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?

Maybe a tangent but Ritchie’s recent Andrew Gold video has over 1.1 million views in a fortnight - that’s an extraordinary situation, being so open and vulnerable in front of so many (Andrew Gold’s biggest episode so far, with Dr Emma Hilton/Beetles not far behind)

My impression of Ritchie is that he’s a good egg - I can definitely envisage how detransitioners could find it difficult to interact with an org that tries to make positive connections with all groups (including very pro gender doctors and transitioned AGPs).

Plus the support that something like Genspect can offer detrans people (facilitating online peer support meetings and offering reduced cost Skype therapy) isn’t the support that most of them desperately need which is medical (dealing with the repercussions of transition) and practical - lots of them have burned family and friendship bridges and are in precarious housing and financial positions, many have untreated mental illness of a type that needs more intense and sustained intervention (and medication) than talk therapy with a counsellor eg OCD/Bipolar.

Take your points @ChaChaChooey - and I agree that Ritchie seems like a very good egg. But I think Genspect's approach - or rather, multiple approaches - is refreshing. Surely, it's a truly person-based approach - asking what is needed for this individual person?

Rather than the ideologically driven WPATH/'gender-affirming' dictatorial policies.

I think that here in FWR, we expect that opposition to extremist gender ideology must necessarily be a particular 'brand' of feminism. However, I think Genspect have been very clear that they are not primarily 'feminist' - they look at therapeutic approaches for those affected by gender extremist ideology - parents, young people/transitioners, detransitioners, (and even those men living with AGP - who may not want to be in that situation ... )

There's a very telling episode of Gender: A Wider Lens quite early in the pod (in 2021 I think) where they review the various approaches to gender extremist ideology - and they include & discuss feminist approaches as if from the outside. I found that both challenging (I come at this as an old 70s 2nd waver) and very interesting.

I don’t disagree with you, Lilac just thinking about how someone who has been personally harmed by genderist doctors (some
of whom are transitioned males themselves) might be experiencing things.

There is a recent post from a young detransitioned woman on the detrans subreddit that talks about how violated she feels after a gender-motivated mastectomy as a teenager. Her emotional post trauma response is extremely reminiscent of a survivor of significant sexual violence - how would any survivor feel about a support org for victims of crime who also worked with perpetrators of crime?

(not saying viewing your surgeon as your
abuser is always entirely rational, btw, just illustrating that it’s an extremely wide coalition to try and hold together! The gulf between gender doctors and former patients might be even bigger than the gulf between ultra feminists and transitioned males!)

if there were more professionals involved in the gender wars support orgs and professional orgs be split into distinct entities that are loosely affiliated but obvs Stella can’t do that on her own/with a tiny team (and Genspect have grown out of a need for an emergency response to what was happening to teenagers and their families, not set up with a strategic plan in place). I’m deffo not intending to criticise Stella or Genspect, they are invaluable to parents with gender-y teens (inc me). I’m just trying to make sense of the occasions where criticism of them does flare up.

Here’s the r/detrans post mentioned in my previous reply

Ritchie gets the same accolades from the GCs for speaking about his detransition just like the accolades he used to get for transitioning when he was a TRA. I don’t think he’s a good egg at all. It’s clear that counselling didn’t work for him and so he furiously declares that counselling doesn’t work for all detransitioners.
He had over a 100 counselling sessions prior to his operation and it evidently did not help him then either. The way he talks about other detransitioners is very concerning, he acts like he owns this space but he is narcissistic, vindictive and completely unself aware (is that a term?)

That's what I thought when I first heard about him before I actually listened to what he is saying, which is cogent and coherent, and angry. He goes off on one at times but he has reason, and he's more self aware than many people I know.

He's talked about why the counselling didn't help him to not make this mistake. He was presumed to need to transition - told he was "the ideal candidate", his poor mental health wasn't seen as a reason not to do it, and his doubts (when he had them) were overridden. He transitioned partly through anxiety (FOMO) and partly because he was threatened with the loss of his counsellor if he didn't. He hasn't said (as far as I know) that detransitioners don't need counselling. But that they need other things as well, some more urgently than they need counselling, and I'm sure he's frustrated if that's all they're being offered.

From the interview:

Gold: I can feel your anger speaking about this

Herron: Yeh, I'm really pissed. I'm really pissed off at how detransitioners get tret (treated) and anyone who has like decorum of regret, in this space you're expected to be all knowledgeable, you're expected to have all the answers, and you're also put on this crazy trial and it's like you don't just walk one tightrope you walk about 20 different tightropes and if you slip on one you get caught by the other crowd who're like <angry>"why did you say that?, why did you say that?" and it's like "holy shit, I'm just trying to tell you, I regret this and I shouldn't have done this" and I remember the leadup to surgery when I was trying to ask people "what's it like, is it good?" and the ones who had like in hindsight had really bad regrets were saying <subdued> "oh it's OK, it's fine, I don't regret it" and I thought Why are we all just taking this? Why isn't anyone like saying like "I shouldn't have done this, I shouldn't have had that surgery and even if it went well - "well" means you have less complications, that's all that means, but you've still been castrated at the end of the day - but yes <smiles> I am quite angry about the whole thing.

Ritchie Herron puts a burden on himself. He feels responsible and talking about it and supportung other people and campaiging is part of his way of dealing with his past and what's happening to him. I respect what he's done for himself and for others.

(I may get deleted for using the c-word, if I do I'll re-post without it)

I agree. We should not try to police clothes. But we have a right to expect basic courtesy. I would not invite that man to any further events, as he was insulting the women there.

He must have known his dressing up could distress the transwidows. He can’t have failed to know he was offending all the women who didn’t consent to being his fetish audience.

Do you think women who violated gender boundaries in that way would be equivalent to AGP? What's the line between expanding the boundaries of women's clothes, and 'dressing like men'?

What's the line between expanding the boundaries of women's clothes, and 'dressing like men'?

The line between the two is the practical reason for doing it. Women fought for the right to wear practical clothing (men's type) for practical reasons. The humble bicycle played a major role in us wearing trousers today - Sheila Hanlon has done an incredible amount of research on this: https://www.sheilahanlon.com/?p=2098
1870s-1880s: "Politely straddling the saddle and front wheel [on a penny farthing] in a dress was impossible, not to mention mounting which involved launching yourself onto the machine and the likelihood of a skirt catching dangerously (perhaps fatally) in the front wheel. Nonetheless, a handful of women defied convention and tried the machines in borrowed breeches and gymnastic costumes."

By the 1890s, women are wearing Rational Dress - what we might call bloomers or plus fours today. In 1897, a female effigy in Rational Dress is hanged in protest at a Cambridge University proposal to grant full degrees to women. The effigy is in Rational Dress - bloomers - not a skirt. https://www.sheilahanlon.com/?p=292
"The resolution did not, however, pass. Upon hearing this result, the triumphant mob tore down the effigy. They then savagely attacked the mannequin, decapitating it and tearing it to pieces in a wild frenzy. The shredded remains of the poor lady cyclist were later stuffed through the gates of Newnham College."

My goodness. Those women at Newnham College. Can you imagine? I'd just be beside myself with terror. I can feel my heart racing just thinking about it.

There's loads of information on Sheila's website about this history, how the Pankhursts weren't necessarily into Rational Dress (is that luck on their part because they had step-through frames on safety bicycles by then?). But, suffice to say, women have done the work.

If men feel that dresses or skirts are practical for them for whatever reason, it's on them to do the work. Maybe they do have practical reasons. But showcasing trips to Malaga and vulnerable teenagers isn't persuasive.

I agree completely about the men. Thank you for the info, I know about the Rational Dress women and admire their bravery immensely.

The issue is I feel this kind of argument excludes butch lesbians. A woman could wear trousers or the 'three-piece suit, pipe, short back and sides' MalagaNights outlined, incl at a time like the 1910s when that was a serious transgression of gender norms, and still not be equivalent to an AGP fetishist, even though she's not doing it simply for practical reasons.

A lot of butch lesbians deliberately wear clothes that are more sterotypically masculine, (rather than just buying women's trousers etc, and only for practical reasons, which @MalagaNights seems to imply is the only valid, non-suspicious reason to do it, otherwise you're 'dressing like the men' and we can't have that) but that still doesn't mean they want to be men, be mistaken for men, or have an autoandrophilic fetish similar to AGP. In some things men and women can't be judged at precisely the same standards, and I think this is one of them.

I read today that butch lesbians used to hang their keys from their belt loop on one side to signify one type of sex interest and the other to signify another. Is this true??__

Not sure, I have read similar things about the 50s US butch/femme subculture: in that butch women usually took the active role in sex. But that's really outdated and was a minority subculture within the US lesbian community to begin with.
Not sure if UK subculture was the same in the 50s or not, either

Where'd you read that, out of interest?

@AliasGrace47 thank you for your thoughtful reply. This is something of a live issue in my house at the moment (on the male appropriation side) and I was worried I'd been overly rude. Consequently I have spent far too long over-thinking it!

We stand on the shoulders of giants. Not wearing an organ-crushing corset, not wearing bicycle-death-trap-skirts - thank you feminists who have gone before us.

I can't speak for butch lesbians. As I suspect I am raising one, I can sort of see how it might be important for them. Although at the moment for my daughter, it doesn't seem hugely different from girly-girls feeling expression through clothing is important to them - the clothing is different, but the need to express seems more or less the same. I didn't really go through that phase of wanting to pretty myself up or express myself through clothing, so it is all slightly alien to me! But I had the option to not go through that phase thanks to the women who did the work. That seems very different from men on trips to Malaga and, I hope to goodness, vulnerable boys sucked into this.

So I think you're right, that we do judge men and women differently. But we do so now, today, in the comfort of our comfy clothes, in the footsteps of the women who were judged and did the work.