Helen Joyce on Triggernometry

[beastlyslumber]

Space here if anyone wants to discuss. I've only seen the first couple of minutes and had to switch it off and look at some puppies, but will fortify myself and watch the rest tomorrow.

Instead of GC, why not 'biological realist?'

None of this is considered or talked about. In 20/30/40 yrs some of these people will be very elderly and at much higher risk of utis due to the surgeries. Osteoporosis due to the hormones. Skin infections due to aging scarring. Heart diseases, strokes.

I'm really not surprised this person doesn't want to get old in their body. (I also didn't realise Duchess was also a regretter.)

It raises all sorts of extra ethical concerns rarely discussed. More likely to desire assisted suicide.

Not only are they sterilising kids, they're potentially increasing the likelihood of assisted suicide due to both extra layers of physical complications when elderly (or younger) as well as simply being in the mindset that you can medically manipulate everything about your body, including death.

I think she's spot on about parents digging it. To admit you'd got it wrong would be devastating to your sense of self as a parent and to say you've contributed to such damage to your child ... it doesn't get more difficult. What a horrific situation to find yourself in.

There are clearly people digging in and refusing to engage with any concerns whether about child-safeguarding or women's rights and protections simply because they have a family member who is trans identifying. Here (in Ireland) there are questions about media avoidance of the issue which may be connected and the leader of the main opposition party has a trans identifying brother. Do I think she is capable of looking at this issue objectively or of centring the interests of the Irish people as a whole rather than her brother? Not a chance.

I wasn't aware of that. She seems deranged at times. She reminds me of Susie Green. Transing a gay son, then taking over Mermaids to justify what she's done.

She eventually flounced patti after making out that she was in discussions or some kind of correspondence with the NZ sports minister or someone in NZ sport and so had better things to do.

Not one shred of credible evidence (kept posting all the ones with poor methodology and questionable conclusions) and all the emotional manipulation in the world. Well, you can imagine how that went down on MN FWR ....

Yes, I've seen some of the letters and complaints she's written and she strikes me as a woman who has been used used to bludgeoning people into doing what she decides and can't cope with the fact that boundaries exist.

Thing is - I know they’re claiming it, but I don’t know whether they believe it or not.

I'm not in a position to judge that - and I shouldn’t be!

I agree completely, Sazza. There's no way to judge the sincerity of someone's belief.

I tend to use "men who say" rather than "claim" but I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.

This. Unequivocal language.

men who demand that we call them women

Yes, because that's the whole problem.

Transwomen used to be "men who pretend they're women". Why not, in a liberal society? Live and let live. (Even if it's offensive to women, people are allowed to be offensive - at least in their own time and spaces.)

But now they're "men who demand that we call them women". And they're getting legal support for that. That requires a totalitarian society.

The meaning has changed fundamentally and radically. And I don't think acceptance has fundamentally changed - we're just responding more negatively to the much more unreasonable demand.

Maybe there have been other meaning shifts internally - stuff like shifting from dysphoria to gendered souls or whatever - but they're not really relevant from the relationship to others, which is what we care about for a legal framework. The change that matters is the above. Previously all we had to do was tolerate them pretending - "transphobia" was treating men dressed as women badly. Now we have to actually break all of society's protections for women - "transphobia" is letting women have their own sports or prisons.

I still like "men who think they're women." Obviously we don't know what those men are thinking, so the term is generous at the same time as being realistic.

"Men who say they're women" is more accurate, but leaves one open to the idea that there are also men who actually are women. I'm thinking about the kind of people I might discuss this with. "Men who think they're women" covers all the potential groups, for me.

Of course different terms can be used in different contexts. I'm refusing to use transwomen now though. It's like "cis" - just using the term in itself implies a level of ideological agreement.

sazzasez, yes absolutely, any policy needs to take into account that it's well nigh impossible to distinguish between claimers who are lying and claimers who are true believers. The existing GRC process at least tried by involving diagnosis in the process, but people can lie to doctors too. Law can only really judge on people's actions. So if someone claims to believe they're a woman but goes round with a beard and has all their mail addressed to Mr, one might have reason to doubt that they believe it. If they detransition the moment they're released from jail there's good odds they were lying but it can't be proved.

I'm listening to the back episodes of Triggernometry now.

Just listened to a Posie Parker one an the Olli London one. So many clear and articulate points made.

SUCH a brilliant interview. Maybe my favourite Triggernometry interview ever. She's so well informed, so articulate, so engaging and explains complex information so clearly. And comes across as an entirely sane, 'normal', relatable person. Wonderful

@thirdfiddle one of the many poorly thought-out points in the Scottish GRR Bill is that it risks criminalising detransitioners.

As for beards, that bloke who Stonewall had telling everyone he’s a lesbian has a beard. But we are meant to accept him, “widening the bandwidth of what it means to be a woman” - which is the wrong bandwidth for him.