Zoe Williams on Ghey case

[theDudesmummy]

I find this article really offensive, especially the breathtakingly simplistic (wilfully deaf/blind) tone of "A child* *having to use a toilet cubicle previously occupied by a trans woman is apparently the right-thinking parent’s most pressing fear". Co-opting this tragedy in this dogwhistle way is not OK. Nuanced debate and analysis would be welcome.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/brianna-ghey-name-killers-transphobia-children?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It's part of the grift. Privileged people like her would be out of a job with the identity politics publications like the Guardian buy into, so if you act as a champion of repressed minorities you keep your job.

I've seen other publications hire middle-class white men to write about the discrimination faced by minority groups!

@NotBadConsidering fair point. They're not mutually exclusive though.

Yes it's only yesterday I even heard about sj being expelled and moved because she laced sweets with poison or drugs and gave them to other kids. So yes, red flags! The new school ht met her twice, seemed completely ineffective and to not gave her safeguarding file, bit worrying.
The boys dad is a criminal and extremely young.
Bg didn't go to any lessons or even attend all day, had no friends which I why mum was so happy and encouraging her to go meet them in the park. Don't think she knew about the planned cocaine use.

Why has all the reporting made out all 2 were just standard teenagers when clearly they were all extremely vulnerable with massive files.

Brianna was certainly more likely to have been the victim (there was always going to a be a victim) than some of the other children in the environment, because of being a more disturbed and vulnerable teenager than most others. But identifying as trans was because she was a disturbed and vulnerable teenager, not the cause of it. It could just as easily have been a child with other vulnerabilities: intellectual disability, marked ASD features, physical differences, being camp or butch, coming from a notorious local family...the list goes on.

Zoe Williams is a prat, and a crap writer. I gave up reading her nonsense years ago, and I have no intention of reading this article. I suggest others do likewise.

My sincere hope is that one day the people who peddled this shit will be held accountable for the harm they have caused: the women without breasts, unable to have children; the castrated boys; the female prisoners forced to share spaces with rapists; the victims required to pretend by a court of law that the man who raped them was a woman; the brilliant, brave women who stood up against this ideology and were bullied and forced out of their jobs.

Sadly, it won't happen. Because privileged women like Zoe - white, middle-class, privately educated, sailing through life with no awareness of what it is like to be poor or abused - always get away with it. They will never have to face the consequence of their actions, and with a trail of destruction behind them they will just glide smoothly on, oblivious. It would be nice to think that somewhere, in some corner of her mind, she has enough self-awareness to grasp the enormity of what she has been a part of, but I doubt it. She will find a way of blaming others while absolving herself of everything. As always, the people to suffer the consequences of this shameful episode in our history will be the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

'The reporting nd mythology around this case in general has been infuriating. Brianna was "fearless", but also unable to catch a bus alone at the age of 16, or attend normal lessons because of anxiety. Brianna was so popular, but was being bullied and had no friends'

Such a good point

@RoyalCorgi brilliant post. Thank you.

Reality has become a sub text in cases like this. I noticed at the time that the usual ‘tributes’ from the school were missing, presumably because BG didn’t attend much and had had a troubled educational experience. Far from victim blaming, but the distortion of the child’s experience as a person with long term psychological difficulties into the ‘stunning and brave and loved by all’ trope is very unhelpful to other children and parents.

But I suppose when the courts insist that a rape victim refers to her attacker as ‘she’ , and requires her to describe an assault with ‘her penis’, nothing should surprise us.

I was and still am against the naming of the two murderers because all it has done is allow the press to write all these sensationalist articles.

In pretty much all cases the media will focus on some aspect to try to generate a campaign from it and distract from the actual details of the case. The same old narrative of "normal people" being transformed into killers because of ABC.

If one of the other boys had been murdered this case wouldn't have generated the headlines that it has.

It's useful for awful people too use to score points.

Just after the news of the stabbing, vigils were set up where fetishists pushed their ideologies under the guise of 'mourning'

Brianna is a poster child for men to point at to accuse women of being at fault and to figuratively beat women with.

The Judge, who heard all the evidence, says a secondary motive for. Brianna Ghey's murder was transphobia. People here who deny this are undermining the consistent, fair, balanced stance of mainstream CQ and giving grist to the mill of people who want to paint us as rabid transphobes.
I think Zoe Williams is a disgrace for things she wrote in 2007 about pregnancy, but that's another story. She says that the more populist end of GC belief is responsible for fostering an environment where transphobic hate can flourish. No, it flourishes when gentle, thoughtful, considered voices like Kathleen Stock, JK Rowling, Helen Steel, Maya Forstater, Allison Bailey, and thousands more are vilified and persecuted by the Trans Rights lobby, and when the policies they demand defeat ordinary reason and decency.

The reason why it is getting so much attention, in this offensive way, is because of people like Zoe Williams. I think, though, that by pigeon-holing her as a product of her background absolves her way too much of her own agency. I too am a privileged, white, middle-class, privately educated woman. I don't spout this misogynistic and homophobic shit.

Scary isn't it, that we're now so used to teens knifing one another that to be laced with the shock value for clicks, brianna's gender identity has to be constantly wheeled out for them to use this horrific tragedy to keep the interest going.

The media haven't ever been ones to let murdered children rest though, look how often madeline mccann's disappearance gets dragged to the surface on a slow news day for example. They seem to have the cases that grab the most attention and ignore the ones that don't generate the same interest. I think we'll see this with poor brianna.

The Ghey case is horrific and tragic but I don't understand why it's gaining so much attention.

It isn't that uncommon for teenagers to be stabbeanto death by other teens nowadays. It might get a brief mention on the news but that's it.

Two things, the extreme sadism and planning, and the trans element. It's not a fight over drugs or a heated argument where someone brought a knife, which most of these other murders get written off as, rightly or wrongly.

I just assumed that's how hate aggravators work in sentencing.

If BG had been black or gay and not trans, and the boy had made racist or homophobic comments in his messages it would have been the same, even if all the others on the list had been white or straight and there'd been no evidence that black/gay people were being specifically targeted.

The prosecution will press for it because of a potentially heavier sentence.

Zoe Williams... I won't give her headspace. Her article is entirely predictable. The Guardian could fairly easily create a ZW generator and just replace her. Maybe they have.

I’m stridently GC, but I would never dream of using the murder of a child to push that agenda. Zoe Williams is despicable for using it to push hers.

I just assumed that's how hate aggravators work in sentencing.

If BG had been black or gay and not trans, and the boy had made racist or homophobic comments in his messages it would have been the same, even if all the others on the list had been white or straight and there'd been no evidence that black/gay people were being specifically targeted.

The prosecution will press for it because of a potentially heavier sentence.

Yes, I agree. He made homophobic comments about a different child on the girl's "kill" list, if that boy had been the victim I think it also would have been seen as the same.

Also I think the issue with the boy is that there wasn't much of a clear motive. The girl is a violent fantasist. The boy less so and more concerned with school etc.

Zoe has a bee in her bonnet after the recent responses to her posts about Jo Phoenix, I take it?

No, you're confusing it with changing your birth certificate or potentially having more right to access single sex spaces which require a GRC.

You're protected under the characteristic "gender reassignment" as soon as you say that's what you are. Also if someone thinks you're trans even if you're not (eg butch lesbian, drag queen).

She's awful. I'm not bothering reading that either, like many pp, but I have read some of her recent pearls of wisdom elsewhere. So lazy, so dishonest, and the opposite of what proper journalism should be.

Don't you have to be 18+ to get a GRC anyway?

Yes. Children are protected under "gender reassignment" though.

GRC is mainly about lying about your sex on official documents, historically to circumvent lack of same sex marriage and different pension ages.