Student Lucy responds to James Kirkup

[WandaWomblesaurus]

www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-should-my-student-paper-report-on-an-anti-trans-documentary/

So all I can basically get from this is that she thinks it's hate speech.

My response to her is that I think she's an idiot.

Well, quite. I mean, that's an awful lot of journalism just stuffed then.

I suspect that Lucy is going to cringe herself inside out about this at some point.

Lucy sounds like a fool, and life is too short.

But to argue that the difference between the two sexes is based solely on biology

WTF else is there?

I'd say that Lucy clings to the same woolly Indivisible Bundle of Good Beliefs That Good People Must Subscribe To And Affirm [Insert Multiple Mutually-Contradictory Contortions] that the Righteous use as their comfort blankie, to reassure themselves that they are indeed Good People. The next "logical" step is that any deviation or separation from the Bundle is by definition Bad, and therefore signifies Bad People [Insert Further Contortions]. And <ominous tone> You Wouldn't Want To Be Bad, Would You?

She was universally panned BTL at the Spectator. Must be embarrassing for whoever's relative she is.

She's written it incredibly poorly, so this is just a guess, but perhaps she means the difference of one sex class having privilege and the other not having that privilege. Ie men generally being dominant.

That is not caused by me being female, but by the misogynistic way females are treated, socialised, expected to behave, etc. It's a cultural difference, one we might call gender (not gender identity) and exists only because there are biological differences between the sexes.

Exactly. It makes no sense. The word "sex" itself refers to biology: the reason there are two sexes, rather than just one, is because males are biologically different from females. This is true throughout the animal kingdom.

It's possible, as LaughingPriest says that she means "the difference of one sex class having privilege and the other not having that privilege."

If she does mean that, however, that would make her a gender-critical feminist, which she clearly isn't.

But would her view of sex class privilege be that although there's male and female, the privilege there is broadly equal compared to the massive gulf between cis and trans?

After all, journalists shouldn’t be obliged to report on things that might cause harm to others."

She really has no respect for the amazing things good journalists do and the good they have done for societies all around the world.

The best journalists hold people and regimes and oppressive organisations and systems to account. Sometimes what they report results in outcomes no one would want. But if they don't report, terrible things go unseen.

Should journalists not have reported on, say, what's going on in Russia or Syria in case that causes knock-on retributive harm to someone somewhere? What can journalists safely report on that can be guaranteed not to cause harm to others? Village fetes, dog shows, the royal family, pop stars, celebrities? Does this explain the parlous current state of journalism, with so many young journalists entering the field in order to write about the nice things they approve of and which fit their world view?

She insults all the brave journalists who have reported on atrocities, bad legislation and so on. I think of drug barons (Veronica Guerin) and political corruption (Jamal Khashoggi, Daphne Caruana Galizia).

Here's the Press Gazette link that will tell you something about the countries where journalists are detained for writing about things that may do others harm: others like their corrupt leaders.

pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/rsf-journalists-jailed-killed-2022/

533 journalists jailed and killed this year for revealing things that people in power didn't want to be known. I really despair for this current generation. What happened to them.

Plus 'some of my social circle/colleagues/family are trans and I am a loving and supportive friend'.

Plus 'they wouldn't be angry if it wasn't justified, so the fact that they're angry at opinions that don't agree with theirs must mean that those opinions are wrong and I don't want to be wrong'.

I can imagine the little jig James Kirkup did after reading Lucy's thoughtful, considered response to him. She got the chance of a huge break — and she pissed on her chips.

Look at child soldiers everywhere. The technique of moulding young people to a particular way of thinking and acting, together with the over riding of the appropriate learning process of empathy, conscience, is well understood. Wasn't it the Jesuits who said "give me the boy at 7 and I will give you the man" or words to that effect. Control the formative years. It is sinister.

Can I recommend the Beano?

'some of my social circle/colleagues/family are trans and I am a loving and supportive friend'.

There's never any self awareness of what a naive and privileged thing this is to say.

They have no one in their social circle, colleagues or family who is of a faith or culture that would raise their awareness of the issues there for women. No one one who is disabled or traumatised. No one who they've heard talk about their CSA, DA, DV and supported through a life or death run to a refuge, or handled an abusive ex. No one older than them with wider life experience. No one outside of the affluence and education and class that shelters from the realities of women and children's lives.

They are no loving and supportive friend to women, or anyone at all beyond their mates. It's as blindly snobbish as Hyacinth Bucket or Margot Ledbetter. There's 'them' and there's 'us'.

It's like all the decades between the 50s and now just never happened for these young liberals. Who expect that their privilege, education and political piety makes them more worthy and more important and that their voices and interests should rightly mean they are of the class that control the plebs.

I followed the link, desperately hoping she is not a trainee journalist. Her belief that journalists shouldn’t be obliged to report on things that might cause harm to others is pretty much the opposite of the basic principles of journalism. That's not just ignorance, it's opposition to the whole point of a free press.

But oh god, no -- she is actually the editor of her student newspaper. That is tragic.

Well put, Patti, and thanks for the link. It really distresses me that people of Lucy's calibre are well placed, through their contacts, to take influential jobs. Jobs that should be done by journalists who are passionate about the truth, about finding facts and reporting events that someone with some kind of power wants covered up.

The article :
archive.ph/iybc3

It's embarrassingly poor. I don't think I could have got away with such spurious arguments at A level, let alone at Uni. There's no point in engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

How she gets from 'trans is a belief system' to 'trans people are undeserving of rights' in the documentary is beyond me. Either very poor critical reasoning, or very flawed comprehension skills.

A huge fail and complete own goal.

I just couldn’t believe she quoted Judith Butler as a serious source of anything and didn’t give any thought or room to the very strong arguments that refute Butler. She talks about her with such reverence, but as far as justification for her ideology goes, that’s all she has.

While women on the side of material reality have science, and an enormous amount of concrete evidence of how sex differences play out in society, especially in regard to male intimidation, sexual assault and violence.

Lucy doesn’t seem to appreciate that she is fronting for men’s sexual “rights” ultimately justifying putting rapists and murderers in women’s prisons. And what about all the issues that are unique to women’s bodies and our health? By refusing debate, she isn’t allowing students to hear, especially the voices of older women in other generations. The hubris due to the narrow education of Gen Z is on full display here.

I shouldn't, because it's intrusive, but I do wonder which of the non-figments Lucy has.

Platforming harmful rhetoric is not balanced journalism. Equally, it is not ‘bad journalism’ to recognise the moral implications of our actions as reporters and the responsibilities that we therefore must undertake.

This from the younger generation really bothers me. We have not taught them that you can only understand an issue if you "walk a mile in another's shoes". That where there is conflict you HAVE to see all the sides that you can. That if you don't do this, you are not a journalist but a peddler of propaganda. Jeepers Lucy, look for the whole of the moon love. This is embarrassingly naive and puerile, you can do better. Also look at the coherence on an argument, tell us what gender is. Your words "a fluid and culturally inscribed construct" are just salad. Write something with a bit gravitas why don't you.

When I read the Beano there was an awful lot of violence, hurtful speech and dangerous behaviour in it! I am not sure Lucy could cope.

Whenever I hear obfuscation around the word sex, I want to ask “how do you apply that thinking to cannabis?” Cannabis is a dioecious plant - plants have different sexes. Whatever definition she comes up with for sex must also apply to cannabis plants (and peacocks, and pigs, and apple trees, and chickens)

"Freedom of expression is not freedom from accountability." says Lucy.
Apparently the trans side of the debate now realise that cancel culture is no longer flying with the general population so they are gradually morphing it into the catch-all concept of accountability.

Lucy it's the same thing. If it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck.

Universities are supposed to teach critical thinking. The problem is that instead of teaching students how to think they are teaching them what to think.