What to do about nice but misguided people

[Nokoolaidherethanks]

Just seen a fb post from someone I'm not super close friends with but who I've always liked a lot in my dealings with her. She seems like a really lovely person and I've always got on well with her. She's posted Rishi Sunak's comment about being not being bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want. And she says that by saying this he's bullying "the most vulnerable members of society". FFS.

I don't know her well enough to comment. But would love to ask her what she thinks about rapists who conveniently transition in prison or before trial, or women losing out on sporting records to men, or how she'd feel if her daughter was exposed to a penis in a "female" changing room.

Do you ever challenge people like this?

👍👍👍

There are people at Malaga Airport who are very adept at manipulating people.

If this is all that is left standing in this section of the thread it will look very odd 😂 However, it's such an important thing to keep in mind. They also manipulate the angry footsoldiers just as much as the "captured" legislators and teachers etc.

Can you explain more about the steel manning?

Was it done in an organised way, like a debate where you're told which side of the debate you have to be?

One person suggested it and I'm not sure anyone else had heard of it. So there was a bit of confusion initially but then it fell in to place when someone else stepped forward as the "TRA" and the rest of us figured out what was going on. For a fair amount of time afterwards it was referred to as "the steel-manning threads" or the "good faith" threads. After a few rounds of it, the conversation naturally flowed more as people found their debating voices with the need of a specific protagonist. A very useful exercise though. And one that could definitely be done in a more organised way. Useful for participants and lurkers alike I should think.

Could we do that again? Like an organised debate?

I would absolutely love to argue the other side of this.

We could pick a particular topic and perhaps have one person arguing from a hardcore trans activist perspective, or perhaps a trans person's perspective, and maybe another person arguing purely from a "be kind" perspective, and everyone else challenging them.

This was thread 2 of 3:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4796082-still-genuinely-willing-to-discuss-in-good-faith

It has a link to thread 1... Which had a very different vibe to start with... But also useful and where the steel-manning started then morphed in to genuine discussion.

I think it went something like this:

1. "Good faith" poster started thread 1.. then disappeared
2. Remaining people found conversation interesting and steel-manning was initiated
3. Actual debate happened. Someone who had a genuine belief in gender identity joined in (they are already there in thread 2) and took part in a genuinely non-hostile conversation.

Lots of twists and turns along the way. Including me (and others) being told off for "fawning"... I think you may also have been in one of the threads, possibly after the steel-manning had morphed to actual debate, @MargotBamborough but I may have remembered that wrong. I remember you posting some great points on long debate threads, if it wasn't one of these.

Sounds like a great plan! I'm happy to be in. I'd be happy as any "character".
An organised exercise sounds like a great way to do it.
At the very least it's worth opening a thread and seeing who might step forward.

I'd like to comment here on your post, Porcilina, and also the one you were responding to:

I think it can be a good approach in discussions with individuals on this topic to stay away from these belief elements. For all the reasons mentioned.

I think it's a little naive to think we can avoid ideologies by prohibiting religion, or things that look like religion. This idea that non-religious philosophies or ideologies are somehow neutral, and fundamentally different that religious ones, is completely false. Everyone has some idea, even if poorly thought out and articulated, about what is real, how things fit together, how to think about truth, what gives things meaning, and so on.

Western society, even in modern secular contexts, still for a long time had a pretty strong basis in a shared set of ideas about these things. Now, perhaps, it's less so. But any set of ideas that schools are going to teach kids about the nature of science, or truth, or justice, or fairness, is coming from a worldview perspective.

Personally, I think kids in a good faith school have a real advantage, because they can learn the underlying beliefs that structure what they are being taught, which allows the possibility of being critical of them, or seeing how they influence their own thought. Most non-religious schools just take a set of widely held ideas about reality for granted, and teach from that as if it's self-evident. But it's not, and if students believe that they can't challenge those ideas.

I think we all need to consider that there isn’t a “correct” answer here
the premise of this thread suggests that people advocating for trans rights are wrong and need to be educated
but in fairness, lots of those people are educated, know the arguments and just have a different position
it's the same in lots of political/ethical/rights based issues
a discussion is great, but if you’re going into it thinking that people on the “other side” are wrong and just don’t know what you do then you’re going in with the wrong attitude imo

My favourite tactic is to quizzically and faux naively pose question/ statement along the lines of, oh but it just all seems so sexist doesn't it?

And leave them hanging. As NO ONE wants to be sexist.

(IRL. Fb is pointless.)

I have never once met a tra on mumsnet who appears well educated on the true gender critical position.
I suspect Owen Jones and Billy Bragg know the arguments, and simply place men over women, but the vast majority think that the gc position is identical to the religious right’s.

Yes I think that's correct

I did have a lot of fun once commenting on an acquaintance's public post sharing that cringe C4 Charlotte Clymer short, and being all "oh so brave 😍!"

My acquaintance is a locally well known dancer who runs loads of fabulous fitness classes as well as performing.

I just said something like, "didn't this person get in to trouble for sexual harassment in their previous workplace or something?"

Post deleted a few hours later 😆

@fearfuloffluff obviously the rapist/elite sports parts of the argument are about atiny percentage of trans people but they are the bits that make people think. Although many trans people are undoubtedly vulnerable, to suggest that Rishi Sunak is "bullying" them by saying not everyone needs to believe that people can change sex is ridiculous.

I would absolutely denounce any bullying or harassment of any person as a result of how they identify. But trans people and activists do not have the right to require everyone else to believe the same as them. To say that is not bullying. In the same way religious people do not have the right to tell others what they must believe.

A lateral thinking style comment could be, "oh the 'most vulnerable in society' are surely severely disabled women and girls who are unable to easily communicate, so I'm not sure it's as straight forward as that."

I was going to suggest exactly that. There are plenty of examples of genuinely marginalised and vulnerable groups - refugees, people with serious disabilities, the elderly poor, Travellers etc.

I don't think the arguments about sports or rapists are actually the most compelling when dealing with "be nice" people. Because they will tell you and themselves that you are talking about a very small number of people and that the vast majority of trans people are perfectly harmless.

When I was talking to my "be kind" friend about this, and we talked about changing rooms and toilets, she said, "I think they should be able to use whatever spaces they feel safe and comfortable in."

I replied, "What about women who don't feel safe or comfortable sharing intimate spaces with any members of the opposite sex for whatever reason? That's a lot of women. Religious women, rape survivors, teenage girls, older women, to be honest lots of women who aren't even in a particularly vulnerable group still don't feel safe or comfortable sharing toilets and changing rooms with members of the opposite sex? Where can they feel safe and comfortable? Because if you open up their spaces to anyone who wants to use them, there is nowhere they feel safe and comfortable. Now I'm all for people feeling safe and comfortable but I think all people should have that right, and it is not at all kind to women to say that they no longer have that right because we all need to be kind to trans people."

She had no comeback to that.

And that argument paves the way for a neat segue into a discussion about third spaces, where you let the other person agree that third spaces would be a good solution allowing everyone's needs to be met, and then you point out that trans people don't seem to want third spaces, they aren't campaigning for them, and some have even explicitly said that if third spaces were provided they would refuse to use them on the grounds that they are "othering" and they want to be in women's spaces regardless of how women might feel about that. Which starts to look as though it actually has nothing to do with safety or comfort at all.

Glad I’ve read this thread as I’ve been wondering how to approach a friend about pronouns as she wants us to use them in a hobby group. I couldn’t think of a way to state my position without potentially alienating her, but the beliefs angle might hopefully do the trick.

I was going to suggest exactly that. There are plenty of examples of genuinely marginalised and vulnerable groups - refugees, people with serious disabilities, the elderly poor, Travellers etc.

Yes - it may be of more value to verbally analyse to someone with that simplistic view point that "most vulnerable" isn't a linear binary fact; it's often complex.

They like the hierarchy type approach of privilege and oppression which is really simplistic.

What do you mean she wants you to "use pronouns" in a hobby group? What does she actually want you to do?

I always, always challenge the 'most vulnerable group in society' phrase because it makes my teeth itch. NO group is the MOST vulnerable ALL the time.

It allowed me to successfully peak a friend who used it wrt Isla Bryson. In that situation, the women in Cornton Vale are the most vulnerable group, given something like 80% have head injuries and 90% have suffered male violence. (I cba to double check the stats rn but I'm not far off).

Crucially though, I did it in private. No-one wins on social media.

@DrBlackbird I was told by a much younger woman who's very involved in the 'terf wars' to make the point that some are not ready to out themselves with pronouns and to do so could put pressure on them that they're not ready for 😃

This is what I say regarding pronouns. Depending on who the audience is (I haven't needed it yet) I may also link it to the Yogyakarta Principles. It's number 6, just written in lots more words. This document was written by and is used by WPATH. So it's the official "trans advice" on the matter too.

"... any set of ideas that schools are going to teach kids about the nature of science, or truth, or justice, or fairness, is coming from a worldview perspective."

There is a sense in which this is, of course, simply true. There is a 'worldview perspective' underlying anything we might teach our kids.

However, there is another thought that often goes along with this truism, one which @Rudderneck seems to accept. It is that our 'worldview', being in the nature of things, one among many, has no greater claim on veracity or utility than any of the other available 'worldviews'. This is a mistake, and a bad one.

Why? Because this 'worldview' works. The science we inherited from the seventeenth century empiricists has given us antibiotics, vaccination, hybrid maize, streetlights, safe lifts, world trade, paperback books ... and so on and on.

Justice and fairness may still need some work (although some may think there has been progress even there over the last three hundred years or so, at least in some areas) ... and of course however useful our science is there still may be questions about the wisdom of some applications thereof. Nevertheless, the 'set of widely held ideas about reality' Rudderneck mentions, which we 'take for granted', including, for instance, ideas about the mechanics of the universe and technology based thereupon, whilst perhaps indeed not self-evident (some early responses in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will convince a reader of that), nevertheless work.

You want to go to the moon? You want a polio or covid vaccine? (And so on.) Try using any other 'worldview' than our scientific 'widely held ideas about reality'. Magic crystals? Gender identity? Ghosts and demons? Gods and devils? Substances, accidents, real essences, matter and form? Huh. Good luck. See how far you get.

No, Rudderneck, any 'good faith school', if it is to be any use to its pupils, must teach the same 'widely held views about reality' as other good schools, at least in its non-faith-based lessons.

It can't be really true that there is no real truth. Do you see why, Rudderneck? And do you see how this undercuts your own brand of relativism?

In my experience if you ask the “just trying to be kind” lot with the facts about where gender ideology takes you in the real world- rapists in prison, children pushed into medical interventions etc- they just look sad and say “it’s so difficult/complicated”. Which in my opinion means “I have no intention of thinking any more deeply about this than be kind”.