£10,000 prize for arguing both sides of trans debate

[IcakethereforeIam]

This could be interesting. I expect to see FWR being cited 😁

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/10k-essay-prize-for-arguing-both-sides-of-trans-debate-vvfgmbc8k

https://archive.ph/NzNEy archive link

Although, the journalist quoted seems to have transwomen/trans women mixed up.

Transmen are, once more, conspicuous by their absence.

Just what we need.

When women are desperately fighting to hang onto their rights and services, students (ie young people with no real life experience) are being given money to pontificate about who or what a woman is.

If this is the consequence of "enlightenment" it implies it doesn't really shed a light on anything.

What's the difference between transwomen and trans women please?

Unfortunately my phone won't load the archive link so I can't read it

Kapil Summan, 35, a journalist in Scotland, is one of the competition organisers. He said that trans activists used transwomen as one word because it implies that men who transition become women. He acknowledged that radical feminists were more likely to put a space between the words.
“It makes no sense for us to use ‘trans women’ since it affirms the point we’re asking entrants to argue against,” he said. “It is true that ‘transwomen’ affirms the opposite,” he conceded, “but we have to choose one.”

Even-handed, then. Or, not.

Eh??
I really don't get the "transwomen Vs trans woman" quote above at all.... It's the opposite surely!

Gender critical feminists are more likely to use "transwomen" because it's a noun by itself and completely distinct from "women". Two separate things.

Using "Trans woman" on the other hand makes "trans" the adjective, with "woman" being the noun, so the language blurs the boundaries between transwomen and women by implying that trans women are just another type of woman like "tall women" or "black women" or "skinny women"....

No thank you. Transwomen are not a type of woman, like a seahorse is not a type of horse.

If the organiser is ignorant about which side is demanding the gap in “transwomen” I don’t hold out much hope that the prize will be awarded to someone who actually understands the arguments.

And he missed the fact that many of us refuse to use that word at all, because men are not women, whether they claim to be or otherwise.

I think it’s more likely the journalist got the quote mixed up than the competition organisers got it wrong. I know men gonna men, and they do blunder into this debate half-cocked. But still, the organisers must have put some thought and research into this before launching it

Kapil Summan, 35, a journalist in Scotland, is one of the competition organisers. He said that trans activists used transwomen as one word because it implies that men who transition become women. He acknowledged that radical feminists were more likely to put a space between the words.

As Circumferences points out,this isn’t even true, it’s the opposite. TRAs are more likely to insist/demand there is a space between the two, because they’re always claiming that the trans is just another adjective to describe a type of woman:

Tall woman
Black woman
Asian woman
Trans woman

etc.

I have to override my phone autocorrecting transwoman to trans woman and I have a vague memory of there even being a furore on here once about someone being deleted for using transwomen instead of trans women.

What an idiotic competition 😵‍💫

Oh yes an undergraduate essay competition will definitely sort everything out with no further issues.

On the other hand it's not a bad idea for students to have to actually work on paper and learn to develop their arguments. Like universities are supposed to help them do.

I'm enjoying the fact that the well-meaning organisers have got a core tenet of online gender ideology wrong straight out of the gate, and clearly have no idea. Will essay-writers correct them I wonder, or will they blindly carry on with it?

Apparently, this essay is going to 'settle the debate'.

Of course it is, dear. We're all definitely going to roll over and do what an undergraduate tells us to do.

Great idea. It's basically a bribe to students to get them to engage with the other side of a debate that they might normally block, shout down, or parrot slogans at. They might even read what JK Rowling wrote.

My first reaction was "argue both sides? hold my beer!"

But...undergraduates only.

If I start a new degree course would that make me an undergrad again? Maybe it's time to do that open university degree 😁

(Or maybe I can just identify as an undergrad)

I'd like to know how it's being judged. Ideally each essay should receive a score from both a TRA and a GC feminist for how well the essay explains and engages with their side's position - with the option of scoring negatively for caricaturing with straw-man arguments or missing out massive issues. The prize to the highest scoring essay that has the two sides scoring it as evenly as possible, with essays that have a difference in score from the two sides of greater than say 10% being excluded from the final shortlist.

I suspect they won't do anything so even handed and the winner will be terribly biased in one way or the other.

Ok the idea this will 'settle the issue' is comically arrogant, and not understanding the meaning of the space in 'transwoman' is not a hopeful sign either. Even so I'm going to refrain from snarking because I think anything that encourages undergraduates to learn how to argue and debate properly is a good thing.

Perhaps the organisers should do their fucking research before releasing a patronising statement that will make them seem completely ignorant because they don’t seem to have any idea about the positions of either side.

It has just made a laughing stock of how ignorant they are.

I'm not confident that the competition will make it across the finish line. As, questioning tra 'logic' is literal violence. It might even fall foul of the new Scottish hate crime laws!

But, if it does go ahead, it'll be interesting to see the arguments for both sides.

“It makes no sense for us to use ‘trans women’ since it affirms the point we’re asking entrants to argue against,” he said. “It is true that ‘transwomen’ affirms the opposite,” he conceded, “but we have to choose one.”

I'd like to see if he changes his mind as soon as he realises he's got it backwards.

Me too.

I find it hilarious - just the idea that he has come up with this undergraduate competition as a way of "settling" the debate, and then got the terminology arse-backwards. Are trans activists going to be angry that he's chosen - albeit inadvertently - the terminology used by gender-critical people? If so, is he going to change it to the terminology used by transactivists - or would that risk showing which side he's on? He's absolutely in a bind now.

Come on, it's clear, isn't it, that it's the journalist who's confused, not the organiser? There's nothing wrong with the quote from the organiser (except that it's going too far to say that leaving the space out argues against the proposition: it's decently neutral - seahorses are not horses, but cornflowers are flowers, so without the space it can go either way).

Anyway I've pointed my impecunious undergraduate offspring at it. Though I agree there's an interesting question about how it's going to be judged.

I'm going to cut Kapil Summan some slack:

s

To be explicit, entrants are asked to argue for and against the proposition that transwomen are women. To include the space would have affirmed the proposition - to write "trans women" prejudges that these people are women. Nothing backwards about it. It's the journalist's words that the Times puts before this quote that have it backwards.

The journalist quoted is one of the organisers.

A transwoman is a male who 'identifies as a woman'

A Trans Woman is an attempt to suggest that TW are just another type of woman. 'Trans' being the adjective...so similar to ' white woman', black woman' 'disabled woman' 'tall woman' 'Hindu woman'.....

Most here would entirely reject the latter for obvious reasons.

TW are a category of male, not of female.

The Times article has the byline "Jonathan Ames Legal Editor" and it is his words that are backwards. Kapil Summan is a journalist. But only the words indirectly reported ("he said that") are wrong, so I am surmising that it is the journalist, Jonathan Ames, who is confused. The words actually in quotation marks are presumably Kapil Summan's, and they are fine. No?