Andrew Neil has discovered Detrans kids - he is not happy

[fromorbit]

"This is heartbreaking. It is barbaric. What have we become?"

Neil listening to Chloe Cole's evidence to Congress:
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1685029046915063808

It is easy for us to be angry/sad at his ignorance when so many have suffered for telling the truth for years. Remember though Neil was one of the countless millions who either had no idea what is going on or sidelined it as just one of those "feminist" things. Many of us peaked the same way. He gets that he screwed up :

"I understand that. But we allowed it to happen. In my case because I had no idea such things could be done to young, vulnerable people. I feel ashamed and angry. It must be stopped."
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1685032706139197440

What matters now is what he and others are going to do to put things right:

Gavin Barrie "Andrew Neil peaking is a pretty big deal … because of his connections and his public profile.
There isn’t an influential journalist or editor he doesn’t know personally.
He knows all the TV producers and editorial staff.
He’ll push to haul this into the sunlight."

Andrew Neil Retweeted
Baroness Foster DBE
This will become the biggest medical scandal of the 21st Century…At it’s heart Big Pharma along with unelected groups of Activists such as
@stonewalluk & others in UK 🇬🇧 ! These kids aren’t old enough to smoke, drink or vote yet they’re pushed into surgery & a lifetime of drugs!

Johnson hid in a fridge rather than face Neil.
Where are Rayner, Nandy and the rest gonna hide.

All we need to do now is bring back Brian Walden, Sir Robin Day and Jeremy Paxman to run the interviews alongside Neil.

I can understand why even if he was aware of the general controversy that hearing the story of a detransitioner would be shocking, the testimonies of the young women and men affected by this medical scandal is a very confronting thing. It's not just a dry outdated tiny percentage figure of people for whom a medical treatment was ineffective, it is a real person who has suffered from an experimental medical "treatment".

I thought the trans stuff didn't make sense, but listening to long form first hand accounts was what made me certain that the medical industry had got this badly wrong and that people are putting so much faith in what are extreme and experimental treatments with no real safeguarding to make sure that the treatment is right for the individual. (Even if it could be right for some - which is not clear to me - how they can just let kids self ID into their diagnosis and not make sure that other groups of kids weren't getting caught up in it).

It seems obvious to us because we've already heard these young people speak.

I was in a pub tonight meeting some old school friends, mostly childless (I think this is relevant) and trans issues came up. They were still fairly 'be kind' but one older man independently came up with detransitioner regret, and that this was something to be worried about.

I played a few disingenuous cards, wondering aloud about the number of children identifying as trans who are autistic, and the way that non binary for women seems to involve cross sex hormones and mastectomy and non binary men are much more long hair and eyeliner (it was a bit simplistic but I'd had three pints of cider by that point)

I have a couple of friends in the industry. They know how much I've banged on about it for years. They were all 'let people be' and 'be kind'. Then the reeducation started and working with people demanding to be known by pronouns and being totally unreasonable in their behaviour - and the penny started to drop. Then I started talking about prisons and offending and gave them stats. And it dropped a bit more.

They are as 'lefty liberal' as you can imagine. BUT they are starting to object to toxic inexcusable behaviour which is hidden by rainbow washing.

I think it's hitting the entire circle and I suspect dinner parties are making for interesting conversations after sunset.

"I think it's hitting the entire circle and I suspect dinner parties are making for interesting conversations after sunset".

I was educated about the sins of "bonus holes" by some furious women dog walkers this week. One of their number recently died from cervical cancer and they were incensed about the insulting language - and from a women's cancer charity. It's evident that knowledge about the repeated overreach / language grab has spread widely into the population and everyone's turning out to be raging terfs 😄

Well, @MrsOvertonsWindow I am up for being a raging terf.

Given that sunlight seems to be the arch nemesis of the TRAs, are we all now vampire slayers?

Now that the banks are behaving like arseholes to people all over the political spectrum, the rainbow smoke screen the big corps have been hiding behind is becoming very noticeable.

I’m glad that that everyone is peaking but the backlash is definitely coming and I’m ready to batten the hatches with the LGB. Thank fuck they’ve been sensible enough to start some orgs without the T because when Stonewall goes (and it’s going, I’m sure) the LGB Alliance will still be standing.

Yes, i think this is probably correct.

And i can't wait for him to get whatever tory minister in front of him who is allowing this to happen on their watch.

In addition to fairness in women's sports, I think the situation regarding children is one of the most accessible for people to grasp once they allow a small amount of critical thinking in. Even people who don't have children are likely to feel an injustice and a sense of horror when they understand how children are being pulled towards changing their bodies in their belief that they are being their true selves, cheered on and encouraged by what they see in social media.

Detransitioner regret has been downplayed and silenced but (tragically) the number of detransitioners is now at a level where the lid can't be kept on any more.

Hopefully Andrew Neil will stumble across Transgender Trend for a deeper understanding of what's been happening to children. Perhaps he will also talk to the brilliantly articulate and knowledgeable Stephanie Davies-Arai and bring her on his show.

I agree on the 'this thing ive been ignoring needs addressing'

I have some not very coherent thoughts on why female detrans voices are getting more publicity than male detrans ones - though it may be as simple as female detransitioners are more common, given the cultural shifts of the past few years meaning that a previously tiny stable number of mostly male people considered to need 'treatment' for their gender nonconformity suddenly became ballooning waves of girls quite obviously caught in the crossfire of an oppressive fad.

He's grilled MPs on " what is a woman" on his Andrew Neil TV show, and also during the brief time he was with GB TV.

He instinctively is GC - but up until now it's probably been a side show for him.

I suspect that young girls are more susceptible to social contagion. Girls are socialised to fit in and conform. Whereas boys are encouraged to be individual and have confidence in doing their own thing. This creates a totally different pattern of influence.

Boys will be more likely to be influenced from an individual not necessarily in their direct social circle so it's less common. The very point is to 'be different' from their immediate peers. And then have a collective identity elsewhere. It's proudly attention seeking.

Girls are more likely to be influenced by their immediate social circle and all the accepted common interests of that group. To fit in they must conform to the standards that are presented to them. Therefore if a girl has short hair she 'must be lesbian or trans'. Also see 'not feminine looking enough'.

As for publicity over detransition.

It's quite simple: the narrative is 'look at how this beautiful young innocent woman has been ruined and now is less fuckable'.

The same narrative just doesn't work for young males.

Argh I hadn't seen that one and you're right.

Bloody hell how I hate that we have to use men's misogyny in order to fight other men's misogyny because no one listens to or cares about women for any other reason.

Yes tbh the main horror is making kids especially girls infertile, active second is loss of sexual function which oddly people only care about when the young woman are not able to have sex.

I actually think you could add another rule to Bewilderness's list:

'Women's value to society is directly related to their fuckability score'

This makes sense. I'm watching the dawkins/ joyce discussion linked upthread at the moment. Dawkins is stunned by what Joyce is saying despite the fact that he has been in the loop for a very long time. Dawkins, I believe, came into this issue through his antipathy to postmodernism and irrational cults, but it's still surprising that he's still being astonished. I think for many men it IS a sideshow because there are other, more egregious things, which take their attention. We literally have not been paying attention.

The same thing happened to me. I was aware of the issue, but thought of it as a peripheral issue which came along with, but wasn't so pressing, as the cultishness, the irrationality, the puritanism, the bullying and the gaslighting I was getting from a progressive movement that I have had a lifetime's love/ hate relationship with. Decades of it.

What peaked me was JKR's essay three years ago. Actually, not the essay itself, but my son's reaction to it which was "Yes, she is clearly transphobic, but that doesn't mean she's a bad person". I was astonished, because this is my intelligent, capable, literate, rational, competent, wise son. I asked him what he meant, and would he please point me to the clearly transphobic bits in the essay because I couldn't see them. He didn't. He just started talking about other things, because this was just not an issue for him. And that's when I started actually listening to the women.

Yes, men haven't been listening to the women, but then, I found, neither have lots of women. It's been an extraordinary few years.

Sorry, it;s not linked upthread, I found it on the same page as a twitter link in the OP.

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1685390378554527744

I do wonder if the male detransers are harder to think about?

People in general really struggle with thinking about tragedy and looking into the eyes of someone who suffered it - there is an excellent piece by one of the Charlie Hebdo staff about Nice that talks about this as a phenomenon - and it’s something I experienced when my child had cancer related illness.

The majority of the female detrans have only gone as far as top surgery whereas many of the males have had genital surgery. The young women mostly have at least the the possibilIty of regaining fertility and sexual pleasure whereas the young men have had theirs amputated,
often leaving them incontinent as well as infertile.

Many of these young men are gay (and sorry for the crude stereotyping!) so much of a young gay man’s life is sexually focussed that it feels tragic in a way that mastectomy does not (plenty of women are living full lives post mastectomy for cancer or cancer prevention)

I know men that recoil in horror when you mention castrating a pet puppy, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they cannot bare to think about a young man having an unnecessary orchiectomy at 18, let alone a penectomy.

I don’t doubt their is the ‘some doctor made this young lady unfuckable, what a waste’ thing going on as well, I just think it’s probably two phenomena in tandem.

Plus the girls/young women have automatic champions amongst terves and other GC people, so their voices are being raised up by many, making their stories harder to miss.

I also think male detransers are more ashamed of their transgender experiences (seeing as male transition is often much more sexual in it’s origin than ROGD in girls or even in the old style ultra butch lesbian > female transsexual pathway) ) and thus they more likely to remain in the shadows.

(imo in the younger and/or autistic chaps much of that shameful sexuality has been imprinted on them by older males and they have no obligation to carry the feeling of shame forward with them but this is FWR and maybe not the place to talk about the detrans boys/men)

Now that the banks are behaving like arseholes to people all over the political spectrum, the rainbow smoke screen the big corps have been hiding behind is becoming very noticeable.

I think banks has triggered a lot of people. The ones who are thinking beyond 'Farage? couldn't happen to a nicer bloke' are joining the dots and realising that could be them next if their bank thinks they've stepped out of line

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/29/in-deserted-courtroom-grim-details-of-nice-atrocity-go-mostly-unnoticed

Only tangentially relevant but adding the link for completeness.

to bring it back somewhat on track Robert McLiam Wilson of Charlie Hebdo did a podcast with Brendan O’Neill for Spiked recently and mentioned Kathleen Stock, who McLiam Wilson affectionately referred to as ‘Stocky’, which I thought was rather lovely.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

Countering the "unfuckable"/misogynist angle, many of the female detransitioners looked androgynous before their transition. Many look more masculine following their transition. I'm not sure there will be many men looking past all of that to lament the lost fuckability of someone. I think it's just genuine horror when people - men and women - realise what someone has done to themselves, supposedly of their own volition, under the guidance of the medical profession while either still a child/adolescent or as a vulnerable adult.

The revelation that both arch Brexiteer Farage AND Remainer-in-Chief Gina Miller have had accounts closed has been enlightening!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12350607/amp/Brexit-architect-Nigel-Farage-stands-shoulder-shoulder-vocal-Remainer-Gina-Miller-political-partys-bank-account-shut.html

Excellent thoughts. As a man, I came to this about 7-10 years as my ears pricked up on what I was subliminally aware of from the whole ManOSphere/incel/AGP world. It triggered me because the dissonance of polite society shunning more typical misogyny was somehow put aside for this New Misogyny.

My brain, honed on a few decades of New Atheist thinking, just would not accept the inconsistencies being not only put to me, but demanding my acceptance.

Early on, maybe day one, I chose not to accept. And in some ways, that's a terrible decision because it forces you to keep looking, and thus to keep your head exploding.

When the arguments on rejecting magical thinking and battening down the hatches on free speech then took a toxic turn into viewing the unfolding medical scandals and full on assault on women's rights, I realised I'd lost my antipathy I had to Greer/Bindel/Moore feminism that I had as a younger man, and I was onboard fully with women's rights, and I had a cause to believe in.

That was 2015-2019. It's only gone up a few gears since then, culminating in me taking a year of therapy to regulate my emotions and personal strategies.

And here we are in 2023, the year the levee broke. Time to welcome every new convert to the GC cause, and every TRA type moving to sanity (we hear you, Lisa Nandy).