Inside the Guardian’s civil war over trans coverage - an american viewpoint

[IwantToRetire]

In early March, an internal memo announced a new working group on “equality and equity between women and men” that would “encourage open and respectful dialogue between those with differing beliefs and experiences.” The Guardian will hold an event on April 19 titled “untangling sex and gender.”

(much of the rest of it is a rehash of various articles already published but with a few extra titbits like the one above)

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/02/2023/inside-the-guardians-civil-war-over-trans-coverage

Also in a slightly more robust style is an article by Julie Burchill The Guardian has wrecked itself https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-guardian-has-wrecked-itself/

Or will they keep telling the great unwashed how they should feel about everything from breakfast to Brexit while the paper’s sales dwindle and their heads disappear further up their fundaments?

I certainly shan’t be observing any inter-hack loyalty while they make fools of themselves, as Owen Jones and his colleagues have thrown words like ‘fascist’ and ‘white supremacist’ at this magazine’s writers for too long. That The Spectator was one of the few publications of the time to stand against the slave trade while the Guardian filled its coffers from profits from that heinous trade is almost too poignant. Wrong side of history, anyone?

(This article can be read via the archive.ph/ web site by pasteing in the Spectator link)

Well these articles seemed to have started a trend. Now there is one in the Times.

Not much new in it, although their slant is as much about the Guardian's historical link to slavery.

Former Guardian journalists say that admitting to historical ties to slavery was a much simpler issue for the paper to take a firm stance on. “The Guardian wants to be on the right side of history so it was happy to deal with something that happened 200 years ago because it knows where it stands. But it doesn’t with the trans issue,” one said, likening the “paralysis” to that gripping the Labour Party. “Both organisations pride themselves on being progressive so they haven’t known how to tackle this issue. They don’t want to be seen as either anti-women or anti-trans. The problem is that it fosters unhappiness within the ranks. With no strong bulwark against the ideological madness, you end up with the lunatics running the asylum.”

Viner’s stance has been contrasted with that taken by The New York Times, which publicly defended its commitment to interrogating the debate in the face of two open letters from staff criticising it for “bigotry and pseudoscience”. One staff member said: “The Guardian ties itself up in knots, trying to be politically correct and often unsure which way to go; failing to please anybody and annoying everybody.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inside-the-guardian-civil-war-newspaper-politically-correct-2023-jhgpq7bxp

Full article also available by going to https://archive.ph and pasting in the Times link above.

Absolutely true and the 'only talking about things like nipple creams' comment made me crack up!

The more I looked at the situations, the less convinced I became that the infighting on the British left can transfer to the more polarized, post-Trump American landscape... Some of the loudest Trump supporters in Republican politics and conservative media are also the most vocal in their derision of trans people. Those aren’t comfortable bedfellows for American liberals, even ones who may share some of [Hadley] Freeman’s reservations about trans rights. And so America’s polarization may keep some of the infighting at The [New York] Times and other American institutions inside the tent, as Viner tried and failed to do at The Guardian.

Well, it’s progress for an American writer to acknowledge that many GC feminists are lefties. And that “shut up or get Trump” analysis is certainly why the NYT has sat on this for so long.

But I’m not sure that still holds. This logic breaks down when people start thinking about the issue in its own terms rather than through tribal loyalties. The more people hear about and understand this issue, the more concerned they are about losing female-only spaces. There is no way to stop predators taking advantage of self-ID, and although young libfems don’t like to think about this, having certain spaces be single sex is still essential for women and girls to participate safely and fairly in society.

As the US public start to get to grips with this, some at the NYT are going to realize the analysis may actually go the other way, especially in swing states: speak up or get Trump.

Re ‘you’re saying all TW are predators’. No, nobody on here is saying that. That would be stupid and untrue. MN FWR specifically aspires to reality-based discussions.

And on that point obviously not all TWALT but IIRC freedom of information releases show that TW are highly over-represented in the UK’s sex offenders prison population, compared to ‘cis men’. That fits when for some TW, the idea of themselves ‘as a woman’ is a sexual fetish. So much so predictable and shown by years of evidence, in the relationship of paraphilias to sexually motivated actual crime against women.

However, this is also why gender identity based prison housing allocation for men in women’s single sex prisons is completely unacceptable. Regardless of how the men ‘gender identify’. Whether they’ve committed a crime against women and girls or a different crime.

On a political level it’s also why Stonewall’s ‘no debate’ and ‘acceptance without exception’ mantras have been so deliberately dangerous and rights-eroding for women and children and in a terrible bitter irony very destructive and harmful for lesbians and gay men. Yet this attitude still survives as the last resort of misogynists who want women to shut up and be kind. Even when the problems with this politics have been factually pointed out.

Since some men in any category of men are dangerous to women and children, then no, you don’t want to be ‘accepting’ them. You want to strengthen safeguarding to deter the ones who want to get access to women and children in spaces where they are particularly vulnerable , however they gender identify.

Nobody should be required to validate anyone else at the cost of their own safety, privacy or dignity, which is exactly what happens when women are forced to accept men into women’s single sex spaces. So we say No. Saying no should be enough. For decent people, it would be enough.

So at this stage in this over a decade long culture war, anyone who has not been living under a rock but is still on the women-hating and homophobic, anti safeguarding and anti-reality side of the argument is really marking themselves out.

Women who are gender-critical are not marking themselves out as ‘man-haters’ btw but as reality-based risk assessors, which is what women have to do all the time, unfortunately..

Great post DrHf