Helen Joyce speaking to Andrew Doyle about Cambridge Uni, social contagion and phobia indoctrination

[MoirasSaggyBundles]

From this evening's Free Speech Nation, another great interview with Helen and Andrew. They are just both so sane and sensible - I am so grateful we have the grown ups on our side. And Helen's determined not to give up!

Keep the grown ups in the room!

I really like Helen Joyce. She's another woman who can think on her feet and because she's articulate, get her points across in double quick time.

Plus, she's just so normal.

Thanks for the link.

she's just so normal

Isn't she?!

Did you see her interview with Winston Marshall* for the Spectator? It's like a primer for anyone wanting to get to grips with the whole issue.

Reading with intrigue

Thanks, Moira, I'll look at that later

Love the user name, OP… 😂🤣

I enjoyed that. I admired HJ when she was at the economist and I admire her even more now

Thank you.

Legal disclaimer: My user name is an act of fiction, and any resemblance to any person or persons in real life is purely coincidental.

😜

I love Helen Joyce. She's rational, funny and very clever. Wonderful woman.

Thanks Saggy. What a good listen.

Just coming back to say I've listened to it. Thank you. She is very articulate.

I was nodding along to all of it. It was like a visual representation of the last five years of FWR!

I love them both. Always a joy and a breath of fresh air when I hear them speak on this issue....the sense of relief knowing that I'm not the one going mad.

But like Helen, I really do not or cannot understand how supposedly clever and the brightest of the bright people can believe the gender BS. Maybe human intellect and rationality and logic only explains a small part of our belief systems and behaviours, the rest are emotions and subconscious.

I saw a part of that interview in which she was expressing bafflement about an academic believing such nonsense. She comes across as more persuasive when she is explaining and arguing a case rather than appearing narked and crabby about an individual, which I felt was happening a bit here.

Your last sentence is a very interesting observation in this context but more widely also.

I think when she first appeared in GC commentary, she came across as a bit of an anthropologist - as if she was studying the interactions from both sides with a sense of detached bemusement. I think it is more personal for her now, especially after the Cambridge incident. On the whole, she still comes across as a steady ship sailing though a shit storm. As does Maya. I don't know how they do it after all the abuse and threats - ovaries of steel!

Logic is always limited. You can logically get to any conclusion so long as you begin with the right assumptions.

And we all start from assumptions. Most people only have a vague idea what their most foundational assumptions are.

Yes logic is always limited. It is limited by what info you have, the assumptions, the facts (if you want to call these 'assumptions'), the fundamental rules of science. That doesn't mean that emotions and irrationality should rule though, or maybe these days reality is proving that that is indeed the case ....and we should just forget that Enlightenment ever happened, or the value of it.

@Abitofalark It's the bit where she says 'how do you get through to their thick skulls...', but these are evidently not thick people, drunk on their performative self righteousness and power maybe, these are meant to be the people with the greatest thinking skills...or maybe that's why they are so adept at the mental gymnastics required to make themselves believe such BS, but I think they can't really believe it or rationalise it in their mind, because these people almost always decline any debates and cannot articulate their case.

I'd forgotten the actual words she used and that she'd actually said that but I noted and remembered how she looked and sounded and it gave a different impression of her. It seems to bear out the saying that x per cent of communication isn't about the words but how you come across.

Good point about clever people and mental gymnastics but they wouldn't regard it as gymnastics as it makes perfect sense to them; and it makes sense in terms of underlying beliefs such as pervasive notions of rights, attitudes to do with minorities and values of being - agh...I don't want to use the weasel word - let's say nice, open minded etc. There are prevailing influences all around us and probably most of us are primarily accepting and trusting or passive about what's going on. Spirited women, though, are alive and kicking!

I love love LOVE Helen Joyce. She's utterly wonderful: clever, funny, rational, compassionate, sharp, quick, confident, considered and a brilliant communicator. She's become a real inspiration to me and I hope I can be a little bit like Helen when I grow up (I'm 43).

www.varsity.co.uk/comment/24549 This just popped up on my feed...article about why Helen Joyce needs to be heard from somebody who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

The author of that article is a very brave young woman. I wonder if her message will get through.

As in, through to the students...

No, but you need to know your assumptions or it's very easy to be all loosey goosey with your logic, and to do so without realize it.

Ideas like "basic laws of science" are part of our assumptions, and it's surprising how many people have only a vague sense of what they mean by them, about how reason works, about what counts as a fact.

A large part of the time people have an intuition about what the correct conclusion is, and they unconsciously construct an argument from a set of assumptions that will lead to that conclusion. That happens pretty easily because they don't have a strong sense of what the assumptions are and how they play out. So no alarm bells go off that they are being inconsistent or there is some idea that may not be well founded.