Does anyone believe this debate will go ahead ?

[yestheyhavethesamedad]

Grace lavery at 2am sunday morning put out a post asking british feminists for a debate , when they are in the uk in march , about 3 minutes later claimed people were too scared to debate 🙄
Helen Joyce, Julie Bindle and a few more woman have said yes ,grace is now saying no one has confirmed and that they are backing out.
So does anyone thing this will actually go ahead and want to place bets on the excuses why suddenly it cannot go ahead , backpeddling already started , ie: no one is organising ect

@Thehumblesnail

Grace is very smart, and will be difficult to debate - don't kid yourselves. As a public-school educated teenager, Grace took part in various World debating championships, and has since spent a career discussing conceptually difficult ideas in public. Grace is a good polemicist, doesn't lack verbal style or self-confidence, and is pretty ruthless.

Does she want to sell books? Of course. In fact, Grace currently seems desperate to be sued, or engaged with in other ways that might stir up controversy, in an attempt to corner the trans-saviour market and boost their public profile. She tried to rile Kathleen Stock into biting but that doesn't seem to have worked so now she's trying to use other GC figures to advance her career.

I genuinely believe that smart, well educated, used-to-debate people can get the upper hand in any debate. Politicians do it all the time.

But personally, I don't understand how anyone could ever win a debate over this, given that it has the departure from reality as its premise.

But more than that, much, much more than that, even if your linguistic skills are giving you an advantage in a debate, the very nature of what you're arguing for is what I would like to be put into the public domain.

Even if you win or dominate, let's see what you claim is your prize.

Who on earth can remember the first person who said not all women have a cervix? But now, every politician, gets asked that.

Whatever Grace Lavery asserts, every politician, policymaker, pundit, will be asked whether they agree with it.

I couldn't give a toss about the likes of Lavery. I do care about who is writing prison policy, and putting children and men in the same changing room. And they have to agree with someone like Lavery, in order to do it. So let's all see exactly what Lavery thinks.

But personally, I don't understand how anyone could ever win a debate over this, given that it has the departure from reality as its premise.

Yes. Lavery may be smart (though I suspect not as smart as Helen Joyce or Kathleen Stock) but Lavery is tasked with arguing, in effect, that the earth is flat, which surely has to be harder than arguing that it is round.

@Thehumblesnail Grace is very smart, and will be difficult to debate - don't kid yourselves. As a public-school educated teenager, Grace took part in various World debating championships, and has since spent a career discussing conceptually difficult ideas in public. Grace is a good polemicist, doesn't lack verbal style or self-confidence, and is pretty ruthless

Well, if you say so. Just seems odd that none of these wipe-the/floor debate-winning points ever surfaces in Lavery’s twitter posts or other outputs (I had the misfortune to wade through a very long post on Lavery’s substack the other week. It had no style and no substance, which is quite a hard thing to pull off I guess).

I don’t doubt that Lavery would be difficult to debate, but more because there’ll probably be lots of bad-faith raised-voice ranting, rather than any actual engagement with the issue at hand.

Just my opinion of course. Everyone’s got one.

grace will have to use underhand techniques like the gish gallop on this, given that no genderist ever has been able to explain why some men are women, and why the world should be rearranged to accommodate their religious beliefs. straight engagement would result is grace getting egg on grace's face

i'd still like to see what Helen Joyce makes of Grace though, despite my worry that she (Helen) may be too well intentioned to have a meaningful interaction with someone like Grace

There are tons of smart people, all over Twitter.

I have never yet seen a convincing argument. Not once. Bogus stats resulting in be kind. It's a bit of a piece of piss to refute.

However I won a debate once because I said the solution was to give everyone a martini.

People didn't agree to base government policy on that though!

Sadly...

Take my money people!! This needs to be televised.

as soon as women stop being stopped in their tracks by being told that excluding men from women's prisons makes those men sad, and just say 'I don't care, women's safety, privacy and dignity is more important to me than allowing men unrestricted access to women (which isn't important to me at all)', the genderists have no where to go really.

so out come the circular arguments, the anecdotes, and eventually the rudeness. seen it a million times here

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

as soon as women stop being stopped in their tracks by being told that excluding men from women's prisons makes those men sad, and just say 'I don't care, women's safety, privacy and dignity is more important to me than allowing men unrestricted access to women (which isn't important to me at all)', the genderists have no where to go really.

so out come the circular arguments, the anecdotes, and eventually the rudeness. seen it a million times here

Exactly right Bernard, but as Datun points out it's always good to see exactly what the genderists are demanding for themselves and what's expected of everyone else.

As an aside, our farming friends have an eye opening thread on Laverey...

What exactly is up for debate?

I won't tolerate the bullshit accusations it's about trans people's right to exist. Trans people exist, nothing to debate and nothing for me to get over.

Women are adult human females, a sex class, this is scientific fact and I won't debate alternative definitions.

Women have a right to safety, privacy, dignity, fair competition in sports etc, this means excluding males from some spaces and activities. I'm not prepared to debate that either.

It is not the responsibility of women to sacrifice their own rights to make space for another vulnerable group particularly when it increases risks to women. That's not debatable either as far as I'm concerned.

Public debate as theatre is useful in correcting many of the mistaken assumptions people make about the GC position but I also think it also signals a willingness to negotiate and give ground. I don't negotiate with terrorists.

Midsomer, I never said that Grace would have 'wipe the floor debate winning points'. Just that Grace would be an effective advocate as far as the strengths/weaknesses inherent in the TRA argument will allow. Some people upthread seemed to think Grace is an idiot. I've read Grace's academic work and know that isn't true.

Refuting bad-faith arguments and subtle misrepresentations of data/positions is much more difficult in a real-life debate than it is in writing, even on Twitter, because you have no time to compose your arguments, or check facts, or look back at quotes and consider them in context.

Given that someone as stupid as Donald Trump managed to do ok in debates in against Hillary Clinton (mostly because SO MUCH of what he said was bullshit that there was little either the moderator or Hillary could do by way of refutation until after the event, by which time people had stopped paying attention) I suspect that the floor won't be wiped with either party here. As Datun says, Grace has to argue for some batshit propositions, but I think Grace will no doubt find a way to make them sound as plausible as they can be made to sound through elision, and obfuscation, and rhetorical sleight-of-hand.

Omg I had no idea what had happened to Ortberg

@FOJN

What exactly is up for debate?

I won't tolerate the bullshit accusations it's about trans people's right to exist. Trans people exist, nothing to debate and nothing for me to get over.

Women are adult human females, a sex class, this is scientific fact and I won't debate alternative definitions.

Women have a right to safety, privacy, dignity, fair competition in sports etc, this means excluding males from some spaces and activities. I'm not prepared to debate that either.

It is not the responsibility of women to sacrifice their own rights to make space for another vulnerable group particularly when it increases risks to women. That's not debatable either as far as I'm concerned.

Public debate as theatre is useful in correcting many of the mistaken assumptions people make about the GC position but I also think it also signals a willingness to negotiate and give ground. I don't negotiate with terrorists.

I agree with you FOJN, and I take your point re: "don't negotiate with terrorists" and the dangers there in but there are still plenty of folk who don't really understand the genderists' agenda and need to see it clearly laid out.

I'm not interested in "debate" as such either but I'm happy for the genderists to lay it out there and then have someone with no fucks to give ripe it to shreds...someone like Julia Long for example....

There are tons of smart people, all over Twitter.

I have never yet seen a convincing argument. Not once. Bogus stats resulting in be kind. It's a bit of a piece of piss to refute.

I agree. There aren't any convincing arguments that someone like Helen can't prepare herself for. Which is why I don't think this will ever happen, and why hashtag no debate was such a thing.

I'm not interested in "debate" as such either but I'm happy for the genderists to lay it out there and then have someone with no fucks to give ripe it to shreds...

Proper debates have been incredibly rare. Here's the only example that I can currently think of

It was a more formal classical debate set-up though. Not much actual back-and-forth.

That reminds me, actually - the World Rugby consultation rejected any sort of debate format for their consultation, as they felt it wouldn't be productive. They actually went for some sort of pseudo-legal set-up where they had witnesses from each side who were examined in each area by a panel. A bit more Radio 4 Moral Maze, I guess.

terryleather

You are absolutely right. I'm always impressed by the level of patience displayed by the many amazing women who take the time and effort to calmly articulate the issues at stake so that people can be more informed about the implications of self ID.

I'm going through a very belligerent and angry phase of dealing with this crap and I'm beyond caring about the insults. It's quite liberating for me personally but not necessarily constructive.

What was KMs excuse for backing out? Very curious!

I don't think KM ever accepted the debate, just wanted to claim that GC women weren't willing to do it.

Given that someone as stupid as Donald Trump managed to do ok in debates in against Hillary Clinton (mostly because SO MUCH of what he said was bullshit that there was little either the moderator or Hillary could do by way of refutation until after the event, by which time people had stopped paying attention) I suspect that the floor won't be wiped with either party here.

This is a fair point. There's a great episode of the Simpsons where Springfield comes into a lot of money, and a charlatan persuades the town to spend it all on a monorail. He does it principally by singing a song about how great the monorail will be. Marje stands up and provides a very sensible, reasoned argument against it. When she loses the vote Homer says, "You should have had a song."

I suppose the fact that so many people are taken in by the ridiculous arguments of trans activists, including sex is a spectrum, half of all trans people die by suicide, and more trans people are murdered than any other group, shows that having the most sensible argument is not a guarantee of winning.

@FOJN

terryleather

You are absolutely right. I'm always impressed by the level of patience displayed by the many amazing women who take the time and effort to calmly articulate the issues at stake so that people can be more informed about the implications of self ID.

I'm going through a very belligerent and angry phase of dealing with this crap and I'm beyond caring about the insults. It's quite liberating for me personally but not necessarily constructive.

I hear you! I'd LOVE the genderists to lay it all out there and then just be told "no, now off you trot" while they all do a collective Buttergasp and clutch their pearls in horror at the audacity of those telling them to do one....

I suppose the fact that so many people are taken in by the ridiculous arguments of trans activists, including sex is a spectrum, half of all trans people die by suicide, and more trans people are murdered than any other group, shows that having the most sensible argument is not a guarantee of winning.

This is completely depressing but sadly I think it's true...

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I don't think KM ever accepted the debate, just wanted to claim that GC women weren't willing to do it.

Too bad, would have paid to see that!

But when do they ever get challenged by people who have heard them before and know they are nonsense? As Necessary said I think the Murphy/Goldstein is the only GC feminist v TRA debate I've ever seen. Blair White debated Contrapoints a few years ago and was far superior, but that's obviously an MTF trans person debating an MTF trans person. Just as if Rose of Dawn or similar did it.

I'd LOVE the genderists to lay it all out there and then just be told "no, now off you trot"

I was watching an excellent , plugging his new book "Woke Racism". It seems generally applicable to cover the gender stuff too.

We will never get through to people like that, but we just need them to sit down. They used to be sitting at the table. It's not that people who believe in Critical Race Theory had never been heard from until a year and a half ago, it's that they used to be seated at the table with the rest of us. The Elect need to sit down. They don't need to leave the room; we need to hear from people on the hard left all the time, they have interesting things to say. But we need them to sit the hell down and the only way that's going to happen is we have to stop being so afraid of the rhetoric that they spout when you go afoul of their religious tenets.

We can't let them win. And I think that at this point America is still so unaccustomed to that kind of person having so much of a presence, that we're getting a sense of how to deal with them. And I know it's happening in Canada, Australia and the UK as well.

What do you do with that kind of person? What you do is you tell them to sit down, and you don't rest, and you don't look out of their eyes until they do. And if we don't learn how to do that, then we're going to be run by prelates. We're going to have our lives run by anti-intellectual priests who have no genuine concern with the well-being of the people they claim to speak for.

That's not the way this is supposed to go, and I think we all know it - we just have to we have to frankly grow a pair, so to speak.

The relevant Twitter threads are being archived. Such as;

archive.ph/23pb8

Not too sure Grace has much comprehension of political science though; their definition of fascism is a bit bonkers.

And although Grace is said to not be stupid, that isn't reflected in their postings. Perhaps Grace makes a deliberate effort to mask their intellect to try to appeal to more people, but might have just been too enthusiastic in doing that.

Certainly the first draft question Grace posted (see the archive link) didn't suggest they are an intellectual titan. One reply was particularly cutting; if that initial question was agreed, Helen would just agree with it (most GC would too) and that would be the end of the debate.

It will get harder for Grace to back-out, but posting that they have a positive lateral-flow test on the morning of the debate will be a last resort. Allowing Gendered Intelligence to organise is a fabulous idea, making it even harder to find an excuse to back-out.

Was very surprised to learn that Andrew Doyle was a teacher of Grace Lavery's. Doyle doesn't look old enough.