Janice Turner interview with Debbie Hayton in the Times

[CaptainWarbeck]

Share token link here: Debbie Hayton: the trans woman taking on the trans activists

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/df87fe47-3dd3-4f35-ac48-81f54aeb418f?shareToken=a53b2f201cdd4c204b9009b204cb1ef3

Janice neatly runs through a history of trans issues with Debbie including a discussion of AGP. An excellent read I thought and will get a wide audience as a Saturday Times Magazine article.

After Helen Joyce's "fuck off" to women who object to others voluntarily using wrong-sex pronouns, I lost a lot of respect for her.

I’m not on Twitter. Did HJ tweet this?

tbh, left and right feels anachronistic rather than useful in some areas.

I recognise this:

This cartoon I made offers a rough outline of my recent political "journey" that I've been on while standing completely still.

https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1462114108535312388?lang=en

Not read all the posts in this thread but as others will have said this feels like a continuation of JT's previous couple of articles which seek to separate good, reasonable Labour voting women from those bad, extremist women who might be tempted to vote Tory on this issue.

With an election on the horizon and the prospect of a new Labour government there's a lot of realignments and boundaries being rejigged all over the place at the minute.

It's going to be painful but a number of women we think of as being on 'our' side will fall back and fall in line with a Starmer led vision of 'reasonableness' in handing over rights and definitions belonging to women.

BettyFilous · Today 21:00

After Helen Joyce's "fuck off" to women who object to others voluntarily using wrong-sex pronouns, I lost a lot of respect for her.

I’m not on Twitter. Did HJ tweet this?

If it's the video I've seen Helen Joyce said she hates the 'pronoun police' whatever side they're on, and thinks people shouldn't be 'corrected' but allowed free speech.

Thanks Pixie. That makes more srnse.

Is it the incident described here?

https://wildwomanwritingclub.wordpress.com/2023/06/12/on-pronouns-live-not-by-lies/

“I absolutely bloody fcking hate the fcking pronoun police. All of them! [laughter and applause] All those women who pop up and say, “HE!”, when somebody says “she” of a transwoman. Would you F*CK off? And the other way round obviously as well.”

This is the Helen Joyce video I've seen. https://twitter.com/andrewdoyle_com/status/1754524663730844031

Well that's not bad as I thought it would be. And I get it. You could just get bogged down in a whole he! No she! No he! For fricken hours. And any chance of communication goes down the swanny.

But that's not what Janice Turner did. Janice Turner wasn't having a conversation. And she already had permission to use the correct pronouns for Debbie Hayton. And she then accused women who object of being extreme.

Different kettle of fish altogether.

And I agree, if she hadn't doubled down on Twitter, it would've been a different story.

Annoying, but she wouldn't have been planting her flag anywhere.

@BettyFilous
It think it was the incident documented in the blog that Old Crone posted (thanks, Old Crone) but my memory of the video clip was of HJ saying "just fuck off".
There was a thread about it on Mumsnet but I can't find it.

If it Labour's objective is to make Self Id easier and to make it normal to use pronouns - to what end is this objective? How will the above change anything for anyone? If male people are recorded as 'women' in what way does it make things easier for them? And more importantly, how does recording men as women impact upon women and children?

My understanding is that the protected characteristic of 'gender re-asignment' was originally drafted to permit men to marry other men before the gay marriage act was passed. It wasn't meant to permit them to use women's facilities, as is now often suggested.

If single sex spaces, services and sports mean exactly that ( female only) - then what 'benefits' can be accrued for the holder in having a GRC?
If single sex means single sex and everyone knows you cannot really change sex - then what is the purpose of pronouns? Are pronouns simply suggestive of a performance/ a game that we are all compelled to play along with - and for whose/what benefit, and at what/whose cost?

Just came across Julie Bindel commenting on the criticism of Hayton’s interview on Sunday with Andrew Doyle (Doyle used female pronouns throughout) and Bindel’s view of this criticism is in keeping with Turner, Freeman, Stock et al.

'Andrew Doyle is a decent, good person who is a genuine supporter of free speech, and, at the same time, critical of bigotry. It is disgraceful to hound him in this way. But then, the crowd that has done so are motivated by pure spite.'

https://x.com/bindelj/status/1754784371469369696?s=20

Why these 'public name' people persist in viewing an increasing number of ordinary people refusing to accept the use of wrong sex pronouns 'for the sake of politeness' is baffling to me. Why they keep framing this refusal to comply as hate and spite rather than seeing that a lot of people have had enough of the social control and authoritarian behaviour from their class of people (social control that is greatly responsible for getting society into this gender mess in the first place) is beyond me 🤷‍♀️ I understand wanting to protect your mates but assuming that every criticism of your mates is motivated by hate is childish and simplistic, especially from people who make their living by debating and opinion-writing in the public sphere.

For some reason I could see that Andrew Doyle Twitter link, but his Twitter account has been deactivated. I saw something about that earlier on - what's happened?

@UtopiaPlanitia that's interesting, thanks. I think it's a defensive posture. There's probably a name for the psychological bias as well. It's easier to defend against a single threat, a sort of cartoon villain, rather than accept that the person who disagrees with you is as complex and nuanced as you are. I think it's also to do with "context collapse" on the internet.

This is an interesting listen. I can't exactly remember the full content as it was a while ago I heard it. It's The Digital Human episode about context collapse.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014x7g

I suspect Rebellious has nailed it above.

This is a group of people who desperately want to not give up on Labour or see Labour not get into power, and are even more desperately trying to find a version of some limited, a bit, GCness that might somehow possibly jive with the party gender nutjob leadership AND stop women refusing to vote Labour.

They're onto a loser, and they're just pissing off those of us who are not prepared to let women be abused a little bit or even at all so that boundary breaking men can have their absolute sexual freedoms. Or tolerate the marginalised of women being excluded to let fantastically entitled men dominate and control everything.

Because that IS NOT BLOODY LEFTIST POLITICALLY. And it's ETHICALLY FUCKED.

I'm sorry. I feel for these people, they're in the denial stage of grief for the party they once loved and they're jumping up and down on its chest at this point trying to restart the sanity heartbeat.

But it's dead guys. It's over. I'm not voting for that mess. I will be saying so loudly and clearly and I really won't care what names you call me. At this point it's water off a duck's back.

I suspect we're heading towards the pleas of 'look, it's better to have a Labour government who MIGHT POSSIBLY think about listening to us a little tiny bit if we're really nice and good girls, than to hold out for too much (like women not being abused and having their rights destroyed) and Labour not get in'.

They can join hands with the poor women who have been trying to 'change Labour from the inside' for years now with zero success. Fuck that.

I think Andrew is taking a break from Twitter as a result of people telling him how they feel about the pronoun use during the Hayton segment.

We've turned full circle.

Parliment bought in GRA and GR because there's a small number of men who are women/need to be called women. This shouldnt impact woman because SSE.

We then have a decade of talking about this, seeing examples of where these acts have failed, court cases, fighting to remove the ideology from schools. Listening to how its devastated families.

Now we are back to the idea that a number of men need to called women, but its ok because SSE.

Have the people who were part of the decade between all come to the conclusion that parliament was right all along? Whats changed?

Thank you for the link - I’ll add it to my podcast list for listening to later 👍

I see what you’re saying and I can understand that analysis - it does seem to fit some behaviour.

But when it comes to Bindel she is always very negative and assuming the worst in her descriptions of women who disagree strongly/loudly with one of her mates; Freeman is the same. Stock is largely dismissive of those who disagree (she makes it clear that she doesn’t really care about engaging with their opinions/objections) and Joyce is more likely to discuss her view of the issue and agree to disagree (although she has expressed strong dislike of these public disagreements and framed them as attempts at compelled speech). None of these women see the frustration people feel with them for talking the big talk on a conceptual level of resisting attacks on women’s rights but, socially, still going along with a set of establishment rules that are maintaining the problems for women, children, and gay people.

Bindel will call us 'spiteful' and then look for support from us when she needs it i.e. subscriptions to articles and podcasts and attending public events. It’s a weird dynamic for a woman who often describes herself as a blunt, Northern, working class woman; she doesn’t seem to like other blunt women.

I don’t know these people, I can only assess them by their public writing and speech so it’s possible I’m missing some info that might make some of their behaviour seem less inconsistent but I, along with the people who give them feedback and get called haters for it, am frustrated with the inconsistencies. They’re claiming to speak for disadvantaged women, so why not listen to women who have concerns. I’m not saying rudeness towards them is okay - it’s absolutely not, but bluntness and criticism is not automatically rudeness.

I wonder whether there would be more pushback against DH if DH insisted on female pronouns. Would Janice, Andrew etc be quite so happy to use she/her if pressured to? I think DH has played this nicely. He gets to look all magnanimous by saying he doesn’t care which pronouns are used for him and so really, not using she/her looks a bit churlish, given how reasonable DH presents himself. It’s pressure without people seeing the pressure.

Exactly, @rogdmum. You'd have to be a 'GC ultra' not to go along with it.

You'd have to be pretty gormless to not realise that standing behind Mr I'm so palatable and reasonable is a long line of other men, including Danielle Muscato, India Willoughby and Katie Dolotowski.

Somewhere there is a very good article, I think written by a gay man? Or a man with a TQ+ identity? It was pointing out that the political lobby always leads everything with images and speakers of sweet vulnerable young teens to sway the public into awww bless, harmless, who could mind about them? Not letting the public know that those kids are being used to hold the door open for the six footers with beards with the swords and the ones frantic to get in the tampon bin.

We've tried 'just a few nice ones'. It didn't work. Men have proved beyond all doubt this does not work and won't ever work. The GRA was this compromise, and look what's inevitably happened?

This is how I feel. I wouldn’t describe myself as GC Ultra either. I just wonder why oh so reasonable DH gets a pass but India doesn’t? If one is ok then why isnt everyone? If one is “allowed” to be called by preferred pronouns what about the others? If not why not? Who decides? Where does it stop? Why do people who write for newspapers have the veto over other women?

Brilliant description of the problem!

I think, on the issue of the article this thread is discussing, that these public figures have decided that female pronouns can be gifted to men they like personally or who don’t make them personally feel threatened or (like Julie Bindel with her friend Claudia) to mates/acquaintances who acknowledge biology exists but continue to present as women.

Which confuses the issue because it makes it hard to hold the line politically and it guilts/pressures other women into feeling that they have to go along with this usage to be viewed as kind and well-behaved.

The third category particularly confused me this week: a man claims to acknowledge biological reality and not be fussed with regards to how he’s described but some journalists are calling readers names for pointing out that this article would have been a really effective opportunity to take advantage of that potential offer and use sex-based terminology. I don’t understand why Turner feels respect for an interviewee who acknowledges reality in some ways but then lives a life at complete odds with reality. Nor do I understand why respect automatically necessitates opposite sex pronoun use; it’s possible to be perfectly respectful and not agree with someone’s philosophical beliefs.

One MNer described how this same scenario played out in her daughter's school, in miniature.

The first boy to want to use the girls' toilets was a sweet boy who'd always got on very well with girls. The girls said they were fine with him, so the staff went ahead and gave him explicit permission.

The next boy to demand to use the girls' spaces was an aggressive kid who scared some of the boys. The girls and staff didn't know how to say "no, not you", so in he came.