Tavistock clinic to close as not safe for children

[GettingMarriedAgain]

Breaking news in the Times and Telegraph:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e1ed2bea-0e63-11ed-93cf-b011fa7fe86b?shareToken=4fa557c3083dee141defde72e0e53d54

He's got a point.

It amazes me that so many feminists fail to see the link between this and all the other damaging victim class, group hierarchy, identity politics.

It all stems from a combination of Marxist theory with postmodernism which developed in the universities infected all social sciences and then leeched into the management classes who emerged from the unis.

Everything is a social construct, there is no truth and everything is just a power struggle between oppressed groups.

You allow that to develop and transgenderism is what you get. It's the absurd pinnacle of it which reveals the insanity, but most identity politics is based on the same premise.
Even gender critical feminism.

Sure, there could be some interesting conversations to be had around that. But not with that writer, not given the standard issue own-the-libs dross I just read.

Doesn't it just.
In terms of our own coverage, we are a forum for discussion and debate and we are keen to hear from a range of voices, including trans people and those psychologists who work directly with them. Please reach out on [email protected].

No mention of detransitioners!

Who was it who got their application to research detransitioning turned down a couple of years ago? I wonder if he'd have more success now?

James Esses?

Oh, was that him? He must be feeling all sorts of schadenfreude now.

James Caspian, I thought. Search the name and "free speech matters" as we can't link to crowdfunders.

Think you mean James Caspian at Bath

Damn you're right, wrong James. Must not post when sleep-deprived.

He's got a point.

Not much of one. It's easy to make up that kind of narrative but it's not really accurate. That kind of Marxism was only one thread within feminism. It's only one thread within Marxism come to that. And it's easy to predict "sooner or later something will go wrong" in any branch of politics, you're pretty much guaranteed that will be true if you're willing to wait a generation or two.

most identity politics is based on the same premise. Even gender critical feminism.

GC feminism wasn't based on "there is no truth" "everything is a social construct" or "everything is a power struggle between oppressed groups" last time I looked. Didn't Kathleen Stock call for more actual data and less theory? Hardly "there is no truth".

Don't create another circular definition where GC feminism is just another kind of identity politics and anything that isn't identity politics isn't GC feminism.

The Telegraph article was right-wing rabid drivel and sought to blame women's struggle for liberation (including the pill, and, presumably desiring economic independence from men) for the misogyny we face now. Utter bollocks. And gender is a construct - a harmful one that is a prison.

New piece from Sue Evans, on Bari Weiss's Substack, so reaching a US audience.

How Tavistock Came Tumbling Down

I was a nurse working on a team that recklessly prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids. I blew the whistle in 2005. Now the government is finally listening.

How is gender critical feminism based on that? It rests on the fact that natal sex isn't a construct and can't be changed. As PP said, it's also the movement calling for more research and pointing out the current gaping holes in knowledge. Stonewall et al are the ones crying "no debate".

I'm not interested in getting into an extensive debate about it on this thread; I've discussed it elsewhere on this board and been highly criticised by people who would identity as GC feminists for suggesting that gender is not just a social construct and that not everything is interpretable through a women are oppressed by the patriarchy lense.

These factors certainly have some roots in the social constructivist and post modernist movements which have merged with critical theory in the universities. This type of theory in various presentations underpins all current identity politics.

I'm sure this will get howls of protest and attack as it has before but I'm going to try to resist posting on this topic again myself on this thread, as that debate isn't what this is thread is about.

It just baffles me that so many feminists don't see the links and how the Trans movement is a development from this.

It amazes me that so many feminists fail to see the link between this and all the other damaging victim class, group hierarchy, identity politics.

I think it's been discussed a lot here and certainly i see it elsewhere. B Boyce comes at it from that angle, as do many on triggernometry. The university lecturers who've been persecuted have all experienced it via those who channel oppression Olympics and queer theory. That's what's infecting schools. And what Kemi is trying to stop as she recognises how it leads to a range of extremism, as well as trans ideology and tra culture. And it's so important that is clarified as there's a real danger of homophobia x 2; one naively (ish) trying to make gay kids change sex and two those who just are homophobic jumping on a bandwagon without due diligence.

What slightly then blows my non political mind is how the writers behind the 'on the woman question' website, I think pro Marx, but also extremely 'GC' manage to set it all out >> 🤪 << actual brain cells trying to square both positions.

I can see some connection.

I have also been told on here that my view, that not all gendered behaviours are a result of socialisation, was not a feminist one.

We know for a fact that sex affects behaviour.

The majority of men find women sexually attractive and have sex with women but have little significant sexual interest in men, and the majority of women find men sexually attractive and have sex with men but have little significant sexual interest in women, and that's the case in every human culture we've ever come across and seems highly likely to be biologically-based.

I don't find it at all problematic from a feminist point of view, therefore, to posit that female humans might be more biologically predisposed to some traits and behaviours than male humans, and male humans might be more biologically predisposed to some traits and behaviours than female humans. You could describe those traits and behaviours as "gendered", but to do that is to conflate them with traits and behaviours that have a cultural origin. Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to distinguish which influences are operating where, especially since cultural influences often act to enhance and entrench biologically-based traits and behaviours.

For me the point of feminism isn't in saying, "There is no difference between men and women other than what's culturally imposed", it's in saying that men are not superior to women, whatever the differences between the average man and the average woman are, and that you shouldn't make assumptions about any individual based solely on whether they're male or female, deny them opportunities, force certain types of work on them, and so on.

You can absolutely do feminism as a kind of identity politics focused on hierarchies of oppression. Just like you can totally subsume ideologies of racial justice in identity politics. It's ubiquitous enough that even people who are very clear on the idea of biological sex differences and roles often also have elements in their thinking around women's issues. Look at how often there are arguments made on the basis of who is opressed, rather than what is true.

The idea of patriarchy in the feminist sense is largely from that stream, where you have what is meant to be a class analysis but almost always it's discussed as if it exists apart from actual mechanisms, very similar to the idea of systemic racism as used by id pol believers.

Very well put @ClumpingBambooIsALie

This video hasn't aged well

twitter.com/womenreadwomen/status/1497222535070744578

That video is quite disconcerting, to say the least, most politely.

Sorry I should've given a trigger warning.

For those who don't want to watch it's a jaunty song about giving children puberty blockers and hormones. The singer is making inappropriate hand gestures.

That video is awful!

It's ok, I've seen possibly worse, sadly

I've seen worse, too.