14th October 'Nolan Investigates' podcast - Stonewall?

[Helleofabore]

This sounds interesting.

A special ‘Nolan Investigates’ podcast drops tomorrow afternoon on @BBCSounds. An 18 month investigation into the influence of a lobby group on public bodies throughout the UK. More details in the morning

It seems to be about Stonewall.

Anyone know more about it?

There is some chatter about it on Twitter.

twitter.com/stephennolan/status/1448052827088109568?s=21

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1448205588253618176?s=21

(Tweet from JCJ says:

Okay, at last, here it is.

The BBC Ulster documentary on the influence of Stonewall on public life in the UK.

Many GC women have been interviewed for this.

Let's take the lid off this thing shall we?

I've listened to the whole lot 3 times. Just brilliant.

One thing that I enjoyed was Benjamin Cohen trying to explain "two spirit gender" and also he really caught himself out when he said....

"As someone gets older and they decide.....er......they discover they're non-binary blah blah"

Using the word 'decide' there just really showed this gender ideology movement up for what it is. It's choosing to be part of a club.

Kirsty Allsopp
twitter.com/KirstieMAllsopp/status/1449708813372825608?s=20

Follow the link in this and watch the little film. It’s clearly aimed at 10 years upwards

I found at least two of the examples about a 14 year old and a 15 year old disturbing.
Gender identity theology for children.

Also the ‘explanation’ in another story about why women don’t ‘need’ separate changing rooms… watch the end credits and see who paid for it: the NHS

twitter.com/theproudtrust/status/1447518994592849924?s=21

From the Proud Trust website:-
(Apparently we all have a gender identity…)

WHAT IS GENDER?
When people think of “gender”, they often think about body parts, clothes or how a person looks and acts. But we also have a gender identity. This is the gender that we identify with, the gender that we know ourselves to be and it is part of our internal sense of self.

Our gender identity can be very important to who we are as a person. Some people are men, some people are women, some people are non-binary (which means they identify as neither 100% a man nor 100% a woman). You can describe your gender however feels most comfortable to you. A trans person is someone whose gender is different to the one they were assigned at birth.

Your gender is not determined by your body parts. People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own gender.

Some more

“ You’re never too young to be yourself. We usually become aware of our gender around the age of three or four years old. Remember, if you think you are trans, there is no checklist of things that you must do. You might want to do simple things like change the clothes you wear or ask people to use different pronouns such as he, she or they. There is no age limit for doing these things.”

Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside?

I honestly think it should be illegal for publicly funded bodies to promote ideas like this to children.

I don’t know if anyone has ever researched the mental health consequences of believing in mind/body dualism but based on my own experiences recovering from anxiety and chronic dissociation, internalising a dualistic view of the world was bad for me, and presented a barrier to recovery. What if the “different body” you woke up in had a faster heartbeat and different patterns of muscle tension? Wouldn’t that change anything “inside?”

I could rant for hours about this honestly. I know teachers of young kids understand the mind/body connection a lot better than they used to, are there no guidelines about helping children themselves understand it? Or at least not actively confusing them?

We usually become aware of our gender around the age of three or four years old.

AFAIK: What that originally meant, in the days when words had meanings, is that most children could correctly identify their sex by that age and knew whether they were a boy or girl that way.

AFAIK: What that originally meant, in the days when words had meanings, is that most children could correctly identify their sex by that age and knew whether they were a boy or girl that way

They know by 3/4 but simultaneously need blockers to buy extra time to figure it out at 11/12/13

Which is it

@allmywhat

Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside?

I honestly think it should be illegal for publicly funded bodies to promote ideas like this to children.

I don’t know if anyone has ever researched the mental health consequences of believing in mind/body dualism but based on my own experiences recovering from anxiety and chronic dissociation, internalising a dualistic view of the world was bad for me, and presented a barrier to recovery. What if the “different body” you woke up in had a faster heartbeat and different patterns of muscle tension? Wouldn’t that change anything “inside?”

I could rant for hours about this honestly. I know teachers of young kids understand the mind/body connection a lot better than they used to, are there no guidelines about helping children themselves understand it? Or at least not actively confusing them?

Yes I agree. It should be illegal. It's doing a huge amount of harm..The underlying message here is 'if you think you might be this indefinable thing then you are and you should start challenging those around you to adopt your world view immediately'.

Pretty heady stuff for any child with identity issues (doesn't that describe all teenagers?!)

Your height is not determined by your body parts. People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own height.

But does your height match your age? One is variable and fluid, one is based on a fixed material fact.
Your height can either match, or be different from, the date of birth you were assigned at birth.

This is a charity project supported by the NHS. They do a ton of outreach work in schools, funded by local councils etc. Stonewall is but one organisation promoting this ‘vague feeling in your head’ stuff. At the very least, all such ‘affirming’ material should also share time/resources with a science based information programme re same sex attraction, eating disorders and exploring general mental health in teenagers etc

@MonsignorMirth

But does your height match your age? One is variable and fluid, one is based on a fixed material fact. Your height can either match, or be different from, the date of birth you were assigned at birth.

Mind blown. Scientists now understand this stuff so much more than since when I went to school. Thank you for educating me!

I’m pretty sure if anyone woke up in a different body it would be strange and unsettling.

Even Sam Beckett found it weird and he did it every week.

I'm remember waking up in a different body, I was thirteen year walking to school and for the first time every fourth or so car would beep at me. Suddenly I no longer looked like a little girl. Its called adolescence and the issue is not gender dysmorphia but a society that treats women as sexual objects

It makes no sense to me.
People build senses of identity based on lots of things about themselves. And many of those, unlike sex, do actually change. It feels strange to start with but our brains catch up.

For example you build an identity based on being well off - but then lose your job. Or you build an identity based on being married - but then your spouse runs off. Life changes like losing a dear one, a medical diagnosis. Getting old! Happens to us all.

We're always still the same person inside, but we do need to make adjustments and we are perceived differently by the outside world. And some people hang more of their sense of identity on particular things and struggle more if those things change. People don't generally think it healthy to keep hanging on to feelings of identity based on something that is no longer true. How much less to hang your feelings of identity on something that was never true in the first place?

So in that thought experiment, yeah, if I woke up male I'd be a man. It wouldn't change a lot tbh. Not half as identity rearranging as when I became a parent or changed careers.

The person I am inside is just me.

Nolan and Thompson were just interviewed on the Today programme. They got a fair amount of headwind from Mishal Husain and struggled to convey their message in terms of the facts in such a short segment. She didn't seem that interested in the issues of partiality. I couldn't figure out whether she was doing Devil's Advocate or if she views Stonewall simply as part of the furniture at the BBC.

The response on twitter was "bigots" and "Irish bigots" in the main.

The more I've read about gender the more it's clear no-one can say exactly what it is, or they don't want to because they realise it doesn't stand up to scrutiny if they want it to become a legal category.
Either it's:

• a sense of being male or female - when male or female is purely your biological sex, does this mean people "see" or "feel" (hallucinate or phantom limb type sensation) different genitals on themselves?

• a sense of being masculine or feminine - in which case being eg masculine and being male are mutually exclusive categories and it's wrong to think being one necessitates being the other.

• A sense of being deeply unhappy with your body because it doesn't look/ work like you'd like it to - in which case this seems like body dysmorphia or anyone else who wants to change their appearance according to what society dictates is acceptable.

None of those should be dismissed, but none of them explain why a feeling of gender means you actually are one sex or another or neither.

People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own gender.

Just commenting on this quote from Proud Trust which is complete propaganda. How can you ask a question aimed at children and then immediately answer it. How is this misinformation allowed to be targeted at children?

I think it is quite clear that you may well feel different if you wake up in a different body and that the experience of detransitioners bears this out.

People often suddenly find themselves in a different body. For example, my mum had a stroke, and became disabled overnight. At first, she would dream she was no longer disabled, and was horrified when she woke up to find the reality of her body. However, after a while, her mind accommodated her new body, because it was the reality.

People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own gender.

So what's the reason again for pressuring thousands of children into irreversible surgery? Talk me through it.

Bodies don't have anything to do with who you are, but to truly be who you are, you should change your body?

@Deliriumoftheendless

I’m pretty sure if anyone woke up in a different body it would be strange and unsettling.

Even Sam Beckett found it weird and he did it every week.

The piece on the Today Programme got a lot in I felt, in a short space of time. It will have a huge audience too.

It's available on iplayer now - starts approx 20 minutes before the end
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010ncj

"If I woke up in a different body", is an interesting thought experiment that can help us feel empathy for other people.

But, if I woke up in another body, I'd be using the neurology of a differently wired brain that reflected the experiences of growing up in that body. In short, I'd be a different person.

Brains build an internal model of the body from biofeedback. If the body changes, it adapts. So if it stops getting sensory input from your right leg below the knee, it adapts to not having it. The neural networks that used to give you the sensation there will be colonised by other sensory input, which will make it feel as if your missing leg is being touched initially, but eventually your brain learns that that sensation is now coded to somewhere else.

Likewise if you have an artificial limb installed which gives biofeedback, your brain adds it into your mental model of the body. In fact, we do this with objects temporarily, like riding a bike.

The book "Livewired" dives deep into how the brain works and adapts. It was a really fascinating read.

So our brains (and therefore minds) are deeply integrated in with our body experience - not least because it is a part of the body, you can't divorce the two. But even if our bodies change dramatically such as losing a sense like sight or hearing, our brains adapt, other sensory inputs colonise that prime real estate of processing power to understand the world with what we have.

Sometimes we live so much in our thoughts we forget that our thoughts are products of our physical bodies.

@Fukuraptor

"If I woke up in a different body", is an interesting thought experiment that can help us feel empathy for other people.

But, if I woke up in another body, I'd be using the neurology of a differently wired brain that reflected the experiences of growing up in that body. In short, I'd be a different person.

Brains build an internal model of the body from biofeedback. If the body changes, it adapts. So if it stops getting sensory input from your right leg below the knee, it adapts to not having it. The neural networks that used to give you the sensation there will be colonised by other sensory input, which will make it feel as if your missing leg is being touched initially, but eventually your brain learns that that sensation is now coded to somewhere else.

Likewise if you have an artificial limb installed which gives biofeedback, your brain adds it into your mental model of the body. In fact, we do this with objects temporarily, like riding a bike.

The book "Livewired" dives deep into how the brain works and adapts. It was a really fascinating read.

So our brains (and therefore minds) are deeply integrated in with our body experience - not least because it is a part of the body, you can't divorce the two. But even if our bodies change dramatically such as losing a sense like sight or hearing, our brains adapt, other sensory inputs colonise that prime real estate of processing power to understand the world with what we have.

Sometimes we live so much in our thoughts we forget that our thoughts are products of our physical bodies.

That was such an interesting post.

So if I woke up with a dick one day initially my brain would be like 'whoa! Fuck. How do I wee?' but after a while it would be like 'there's ma dick, doin' ma wee.'

Fascinating.