Continuously willing to discuss in good faith: part 3

[BonfireLady]

Continuation of thread: part 3. Hope those tagged below don't mind.

@catiette and @arabellascott, you both mentioned possibly starting a continuation of the thread so please forgive my keenness! I couldn't see anything when I started writing this so I thought I'd kick it off.

I watched the video that @spookyfbi shared, then read the transcript excerpts (thank you @helleofabore) and comments.

Long post alert! But I wanted to share my thoughts in full. Although I feel very embarrassed sharing this on an FWR board (I am fully prepared to get shot! 😂), I want to do so because I think it helps illustrate how an opinion can be formed. In order to explain myself, I'm going to frame it with some excuses context:

As I said in the previous thread, my daughter had told me she thought she was transgender and asked her dad and me for puberty blockers so that she could explore everything. To support her, I unturned every single stone I could find on the subject of gender identity in autistic girls (there's not a lot of info so I had to piece it together). By now, I had read on the NHS website that the effects of puberty blockers and brain development were unknown so that was a hard no. We weren't going to let her do that to her body but we were still open minded that one day she may be our son and we knew we would love her just the same.

I immersed myself in everything I could find relating to gender identity. Science papers, news articles, Benjamin Boyce detransitioner interviews, a therapy book on gender dysphoria etc etc. I also spoke with people from the LGBT+ community so that I could get an all round view. I've said on previous posts that I still value these conversations.

I didn't come here as it was nowhere near my radar. I also didn't read the Daily Mail or Telegraph as I had been brought up on the Guardian and frankly, they were evil publications in my head. And as for Glinner...... No way. I'm not on Twitter but I'd seen some copies of his Tweets in the Guardian and Independent and I didn't want that kind of input. I couldn't imagine how anyone like him could help me find information that could help my daughter. I just thought he was a nasty rude man who enjoyed taking the piss out of marginalised people.

(Suffice to say I have since I overturned everything I've just said in the last paragraph 🤦‍♀️).

Even though I had done soooooooooooooooo much research in to autism and gender identity in children, it never occurred to me that JKR's infamous Wombund Tweet had any connection to my daughter's situation. She just sounded a bit ranty to me and I couldn't see what was so important about declaring yourself to be a woman. I was aware that people were calling her transphobic but that made me even more certain that she was just a nutjob (sorry JKR 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️) because gender identity (as I saw it from my research) had nothing to do with her status as being a woman. I thought "of course you are. And?" and moved on. I eventually read her essays, because it kept coming up in the press and I concluded that she had written nothing transphobic (in fact she said she stood by transgender people so I was pretty baffled as to why people were so angry) and so I ignored her again.

Then... along came Isla Bryson and the Nicola Sturgeon. I slowly started joining the dots and lurking on here to inform myself. By now I was already reading the Daily Mail when it had articles about gender identity and children but still no Glinner. I felt that he was a massive step too far. I balanced out my guilt at reading the Mail by also reading Pink News. I was still very targeted in what I read about. If it didn't help me to directly help my daughter, I skipped past it.

So what has this got to do with the Mica video from the end of the last thread? I'm sad to say that there is a time when I would have believed pretty much all of it if it hadn't been for my shift in focus thanks to Isla Bryson, Nicola Sturgeon and (retrospectively) JKR.

In fact, I'll go further. I would have been really hooked from the start of the video because I find the suffragettes fascinating. I know a fair bit about the story and I always make sure I vote because of what they did to secure that right. I didn't know anything about Sylvia Pankhurst though, so that bit was so interesting. By this point in the video I would have been hungry for more. I know we've come a long way in equality of the sexes but we're not there yet. I would have seen it as a really interesting immersion in to lots of facts about what I could be a part of to change the world for the good of women. I'm not stupid. I have good critical thinking skills (if I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to support my daughter as I have done) but it would have appealed to the militant side of me. I'd have probably skipped or filtered out the weird bits in the middle with the guest (?) speaker (Caelen?) as I found them difficult to follow. But I'd have tuned back in again for all the bits about why today's feminists were the equivalent of the suffragettes in (how it is described as) their exclusion of everyone who didn't meet their standards of a "real woman". I would have assumed everyone on this board and everyone at the LWS events were just bigoted women who couldn't stop talking about the word woman. I'd have conceded that JKR did have a good point that "people who menstruate" sounded wrong, I would have seen it as an odd obsession to be talking about women's rights and the "erasure of the word woman". Sorry
everyone 😬😬😬 Obviously I never did assume that because I came here first, just to be clear!! 😬😬😬😬
I'm just imagining what could have been, if I saw this video at a different stage in my exploration of gender identity. I think I'd have been as disinterested in all the things on this board as I was about JKR's Tweet: just a passing nod while I got on with my life. Worse than that, there's probably a chance that I'd have just found everyone very ranty. I'm not sure if I'd have tried to join in or just dismissed anything you were all talking about. I have no idea because I was so disinterested in the subject of women's rights (I thought we had our rights so all was good) that I'd have filtered out anything important that was being said.

I'm not influenced by online influencers. I make my own mind up. But there's a good chance that the suffragette bit combined with the modern fight for women's rights bit would have helped me form exactly the type of opinion that the video was created for.

Interestingly, as far as the video goes, the bit about the "sterilisation of kids" was such a tiny throwaway comment that it may as well not have been there. If I didn't know better (thanks to my obsessive research in this area I know lots on this subject!!) I'd have assumed it was a conspiracy theory, rather than the sad medical scandal that I believe is currently unfolding in most western countries.

In other words, I'd have been the perfect candidate for being convinced that the women on this board were bigots. Sorry again to all. Obviously I don't think that now at all!

Also, a final sorry goes to Glinner. I eventually started reading his substack when a friend (at the time the only GC person I knew, in real life or online) sent me a 3 part story that had been published by Glinner which was written by a mum who helped her gender incongruous daughter navigate everything. I still think he's blunt in his style but I also think what he's doing to help raise awareness is amazing.

Sorry for the length of post.

Being gender critical stems from critical thinking as far as I'm concerned.

That's why I don't mind it.

I'm not being critical I'm thinking critically.

This

Shades of grey.

Something that people who are autistic struggle with.

Oh wait. What did you say?

Autism makes people seek to put everything into black and white categories to help them process the world...

I would say the view that trans rights activists think gender stereotypes are important is a misconception as well. Gender identity may not be well explained but every text I’ve seen that does try to explain it makes it clear that it’s separate from gender stereotypes

There has never yet been a single, coherent, logical definition of 'gender identity' because they purposely can't define it so they can constantly shift the goalposts.
It's made up batshit and completely built on sexist stereotypes and gender roles.

'Feelings' are irrelevant. They don't change anyone's sex.
If sex and gender are separate and people are transGENDER, why do we have to pretend they are the opposite sex? Or give them access to things reserved for the opposite sex because of their chosen 'gender expression'?

I very well remember that Mermaids had been using 'born in the wrong body' for years, and then suddenly there was a swerve to say they'd never actually meant this. They claimed they were just using it as a simplified way of explaining.

Only never offered a clearer, more detailed way of explaining. I don't think there is one.

Aye, it's more how it's now being used, in a dehumanising manner, and also in bad faith, to try and say that any random arsehole who understands there are only two sexes is 'gender critical', and false-team feminists with various random people on Twitter, for example.

In the real world, just about everyone knows there are only two sexes and sex is immutable. Knowing these basic facts doesn't make anyone 'gender critical', it just means they have a basic grasp of everyday knowledge.

Yes, it's a mistake to assume that because someone claims there is such a thing as x, and they have experienced it, that x necessarily exists.

I'm just trying to describe the thought process that can happen when someone is confronted by a person saying 'this x is deeply important to me'.

I think the fact that most people probably have no such thing as a 'gender identity' can actually encourage them to believe that those claiming not only that they do have one but that it's deeply meaningful to them have specialist knowledge that the person with no 'gender identity' is literally incapable of understanding.

So someone can say 'I don't know what this x thing is, but I know that some people have it and it matters to them'.

I hope that's making sense!

(I'm also not saying that x/gender identity 'doesn't exist' necessarily, I'm just talking about the mechanism for how we assess the qualifications of self proclaimed 'experts'.)

There was a great article somewhere on how we necessarily do outsource most of our knowledge/beliefs/ideas, because nobody possibly CAN have enough specialist knowledge to assess the merits of all the arguments on all the things.

I think that that's a great way to put it

I've just finished reading from start to end in more or less one go, and think I've found this the most fascinating part of the three threads so far - especially some really thought-provoking ideas on what the elusive concept of gender identity is. @Nellodee's magic feather analogy really struck me as a clear explanation for some (many?) cases, and also the bandwagon effect we feel we're seeing in young people. The Freudian and Jungian analyses add complementary lenses (I'd come across anima and animus before at some point, but had to look them up again). And then, of course, there's the commercialisation of gendered difference subsequently explored.

I think @nepeta's post at 1716 is a really powerful explanation of the consequences of the loss of the word "woman". I really enjoyed watching the coronation today. But even then, I couldn't help momentarily bristling in response to commentators' occasional references to this being "the first time a woman has..." or the aspects of the ceremony featuring an unusual number of "women". I used to relish such moments, but now that I know that the BBC would as readily use the same term for a man purely on his say-so, they've lost their uplifting impact, drawing my attention less to progress made than to the dangers we face when even our "politically neutral" national broadcaster has unquestioningly adopted the redefinition of half the population, choosing to model as fundamentally progressive a controversial value system that, in fact, elevates one group's concerns above those of another.

I think the explorations of failures in education early on are really interesting in the light of this. These conversations have solidified my belief that we're doing a real injustice to girls - and boys - in not teaching the history of feminism (or the movement towards so-called equality of the sexes, if you don't want to "politicise" it - but that caveat in itself reflects the anti-feminist backlash we're seeing and the importance of language when, in truth, despite huge strides, to my mind full equality remains a distant dream). Knowing the battles we still have to fight and win are foundational to making our concerns about the meaning of "gender identity" and "woman" above understood. I'm also beginning to think, from reading today, that statistics should be given more importance in schools - and why isn't logic taught formally any more? It used to sit at the heart of a traditional curriculum, and seems more important than ever in the context of the egocentrically-driven informational overload of the internet age.

I think learning how to accommodate the fact that some people believe in this is possible but it's going to take a lot of effort to separate church and state as it were. A recognition in law that belief about your gender identity and how you would like to define or describe it today is personal and nebulous and that sex is a different thing.

Thanks I found that really interesting

We have that now, single st'sex spaces are written into the equalities act. But it's not good enough as they are pushing and pushing for the law to change. Everything from wanting no gate keeping on gender change, to misrepresenting the law about sex segregated toilets and spaces.

You can't square the circle. Either you have to put into law that everything is unisex and gender identity (a feeling we can't define or prove exists) which is what stonewall mermaids and so forth are campaign for

Or you want what we have now companies just need to understand sex segregation is fine in law and wanted by the majority.

All these campaines have been to try and keep the law as it is.

In what circumstances is information on gender identity ever going to be needed?

It's needed as much as information on someone's religious belief is. Because that's what it is, a personal belief.

I completely agree in my point of view gender identity wouldn't/ shouldn't be tracked by the state at all.

At some point people in power are going to need to start saying no

But a progressive company / public building could put on third spaces as an extra akin to how some places have a prayer room.

Is this time to remention the Swimming Pools in London.

So there were 3 pools.

One for men
One mixed
One for women.

Queer Theory comes along and men who say they are women want to access the women's pool.

A consultation goes out and the result is:

One for men
One Mixed
One for women...and anyone else who says they are a woman.

The gents from Man Friday popped in one Friday to the men's pool as they identified as men on Fridays...and the men called the police.

They were removed.

So we have:
One for men
Two mixed sex
Zero for women.

When they 'gender neutral' everything they don't 'gender neutral' the mens' they 'gender neutral' the womens'.

This is a prime example of how Third Spaces will work. They won't! They don't want Third Spaces. They want our spaces.

I'm catching up on all of the comments and have pulled out some themes. I'm sure many of these themes have been discussed many times over many years on this board. But I also think, from reading various comments, that everyone who is contributing to this and its two predecessor threads is a part of a slightly different lens being applied to the "same thing we've always been saying".

To that end, I'm going to keep working through the comments before I post a navigational "round up" so far that can be used by anyone who may need a sanity-saving short cut at some point. The last two threads each had 1000 posts!

I won't get time to pick this up again until later today, between our local coronation celebrations and (probably but not necessarily) watching the concert on TV later. Love or hate the monarchy, it's pretty historically significant and I'm a big fan of social history. (Plus I do love all things royal. Don't shoot me 😂)

Before I go, a couple of things. Apologies that it's just a broadcast again. I'm really reflecting on everything I've read so far but also wanted to share this.

1. My daughter's gender identity exploration has not reached a "destination", nor do I expect or need it to any time soon. When she and I spoke about it recently (I said on thread 2 that I'm led by her... she never brings it up), instigated by me from the confidence I'm getting from this series of threads and the steel-manning one, she told me that she'll still say "I don't know" when someone asks her what her pronouns are. She'll inevitably be asked lots. It is inevitable in many of the every day interactions that she has now that she is emerging from her intense mental health crisis, because they hear her preferred name, see her short hair and want to be polite. I told her that "I don't know" still makes perfect sense to me as an answer. She also believes that trans women are women. I said lots of people do too but because I don't have a belief in gender identity, I believe that trans women are men who identify as women. I made it clear to her that I respected her views as well.
   Our personal journey is still unfolding and I don't want it to dominate this thread. There is a lot more still happening in relation to her gender identity exploration, albeit not always directly with my daughter. To this end, I'm going to set up a separate thread when I get chance so that our own story isn't disproportionately impacting this thread.

2. A surprising parallel from an unexpected place....
   My neuro typical daughter (other daughter) and I went in to London yesterday after the coronation. After wandering around the various royal sights, we went to the theatre to watch To Kill a Mockingbird. Not only was I struck by how amazingly well it was done, I also thought about the parallels to what is happening in the polarisation of Gender identity discussion in the western world.

Spoiler alert!! (although if you haven't read TKAM, you've had a few chances since 1960 😬😂).

It's not always clear who is right and who is wrong if you haven't spent time looking in to all of the nuances of a situation. I can't think of many times when people would imagine a judge, a sheriff and a lawyer colluding to cover up the murder of a man would be considered "right". I also can't imagine many people come away from reading that book, or watching that play, thinking that this group of people were in the wrong. The story is full of lots of examples of people who form opinions based on a few facts and bake in their own understanding of those facts through the lens of their own beliefs. It also shows a consequence of the application of law (the guilt or innocence of Tom Robinson in this instance) being based on the outcome of that understanding.

Ps just to clarify on point 1. She says she is female. She answers "I don't know" when she is asked about her pronouns. To me, this speaks to her black and white understanding of the world and that she finds this question very confusing. Paraphrased it is "are you happy with being a girl or are you thinking about being something else?". She is baffled as to why people keep needing to ask her this. In her black and white thinking, she is a female and she has chosen a preferred name that she likes.

So by our journey not being over, I mean that there are many outside influences still at play. I am working to remove as many as I can without needing to tell my daughter what her answer should be. However, I will not stand by and let her make a decision about her body, in her early teenage years, that will impact the rest of her life.

More on this in my follow-on separate thread. I just wanted to clear up any potential ambiguity.

This one caught my eye just after I posted my last update...

I was going to wait but thought I'd chip in now if that's OK.

This all makes for sobering reading and makes a lot of sense... However, could there be different types of "they"?

This is a prime example of how Third Spaces will work. They won't! They don't want Third Spaces. They want our spaces.

On the previous thread, a petition for a third spaces provision was shared that had been created by a transwoman. She was advocating for third spaces. From the date of the petition it looks like it ground to a halt and I'm aware that the transwoman who raised it has be subject to discrimination herself. But perhaps it can be dusted off again now that there is more awareness about the conflict that has been highlighted by the Man Friday ladies and other more recent information hitting the press?
I'd certainly back it. I don't think there is a perfect answer that will suit everyone but the petition is to get a debate going. With changes possible in the Equality Act (I do hope so), it's an even better opportunity for this to do the rounds again.

@AlisonDonut
Is this time to remention the Swimming Pools in London.

So there were 3 pools.

One for men
One mixed
One for women.

Queer Theory comes along and men who say they are women want to access the women's pool.

A consultation goes out and the result is:

One for men
One Mixed
One for women...and anyone else who says they are a woman.

The gents from Man Friday popped in one Friday to the men's pool as they identified as men on Fridays...and the men called the police.

They were removed.

So we have:
One for men
Two mixed sex
Zero for women.

When they 'gender neutral' everything they don't 'gender neutral' the mens' they 'gender neutral' the womens'.

This is a prime example of how Third Spaces will work. They won't! They don't want Third Spaces. They want our spaces.

To quote Rage against the machine "your anger is a gift" @AlisonDonut I do not disagree or think it unjustified.

I remain absolutely convinced that we have to have biology words in order to make these really important points. Just yesterday I saw the incomparable India Willoughby on twitter declaring that she had a certificate that proved she was a biological female.

@BonfireLady, it sounds as though you've had a very busy weekend! Mine's been a bit hectic, too, but managed to include watching the coronation. I'm so jealous you were in London for it!

The details you've shared about your daughter's journey, and the ways in which you've supported her through it, have been very moving. She's very lucky indeed to have someone who's taking such care to walk the impossible tightrope these issues present with such grace and love.

I think the Mockingbird parallel is interesting. One thing I find fascinating about all this is the way in which, as we see it, this movement is terrifyingly authoritarian in character. It's always seemed to me such a tragic paradox that what many would see as one of the most damaging movements of the 21st century, Communism, was born of a naive dream of human betterment. We never learn, do we? We could almost start a literary parallels thread. "1984" is the most obvious and oft-cited - Orwell was astonishing, a modern prophet - but "The Crucible" is also apt (again, opposing the ideals of Communism, McCarthyism, similarly propagandised as synonymous with patriotism and, by extension, ethical). It's fascinating and utterly infuriating in equal measure.

NAVIGATIONAL SUMMARY
Overview

I have finally read the whole thread from start to finish. Despite the title, it's very possible that we have reached a natural conclusion to the conversation (or not? let's see). I guess even if we've finished the thread, we're all still willing to discuss things because that's why we're all here.

I've picked up 4 general themes so will create a post per theme. The purpose is to act as a navigational aid. If anyone feels I've misrepresented their comments, please do challenge what I've copied in to each post. It is absolutely not my intention to misrepresent, and I think there has been some amazing discussion here. I've added some context to quotes using square brackets if needed.

The themes (in no particular order - all are important) are:

1. Labels and categories being a help and a hindrance
2. Women's rights can be seen as a historical issue that is "mostly fixed".
3. Children who are "gender non-confirming"
4. What is gender identity? And what is it to be "treated as a woman?"

NAVIGATIONAL SUMMARY
Part 1: Labels and categories being a help and a hindrance

There are lots of labels, categories and phrases that are used by both those who believe in gender identity and those that don't to make sense of the types of ideas that they are opposed to. Some examples (not an exhaustive list):

Gender critical movement
Gender critical ideology
Trans agenda
Gender ideology
Biological essentialism
Transgender movement
The 3 distinct categories of people who don't believe in gender identity (see previous thread)
The 4 categories of people (that I shared because it helps me) of people who request the use of preferred pronouns (see previous thread)

Also, many people use words and phrases to categorise and make sense of the people who they perceive to hold these ideas (not an exhaustive list):

Gender critical (adjective or noun)
Gender criticals (noun)
TERFs, TERF, TERFy
TRAs
GC feminists
Transwidows
Trans activists
Transgender (e.g. grouping of people with a large spectrum of "commonality" including gender dysphoria and people with fetishes, for example)
GC activists

Sometimes people use these labels about themselves, to explain their position. Sometimes people reject these labels because they find them offensive and overly simplistic, where the over-simplification can lead to deliberate and bad faith conflation of differing views under a single label.

Labels can do as much harm as good. WarriorN

[Categories are] useful to distinguish between people who object to trans people because they’re generally uncomfortable with people breaking gender norms, and people who have no personal objection to trans people living their best lives and doing what makes them happy but are concerned about the legal ramifications. SpookyFBI

Labels can be dehumanising
Several posters

Labels can be helpful in understanding information.
Several posters (including on thread 2)

See also a great post by AlisonDonut on page 5 at 13.46

Some food for thought, even if only to keep in mind when applying critical thinking:

Did make me wonder whether key GC activists equally [unintentionally] misrepresent trans views. I don’t see it, but recognise I could be wrong, curious about whether other people do?
@Hagosaurus thank you for sharing. I hope I'm thinking about this anyway (it's one of the reasons I read Pink News etc for a different perspective), but I found it helpful to specifically call it out so that I can be more consciously aware and maintain it.

Did make me wonder whether key GC activists equally [unintentionally] misrepresent trans views. I don’t see it, but recognise I could be wrong, curious about whether other people do?

Don't take other people's word for things. Check them out yourself. Look for sources and evidence and references. That goes for everything and everyone.

The entire point of what many of us are trying to do here is to encourage people to engage critical thinking. Freedom of thought and speech requires us to use our own judgement; anyone who is content to rely on the assertions of others without looking for evidence is going to be far more comfortable with a passive, top-down and authoritarian model of thinking than the approach required here.

Which is self motivated and calls for frequent reassessment and possible readjustment as situations, contexts and evidence evolve. Hard work, yes, but I can't see how that's avoidable if one wants to maintain integrity.

NAVIGATIONAL SUMMARY
Part 2: Women's rights can be seen as a historical issue that is "mostly fixed"

I shared that I once thought JKR was a nutjob (🤦‍♀️) when I first came across her Wombund Tweet. Not because I thought she was wrong on her point that "people who menstruate" sounded awful but because she had chosen to keep digging in on such a non-issue (as I saw it) after the furore blew up. I genuinely thought she should just make an Emma Watson style statement and that would be that. I was very wrong. Are women speaking up because they are bigoted or because they are being silenced for trying to highlight that the issue remains current today? After a rollercoaster journey of lots of information gathering from multiple viewpoints (that remains ongoing for me today), I now firmly believe it's the latter. Clearly plenty of you knew this way before I did!!!! 🤦‍♀️

[In response to my embarrassed confession] Personally I think this accounts for a lot of the viewpoint that women are bigoted over this issue. Datun

It doesn't help at all that biological women are now recast as the privileged group in the new gender identity category 'women.' nepeta

There may be some people who are deliberately trying to silence women, but I highly doubt that’s what the vast majority of lay people are doing. The vast majority of people are just perpetuating their unexamined but sincere beliefs. SpookyFBI

We live at a point in time where we are all lazier and prefer to have information condence and told to us instead of fact finding. frenchnoodle

Totally agree.