Episode 4 of Nolan Investigates Stonewall

[ThisIsJeopardy]

In episode 4, Nolan interviews a person named Owen who identifies as non binary.

Nolan: "Why is the label 'nonbinary' important then, and how do you define it?"

Owen: "Yeah, it's important because it communicates that we're not male and we're not female, that we're different from that. And of course within that community there are lots of micro-labels... But as an overall term 'nonbinary' is important because... it's useful to have that overall grouping term when we are campaigning for our legal rights and legal protections, and that's why 'nonbinary' is so important."

I am astounded by the acknowledgement that it's important to have an adequate overarching term for a group of people who want to campaign for their rights and legal protections. And yet 'women' 'girls' 'female' and 'mother' are all treated as open for erasure or redefinition by anyone who sees fit, and those who would wish to retain the definition and use of those terms and regard them as 'so important' for campaigning and rights, are derided as bigots, dinosaurs, and Nazis.

What would Owen and others in this movement suggest is 'that overall grouping term' which describes the half of the worldwide human population who are born with female reproductive biology?

Do they not need one? Is there no need for this rather large grouping to have an overarching term that refers to all of them and only to them? Is that because this group suffers no oppression on the basis of their common characteristic, unlike the poor, persecuted nonbinary community? Because mutilated babies and child 'brides' and prostituted teenagers and beaten, controlled wives and murdered women don't have the same need to name the common denominator of their oppression? It's 'so important'' that those males and females, who share the common characteristic of having a preference not to be referred to as males or females, have a collective, overarching term so they can discuss their rights, but it's not at all important for all female humans to have such a word?

I'm sorry if this is covered in the very long Nolan podcast thread. I am raging and didn't have time to go through it all, but the hypocrisy and misogyny of this segment made me see red.

@WanderingSoutherner

I've listened to nine episodes now. Is it Owen who insists in an earlier episode that you can't tell a person's chromosomes by looking at them? Completely missing the point that you almost always can, and that's the whole fucking reason sexism is able to exist. I'm pretty sure what my chromosomes are. I bleed once a month so if it's not XX I'm in trouble.

Yep - I was sitting there thinking how incredible it is that I know his male chromosomes and yet he doesn't, and he claims to be the expert on matters of sex and gender!

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I agree with a lot of that, Esma, but I would add that a lot of the stereotypical expecations of boys and men in western society are extremely harmful. My hunch is that some boys and men can't live up to the stereotypical macho male they think they should be, and for some reason can't get their heads round being a gender nonconforming male who is happy to be male.

I was very struck once by a remark I once heard about how the only acceptable emotions for boys and men to express openly are anger and amusement/ridicule. Not all families are like that, not all communities, not all individual men and boys, fortunately, but there's a recurring theme in the stories of late-transitioning transwomen that they had very stereotypical, almost hypermasculine upbringings - any or all of all male boarding school, army, Oxbridge colleges at a time when they were still single sex, male-dominated work environment. All the way through, laughed at and worse if they showed any sign of emotion, as that was interpreted as weakness. Trained to toughen up. Explicitly and implicitly trained to see females as the weaker sex and anything coded female as inferior. I surmise that many of them had very domineering fathers or father figures in their lives and found it difficult not to see that as the pattern for how a man should be.

Enough of the amateur psychoanalysis! Not sure how coherent this is.

I am not sure how coherent it is, but it's the sort of thing I try as well. I reassure myself that even if I am entirely incoherent I am being much more coherent than the likes of Hurcum.

@BitMuch

Owen speaks at the start about experiencing 'euphoria' at the age of twelve when dressing in a woman or girl's clothes. I know what Owen is describing there.

The entire waffle is a lesson in gaslighting someone not to listen to the evidence of their own ears. Owen calls it 'the language games we play as a community'. Owen is campaigning so that the law, passports and other identity documents like birth certificates will aid in these efforts to make people ignore obvious reality. I hope if Owen has a girlfriend that these linguistic tricks are not employed in conversations and arguments with her.

I posted on the other thread that I have absolutely no idea of OH's sexual orientation. Is he a gay man, bisexual or straight? We have no idea because he says he is open to either gender, but we have no idea whether that is either gender in a male body, either gender in a female one, or either in either.

I cannot help think that - whilst his sexual orientation is none of my business - that anyone who bangs on about issues relating to sex and gender should be able to clearly explain their sexual orientation, and if they are unwilling to do so then their perspective on such issues can be pretty much ignored.

I could be wrong, but there is nothing about Hurcum that makes me think he's anything other than a straight man identifying into simultaneously being "special" and oppressed.

LaetitiaASD Yep - I was sitting there thinking how incredible it is that I know his male chromosomes and yet he doesn't, and he claims to be the expert on matters of sex and gender!

The whole argument of "determining sex is actually really complicated, intersex blah blah" infuriates me as it's a total red herring. In very rare cases sex may be ambiguous or complicated to determine. But the argument is used to imply that trans people are probably intersex when the overwhelming majority are not. It's irrelevant.

Obviously if you ask whether that's what they're saying they deny it. So why bring it up? Just to blind people with science many will not understand and make them shut up.

Being incoherent isn’t a bad thing.

Being unable to reflect on our coherence and challenge where it needs clarification is a problem.

If we can’t do that then discussion never develops and moves on from merely stating a point over and over and over again.

Which is demonstrated clearly by one side of the ‘argument’ this podcast.

If I recall correctly BitMuch Hurcum mentioned "gender euphoria" more than once in the series. It did leave me wondering which part of the trans umbrella they is under.

I’m part way through episode 6 and I’m having to take a break because Owen is infuriating. I’m glad Debbie has pulled Owen up on a few things but Owen seems to be spouting narcissistic nonsense.

CharlieParley
I'm sorry the non-binary mayor is so incapable at a skill that a typical four-year-olds has mastered so well we take it for granted, but why do we all have to pretend the rest of us are equally inept?

Maybe I'm being pedantic but I'm not sure four-year-olds are actually accurate at this. Or rather, they can probably tell what sex an adult is just by seeing them, but also tend to place more emphasis generally on gender stereotypes. Not just gender, it's more a case of the young mind absorbing various societal norms and overarching expectations or assumptions, a more black-and-white, basic level of thinking, to start with. This develops into more nuanced thinking, seeing the shades of grey and understanding that not everything or everyone fits a rule or stereotype, as they get older. (Worth noting this may be delayed in children with ASD.)

Even a TRA will concede that, for example, a male could wear a dress and still be a man. To a young child, a boy wearing a dress is sending out a signal that they are a girl.

Its one of the many reasons rushing to label children as trans is so wrong.

Sorry, CharlieParley, I wasn't disagreeing with you, your comment just set me thinking!

Owen's main reason for wanting the term non binary to be recognised in law was so that Owen can have special protection in law. That is a problem with our equality legislation that some people get more protection than others with regard to discrimination and hate crime. If we had a "people are people" policy with the same laws for everyone then people wouldn't be trying to get the number of people who get special protection increased by adding extra groups to it. It does come across as just wanting your specialness to be recognised for the sake of it. Why can't Owen just dress and behave as owen wants and drop the labels?.

These people are ridiculous. I’m a huge fan of the singer Prince. And as someone else pointed out during that time a lot of men dressed in a way that was “romantic”.

And Prince was male, had lots of women and was a right out womanizer! And he changed his name to a symbol. Yet he was always a man.. so what is their point?

Dressing up and wearing ruffles and dying your hair green doesn’t make you anything other than someone who has risky fashion choices.

As someone said.. this is a white male from a wealthy western country, who is probably dry and boring and instead of actually developing any sort of hobbies and interests that don’t involve navel gazing and demanding attention and validation, has decided to choose this hill to die on.

Ok he is special and doesn’t feel male or female.. ok and? So what?

What rights is he not getting that he is entitled to? That if he is murdered it’s a hate crime? That’s it.. so most people who are murdered their death is not a hate crime.

These people are the very epitome of bored, entitled, self absorbed people who need to get a hobby. Or a job.

Owen is just another entitled man demanding everyone bow down to him. Funny you can always spot these supposed “speshuuuul” people by their extreme sense of entitlement and outrage that people aren’t just allowing them to steamroll over them.

My parents had a lot of cds when I was a girl and I listened to their Prince CDS faithfully.. and I never once thought prince was anything other than a man when I looked at his pic on the CD covers.

I even recall him wearing eyeliner.. yet still a man.

Wearing ruffles and green hair are not risky fashion choices these days, they are the status quo. All it signifies is a person follows the crowd.

If I recall correctly BitMuch Hurcum mentioned "gender euphoria" more than once in the series. It did leave me wondering which part of the trans umbrella they is under.

Yes, also mentioned on their Instagram.

Wonderdog - I think you have a point about the socialisation of males and how it affects men and boys. I was thinking that football is one of the few places where they can be openly emotional, i:e: hug each other, cry etc.
Stereotype - feminine males = gay, was always a problem for boys who were teased in all male environments. Men have a long way to go in accepting each other in all their many guises. Maybe they could learn something from women!

And also, does this episode not reflect the desire of many teenagers to live their lives as a kind of intense drama with themselves in the starring role? Owen must have spent a lot of time (some of it possibly in front of the mirror), cogitating on all this!

I'll be listening for more mentions of euphoria. My Alexa skips straight from episode 1 to 4 and won't play any of the others so they're the only episodes I've heard so far. It's the first time that has happened with any series I have listened to using it.

I got an uncomfortable feeling when Owen said hy likes 'nice' people regardless of gender and often can't tell their gender without asking. Asking a woman "what is your gender?" seems like negging, a small insult from a man that finds out if a woman will exhibit self protective instincts or act nice. Gavin De Becker calls it typecasting in the Gift of Fear. De Becker also warns to look out for someone using 'too many details' which is a sign of lying. Owen mentioned safeguarding in the waffle, so hy is aware of arguments about safeguarding while campaigning to undermine safeguarding by allowing sex to be removed from legal identity documents.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Reminds me of the case of convicted rapist Craig/Lisa Hauxwell a few years ago. Went on the run before sentencing. The Derby Telegraph‘s headline read ‘Have you seen missing woman spotted in Derbyshire dressed as a man?'

I remember that case

If it wasn’t such a serious situation, this episode would be one of the most ridiculously funny things I’ve ever heard.

I've only just reached this episode. I think it's great that the series is done as podcasts. If the interview had been cut to fit a fixed length format, we would have lost some of that rambling! Instead, we were able to hear the "full Owen" in all its ridiculousness.

I listened to this today. Oh, the idiocy! When he said sometimes he feels like doing feminine things and sometimes he thinks he's more feminine than women (or did I dream that?) How does he know what feminine is if there is no binary? And now I've seen a photo of him, a bloke with green hair. And he has no explanation as to how other people should regard him as non binary rather than a bloke with green hair....
My only anxiety is that the only people who will listen to the podcast are people (like us) who already know about this sort of thing....

I almost turned episode 4 off because I found it so difficult to listen to. As PPs have said, all the nonsense around chromosomes not being visible. Have a think about that for a moment Owen.
Also Owen really not getting the issue of single sex spaces, thinking the objection was that someone might be attractive to the opposite sex. Owen clearly doesn't understand that rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are about power and control, they are not a compliment about the victims sexual attractiveness. Beyond horrifying. Owen clearly has no idea about the vulnerability of women and girls, or 'female bodied people' if Owen needs a translation.

Owen clearly doesn't understand that rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are about power and control, they are not a compliment about the victims sexual attractiveness.

I think all men know the truth about this. However, it certainly suits some men to pretend that rape and harassment is about sexual attractiveness. This serves several useful purposes: discredit victims (too ugly to get raped/ what did she expect dressed like that); make women afraid to speak up when they’re worried about their safety (like she’s got anything to worry about anyway/ relax, you’re not my type)/ gaslight women who are being harassed and otherwise victimised (can’t you take a compliment/ cis women don’t know how lucky they are.)

As a general rule, men who pretend to think that rape and sexual harassment are about sexual attraction are men to avoid at all costs.

@allmywhat

Owen clearly doesn't understand that rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are about power and control, they are not a compliment about the victims sexual attractiveness.

I think all men know the truth about this. However, it certainly suits some men to pretend that rape and harassment is about sexual attractiveness. This serves several useful purposes: discredit victims (too ugly to get raped/ what did she expect dressed like that); make women afraid to speak up when they’re worried about their safety (like she’s got anything to worry about anyway/ relax, you’re not my type)/ gaslight women who are being harassed and otherwise victimised (can’t you take a compliment/ cis women don’t know how lucky they are.)

As a general rule, men who pretend to think that rape and sexual harassment are about sexual attraction are men to avoid at all costs.

That stuck out for me too. What is with these men who are asserting that the reasoning behind this is sexual and about attraction. I absolutely loved the retort from the woman being interviewed that rape is not about attraction, that it’s about violence, that it is a violent act. Although it worries me that there are people in the world that believe that rape is about attraction, I hope that any of them listening to these podcasts are listening and learning.

@CreepingDeath

Oh god, Owen was so ridiculous, I was cringing so much at 'their' nonsense.

So many self indulgent people are being pandered to and placated in all this. Owen wants a special badge to show how special Owen is, and everyone must constantly acknowledge how utterly special Owen is at all times.

Yes, absolutely