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.

He said himself that he would leave her and the whole family if he had to in order to transition.

I'm not sure what Janice Turner thinks of him, but I'm hoping she doesn't really believe that she needs to accommodate his sexual fetish.

Just so we get that in perspective.

Hayton said he would leave his wife and entire family in order to conduct a sexual fetish in public.

I reckon these GC-lites (thats the opposite of ultra GC, isnt it?) have shares in Haytons book. They are very invested in positive, and only positive, reviews of it and him.

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

Agreed, @UtopiaPlanitia. It's reminiscent of the Royal Family threads here.

Using the word 'hate' (and its variants) seems quite infantilising.

I also note that since Employment Tribunals confirmed that 'terf' is a slur, we are seeing the rise of 'ultra'. Quite a clumsy tactic of Operation Save Labour. I'll be waiting for my Labour MP to trot that one out now - he must be sick of 'less heat, more light' and 'culture wars' by now. 'Labour is for women like you, AutumnCrow, not for the ultras who seek to stoke discord' blah blah.

Whatever is it about DH that keeps stirring up these rows? Here we are yet again and who is at the root? What wonderful publicity for the book and the articles. I bet he’s absolutely thrilled.

The Labour Party knows it has just months left to produce a Great Big Fudge on women's rights and children's safeguarding.

If this 'ultra' business is the best tactic they can come up with - peeling off a group of mythical women and tradducing them as out of control nutters - then once again they have fucked it.

I mean, Germaine Greer would be an 'ultra' in this new, creeping mythology, would she not?

I am tired and cynical by now, but I do wonder about the benefits of being able to monster women who want too many rights and are not prepared to be non consenting tools in a man's sex life if he's a really nice and special man, who after four years of women (the ultra ones) explaining endlessly to him in very small words and refusing to pander or pat him on the matter, has most graciously agreed to stop excluding women from their facilities and resources. Or at least to say he agrees in the right places and to the right people.

It leaves the desperate Labour faithful with the ability to shout 'both sides' and sell themselves as the totally unconnected, reasonable, lovely, middle ground (in PR terms).

But in real and practical terms of the harms to women, I'm not sure what this achieves. Beyond Hayton really having a lovely lovely big bucket of drama and attention to splash in. What are we saying here? That if they don't come in women's spaces we play pronoun performative submission? To everyone or just the selected nice ones? The 'my lovely trans friend' game is a familiar one on MN, but whatever you may consent to with your mate, you cannot demand that the consent of other women matches yours. Or that they agree to submit and suck up whatever you feel is 'reasonable' by your lights and in the terms of you being a woman who isn't really affected by the issues that affect those women saying no, boundary, I can't move it. Are we doing this for women as a whole sex class or not?

The whole 'if you're grotty and ugly by wanting too many rights and boundaries I shall stop being GC' and 'you owe this to me because I supported you' kind of vibes and conversations starting are a bit.... if people in powerful places were ever supporting as a special favour as opposed to because they were just standing up for what is right, then we have a problem. Women's rights too often are seen by the left as a 'nice to have' that will come at some point in the utopian future, and something women are expected to be visibly and performatively grateful for any crumb of.

And I'm afraid pretending that a fetish is not a fetish, and co operatively supporting happy penises at the expense of women is not really going to fly. If it gets off the ground at all it's in for a nasty crash landing.

And I'm afraid pretending that a fetish is not a fetish, and co operatively supporting happy penises at the expense of women is not really going to fly. If it gets off the ground at all it's in for a nasty crash landing.

I agree. It's a fetish. He says it's a fetish everyone now knows it's a fetish.

Does anyone really think that interviewers aren't going to bring that up?!

Because Loony Left Supports Sex Perverts in Schools' is a headline that writes itself.

Whatever is it about DH that keeps stirring up these rows?

Cherchez le AGP. Always one at the centre of them.

I do think its, in part, party political rather than wanting to find the line of authenticity between Kayla Lemieux and Hayton.

Its odd that, in their attempts to brand ultras as right wing, homophobic, ideological, whatever, they havent seen that its going to label them as wanting to impose this onto school children.

He says it's a fetish everyone now knows it's a fetish.

And what's that about?

Is it just something he now feels like talking about for his own reasons?

Is it a realisation in some back room that after years of frantic deletions here and trying to deny and hide it that it won't stay in its box and risks making Labour look batshit, so lets get it out, celebrate it and try brazening it out?

I know! Really, how do they think that's going to go?!

It's never, ever going to fly.

I wonder if they are confident that #nodebate has moved the Overton window far enough in that direction that the papers wouldn’t dare print a headline like “Loony Left Supports Sex Perverts in Schools” any more.

Well, they might, until someone actually asks him.

You can shift the Overton window all you like, but if you're actually completely upfront that you've got a public fetish? In a school?

With regard to Stella O’Malley’s list, as well as various big namers scolding women for wanting too much in their criticism of these people in the public eye, I jotted down a few thoughts.

• On the list, quite a few of the names are people who weren’t truly critical of gender stereotypes but were actually in favour of the concept of true trans. They could agree up to a point with GC feminists but then would insist that them living out, or agreeing with others living out, sexist stereotypes was necessary for 'good' mental health (I’m thinking Orlander, Tyrell, Yardley, Kimberley, Harrison, Hayton, Linehan, O’Malley, Bailey, Cantor, Zucker as examples in this category).
• There are names with whom I have differed in opinion or approach and it was a fundamental difference of opinion so I felt I could no longer support them or their work any further (Helen Pluckrose, Benjamin Boyce, Jane Claire Jones, WPUK would be examples of that for me).
• There are names with whom I have differed in opinion, but it wasn’t always serious enough that I couldn’t continue to support them in their work or campaigning (Stock, Bindel, Fair Play for Women, Jenny Watson, possibly also James Esses and Sarah Phillimore)

It feels galling to realise that someone who’s had our support (in crowdfunders, in physically turning up to events, in contributing to letter writing campaign & petitions, in buying books, taking out subscriptions) believes that they would’ve achieved the objectives and social/activist platform they were aiming towards without public help or support.

Maybe I’m wrong in this interpretation, but it seems to me that a lot of these people believe they achieved a useful position in this debate by sheer force of will alone, and the anonymity of a lot of their supporters is something they don’t genuinely respect. I can see why someone who puts themselves forward is brave but they were helped in this brave stance by our support and, like politicians, we don’t owe them our support or a living - we can disagree and withdraw support if they begin to espouse ideas or things we disagree with.

We’re not a bottomless pit or an unthinking mob, we can be strategic in who or what we support in the fight to protect the rights of women, children and gay people and we are the type of people who make our feelings known if we feel someone has behaved in a disappointing way.

Perhaps I’m being a bit uncharitable because I’m fed up of the Twitter scolding but I’m never going to support fetish in public spaces or around children, and to the detriment of women/their families, and I’m never going to give someone a pass on dodgy behaviour because they’re considered a mate or an ally. Women have to hold the line because if we don’t the boundary becomes porous and we end up in a place that does no-one any good.

This was my view point. I have felt like I have been scolded by the great and the good. If it wasn’t for the thousands of anonymous women stood behind them, ready and willing to put their hand in their pocket for crowd funders and the like, we would not be having the conversations we are and the great and the good would not be able to speak so candidly on the subject.

I feel like a great deal of damage has been done over the last few days. A great divide has being created which may result in less support for those with a big platform to speak - will that mean they will speak out less or with less controversy? I also thought we were getting somewhere on reclaiming language, I think some of that progress has been given away.

My reaction to the idea that Stellas List has been upset is "good". Maybe they are listening, after all.

Stella really needs to wind her neck in.

wrt lists, I can't escape the feeling that this is recurrent.

There are women who are willing to give up the rights of other women in order to budge up and accommodate. This may well be grounded in a wide range of beliefs, motivations, and allegiances.

There are women who recognise the women who are excluded by budging up and therefore put retain a perspective that defends the rights for all women, including the ones that oppose/loathe or even abjure them. I find it easier to set this out as a simpler, "I support women, children and safeguarding. We don't live in societies where we can lessen support for these, we need to strengthen them".

'The coerciveness I am talking about is the fact that men tend to have sexual urges which would be socially unacceptable to express freely. They have three choices, suppress, sublimate or express it whether socially acceptable or not (coerce).

This doesn’t mean that ‘all men’ or ‘all males’ sexuality’ is expressed coercively, but the urges underpinning the expression whether consensually or coercively is a component part of male sexuality. Some men do have a lower drive, but I don’t think that makes them better people.'

Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. The 'urges' you talk about are just sexual urges. That doesn't equate to rape. Having a sexual urge doesnt' mean someone is going to rape. Of course males have sexual urges, just as women do. Having a high sex drive doesn't correlate to propensity to rape.

Honestly I can’t actually understand what you are reading into what I said.

You are the one who used the word ‘rapey’ - in a way that distorted what I was saying.
You are the one weighing up whether things equate with rape, not me.
You are the one talking about a propensity to rape.

Is it okay if you shoehorn the word rape back out of what I said, and then tell me exactly, using my own words, not your mis-paraphrasing, what you are disagreeing with. At the moment you are disagreeing with me about things you said I said, not what I said.

Maybe it's the word coerce?

And whether or not you think coercive sex constitutes rape?

If it is helpful for me to clarify what I consider to come under socially unacceptable sexual urges men have which are not the urge to rape.

• The urge to stare at a woman’s breast as she is breastfeeding
• The urge to grab a woman’s bum or other body part.
• The urge to smell a woman’s hair.

^^ These are all urges that are involuntary, that men need to avoid acting upon, because it would be socially unacceptable to express them openly. They are on the milder, far short of rape, end and its obviously not an exhaustive list.

With these kinds of urges there three choices - suppression, sublimation or expression.

Since I am saying there are three choices here, it logically follows that acting upon urges is not inevitable, so I don’t understand why you seem to suggest that I am saying this it is.

However, if they are acted upon, they would be coercive and abusive, if the woman acted upon doesn’t consent. A lack of consent doesn’t stop the urge though, does it?

In my post above, I clarify that I am talking about a whole host of urges and acts, not just intercourse.

Coercing children to call you ‘miss’ when they you know you are a man is not rape, but it is still sexual coercion.

Well. I am trying to parse it out.

What you're saying is that men have sexual urges. And they want to act on their urges. Sure.

That does not logically mean a coercive act would be the next step; depends on the context.

Coercing children to call you ‘miss’ when they you know you are a man is not rape, but it is still sexual coercion.

Absolutely agree on that point!