it's a start. The paper has belatedly realised it can't continue ignoring this issue so it has to say something. Interesting that they've used a writer who doesn't normally write on this topic rather than any of the usual bunch.

Am feeling no little pleasure at the thought of Talcum X exploding in rage at the Guardian deigning to consider both sides of the argument. But he can't resign in fury because no one else will have him.

Peter Tatchell seems to get a lot of column inches, there.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3419275-Paedophile-Apologist-Book-including-chapter-by-Peter-Tatchell

And this, from Tatchell's own website.

www.petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/age_of_consent/im-14-im-gay-i-want-a-boyfriend/

Also, Tatchell says:

Bans and no-platforms suppress bigoted views but don’t challenge and change them. Bad ideas are most effectively rebutted by good ideas that show why they are wrong, marshalling counter-arguments and evidence.

Yes, of course. I completely agree. But then he goes on:

However, there are double standards on race and trans issues. Why do many people who support the cancelling of racist speakers oppose the cancelling of those who hold similar prejudiced opinions about trans people?

Let's remember this. I thought the party line on race and sex was that they weren't similar. There's a sleight of hand going on here - a misrepresenting of the promotion of women's sex based rights as being nothing but anti trans bigotry. The "women" bit of it seems to disappear like water off a duck's back. It's just not there.

Of course, this bit of conjuring depends on the pretence that there is no sex other than as irrelevant biology, and that what people really mean is gender. Does Tatchell really believe that debate won't open up this nonsense to scrutiny? Does he realise he's playing with fire here?