Article in Jewish News - Alan Johnson on sex based rights

[ArabellaScott]

Good, short, punchy summary of the issue.

www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-the-wilful-erasure-of-hard-fought-desperately-needed-sex-based-rights/

• prompted by this:

www.jewishnews.co.uk/appalled-and-disgusted-rabbi-accused-of-transphobia-over-eddie-izzard-tweet/

Rabbi Solomons is awesome!

There is a pattern, isn't there? Reasonable person says reasonable thing, taking care to express no hatred of anyone. Someone comes along and spouts nonsense about the "violence" that never happened. Reasonable person says more reasonable things to clarify their position and is roundly condemned by people who have only read as far as "transphobe" before their brains fell out.

Do you think it's a specific educational problem? Are there really so many people who don't know what violence is? Haven't they noticed the lack of stitches after someone doesn't validate them on Twitter?

Both well worth a read, thank you Arabella

Rabbi Solomons is awesome!

He really is! I've never read a less hateful or violent opinion, he seems motivated entirely by love of all people and a wish for balance and fairness.

Very good article covering a lot of ground.
Disappointed it's not the Labour Alan Johnson though!

Such a good article.

I thought this was going to be Alan Johnson, the former Labour minister and MP.

It's by Professor Alan Johnson, whoever that is.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Johnson_(political_theorist)

" • Alan is writing in a personal capacity. "

A bit of a sickener, to say the least, that they felt the need to add that comment at the end of the article!

Yes. And I doubt he would have been able to write this if he'd still been working at a university.

No, he'd likely have been boiled alive, or suffered some other sort of medieval torture had he been!

Even so, its out there!

Me too!

Never thought the day would come when I would feel more respect for and more comfortable with an Orthodox response to a social situation than a Reform response.

Do you think it's a specific educational problem? Are there really so many people who don't know what violence is? Haven't they noticed the lack of stitches after someone doesn't validate them on Twitter?

No, I think the Prof has summed it up very accurately: it is because of fear, including the fear of being called ‘shameful’ and ‘hateful’. After all, no one wants to be accused, as Suzanne Moore was at the Guardian, of being Goody Proctor dancing with the devil. Far safer to do the accusing.

Both great articles thanks Arabella. But very disappointed that the overwhelming response to Rabbi Solomon's first tweet was that EI is a woman. Wtf is it with these utterly insane accusations of violence and saying they feel unsafe when someone has made a compassionate point? Ludicrous

I don’t think that’s right Igmum, 753 responded “woman”, over 4000 responded “man”.

Bears I haven't seen the tweet but in the article it says:

If you think this is a man, Retweet. If you think it’s a woman, like,” Solomons’ tweet read, receiving 625 likes and 3,475 retweets as of Wednesday night.

Calm, coherent, well argued and irrefutable. That is, unless you believe that people born with penises should be indulged in every whim and those born without penises are some kind of subclass who pay equality of taxes but can fuck off in expecting equality of access with the penis people. In which case your male supremacism is very first century.

Sending that one to my MP.

@Igmum - I think you've got confused because they gave the results in the opposite order from the initial tweet.

If you think this is a man, Retweet. If you think it’s a woman, like,” Solomons’ tweet read, receiving 625 likes and 3,475 retweets as of Wednesday night

Retweet = think it's a man = 3475
Like = think it's a woman = 625

It’s defo the other way around!

Just checked the tweet, and it's now up to
Retweet = think it's a man = 4133
Like = think it's a woman = 754

There are also 255 quote tweets, which I guess are just comment.

So more than 5 times as many of the people who responded consider Eddie Izzard to be a man than a woman.

No he wouldn't have been boiled alive, because he's a man. It's women that are punished most for transgressing.

Funny how people can tell the difference between a man and a woman when they want to, and they don't even check their pronouns first.

Oh thank goodness - that's cheered me up! (I'm too tired to follow gender woo)

I know Rabbi Solomons and his wife, and they're great!

I'm Reform/Masorti but find myself agreeing more with the orthodox stance on this, which has been something of an eye-opener. My Masorti shul partnered last year with a Liberal rabbi to deliver a talk on drag to 11-year-olds, which caused a huge rift in the community. Several old stalwart members actually left.

He was espousing GC views, ergo = heretic. So it could go either way, to be fair.