What's going on with Genspect?

[MalagaNights]

I've seen Stella O'Malley tweet about being unfairly attacked.
I've seen a weird exchange from James Lindsay about feminists trying to take down Genspect.

But I can't work out what's happened or who is fighting with who.

Any ideas?

These are important discussions to have.

We don't get anywhere without discussing and weighing it up.

Yes. I hadn't clocked the name of the article author when I was commenting on that thread. D'oh.

I understand that as much value as there is in psychologists attempting to understand various sexual proclivities and the motivations behind them in terms of generalisations, there will be a range of individuals with a range of individual differences within any group and I'm not in a position to say with absolute certainty what is going in someone else's head.

I understand that in a liberal democracy, constraints upon people need to be limited to how they behave, not how we presume they are thinking. I don't believe there should be a constraint against men wearing dresses if that's what they want to wear.

@ArthurbellaScott thanks for that, but honestly, we already KNOW these men are AGP. We. Know. They're out there in their stupid skirt go spinnies shouting "it's Ma'am!" at hapless shop assistants. What else is there to learn? Blanchard had this covered years ago (although he thought that women should a accommodate these men so...).

Good post from Safe Schools Alliance.

Awesome response, and right on the button IMO.

One of the things I like most about Stella and Sasha is that they DON'T oppose the quasi-religious certainty of gender ideology with an alternative certainty of their own. They admit (as Stella says in this response) that there's an awful lot we don't know and that it's more important to be asking the questions than to be pretending prematurely that we have the answers.

There are plenty of trans people who haven't drunk the kool aid, oppose medicalisation of children and don't wish to infringe upon sex-based rights. The conversation should surely be inclusive of them.

Stella actually writes in "the split" that

There are many types of sexual deviancy – fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, paedophilia, sadism, masochism, frotteurism, and autogynephilia and the more the public knows, the better society will be able to tackle it. Although autogynephilia is not very well-known, it appears to be increasingly prevalent. And it is dangerous. Just last week the clinical psychologist and sexologist, James Cantor, testified under oath at the Amy Hamm trial that autogynephilic men are more likely to have other “paraphilic sexual patterns, such as sadism” and this makes them more likely to commit sexual offences.

Which is the point SSAUK is making, about working with people who are agp.

How can you safeguard against infiltration if you work with children?

Apparently Genspect have deleted the tweet promoting his book.

Great tweet 👏👏
Genspect could do with them as comms lead.
Edited to say: they should have acknowledged the safeguarding issue though. That's the problem with playing with fire and not managing it properly.

That Safe Schools Alliance tweet is spot on.

I think this is one of those cases where the rules to fix the problem would be worse than the problem. Stella’s piece seems good to me, I don’t think she misses the nuance or glosses over the nature of agp. This was a conference not a therapeutic space, so to have a high level of control over participants’ beliefs and clothing would be quite difficult territory to get into, riven with contradictions and at a cost to the conversations that need to happen.

There are plenty of trans people who haven't drunk the kool aid, oppose medicalisation of children and don't wish to infringe upon sex-based rights. The conversation should surely be inclusive of them.

What conversation and why? This smacks of the true trans / pet trans stance. Like DH, who's often rolled out as a good'un but I would be fascinated to hear how his wife and kids really feel.

It's also the balance of free speech and academic freedom verses the very necessary safeguarding boundaries of working therapeutically and directly with children and vulnerable people.

It's a huge melting pot they've taken on and it's going to bubble over and spit at times.

Safeguarding is an ongoing learning process and self reflective practise, you can never be above criticism. Many think waving their safeguarding course certificate and dbs is enough; that's just the starter.

breadless shit sandwiches

There's a classic Mumsnet recipe right there! 😂

Told you I was learning 😉😁

I think this is a really good post. Ultimately I think calls to exclude people who's views we don't like are too close to the Genderist position.

It's why they are losing- their intolerence puts people off and they can't frame an argument because they never listen to dissenting views.

It's not anyone's views I'm concerned about. It's their non-consensual paraphilias.

That said this is hopefully shedding a lot of light. This man is openly a paraphiliac. He's not hiding his fetish.

What about those who are?

He's written a whole book about how wearing a dress turns him on. This has indeed led me to believe that wearing a dress does, in fact, turn him on.

Stella O'Malley & Sasha Ayad have always looked at the gender issue from the point of view of psychotherapists, rather than feminists. Understanding autogyneohilia in a non-judgemental way is a part of their research and practice, as good psychotherapists.

I also think the work they are doing in platforming autogynephilia is very useful for the 'gender-critical' movement. The more people understand it, the more that the right safe guards can be put in place within society. I think a huge problem atm is that trans-identified males are seen as 'vulnerable and special' and not within the context of fetishism.

That said... difficult waters to navigate with the presence of 'trans-widows' and this individual performing his fetish.... It seems that it is the macrocosm playing out in the microcosm.... what is the solution?

How did Blanchard find out about this? He interviewed thousands of them. He didn't know about it until he spoke to them.

This whole thread is "we need to talk about AGP, but not hear from anyone who has it".

There is this obsession with being afraid that it is normalised, yet what is the alternative? What we currently have. We have activists saying that it doesn't exist, that anyone who has these feelings is because of a "gender identity" mix-up and that transition is the only solution. These people then transition and we then start arguing over single-sex spaces.

I strongly doubt they'd be as many trans widows today as there are if AGP (and the men who had) were able to talk about it. If men were told that they're not trans, but AGP there would be a lot less transitioning going on.

TBH I feel like the people who don't want AGP spoken about are doing the TRAs' job for them. Keep it quiet and let gender identity fill the void.

Nobody cares if he speaks about it. The problem is wearing his fetish gear to do so and involving unwitting onlookers.

I very much agree...but, do men like this end up wearing these clothes all the time... do they ever go back to wearing normal men's clothing

Agree with this.

I think Phil is quite interesting for what it’s worth. I’ve seen some of the discussions he’s done with Benjamin Boyce where he also speaks about being autistic, which may be relevant. He was wearing similar blue clothing in the Boyce videos so maybe it was a personal branding thing. His outfit was eccentric and incongruent. There’s no suggestion he was behaving inappropriately.

He makes the argument that there’s an equivalent female condition to AGP - AAP - which I’d never heard before.

What's a normal man's clothing?

Mr Menno makes a great case for men wearing whatever they want.

Also JKR said the same about wearing whatever you want. Perhaps the small print should be "but not your fetish gear out in public,
thanks". Obviously that's unworkable (given it's impossible to be inside anyone's head) but when an acronym person tells you it turns them on to do so, it's a giant red flag that needs careful management.

We all (the entire population) choose our clothes on a per occasion basis as a matter of routine to make some kind of statement or other. We get dressed up for stuff, we have days when we can't be bothered etc.

The "wear what you like" statement requires self-awareness to appreciate what is in keeping with a particular event, alongside a safeguarding approach when someone who is high risk, wilfully or otherwise, has a different approach to self-awareness.

Blanchard had this covered years ago (although he thought that women should a accommodate these men so...).

Lots of ostensibly GC men do.

I get the feeling from things that happened at WPUK, and now with Genspect, that lots of ostensibly GC women also think we should accommodate these men.

I do not consent to men performing fetishes in my presence, I don’t think anyone should have to tolerate fetishes being carried out in public spaces. I think we really need to fight to enforce a separation of spheres and to insist that people (men) restrict fetishistic behaviour to their private sphere.

Exactly, if he'd turned up to the conference in a gimp suit and nipple clamps we'd be under no illusions as to what was really going on.