So disgusted tonight

[Mollyollydolly]

Owen Jones and Pink News tweeted about the two Helens, Joyce and Staniland and their YouTube chat .. Jones taking what they said completely out of context it's resulted in some of the most vile abuse aimed at Helen Joyce in particular on twitter tonight. So many death threats.

I wish there was something we could do, it's so utterly vile, it's time they were held to account for their lies. It's really upsetting.

Owen Jones isn't fit to lace Helen's shoes, I cant believe The Guardian still employ him. I've seen threats to murder, throw napalm in their faces from Joss Prior and many many more. It's disgusting and all down to Owen.

How can this stand up to any level of journalistic ethics or integrity.

It's time we did something, some kind of collective action.

This. Agree 100%

On a larger scale people who are dissociate from their natural sex are difficult to accommodate in that it means that the whole of society now has make serious adjustments and to find the money to provide separate spaces and services across the board, so as not to have any adverse impact on anyone who is not dissociated from their natural sex.

This can apply to many types of disabled people or people with various health conditions.

@idlemuse "This can apply to many types of disabled people or people with various health conditions."

Disabled people are covered by the law related to discrimination of disabled people. Reasonable adjustments are required by law. [Some health conditions fall within this category.]

The Equality Act 2010 is about one thing and one thing only: discrimination against anyone who falls within the 9 protected characteristics.

Sex is one protected characteristic. Gender reassignment [which is about people who are dissociated from their natural sex] is another separate protected characteristic.

Accommodations are required for each of those two PCs separately in a way that avoids discrimination and or conflict of rights in either category.

Let me see if I have this right.

Some people are (bizarrely but innocently) mistaken about what sex they are. Others tell lies about what sex they are. These mistakes and lies, it turns out, have bad societal effects, amongst which causing harm to children. An author points this out and draws the (natural) conclusion that we would be better off with fewer such mistaken people and/or liars. The author is pilloried for expressing this view because its expression may upset the innocently mistaken, who, after all, do no deliberate wrong.

Is that about it?

Helen Joyce? Good on her. I recommend buying and reading her book.

[I said something about the Owen Jones canard of assimilating trans with gay in an earlier post. I will not repeat.]

So it would be fair to assume that Joyce would support removing protections against gender reassigned individuals from the Equality Act since they most especially require too many accommodations?

No, it would not be fair at all, and is a particular reach. Give it up, the usual suspects are outraged, who the hell cares what Owen Jones, Laurie Penny et al think. HJ is coming from the place of compassion and harm prevention. Some people are very keen to misrepresent and discredit her. Fuck off with your purity spirals, she's entitled to her perfectly legal and reasonable opinion.

That conversation occurred well over a week ago and it is only now that a very malicious person has chosen to make an edit of a tiny part of the whole discussion, to create an intended distortion and use it to stir up hatred and fear.

I think maybe to distract from the Matt Walsh documentary coming out.

Wonderful, new TRA slogan, anyone, 'Statistics are stereotyping'?

Yes, how can anyone advocate for any social justice at all? "It's just stereotyping that black/gay/disabled people are discriminated against"!

I think the point is that anger expressed as aggression or violence is very much a male response, given the extent of male aggression and violence there is in this world.

This.

I believe that gender critical activists are held to much higher ethical and moral and linguistic standards than trans activists.

This may partly be because trans activists regard almost any questioning or disagreement or even nasty comments as what they call literal genocide. It's rarer for the gender critical side to catastrophise the many nasty online comments which could be interpreted as promoting violence against the so-called TERFs.

To put this thread into the online ecosystem on trans issues, here's a sampling of some of the anti-GC things I found by Googling this afternoon:

This is an interesting clip, and quite recent.

In several of the protests some trans activists shouted 'cis scum' (and there is the 'die cis scum' meme) and, of course, there is the terfisaslur website.

A reporter, Ana Valens, who is a trans woman, once tweeted this:

the yr is 2028. the united soviets of america have emerged, run by groups of 12 to 14 trans women who all initiate breeding facilities where we hive five each other while spitroasting cis women. we call it the gender crit wet p*y carousel (now with less respectability politics)

Shon Faye, an author who is a trans woman, once tweeted to a gender critical feminist (whose handle is Lavender Blume on Twitter): "im a woman because I say I am sorry you've lost - even law says so - enjoy ur erasure."

Some of the tweets etc. on terfisaslur site can be read as recommending the mass murder of gender critical people, but the gender critical side does not, on the whole, raise similar uproars to the one discussed in this thread about the slurs and threats they get.

Isn’t 12 to 14 a really specific number that suggests someone has been thinking about this a lot?

Some of the tweets etc. on terfisaslur site can be read as recommending the mass murder of gender critical people

Some of the tweets in response to this same video can be.

No answer to this then? What a surprise…

What an utterly ridiculous interpretation of what I said. The law is the law. No-one is suggesting removing protection from discrimination for those who claim the protected characteristic of "gender reassignment". Such people are wholly different from those whose protected characteristic is sex [defined in this law as woman: a female of any age; man: a male of any age].

That difference is why the two protected characteristics exist separately:

From the Equality Act 2010:

Chapter 1 Protected characteristics

4.The protected characteristics

5.Age
6.Disability
7.Gender reassignment
8.Marriage and civil partnership
9.Race
10.Religion or belief
11.Sex
12.Sexual orientation

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents

Read, mark and inwardly digest, perhaps?

Any answers to my questions?

Would those who are outraged by Helen's sentiments ever like to see a cure for gender dysphoria?

Apart from homophobia, sexism/AGP or trauma what other reasons can people give for transition? An answer to that would be rather useful in moving the conversation forward, (in terms of addressing the morality of reducing numbers).

Not a great thing to say tbh, even if she thinks she’s coming from a place of compassion. The argument from TRAs all along has been that GC people want to eliminate them and bingo here is Helen on tape saying that they are a problem for a sane society. Whatever good explanations there are for saying it (I’m not convinced at all actually if we’re talking about adults - and we have third spaces etc), it could have been foreseen that they would jump on this.

Not sure what difference it makes if random TRAs are jumping up and down. They're not exactly known for their discerning remarks on gender critical narratives.

Anyone who can froth at what JKR said about her assault or refer to dictionary definitions as 'transphobic dog whistles' isn't really demonstrating much credibility.

And whatever people's individual thoughts are about the issue, Helen Joyce has at least got the conversation going.

The different reasons and motivations for transition needs addressing. Teens, homosexuals, ROGD, AGP - none of this is the same thing. It can only be healthy and beneficial to unpick it.

here is Helen on tape saying that they are a problem for a sane society. Whatever good explanations there are for saying it (I’m not convinced at all actually if we’re talking about adults
Exactly - saying they are a problem for a sane society.
Talking about adults, it doesn't become about concerns for children, or respecting spaces (as you say third spaces) it becomes so much more.
It suddenly becomes about trans people being "allowed" to be trans or to be forced into being something they're not. Ie forced to not transition as you "don't believe they should."
Grown adults.

Grown adults can’t all do what they want just because they’re grown adults though, can they?

There’s a difference between trans people transitioning, and society including doctors partaking in medical transition for trans people when the evidence is scant that it helps and incontrovertibly causes harm. You may quibble about “harm” but taking a physically healthy body and altering it to something it isn’t requiring lifelong specialist medical monitoring is certainly under the umbrella of iatrogenic disease.

Want to transition? Go for your life. Want the medical profession to help you along with that? It’s in your best interests that questions are asked and evidence is sought. Because if not, the cowboy doctors who would do anything for a dollar will inevitably ruin some people’s lives. I find it remarkable that any doctor or surgeon would partake in any form of affirmative gender medicine; at the very least they should have their consent process absolutely water tight making it clear to the patient that they’re operating in an evidence-free zone.

And no, “look at all the happy trans people on Twitter” is not evidence.

You may quibble about “harm” but taking a physically healthy body and altering it to something it isn’t requiring lifelong specialist medical monitoring
If you're not trans though, how do you have any idea what it's like?
You can't just come out and say "'something it isn't'' as you're then fitting your ideals of what a person's body should or shouldn't be.

Because the harm is objectively measurable. A male on oestrogen has risk of harm from increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease. A female on testosterone has risks of disease also, but different. Both have risks of unknown complications. Surgery adds a whole new level to that. A “neovagina” has risks and so on.

“Something it isn’t” is hormones levels hugely out of the normal range for that person’s sex. “Something it isn’t” means a wound in the perineum constantly trying to close.

It’s not fitting my ideals. It’s fitting the essentials of biology and the principles of medicine. What my ideal, or a trans person’s ideal of what their body should be, matters not for the facts.

It makes no difference whatsoever if the trans person themselves does not perceive any of this as harm: it still is from a medical perspective and has to be managed accordingly. And given it’s done without strong evidence base, and implications around consent and healthcare resources, it needs to be discussed.

We don’t police other potentially harmful behaviour. I could eat my way to 24 stone and require lots of major medical interventions and increase my disease risk big time and nobody is allowed to stop me. Ditto smoking, drinking, performing extreme sports. There is of course also the similarity to radical plastic surgery which is not banned either. If I want JJ boobs and can pay for them, I don’t see people banning me, despite me ‘mutilating’ my healthy body.
Some people with gender dysphoria get relief from transitioning. It’s a shame that there are some that regret what they did but if they were adults with mental capacity when making that decision, they will have to live with that.
I have an issue with allowing males into female spaces and stopping women from talking about our experiences. I do not have an issue with what grown adults do to their bodies. I wouldn’t dream of saying that someone is a problem for society because of what they choose to do with their bodies because they are not.

Well all of those examples don’t match do they?

If doctors were partaking in helping you eat your way to 24 stone, or supplying you with cigarettes leading to cardiovascular risk - like hormones - then it might be the same. The plastic surgery is a better analogy and I think that is also problematic. A fake set of JJ boobs isn’t healthy and it’s telling that the only doctors willing to undertake such a procedure on consenting adults are unscrupulous private surgeons happy to take people’s money. There’s a very good case for banning such surgeries, and also things like butt lifts etc which can lead to death. We don’t let adults do whatever they want, whenever they want just because they’re consenting. How do you protect trans patients from exploitation from surgeons who don’t care about their mental health?

Some people get relief from gender dysphoria but some don’t and the published evidence says overall there’s no great help, and there’s no way of knowing who is going to be helped. Therefore there needs to be discussion because it’s a problem for society if there’s an expectation that this is all done with public money.

‘If you're not trans though, how do you have any idea what it's like?’

I’ll agree with this (just as nobody who isn’t female can know what it’s like) just as soon as someone provides me with a coherent definition of the word trans, and some explanation of how this state of being is objectively verifiable.

I’ll wait.