OJ “gotcha”

[tabbycatstripy]

OJ: “ In my experience, the people who have had the most profound and passionate changes of mind in support of trans rights did so when a relative came out as trans. I wonder what conclusions so-called "gender critical" people draw from that.”

People will tell lies about what they really believe so they don’t lose their kids/siblings/parents?

They don't believe in it but go along with it to appear kind or to avoid family confrontations.

He's probably right about the people he knows - a lot of people do struggle to separate individuals from the wider picture and a lot of people do only think about themselves and their relatives.

However, our laws should not be made by those with a vested interest only, for people with support and cheerleaders. We have to consider the vulnerable and isolated as well (prisoners, care home residents etc.)

FWIW I went from "all things rainbow flag are progressive and kind" to "WTAF" when people at my kids school started transitioning small children, for sexist and showy reasons. Almost everyone I know who has an opinion was similar. We also have a creepy local character walking about in negligées reminding people that laws aren't only made for your friendly trans auntie.

He should be careful if he follows the idea that people are "transphobic" because they don't know any trans people. IME there are plenty of trans people inspiring GC viewpoints.

Yes, his appeal to the wisdom of a biased minority isn’t the argument he thinks it is. Nobody, when their ‘trans child’ ‘comes out’, suddenly changes their belief about what a man or a woman actually is. They just invest heavily in the emotive argument, and that prevents them seeing the objective one.

What's he on about?

Gender critical people do support trans rights. Like they do women's and children's rights. He should make it clear, if what he actually means, is support for rights over and above women's rights.

@BunnyBerries

What's he on about?

Gender critical people do support trans rights. Like they do women's and children's rights. He should make it clear, if what he actually means, is support for rights over and above women's rights.

This.

We have equal rights in law in the UK.

You'd think that as a gay man and journalist he'd know how important that is, and why it should be celebrated.

Daftie.

@tabbycatstripy

OJ: “ In my experience, the people who have had the most profound and passionate changes of mind in support of trans rights did so when a relative came out as trans. I wonder what conclusions so-called "gender critical" people draw from that.”

People will tell lies about what they really believe so they don’t lose their kids/siblings/parents?

That they're trans widows being coerced into acceptance?

Or that they feel they have no choice, yes. Either because of the weaponisation of suicide narratives, or economic dominance, or just people loving their families, people don’t always say exactly what they think.

@tabbycatstripy

OJ: “ In my experience, the people who have had the most profound and passionate changes of mind in support of trans rights did so when a relative came out as trans. I wonder what conclusions so-called "gender critical" people draw from that.”

People will tell lies about what they really believe so they don’t lose their kids/siblings/parents?

Some detransitioners have talked very movingly about what their families went through and how the people who loved them felt that they couldn't talk to them in any way that might be construed as non-affirmation in case it led to a family schism.

Sinead Watson is remarkably honest on this point and has several conversations with family members as to why they didn't speak up at the time and what those family members told her. Sinead has enough insight to say that if they had spoken up at the time then she probably wouldn't have listened.

"In my experience"

What exactly is his experience?

‘Sinead Watson is remarkably honest on this point and has several conversations with family members as to why they didn't speak up at the time and what those family members told her. Sinead has enough insight to say that if they had spoken up at the time then she probably wouldn't have listened.’

And in the context of their relationships, they maybe did the the right thing. It’s really important for young people to keep stable family relationships, especially at stages of crisis. It’s really unfair to place the responsibility for the whole of ‘trans health care’ and the legal edifice that goes with it on the distressed young people themselves, and their often terrified families.

They’re basically hostages.

I don't really get the point he is trying to make with such flourish?

He has been hammering the 'this is just like the gay rights movement all over again' crap for the last few days.

He doesn't actually have any proper arguments so has to resort to this sort of thing.

@BunnyBerries

What's he on about?

Gender critical people do support trans rights. Like they do women's and children's rights. He should make it clear, if what he actually means, is support for rights over and above women's rights.

Yep.

‘Gender critical people do support trans rights. Like they do women's and children's rights. He should make it clear, if what he actually means, is support for rights over and above women's rights.’

Also, I see being GC as mostly separate from whether I support trans rights or not. I’m gender critical because I don’t believe society’s conventions on how male people and female people should dress or behave (apart from biological functions) are based in any objective reality. They’re conventions and stereotypes.

That has very little to do with trans rights, other than meaning (unfortunately) that I think there’s no such thing as gender identity, other than as an internalisation of peer pressure.

Ultimately it’s all fodder for any columns he writes and without them, how’s he going to pay that cleaner he doesn’t want to have to employ but still does?

More empty witterings from Captain RightThink

He really is a wee eegit. It all boils to how much he can hate on the "wrong sort of women " for LOJ. That is , any women over 35 and not agreeing with him.

This is one of the things I help families with, with children. Empower them along the lines of something like this:

“I love you and nothing you have told me changes that. I appreciate your distress and I want to help you. Equally, I am still your parent and you are still my child and we need some boundaries. We will remember that you cannot actually change sex. This is imperative. I will consider calling you by your new chosen name, but you need to understand the difficulty that brings when I have an emotional attachment to the name I chose for you 12-15 years ago and 12-15 years of calling you that. I will not be compelled by you, nor your Internet friends to use the wrong sex pronouns for you. Not only is that something I can’t change about you, it’s also something I have been doing for the last 40 years of my own life. You don’t get to control this because, as a child, you don’t get control over the language of adults around you. We are setting out now that just because we disagree on things, it doesn’t mean I ‘want you dead’ or am not your ‘real family’ or any of that nonsense. I will not compromise my beliefs on women’s rights because of our family situation either.

“You should understand that, knowing my beliefs on this issue, that I believe therapy and avoidance of undertaking irreversible medical changes is something I feel strongly about. I will support you with that. I will support you full stop. But I will not let you undertake anything I think you may regret later in life. You are still a child and I am your parent. As well as loving you I have responsibility for you, something people on the internet you might chat to don’t. If I express concern or opposition, it’s because I love you.”

And I get them to ban the internet .

Funnily enough, with this I find parents are happy, feel like they can be supportive without telling lies, and importantly, the children feel happy because despite what Stonewall et al tell everyone, children appreciate support and boundaries.

I do want my friends and family who have transitioned to be supported as much as possible as people, and obviously I wish them only happiness. I can't wish for my cousin to be lauded as one of the first women to achieve X, because she's not. She transitioned in her 40s and achieved professional success before that

I've known an individual I think it's true for. She made a U-turn about sexuality issues when one of her kids turned out to be gay, and a similar u-turn when another one announced she was trans.

A nice enough person but always struck me as someone who really didn't hold views and beliefs based on any coherent logic.

And there are other people like this I know as well. A few times I've had conversations with mothers who believe that unless they support what their children do or even believe, they are somehow estranged from their kids, an older woman I know became a radical vegan after her child did. Another told me that because her children were good people she knew they would never do anything bad, so she would always support them. She seemed to equate love with support totally. I always wondered what would happen if her child became a member of a far right group.

Many parents of trans kids who do not affirm have to keep a very low profile. Only those who blaster in celebratory glitter and inflatable unicorns are allow space, the rest have to undergo a guerrilla type of existence while the school calls you in, the out clubs provide binders and the youth worker signs the deeds to change your DC name.

Speaking out asa non affirming parent is año no. You are emotionally blackmail on all fronts, peoples curiosity makes you a target and you walk on egg shells around your DC trying not to concede but not to antagonise unnecessary.

OJ as many of these men wishing to become women only see what they want to see from a privileged position of male entitlement to their own idea of what being trans or being woman is.

I agree with him. I was full on TWAW until a person close to me came out as trans.

They were absolutely instrumental in peaking me. Now I'm a full on TERF.

‘They were absolutely instrumental in peaking me. Now I'm a full on TERF.’

@NotBadConsidering

This is one of the things I help families with, with children. Empower them along the lines of something like this:

“I love you and nothing you have told me changes that. I appreciate your distress and I want to help you. Equally, I am still your parent and you are still my child and we need some boundaries. We will remember that you cannot actually change sex. This is imperative. I will consider calling you by your new chosen name, but you need to understand the difficulty that brings when I have an emotional attachment to the name I chose for you 12-15 years ago and 12-15 years of calling you that. I will not be compelled by you, nor your Internet friends to use the wrong sex pronouns for you. Not only is that something I can’t change about you, it’s also something I have been doing for the last 40 years of my own life. You don’t get to control this because, as a child, you don’t get control over the language of adults around you. We are setting out now that just because we disagree on things, it doesn’t mean I ‘want you dead’ or am not your ‘real family’ or any of that nonsense. I will not compromise my beliefs on women’s rights because of our family situation either.

“You should understand that, knowing my beliefs on this issue, that I believe therapy and avoidance of undertaking irreversible medical changes is something I feel strongly about. I will support you with that. I will support you full stop. But I will not let you undertake anything I think you may regret later in life. You are still a child and I am your parent. As well as loving you I have responsibility for you, something people on the internet you might chat to don’t. If I express concern or opposition, it’s because I love you.”

And I get them to ban the internet .

Funnily enough, with this I find parents are happy, feel like they can be supportive without telling lies, and importantly, the children feel happy because despite what Stonewall et al tell everyone, children appreciate support and boundaries.

@NotBadConsidering this is the best thing I've read all day, I've pm you.

He really isn't very bright, is he?

Plenty of GC people have trans relatives and friends. You can't base policy on "I know a really nice X person". That's not how this works. That's not how any of thos works.

I really hadn’t thought about trans people until my DS said he thought he was trans. I was probably on the side of ‘be kind’ if anything.

Then, when he said he he was a woman I looked into it and realised how bloody ludicrous it is. I actually engaged my brain and read up about it all and realised that it is all about gender stereotypes.

So yeah, I changed my views when someone I love came out as trans, just not the way little OJ likes to think.

I loved my son enough to have difficult conversations with him to make sure that he wasn’t planning to medicalise himself permanently and chop perfectly healthy parts of himself off unless he was absolutely sure that he was aware of what would be his future and that he was aware that he would still never fit into ‘woman’ as a category.

I made sure he knew that I would love him and support him no matter what, of course, but I made sure he knew what a bloody tough life he’d have ahead of him.

I love him enough to spend the time going through his reasons why he felt this way, I didn’t take the easy way out of going along with everything he said for an easy life on my part.

And now he’s happy with his male body and living a great life, not a single life changing pharmaceutical taken.