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.

Actually, @NotHavingIt, I would argue that sometimes you do need to read the Daily Mail because it is the only newspaper that has reported on something.

Google "Cheryle Kempton", the female prisoner assaulted by Karen White in prison and see what results you get.

Yes, I agree, but I think my point was more in response to Bonfirelady's reported aversion to 'right wing media'.

I also have a natural aversion to right wing media. The trouble is, the left wing media has completely lost its marbles on this issue. So I guess now I have an aversion to all traditional media...

It's destabilising to see decent reporting in newspapers like the Mail, and misogynistic nonsense in the Guardian.

I really hate the fact that it gives the trans activists ammunition to spin gender critical feminism as a right wing position.

@MargotBamborough, your breakdown of different perspectives on / approaches to feminism (and, also, "feminism"!) was really interesting.

You also got me thinking re: "Where I think the analogy falls short is that in the former case, the war veteran should be offered support and counselling to help them learn to live in a world with fireworks and backfiring cars in it, without having that trauma response. Literally, we hope that they would in time learn to "reframe their trauma", as Mridul Wadhwa put it. I do not think that female rape survivors, or female prisoners who have suffered male violence, or female athletes, or practising Muslim women, should have to reprogramme themselves to not have a problem with trans women in their spaces."

Obviously agree with your point that follows, that this shouldn't need rationalising or justifying anyway, but, as an intellectual exercise, reflecting on how I'd defend the analogy as standing in the face of that...

I know what you mean in your ironic echo of Mridul Wadhwa, but both the shellshocked soldier and traumatised rape victim alike would, I hope, receive support to overcome, or manage, their trauma* to be able to live as normal and fulfilled a life as possible, in the knowledge that (subsequent sex-stereotyped masculine pronoun chosen purely for simplicity!) he could never be fully protected from unexpected loud noises for the rest of the life, any more than she could hope for a guarantee of no unexpected close encounters with strange males in enclosed spaces.

But both traumatised individuals in this analogy could have a reasonable expectation of being able to plan their movements o minimise exposure to triggers. After all, there's a social contract about making loud noises in public spaces just as there is (or was...) one about men in women's private spaces - an unspoken consensus about what is and isn't reasonable in a civil society, in place to uphold each individual's right to access and use shared spaces. For example, it would be seen as fairly reasonable to challenge any group letting off fireworks outside the proscribe periods of New Year and Bonfire Night, 6pm to, say, 1am, for example, just as it used to be reasonable to challenge a man in the ladies'.

Is that all a bit too neat, though? What am I missing? 🤔

*The word "re-frame" was, in itself, concerning even when removed from the appalling context - its focus on the "expression of" said trauma as opposed to its treatment says everything about the utterly distorted priorities driving this suggestion...

(Quote-fail, a fair few typos and the possible mis-use of proscribed, there.)

And I also realise I'm sounding like I really don't like fireworks - to try to shut down some poor random's sparky birthday celebration would be impressively killjoy 😂. But you know what I mean... Maybe! (Going to stop re-reading my own posts now).

I've had a read through everything and I do owe @GailBlancheViola an apology. There were other comments of a similar style earlier in the thread. Sorry.

"Tone police" and "manipulative" seem a little harsh though.

It comes back to the key question of what is or isn't a good faith discussion. Open-mindedness to listen and engage seem pretty fundamental to me as key requirements of any good faith discussion. I would advocate that defensiveness (followed by not listening at all), rather than open-mindedness, is more likely unless a certain amount of feather-smoothing is done by both parties. And yes, that does leave people open to being manipulated by someone acting in bad faith subvertly. I think that that's pretty easy to spot, once you've got a deep enough grasp of a subject. However, I also think it's easy to misinterpret someone's intentions as disingenuous in an online forum, with its fast pace and written communication being notorious for being misunderstood.

@MargotBamborough I get what you're saying about the double standards. But perhaps that's again the pertinent point, about it being incumbent on both parties to bring their "good faith" selves to any debate. But yes, we're all adults and we can self-police (for want of a better phrase), in accordance with our own views and our own styles, rather than be policed.

To pick up on this one:
You have said you have never really been interested in women's rights and was always very dismissive of JK Rowling.....yet you sound to me of a certain age and a certain education, so that I find this idea quite intriguing?

@NotHavingIt I've always been interested in the history of women's rights. That's why the Gender Criticals video is likely to have hooked me in, with its opening section about a side of the Pankhurst story that I didn't know. But I thought it was just all part of our history now, except for the slow creep towards parity in pay. This was what was also behind my initial dismissiveness of JKR. I'm not sure my (state) education or (middle) age has any influence on these views though.

Yes, I have been really surprised at some of the articles coming from the Daily Mail. They've written some balanced and well researched articles.

@NotHavingIt regarding the Telegraph, I use the archived pages rather than a subscription. That's probably not great in terms of supporting journalism though. So I am considering the ethics of this. They too have done some great journalism on this subject.

If I'd stuck to reading the Guardian like I used to, I'd have seen a very different skew.
Also, I'm making my way through books that are regularly spoken about on this board.

Thank you for the apology @BonfireLady it is genuinely appreciated.

Yes. Hence the often really outlandish clothing. Levels of magnitude above mere fishnets and PVC skirts.

And, according to a woman who is married to such a fetishist, you can't even tell them they look ridiculous to get them to stop, because it feeds the humiliation part...which is a turn on.

Sorry, I know this a v old thread but I wanted to pick up on your point as I think it's interesting. Do you think that this gender non-conformity is always very negative? ⁷

I've recently become interested in Jung but was disappointed that the reddit board discussing him had a lot of posters, mainly men, saying that homosexuality was rooted in problematic psychological developement, not biology, & they seemed to discard the many recent studies that indicate its biological origin, ignoring that Jung's perspective was necessarily limited by his time, as ours is, so can't be relied on 100%. Some of their usernames had words like 'Chad' in so I suspect some were Jordan Peterson followers who had negatively interpreted his message.

I can see that extreme gender non-conformity can be negative if it shades into body-hatred or emulating negative traits, eg. camp gay men acting spiteful & oversensitive or butch lesbians acting aggressive or domineering. I'm lesbian myself, slightly on the tomboyish side, & my experience is that people who veer into being v non-conforming can develop these traits for good or ill, they can be v positive for the individual & those around them, or the opposite.

It's a bit like being a rebellious teenager, I think. There are good and bad ways of doing it.

You play the Rolling Stones at a reasonable volume in your bedroom, to your parents' annoyance, because you love the Rolling Stones. That's being yourself. Healthy self assertion.

Or you can do the same thing, but do it because the Rolling Stones are currently the 'in' way to rebel. If the fashion changed, 'your' tastes would follow it. You're pushing against your parents, but only by buying in to another lot of conventions.

Or you can do the same thing, merely because the Rolling Stones annoy your parents. You don't even particularly like the Stones; anything your parents really really hate would do the job; and of course you play it at full blast every time. You are using your right to self assertion as an excuse to be a jerk.

No, but I do think that much about campness seems to resides in negative feminine type presentations - of the sort on which 'drag' is also based: Moody, narcissistic, bitchy.....and the very idea of " camping it up" is about performance. A sort of exaggerated overtly, and stereotypically, 'feminine' performance.

I don't think it is necessarily 'gender non conforming' to be camp either.......It could be said it is actually conforming to negative feminine gendered stereotypes and presentations.( rather than masculine ones).

Which may suggest 'gender' itself is conformist and something of a caricature. Drag , again, a perfect example. I think this may well reside in psychology rather than biology..... an early and primal imprinting on archetypal content.

I have not read the thread. I think gender non-conformity is entirely positive.

Gender is a system of oppressive imposition of sex-role appearance and behavior. Normal humans do not subscribe to it, they get on with life wearing what is comfortable and becoming, doing the things they like doing, following fashion or not as personal tastes suggest.

Genderists insist that normal humans MUST conform to the stereotypes, 'transing' their 'gender' if necessary. Trans Rights Advocates are oppressive and conformist and should not have been handed the ability to bamboozle vulnerable adolescents.

This looks like a thread I'd like to contribute to. Can someone please post links to the earlier parts? I tried to UTFS but MN search is not the greatest!