Guardian being pathetic again

[Theeyeballsinthesky]

Look at the headline “majority of uk public agree with liberal views on race & sexual identity”

but the actual article barely mentions sexual identity (I assume in old fashioned parlance what they mean is whether people are LGB) and when it dies it of course conflates it with gender identity. Then of course they push the tried & tested line of ‘young free thinking ppl are completely cool & think it’s all brilliant and it’s only Tory dinosaurs who think otherwise’

They really good think people are idiots

Nothing about sexual identity in the actual article though

interestingly the real divide seems to be London/Cities v the rest of the country

The author of that article does not understand what critics of woke mean by it.

they also don’t understand what liberal means. Liberal means tolerance of ideas. A liberal society is not one with conformity to one view.

They have created a narrative and everything they do is in service of that narrative. It's a simplistic, incurious, and bullshit narrative, because they're not dealing in truth, and in fact are doing their best to obfuscate and swerve 'truth', the better to present the lovely comforting story they wish to tell themselves.

I had to read it twice to see if I'd missed something. Turns out they'd missed the bit about how the TRAs have shot themselves in the foot.

Mind, they need to be careful not to present the whole story as good news. There needs to be enough to fight to keep these people in jobs.

Progressive Utopia only works as somewhere that is just around the corner. It must be kept as an idea that is just slightly out of reach, but achievable if only we all keep clapping hard enough.

So true, Arabella. Perfectly put.

Reading this, I'm quite astonished at how clumsily it's trying to create a narrative,

The “liberal-authoritarian divide” they keep referring to and the accompanying “liberal-authoritarian scale” they’ve apparently developed! Where “authoritarian” apparently means “disagrees with the authors.”

They start the section by setting up a dichotomy of 'good' and 'bad' people, based on Brexit voting, as far as I can see. Then abandon this, not correlating it with any of the questions asked in the centre of the chapter. Then come back to it again at the end, as if they've proved something! Implying that the country is made up of precisely two camps - good liberals and bad authoritarians. And all the former agree with the authors, and all the latter disagree.

I'd call it 'propaganda for dummies', except those books are actually usually quite informative.

Can we stop using "woke" and "liberal" to describe views that are more accurately described as puritan?

It would at least hamper their efforts of trying to create a false "liberal-authoritarian" dichotomy when what it actually is is dogmatic Puritans v those who believe in balance of rights.

It's also trying to force a US cultural movement/narrative onto the UK. Which really doesn't work, if you give it around two minutes thought.

So bloody Disingenuous! The guardian are in an uncomfortably weird place these days … i don’t buy it anymore.

They're not puritans either, though. If they were they would want to protect children from being sexualised and forced to participate in adult fetishes.

Puritans wouldn't advocate for things like Drag Queens reading to children or male teachers wearing massive fake breasts.

People can use statistics in whatever way they want. On the question 'Attitudes towards equal opportunities for minority groups' re Transgender people.

33% felt it had gone too far
32% felt it was about right
32% felt it had not gone far enough

Interpretation
The Guardian - 64% said it was about right or had not gone far enough.
Other - 65% felt it was about right or had gone too far.

As I always say, it makes sense to write in to the letters or indeed the writer of the piece. We can all say here that they are living in a bubble and they probably are but if we don’t do anything to point it out, then things don’t change.

Quite. It really makes no logical sense to lump together "those who felt it had not gone far enough" with "those who felt it was about right". People who "felt it was about right" would presumably be against self ID and further law changes and therefore would considered to be anti-progressive transphobes by most trans activists.

Because I think it reflects the ideological framework rather than the group it's being applied to.

In my experience people who believe in this method or producing equality do see it that way, and believe that the way to create equality is using ideas like privilege and creating special programs for these groups, affirmative action, etc.

Then people who really don't accept id pol tend to think that agendas like that are largely negative, no matter what the group.

To be fair, The Guardian does mention that too:

There was a further, and significant fall in the proportion of the public who agreed transgender people should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate, from 58% in 2016 and 53% in 2019, to 32% in 2021. However, the survey said the wording of the question had changed slightly after 2019 to make it clearer it wanted the public’s views on the recording of sex on the birth certificate, rather than whether a person should have the broader right to change gender.

“It may be that some people accept that people should be able to secure some form of legal recognition of their ‘acquired gender’ but also believe that this should not involve changing the sex that is recorded on their birth certificate."

Unfortunately, The Guardian managed to conflate opinions about transgender rights, rather muddying the waters:

About 64% of people thought rights for transgender people “had not gone far enough” or were “about right” compared with 34% who believed they had “gone too far”. The question had not been asked in previous years.

“It may be that some people accept that people should be able to secure some form of legal recognition of their ‘acquired gender’

As pointed out that is pure speculation on the part of the researchers, because they didn't ask that question.

Reminds me of the old quote, "A politician [in this case, activist] uses statistics in the same way that a drunk uses a lamppost - more for support than for illumination" .

Maya has tweeted a short thread on this

twitter.com/mforstater/status/1573026718666919936?s=46&t=MMkUs7RBWuJdGjQsSn-WFQ

How did the Guardian get it so wrong, she asks. I'd like to know that, too.

Interesting that The Guardian amended its report on the survey. Sadly, I have a hunch that I can answer Maya's question ("sadly", because I remember the paper before its recent decline).

I think thats the story

I am sceptical of all polls. If we went on polling Jeremy Corbyn would be PM with a massive majority.

Questions like "do you support rights for transgender people", the assumption many would make is that they're asking about people who have gone through medical transition (ie transsexual), not self-ID or cross-dressers.