Jeremy Clarkson wades into the discussion

[Igneococcus]

And seems pretty clueless:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-clarkson-our-culture-war-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-issues-around-trans-rights-jqsvg0kcx

I cant do a sharetoken (I'm not even in the same country at the moment as my laptop which can) but I didn't want this to be missed.

First JC column I've read in fifteen years.

Is all of The Times like this? It's the literary equivalent of porridge.

You know the pompous bore uni 'friend' of your DH who you have to navigate about one evening a year? This.

He misses the point. Adults can be transgender if they want to. People who are transgender are protected under the law.

But no one can change sex, a man is not a woman and vis versa.

A man identifying as a woman should not be in women’s sports, be a health care worker for vulnerable girls and women, be allowed in women’s prisons, refuges, rape crisis centres, sports, all women’s short lists, leading Girl Guides, head of a rape crisis centre.

Children must be left alone.

A large proportion of gay people are gaslighted into thinking they are trans - they may well have, in many instances, been influenced by homophobia.

he is so clueless he doesn’t realise he’s actually further throwing women under the bus

Disagree. The issue is that he doesn't care. Like so many men, if it doesn't affect him, it automatically doesn't matter.

Misogyny aside - he makes a few points I would agree with. Being trans is nothing intrinsically new but the enthusiastic adoption of gender identity with ever more exotic labels makes it hard to have a serious conversation about it. Plus there is a lunatic fringe.
Plus men like Clarkson are blissfully untouched by and unaware of the issues. As far as he can tell the only transwomen he has seen was in a shop - had zero effect on him.
What he doesn't talk about - because that's not his reasons for writing about it is why the women women (i.e the real women) are quite so cross.
He doesn't believe TWAW he's just not that interested in any of it. I suspect he's sympathetic to transpeople but just doesn't quite get why people are so worked up about it!

Jeremy would definitely notice the difference if they tried to get a bull pregnant on his farm.

Thanks for the share token @ohfibonacci.

Having read the article (which is more than some posters have) I don't think it's a big deal and certainly doesn't deserve vitriol.

Read past his style of writing and in fact he's taken quite a central, sympathetic, point of view, concluding that the small amount of people who are oldstyle transgender (he uses the term born in the wrong body, where we would probably describe such people as dysphoric) might be overlooked in the cacophony of raging voices about toilets, pronouns, whether JKR is transphobic etc.

Which isn't dissimilar to views that I've seen on here - sympathy for people who come under the original condition for which the term transgender used to apply.

It has a serious whiff of "will this do?" about it. I wish I could get away with such slapdash work.

I noticed he referred to Sam Smith as a he.

Non binary is clearly The Line.

This. I so agree.The final paragraph of JC's article is so right.

It's almost as though those who declare themselves non binary or all those other terms and labels, (which have nothing to do with being gay or trans) are just craving attention.
I have a friend with two adult children. One is actually transgender, not causing any trouble for anyone; just getting on happily with life.
The other is "non binary/polyamorous" and several other things. They campaign very vocally for the rights of everyone except those who live traditional ordinary heterosexual lives. They harangue anyone who doesn't use their preferred pronouns, including their own family members who find it difficult to remember when the person looks no different to how they have always looked in their gender at birth and have the same name as at birth. They get annoyed and shout a lot when people get their trans siblings pronouns right but not their own.

The bit I've read, his whole argument is based on "but what if someone really is born in the wrong body? "

Which I guess you could believe if you were religious to a God that was powerful enough to literally put souls in bodies but flawed enough that they increasingly got it wrong.

But I think he's being dishonest by claiming to believe it's a possibility
I simply don't believe he thinks that.

Perhaps he means "people who don't like their bodies". That would be more conducive to an honest conversation.

What if you could go back in time? What if you could shrink yourself to the size of pea, or make yourself invisible?

Read past his style of writing and in fact he's taken quite a central, sympathetic, point of view, concluding that the small amount of people who are oldstyle transgender (he uses the term born in the wrong body, where we would probably describe such people as dysphoric)

I don't think this kind of language (concept of wrong body/right body) helps though - it just muddies things. They are people who desperately wish to be the opposite sex, for all sorts of reasons. And they are apparently not what being trans is about, because that is about gender identity, and gender is entirely different from and separate to sex, we are told. So it becomes impossible to use the word "trans" to describe any group of people accurately.

I lived very near him for several years, moved in overlapping social circles.

he is just as obnoxious as you would expect.

Clarkson thinks anyone who isn't English was born in the wrong body , so it's not really much of a leap.

I agree with you. Also he will get to readers of a different sort and it’s all sunlight. JC is very smart and clever with his language.

Agree.

I didn’t think the article was that bad, I’m a times subscriber so read it earlier.
He doesn’t really say much actually, he agrees the movement has become ridiculous, he agrees women’s rights have been eroded, but he’s saying we may look back culturally as we did homosexuality (that I disagree with.
But I didn’t think it was particularly misogynistic.

Clarkson means Feminists are wrong. Why can't they be kinder and let people live their lives?

Thing is when he was trying to get his cows pregnant he still needed bull semen. Silly man.

HOW DID I KNOW!

Even before I clicked on the thread, that clarkson would not be supporting women.
Even though he positions himself on the right, against woke culture, how did I know he would not be standing with women?
Its almost as if trans rights is not actually progressive afterall and is in fact a mens rights movement.