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.

Sorry, Fa'afafine

‘Cross sex identity is a normal variation of human biology and behaviour. There’s evidence for it across time and cultures all over the world.’

I agree that it’s a variation of behaviour, but not biology. An identity claim isn’t a fact. Nobody else is obligated to accept it. And Joyce is entitled to say she thinks physical transition causes harm if that’s what she thinks.

Interestingly, 'Faʻafafine have sexual relationships exclusively with men who do not identify as faʻafafine.' To me, that is not a proof of trans identity, but a socially acceptable way to be homosexual. And we're still seeing this tendency in our society, according to Tavi whistle blowers

A better comparison might be saying ‘the world would be better without deaf people’ - few of those who can hear would choose to have been born deaf, but many deaf people value their strong community and particular perspective on the world and would not choose to have been born otherwise. Down syndrome is another example.

Surely it is for people in the affected group to say whether it would have been better for them not to have existed, or to have existed differently?

What are you talking about? Cross sex identity? What, specifically, are you talking about?

Well, historically, often that has meant homosexuality. Because that is the clearest sexed behaviour. So many of those "trans" people in other cultures (like the trans kids in ours) were mainly just gay.

Still not a good idea to put gay men in women's prisons or sports, even if you acknowledge that "cross sex identity", and as LK1972 notes, historical cultures more advanced than the 21st-century USA figured that out.

But this is a suggestion that there's something else - something intangible that can be possessed by ordinary heterosexual males that has no detectable impact on behaviour compared to others of their sex - and that somehow links them to the other sex? Um, no...

Getting a sexual thrill from wearing women's clothes and fantasising about yourself as a woman is a normal variation of male behaviour. There’s evidence for it across time and cultures all over the world.

Wanting to not be limited by society's conception of what it is to be a woman is a normal variation of female behaviour. There’s evidence for it across time and cultures all over the world.

Neither of those should lead to surgical intervention. Just as it hasn't in time and cultures all over the world.

It is also likely that many women chose to become sworn virgins simply because it afforded them much more freedom than would otherwise have been available in a patrilineal culture in which women were secluded, sex-segregated, required to be virgins before marriage and faithful afterwards, betrothed as children and married by sale without their consent, continually bearing and raising children, constantly physically labouring, and always required to defer to men, particularly their husbands and fathers, and submit to being beaten

No shit, I think I would go for that too if the choice was that stark.

How sad. We had just got to the point where women were starting to be able to make choices liberated from this type of oppressive expectation/tradition. It's like society just struggles with the idea of women really genuinely being empowered/liberated, doesn't it? If we reject being subjugated or treated like slaves or second class citizens then we must be men!

On further investigation, in Samoa 'Same-sex sexual acts are illegal, punishable by up to seven years imprisonment, but the law is not enforced.' 'Samoan society tends to be very tolerant of being transgender, but not of homosexuality' en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTrightsin_Samoa

Fabulous piece of 'evidence for it across time and cultures all over the world', thanks @Fieldofgreycorn , always good to remind ourselves of exactly what this evidence shows.

(that was a quote from the wiki page on sworn virgins)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_sworn_virgins

*Getting a sexual thrill from wearing women's clothes and fantasising about yourself as a woman is a normal variation of male behaviour. There’s evidence for it across time and cultures all over the world.

And, in case Fieldofgreycorn isn't aware, it's a cornerstone of Feminism to unpick why women's oppression gives men orgasms.

Wanting to not be limited by society's conception of what it is to be a woman is a normal variation of female behaviour. There’s evidence for it across time and cultures all over the world.

And again, Fieldofgreycorn feminism was created to deal with women's second place in society.

A better comparison might be saying ‘the world would be better without deaf people’ - few of those who can hear would choose to have been born deaf, but many deaf people value their strong community and particular perspective on the world and would not choose to have been born otherwise. Down syndrome is another example.

Yes, that's a stronger example. But the difference is that we are actively performing surgery on people or messing with their hormone system. This isn't an accident of birth, it is a deliberate action to impair someone. We are creating iatrogenic disease.

So it's not just about "screening against some naturally-occurring condition", which I agree is greyer ethical area, with something of a slippery slope.

The comparison would be better with - "should we be deliberately creating deaf people or people with Down's syndrome?" I believe there was a case where a deaf couple wanted to genetically screen their child to ensure it was deaf? It's something like that, but more precisely like choosing to deafen a child because it doesn't feel it fits in with hearing people.

I don't know what the current law looks like on medical providers blinding, deafening or amputating healthy people. I'd hope regulation is quite tight, to say the least.

Now, the direct harm for "transition" is less, being more in terms of long-term health impact and potential ongoing complications, and loss of sexual reproductive function, rather than an immediate and obvious reduction in day-to-day capabilities and quality of life. So maybe it can be laxer than those examples. But it should absolutely be taken more seriously than many seem to. ("Yeet the teats"? "Titty skittles"?)

And this is exactly the debate we should be having. What are the ethics of transition, and how does it compare with other procedures?

The latest salvo in this argument on Twitter is that Joyce was definitely calling for genocide because genocide doesn’t have to be murder, it can be other things.

This is what happens when you start acting like you can redefine words at will.

Genocide has a clear meaning: it means the deliberate mass murder of an ethnic, racial or cultural group.

It doesn’t mean other things.

@NecessaryScene that’s a very good analysis of the possible analogies.

Expanding the bandwidth of genocide, is it?

How utterly revolting.

It would be like creating deaf people from a form of treatment that was still in experimental stages for the group it was being used on.

The entire point is that medically treating people with healthy bodies with drugs and surgeries leaves them with bodies that are, to put it bluntly, 'damaged' and then require further treatment and drugs throughout their life.

And the number of detransitioners is unknown, studies to discover the numbers have been closed down, but the number seems to be growing.

There is a longitudinal study from across Europe that shows there was 8+% of transitioners (both male and female) who detransitioned after medical treatment. This study was not about detransition, it was actually about studying some other aspect of their lives, but the numbers were there. And are never discussed by any activists.

Other studies have also shown similar number. And these were studies from before the bump of young female transitioners who have now, finally, been recognised as having significantly different needs. But are still be treated using the same protocols....

Or are we to continue to deny that lifelong patients are being created with these treatments?

‘Expanding the bandwidth of genocide, is it?’

Genocide is now any form of perceived oppression (obviously, no, it isn’t).

oh. I cross posted with Necessary.

This woman met a 'psychologist' online who helped her blind herself. I don't know that many qualified health professionals would do this.

Crikey. Talk about jump the shark.

She doesn't appear to have done any checks, so I suppose this 'psychologist' could have been any random person with a couch.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria

This condition may have some parallels:

'In 2004 Michael First published the first clinical research in which he surveyed fifty-two people with the condition, a quarter of whom had undergone an amputation. Based on that work, First coined the term "body integrity identity disorder" to express what he saw as more of an identity disorder than a paraphilia.[9] After First's work, efforts to study BID as a neurological condition looked for possible causes in the brains of people with BID using neuroimaging and other techniques.[2][15] Research provisionally found that people with BID were more likely to want removal of a left limb than right, consistent with damage to the right parietal lobe; in addition, skin conductance response is significantly different above and below the line of desired amputation, and the line of desired amputation remains stable over time, with the desire often beginning in early childhood.[15] This work did not completely explain the condition, and psychosexual research has been ongoing as well.'

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326051/

'BIID has an onset in early childhood. The main rationale given for their desire for body modification is to feel complete or to feel satisfied inside. Somatic and severe psychiatric co-morbidity is unusual, but depressive symptoms and mood disorders can be present, possibly secondary to the enormous distress BIID puts upon a person. Amputation and paralyzation variant do not differ in any clinical variable. Surgery is found helpful in all subjects who underwent amputation'

'People think of blindness being a disability' says the woman tapping her way slowly down a pavement with a cane. 'I saw it as empowering.'

Where have I heard that before?

I think TRAs are shitting themselves about the upcoming Cass report.

When is it expected?

What she said just follows on from what she and her followers have said before. I see the new #stanilandquestion has been posted on twitter.

"How many is enough trans people and why did you not say zero?"

Sickening in reality.

I'm not sure, I was wondering the same.