Shon Faye book

[SarahOsborne]

The review of Shon Faye's book The Transgender Issue in the Evening Standard reminds us how flimsy the accepted rhetoric is www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/the-transgender-issue-by-shon-faye-review-b954336.html

@ArtemesiaK

"Faye shows us that trans people are more likely to be homeless, unemployed, impoverished and addicted to drugs. They experience more sexual assault and violence, they are a higher risk category for HIV and they work in much higher numbers in the sex trade." When I read stuff like this, I always want to ask "More than whom, exactly? Higher numbers than whom?" It's like they just make things up...

It's also a bit chicken and egg, but as talking about mental health issues is stigmatising how can one be expected to deal with all these other issues?

I fear as well that there is a lot of using US and Southern American experiences and data to prop up what is happening in the UK.

‘Bodily autonomy for 4 year olds’, isn’t that what Peter Tatchell said..?

Does Faye really state that people undergoing major medical procedures shouldn't be advised to lose weight and stop smoking? Are trans people magically exempt from the consequences of this?

@GreyCarpet

Bodily autonomy for 4 year olds means not being forced to hug someone you don't want to. Not consenting to life altering interventions.

Okay, but 'full bodily autonomy' means what? Having whatever plastic surgery you fancy, at whatever age? Running across the M4? Achieving flight?

Okay, but 'fullbodily autonomy' means what? Having whatever plastic surgery you fancy, at whatever age? Running across the M4? Achieving flight?

Whatever SF and SF's ilk want it too mean... its ridiculous.

PPs are right that it starts to fall apart when SF is upset that people wanting surgery/hormones are advised to stop.smoking or lose weight. That's just standard!

It's almost as if they are trying to pretend that human bodies aren't complex organisms with biolgoical systems.

PPs are right that it starts to fall apart when SF is upset that people wanting surgery/hormones are advised to stop.smoking or lose weight. That's just standard!

It's almost as if they are trying to pretend that human bodies aren't complex organisms with biolgoical systems.

It is almost as if the author doesn't want trans people to have full and complete information so that they can make healthy choices for themselves that may be different from the community.

Or... to be able to feel they can live completely consequence free from any of their decisions. Ramification free living..... what could possibly go wrong?

It is honestly like some of these activists think that anyone who is a victim to any negative impact for the things that they, the activist desires, is inconsequential. Just acceptable collateral.

@Helleofabore

PPs are right that it starts to fall apart when SF is upset that people wanting surgery/hormones are advised to stop.smoking or lose weight. That's just standard!

It's almost as if they are trying to pretend that human bodies aren't complex organisms with biolgoical systems.

It is almost as if the author doesn't want trans people to have full and complete information so that they can make healthy choices for themselves that may be different from the community.

Or... to be able to feel they can live completely consequence free from any of their decisions. Ramification free living..... what could possibly go wrong?

It is honestly like some of these activists think that anyone who is a victim to any negative impact for the things that they, the activist desires, is inconsequential. Just acceptable collateral.

For the greater good...

So Faye doesn’t believe that transmen should be forced to use female toilets because of their appearance - and yet Faye also advocates for transwomen who may not have changed their appearance at all - thinks Alex Drummond - SHOULD be able to use female toilets because ‘self ID’ is the determining factor. Methinks Faye has shot themselves in the foot.

I've given up expectly a coherent intellectual case but the bare minimum I'd like to see would be consistency when it's in book form.

I fully understand people thinking aloud and refining their thinking on Twitter and that is very obviously what some authors do - but once it's in book form, I want consistency or an acknowledgement that the inconsistency exists and a discussion of the basis for it.

@Whitefire "I fear as well that there is a lot of using US and Southern American experiences and data to prop up what is happening in the UK." And that very North and South American-influenced, Wild West attitude to so-called 'healthcare' which assumes there's no such thing as society, only individuals, very limited legal comebacks, you are a customer not a patient, little in the way of safeguarding. I'm surprised someone from a country that has an NHS where we grow up knowing we all have the communal responsibility pick up the pieces when things go wrong for people (before and after care) still comes out with this kind of stuff. Or maybe there's a 'defund the NHS' line in the book too?

Makes sense to me about not asking people to give up smoking or lose weight pre surgery, if language creates reality then don’t say “your risks are greatly increased if you are a smoker when undergoing surgery” and there won’t be a problem according to Queer theory, right? Instead say there are no known side effects or contraindications to these puberty blockers/hormones/surgeries in fact they will save your life and it will be so! The magic of words creating reality!

Has anyone got the book.

I wonder if there is any line drawn around full bodily autonomy from age 4.

Some are still in nappies at that age if they say but to change then carers say ok?

8yo who wants tattoos should get them?

If someone wants to harm themselves that's their decision and doing anything about it is a violation of their autonomy?

If a person consents to being tortured and murdered for money, for whatever reason. For it to go to her children. That's her decision?

It's not unusual for CSA victims who have been groomed to see it as a relationship etc.. So that's ok?

And the big one. Sexual consent. Age. Plenty of queer theory proponents see age of consent as a barrier that needs to be queered IE broken down.

If someone makes a statement like that then I would hope they set out EXACTLY what they mean.

Faye says everyone should have full body autonomy.

Can't wait to see Faye campaigning on behalf of the women of Texas then.

nice I'm hoping it too will come down on an ebook platform to £2 like material girls did, I may consider it then.

Reading some random online reviews.

One from a big fan gives a little more on the topic-

'In what is sadly a timely section, Shon correctly links the right to abortion stemming from bodily autonomy to the same natural rights that trans people possess. I would have liked to hear more on this. I think, for instance, that there is much to be written on the ways in which the liberation of disabled people and trans people are intertwined! Word counts are merciless, however: I don’t begrudge it.'

I'd hardly call word counts merciless. If you're writing a magazine or newspaper article or an essay, you might have a specific word count to keep to. But this is a book, and books vary wildly in length, and even if a length has been agreed with the publisher, there is likely to be some leeway. If SF wanted to make a particular point but didn't feel she had the space, I'm sure there would've been the possibility of adding a footnote about it if nothing else.

Oh so the right to bodily autonomy for abortion is used as a leverage to demand bodily autonomy for trans healthcare, so not really that bothered about abortion rights (which tbh was a somewhat surprising development). I guess it ties in with the faux ignorance about Gillick after the K. Bell judgement.

YY

I don't think there's much point in critiquing the review itself I was interested to see if Google would give more on the autonomy from age 4.

I find the drawing equivalence/ comparison/ etc really enraging.

Abortion is a medical procedure. That exists because women and girls need it. In certain circs.

It's not/ is hardly available in so many countries.

The consequences are unsafe abortion leading to a grotesque amount of death and injury, raped children giving birth. Women having children they can't support/ don't want. Women being forced to carry to term and give birth irrespective on what this means for existing family, their job, their mental health and their physical health.

I mean on it goes.

To take such a massively divisive topic that is a current ongoing issue for millions of women and girls. Because they are female. While believing that the concept of female is best consigned to history and there are no words needed for this group, 50% of the world's population. With such a vast historical and ongoing experience of extreme Oppression.

Is just shit.

The whole issue invoices appropriation. The constant theft of arguments from, I think, all major groups that have and continue to fight for their rights. The bending them to support their wants/ demands or attack those who disagree with them.

It's utterly lacking in any kind of empathy, ethics, consideration, pause or understanding.

One of the major responses to the bell verdict was. This will be used to remove abortion rights.

And that statement was often made quite nastily. Like, if we don't get what we want we'd be happy to see your whole sex fucked over.

Don't often agree with O'Neill but he hits the nail in the head here.

He really does.

Giggling here at the idea that Faye might have managed to write a convincing polemic if only SF had the space to do it!

Sure. I'm definitely certain that everyone would volte-face if SF had written 50 more pages in logical incoherence and petulant demands. What a shame they were so restricted 😆

On the prisons point, 160 TW prisoners would be 5pc of female prison population or 1/20 females prisoners. Thus, it's significant.

I notice it's in the Sunday Times bestsellers charts today. I wonder who's buying it.

@RoyalCorgi

I notice it's in the Sunday Times bestsellers charts today. I wonder who's buying it.

Readers who expect it covers the 'other side' of the issue that Helen Joyce mentioned that she couldn't locate despite searching for it and inviting it from various well placed advocates?*

*NB Joyce wanted an intellectually coherent position to scrutinise. My impression to date is that that is not what Faye presents but it might be what the purchasers hope to see. If I obtain it through interlibrary loan, I would be better informed as to Faye's arguments although I would have expected something to have surfaced in the reviews to date.

She’s on Loose Women now.

Oh, dear. Joined-up thinking is not a TRA trait, is it?

Certain flaws in current “hostile feminist analysis” are highlighted in the book as Faye explores the public toilet issues and points out that it is not appropriate for a trans man, with a beard, deep voice and masculinized appearance, to use the female toilets, and pointing to the dire need for answers to these questions.

Faye, it's not your place to decide who uses women's lavatories. That's for women to decide.

At best, transmen have wispy beards and for the most part, they look like women with wispy beards. They don't have a masculinised appearance, whatever that is.

I can't think of many times I've heard someone speak in a public lavatory, unless it is to say something like "Do you have any toilet paper? This cubicle is out." or "That loo is blocked - don't use it."

Body autonomy blah blah

Seriously? Telling people who are overweight and who are on hormone treatment or who smoke that they need to take care of their health is common sense.

"Faye shows us that trans people are more likely to be homeless, unemployed, impoverished and addicted to drugs. They experience more sexual assault and violence, they are a higher risk category for HIV and they work in much higher numbers in the sex trade."

Faye conflates a number of issues and tries to pass correlation off as cause-and-effect. Faye also fails to distinguish between transwomen and transmen in that statement. I am willing to bet that the issues in the quote above related larger to the former.

It's the same old same old: men are the priority.