Prospect Magazine: Kathleen Stock v Robin Moira White

[Ereshkigalangcleg]

Great discussion.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/gender-wars-two-opposing-perspectives-on-the-trans-and-womens-rights-debate

Gender wars: two opposing perspectives on the trans and women’s rights debate
A lawyer and philosopher respond to seven propositions—ranging from single-sex spaces to puberty blockers for children

Their reassuring statement in the abstract that girls undergoing GnRHa treatment for CPP and controls “showed very similar scores with regard to cognitive performance” and their conclusion that “GnRHa treated girls do not differ in their cognitive functioning … from the same age peers” (Wojniusz et al., 2016) may be overly optimistic. These statements minimize the fairly substantial difference found in IQ scores and may also overemphasize its lack of statistical significance, as given the small number of participants in the study statistical significance has a high threshold.

I am actually shocked by this. Fucking hell. "We did not find this effect in a low powered study" does not mean "this effect does not exist." You can't say that!

And in this particular case the study is Bayesian evidence that the effect does exist. Based on that p-value, if you previously thought there was a 50-50 chance of an effect of puberty blockers on IQ, you should now assume the probability of an effect existing to be about 2/3.

The health and wellbeing of thousands of girls are riding on it and they wave it off with "the groups do not differ." They don't know that, they only know that they didn't see a clear difference when they looked with a low-watt bulb! How dare they handwave it?

Cor, this thread has turned out amazingly. Some brilliant posts- thank you lottie, blibby, artichoke and all the rest of you.

I find it simply incredible that certain posters and externals attempt to slur this board as some kind of backwater of knee jerk reactionary bigotry, when the calibre of posting is like that.

Though, to be fair, sighing “there’s just no getting through to these dreadful people” and flouncing to less challenging pastures is certainly easier than attempting to engage, and likely getting comprehensively out-thought and out-debated

Well. If anything, Robin cannot say that they are not linked up with some excellent and recent studies. Maybe they can pass them on to the Stonewall colleagues.

@OldCrone

Who can say but the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done.

It's interesting that this comment of Robiin's seems to have resulted in so many comments that this is a very 'male' attitude. My first thought on reading that was 'sounds just like me' (particularly when I was younger). Often in the context of being told that I couldn't do something because 'that's not for girls'.

Are people here really saying that they've never reacted to someone saying 'you can't do that' with an attitude of 'I'll show them'? Or have I misunderstood? I do feel I must have misunderstood some context or something.

Yes you have missed the context.

Briefly-

It came up around the point that if puberty blockers at 12 then hormones, had as intended, meant RMW was totally perceived as a girl/ woman.

Then their life and experiences esp decades ago could well have been very different.

I have posted more than once about RMW history, which does show that they are a determined individual with impressive academic success.

A first from impy is not to be sniffed at, nor deciding to study law down the line (after at least one other job, not straight after uni), qualifying, practicing and becoming a barrister.

That is impressive for sure.

However. The question that, given school latter 70s, early 80s. Imperial college early 80s. First job with railways.

If taken as girl/ woman by all, might have been a different experience back then. That there could well have been setbacks.

I had a chat about it with robin about my experiences 10 years later. I went to a science uni a decade after robin went to impy.
I talked about the constant overt or subtle reaction from everyone, other students, adults. Indicating that my a level choices were not.. suitable.
That at uni on my course in the early 90s not 80s 5 female out of 80.

It was so so different in the 70s/ early 80s. I remember. In society. With women and girls.

RMW indicated they saw no reason their life path would have been different at all, if all perceived as female. School in the 70s. Uni early 80s.

Bit of to and fro essentially no comment at all on the differences for women/girls nearly 40 years ago.

Only that RMW sees no reason things might have turned out differently for them. Due to fact if told no means determined to do it. No reason might be different if seen as girl/ woman.

Which is. Well. Not even COULD have been different back then?

That is a very bold statement and contains obvious implications around women/ girls, education, opportunities, employment, careers in general.

Which for obvious reasons are implications that might cause consternation.

Ah caught up!

Old crone and others- in vv brief.

Life brilliant if blockers 12 hormones all see girl/ woman.
70s early 80s v different for women girls etc. Can't be ignored etc.
Here's my education work history.
Ok cool but male/ female back then, school uni jobs etc v different to now if female.
If someone says I can't then it makes determined to do it.

So I said well cool and I understand personal experience with stereotype v male subjects, pushback, yes need determination thick skin.
Surely you see could have been different cos sexism 70s/80s?

Nope. No reason would change opportunities anything etc.

Blah blah until I said yes you are v determined etc (as an obvious fact I had mentioned earlier!) IE a compliment.
(Along with question about girls would need PB from 7/ 8 not unusual). And said if that is allowed it's not just you to think of but all children).

Comment saying flounce and saying i had stated they male due to saying determined. That's a male thing.

Complaining about the GRC requirements always annoys me enormously.

I have MS; there is no cure. It will never go away. I had to undergo a lot of tests, some of them really quite debilitating in and of themselves (Evoked Potentials for instance, I was jangling for a week afterwards, tremors, spasms, brain all over the place). The lumbar puncture often has very unpleasant side effects, and is nearly always painful and stressful. I saw a whole raft of doctors of different sorts, technicians, nurses, before I eventually got diagnosed. I think it took about 3 years all told.

I have secondary progressive ms, so I will never get better, I will always be worse than I was a year ago. Always. I am 63 but physically am more like an 80 year old (my mum died at 84, 10 years ago and could walk faster than I could). I have occasional bursts of energy - about every 6 months maybe? - which last perhaps 2 days. They leave me exhausted, in even more pain than usual (and pain is a constant no matter how hard they try to control it) and often barely able to move, so I stay in bed. It can be days before I've recovere enough to get up let alone do anything.

Nevertheless, despite every doctor, nurse or HCP I see agrees I have MS and this affects all sorts of aspects of my body and how it functions, I had to fill in a massive, intrusive, very upsetting form in order to claim PIP. I then had to undergo an examination by a stranger to ensure that what I'd put on the form, despite the names and phone numbers of my doctors, specialists and everybody else involved, being available to them, was the truth.

And even though there is no cure and I will never get better, I have to be checked every two years - because why?

The stress is unbelievable; I had thought that it was little enough to ask by the State of its disabled citizens, but actually it's one of hte most terrifying things I've undergone. I should have had my two-year check this year but they're delayed so I have to wait another 6+months, just waiting, waiting for them to say 'no, you're not bad enough, we've changed it all and if you can stand up, you can walk from the kettle to the fridge, you're now considered to be OK'.

And that misery is compounded by perfectly normal people saying things like "you look alright to me", even when I'm in my mobility scooter! So I worry that should I get off my scooter and walk into a shop (leaning heavily on my stick) someone will report me, or there're undercover DWP agents watching. Just to catch me out. "You look alright to me" will go on my headstone I think!

The requirements to get a GRC seem like small fry in comparison. At least it only happens once!

@Jux that is awful, and I'm very sorry to hear it. My mum has a disability and I've seen the process up close. It is frightening, intrusive and humiliating and every time assessment time rolls around it makes her even more ill from all the worry. And as you say, it's not one and done like the GRC, it's however often the DWP want to do it and you never know when they might change the rules, or what the outcome will be.

She had to appeal last time and I went with her. There was a guy in the waiting room who was bright yellow due to kidney failure. He still had to go in front of a panel and plead is case. I find it unfathomably cruel. Not to mention a pointless waste of resources.

I get really angry when I see people complain about the GRC process. By comparison it's an absolute cake walk and as far as I'm concerned it's not something that should exist anyway.

'The requirements to get a GRC seem like small fry in comparison. At least it only happens once!'

Well yes. Or try getting an autism assessment for help so that your child scan access school. They might as well just say 'how would you like to describe all the worst aspects of life with your child, repeatedly, to complete strangers, and incidentally get his school staff to be as gloomy as possible about him too? Maybe we could do this annually, in case he miraculously becomes NT? And then, hey, how about we tell you that we can't make the accommodations for him anyway, because we have to consider how the other children would feel about it ?'

But we can def

Yes, well, these idiots don't know they are born.

(Actually, I suspect that since the whole birth thing is not acceptable to them what with involving triggering things like a woman with a uterus and breasts and such, they may not wish to admit they are born.)

But then, unless they've had some nasty health condition from an early age adolescents do not as a rule realise that they too will get unpleasant things like arthritis and bone degeneration and heart failure and thyroid collapse and so on, so they don't either know or care about anything increasing their chances of getting those in their twenties instead of their fifties or sixties; they don't believe it could happen the them because like all adolescents, they are invulnerable to all the pains that the flesh is heir to.

Is Robin still here?

@RobinMoiraWhite?

Given your remarks on this thread, I'm quite curious about why you posted a picture of Maya Forstater's face with a strange comment appended.

Is it a dig of some kind?

what the fuck.

RMW's Twitter is a car crash in general, having just checked it out.

But to insinuate that Maya is a "workplace bully" (because that is the insinuation referred to in the Tweet above) because she's not smiling in a photograph? Well. I think we can all see who the bully really is.

I'm guessing that RMW believes that performative smiliness is fundamental to womanhood, just like another well-known transwoman thinks shaving your legs is. And so women who don't perform womanhood to their individual specifications are fair game for vilification and bullying.

I remember an advertisement concerning people with various disabilities, with the strap-line "Give us a smile!"

There probably are people who think that somehow they are entitled to a performative smile from everyone they see.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Is Robin still here?

@RobinMoiraWhite?

Given your remarks on this thread, I'm quite curious about why you posted a picture of Maya Forstater's face with a strange comment appended.

Is it a dig of some kind?

No surprise, their hypocrisy always trips them up.

I'm guessing that RMW believes that performative smiliness is fundamental to womanhood, just like another well-known transwoman thinks shaving your legs is.

If you just went by RMW's blog, you'd think that RMW believes that being a woman is simply about the performance of stereotypical behaviours.

What a despicable thing to do.

It's quite the take to come here sporadically and wilfully misinterpret comments so as to complain about us 'meanies' while revelling in being a great big 'meanie' elsewhere.

Something to bear in mind next time we are deigned a visit.

DNFTT?

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time......