Genspect Article on separation from GC ideology and social conservative ideology

[MalagaNights]

Sharing this as relevant to some other discussions I've been having on here linked to this.

https://genspect.org/navigating-ideological-currents-why-we-will-continue-to-avoid-ideological-bias/

I found the venn diagram quite clarifying, again linked to some discussions here, where I'm obviously more in the socially conservative circle wanting to protect social norms and other GC feminists here being in the critique social norms circle.(although I'm happy to critique them too, it's just my critiquing is increasingly leading me towards a more protecting norms stance rather than an abolish them stance. So I don't think critique is the best word.)

But we all agree on protecting women and children.

It's also interesting in how Genspect are going to try to position themselves as separate from both GC ideology and socially conservative ideology.
I guess this is how Helen Pluckrose fits in: she's the liberal free speech aversion to any tribal ideology guidance they want.

I think this is a good thing and the right thing for Genspect. But it does mean having to tolerate working with people who we disagree with and seeing those disagreements as necessary and valuable.

“where I'm obviously more in the socially conservative circle wanting to protect social norms and other GC feminists here being in the critique social norms circle”

You’ve misread the caption.

It doesn’t say “critique social norms” it says protect from “harmful gender roles”.

Men staying out of women’s changing rooms is a social norm. Women who are gender critical support that particular social norm. They also support social norms which protect children.

The difference from some/ many social conservatives is that women who are gender critical don’t believe that supporting those safeguarding social norms means there is a price which must be paid by women, in the form of having negative and restrictive stereotypes forced on them.

Looking again at that Venn diagram, I’d say it’s biased in its presentation.

It seems to be claiming that women who are gender critical don’t agree with protecting religious freedom. As there’s no overlap in that segment with the GC circle.

Also, my apologies for my previous reply - I’ve now spotted that the overlap part of the diagram describes both those with GC beliefs and the philosophical liberals as critiquing social norms. I guess that genspect must see “harmful gender roles” as a “social norm”.

Edited to add: Interesting that Genspect doesn’t specify “harmful social norms” in that overlap segment. I guess if they think erotic cross dressing in public is perfectly fine, then their objection to social norms isn’t just limited to harmful norms. Whereas the focus of those with GC beliefs would be on critiquing the harmful norms.

There's definitely a segment saying critiquing social norms.

It includes GC feminists and philosophical liberals but excludes social conservatives.

I think this isn't quite right as I do critique social norms but am tending to come down on the side that preserving them, or them having social utility for women, so am probably socially conservative.

I do think it's a useful attempt to separate some of differences that are becoming visible though. and which have caused Genspect difficulty.

And I do think it's a good reminder to all working in this area we have our priors and own ideology and enforcing this isn't the role of professionals or organisations which work with children.

Yes it's definitely got flaws but has some usefulness in trying to separate the ideological viewpoints involved in this work.

Yes, sorry Malaga, as your post said “circle”, I looked at the red circle initially and didn’t spot the overlap segment straight away. I was too late to correct my post.

Thanks for posting this, it’s useful to see how different groups frame and present these issues.

The nuances around social norms are interesting to explore.

“I think this isn't quite right as I do critique social norms but am tending to come down on the side that preserving them, or them having social utility for women, so am probably socially conservative.”

I agree that their Venn diagram isn’t quite right.

I come down on the side of opposing things that make women’s lives worse.

Genspect aren’t women’s rights campaigners (or that’s what I’ve read on here) so they’ve got their own priorities.

“I do think it's a useful attempt to separate some of differences that are becoming visible though. and which have caused Genspect difficulty.”

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. They seem to be attempting a sort of “we aren’t radical feminists and we aren’t right wing, we’re philosophers” pitch. So they’re not too concerned about the accuracy of the details as long as their broadbrush “we’re not on any side” message gets across.

I think you can’t ’protect religious freedom’ whilst protecting free speech and critiquing social norms. It’s disingenuous.

Is it that you protect the ‘freedom’ for people to subject their daughters to FGM, openly incite violence towards homosexuals, etc, as part of their religious expression, or do you defend the social norms and customs of the UK of tolerance, protecting women and girls from violence, etc?

Personally, I would tick every intersecting statement, - all of them, because I am constantly weighing up and considering and avoiding lazy thinking.

I suppose though, the most important admission, is that they believe philosophical liberals don’t agree with protecting women and children from men, according to the Venn diagram.

Is this rebranding those who wish to ‘liberalise’ harmful male behaviours which overwhelmingly victimise women and children (eg - the enablers/normalisers of pedophiles and other sex criminals), as ‘philosophical liberals’?

It seems to be claiming that women who are gender critical don’t agree with protecting religious freedom. As there’s no overlap in that segment with the GC circle.

That would be right. There’s nothing about gender critical thought that includes protecting religious freedom. GC people may also support religious freedom, but you can be consistently and fully GC and not support it.

Diagrams like this are always limited, so I think insofar as they are useful, you have to remember that they aren't deep.

People who are gender critical, or conservative for that matter, may also be philosophical liberals, for example. That category typically isn't discrete, even philosophical liberals typically have a view on what reality actually is, but they think protecting certain democratic social institutions is really important to the political process and society in general. On the other hand you can have people who are gc or conservative or many other ideological positions that are not philosophical liberals. You sometimes see gc feminists or religious people who would be quite happy to shut down the expression of ideas they don't like, or have secular schools teach kids ideologies, as long as they are the right ones.

People who are gc differ among themselves too. What counts as a socially constructed, negative "gender norm," as opposed to a sex based difference, is not self-evident. There are people who think that any different besides overt physical ones is a construct, and those who would give a far broader account of what is sex based. You'd find similar disagreements among conservatives and religious people.

On the social/religious conservative side, there is a tendency in places like FWR, and I think perhaps at Genspec, to assume that there is an arbitrary quality to the idea of enforcing social norms or gender roles. Somehow these are just dictated by tradition, or God, and so they are to be accepted. That's a gross misunderstanding though, and anyone who thinks that will never be able to get a handle on the conservative position.

I think that it's important to keep in mind that a society has to maintain certain tensions to function, and institutions within that society may have a role in maintaining one side of that rather than the other. Or to put it another way, the way society manages those tensions is to separate some interests institutionally.

So you might say there will be groups focused on protecting women (or other groups), like a rights tribunal, or women's health services groups, or even just feminist groups. But on the other end you might have institutions dedicated to intellectual freedom or research, where that was not the focus and in fact the important thing is to dedicate room to ideas that could be very uncomfortable for women in a pastoral sense, or could challenge what we think is true about women's rights, or something else.

Public libraries are another good example, they need to have a real distance from adopting any particular social justice causes, or religious (or non-religious) perspective so they can function to maintain access to information and ideas without bias. The loss of this understanding is a big part of why we have such issues with libraries and universities now. And this has come back to bite all kinds of groups in the ass because universities are now no longer functional as far as providing research that isn't politically determined, and many people are increasingly alienated from libraries.

My feeling has always been that Genspec sees themselves as first providing a kind of access to the best scientific/medical understanding of gender issues, so they tend to weight their role in that direction.

As far as religious freedom and critiquing social norms being incompatible - remember that religious beliefs are no less "neutral" than the modern western vaguely humanist secularism that many people in the modern UK espouse. If we are going to critique ideology and norms, the views and norms of atheistic secular positivists, and even feminists, are fair game too. So your criticism if it holds would also apply to every non-religious ideology. That would mean that people who believe in freedom of belief in terms of ideology or religion could not also have any kind of belief system about reality themselves.

Thanks for posting this.

I liked this bit: "how essential it is to rigorous knowledge production to have a wide range of worldviews and to take all possible steps to minimise ideological bias"

@TempestTost can you expand a little on what you said here? "People who believe in freedom of belief in terms of ideology or religion could not also have any kind of belief system about reality themselves"

I have my own belief system about reality but also believe in freedom of belief.

I think that it's important to keep in mind that a society has to maintain certain tensions to function, and institutions within that society may have a role in maintaining one side of that rather than the other.

I understand what you are saying, but ‘absolute liberalism’ isn’t actually possible, because if freedoms remain unrestrained, then the strong will enjoy and express their freedom at the expense of the weak, oppressing and constraining theirs.

For example men are the dominant, stronger, less vulnerable group compared to women and children. If men are absolutely free, they can can engage in activities like exhibitionism, voyeurism and so on, without restraint, which severely restricts the freedoms of women and children to move and do as they please.

So ‘protecting women and children from men’ doesn’t belong in opposition to liberalism. It is basically “protecting women and children’s freedom” from oppressive male expression of freedom - essentially- the equality of freedom.

Absolute liberals might argue for pornography, even violently abusive pornography - towards children, to be ‘freely’ available in the library, and that consideration for the women and children who would avoid using this library by the librarians might be described as their becoming embroiled in social justice causes.

I think it is concerning that Genspect have positioned themselves in opposition to protecting women and children from men in the name of philosophical liberalism.

They are essentially saying “We belong to team peen and male freedom of expression- as the philosophically liberal view”.

Sure, really it's just what you said.

Most people have a set of ideas about what is true or not, about what government policies will work, and also more abstract things like the metaphysical underpinnings of reality, what rationality is and means, what is ethical, and so on.

People who believe in liberal democratic institutions also have those kinds of beliefs. But they also believe that it is important for society to have very wide freedoms for people to not only believe what they think to be true, but to have public discourse about it - even if it disagrees with their own views. And that three need to be protections for that discourse, even if some people don't like it, are offended, and even if the discourse challenges the validity of the institutions themselves.

It's not contradictory for me to believe that male and female are biological categories with consequences, and for me to believe that a university should be a place where that can be challenged openly.

The tensions exist because society has to maintain the balance. For example, between freedoms and protections.

The question then is how to make sure the different interests are protected or have a place to be considered.

This is true even within the real of rights. For example - people here often say that the job of feminist groups is to consider the needs and interests of women, full stop. Because it's only in taking that approach that they can really think about where women's interests lie, and advocate effectivly.

But I think we all know that society at large needs to consider other interests and rights as well. Men, children, religious people, and other (and these groups can overlap) may all have different takes on the same question. Sometimes there could even be a conflict of rights (say, is it ok to give a woman a job to meet a sex-based quota, if it means denying an individual male a job because of his sex?)

Mediating these tensions means there needs to be places where these different groups can articulate their interests, there also need to be places that can pursue scientific or philosophical questions very freely, where research can happen, where people can have robust, and even not-kind, arguments, and where people can hear the perspectives of those with different views and experience so as to come to a better understanding.

Traditionally we have different kinds of advocacy and legal groups, to represent interests, some formal and some very informal. And as places that host open information, scholarship, discussions we have universities, libraries, the press.

It's important to remember how disadvantageous it has been to women to lose places where there could be open, and trusted sources of scientific information and best practice around sex and gender ideology. Everyone loses if these places do not exist. And as soon as they lose their reputation for being unbiased and allowing open discussion, they lose their value.

I've always seen Genspec as being primarily about access to good scientific information about elements of gender ideology. Which is really important to those being affected by it, particularly women, and IMO is likely to lead to many women-centric policy positions. But that's not the same as being an advocate for women as such. You can't start with that as a goal without undermining the role as providing the best scientific and legal perspectives.

There tends always to be an assumption that any conservative stance is an automatic retrograde negative - but, in fact, many norms have arisen out of a long history of experience, and out of trial and error. Over-throwing norms just for the sake of it is not progressive - it is simply radical.

Often when you over-throw old conditions in order to liberate some other element, you end up throwing the baby out with bathwater, and then have to start re-building everything from scratch. There is a lot to be said for stability and for re-forming structures in more considered ways. Modification.

I think this inevitable 'progress' type of ideology assumes that society moves forward in a straight line towards an ultimate end goal, and that every societal change is somehow is an improvement on that which went before. This is simply not the case, though.

I guess as an organisation they feel the need to set out some sort of over-riding vsion or policy - some kind of ideological template by which they can be identified. But one can be radical in some areas of life, whilst being quite conservative in others.

The tensions exist because society has to maintain the balance. For example, between freedoms and protections.

Diagrams like this are always limited, so I think insofar as they are useful, you have to remember that they aren't deep.

Agreed. I gave feedback via X that while it's not perfect (and that it's actually impossible to be perfect), if the intent was to find and focus on common ground, this was a good thing. I also said I couldn't plot myself on it, but that I mostly fitted in the GC box. But I'm not radical and I'm not even sure if I'm a feminist (I might be, it really depends on what counts). I also said that it would be good if agreeing on the common ground could lead to an end to the shit-flinging.

My comment got a like from Stella...

Which led me to follow it up with the most important intersection IMO. The light green and pink. There's no point in having a nice diagram unless it can be used so I tested it with a question...

I posed a question about the pathway for adolesent boys with autism to AGP.
This is an area that is not adequately addressed by anyone. Genspect should be best placed to manage this, and to have therapeutic approaches to intervene where 13/14 year old heterosexual, autistic boys are muddling up their emerging sexual desire with messaging online (porn, avatars, anime, suggestions in online forums etc) where they end up getting turned on initially by the cartoons (anime, gaming avatars) and then consider themselves to be the avatars. Language and cognitive processing around all this is likely to have limitations in many autistic boys, as described by Dr Az. It's not a massive leap to think that, left unchecked, this will bed in as a behaviour and will be accompanied by some very single-minded anger... like the shouty TRAs in their early 20s... and could go on to be very dangerous for women and girls.

I've tried various routes in to get this heard, including on an X chat with someone who may be on this board. If you are, thank you. Your perspective as a trans widow (I think) adds another dimension. So far, all I'm getting on this is radio silence from the therapeutic end of things. I don't want to shit-fling because I do believe that collaboration is the answer. I also see a lot of good in what Genspect have done. But this gap (the light green and pink sections) is vitally important for both the mental and physical health of adolescent boys and the wider safety of women and girls. Hopefully they intend to focus on this, as well as supporting the large numbers of adolescent (many autistic too) girls.

@VeronicasMonocle thank you, I hadn't seen this before. It's got some really interesting points in it. I also read quite a few of the comments.
I can see why it got the pushback that it glossed over the danger that these boys/men pose to women. I agree completely. This sentence sums up where it fails on that (my bold):

Here they’re met with the dichotomous narrative of the innocent gay victim of Gender Ideology or the dangerous fetishist. They are forced to choose which of these almost fictitious categories describes them.

My pushback: they are dangerous. No matter how much empathy I (genuinely) feel for these boys and their parents, because at a young age they are victims, they are very dangerous to women and girls if this is not addressed. The link with autism is good to see in the article and it's also a reason why they are potentially very dangerous to society. Obviously autism in itself isn't dangerous, but what it brings to the mix is the potential for obsessive, single track thinking and the explosive, often physically violent, PDA (pathological demand avoidance) traits that many psychologists and psychiatrists who specialise in autism argue is a part of every autistic person's make-up.
I've seen so many examples (not gender related) of boys and girls with these traits from the autism courses I've been on to support my daughter. Having watched my own daughter's violent side emerge during her mental health crisis about 15 months ago, I'm acutely aware of how much work is needed to stop reactionary meltdown behaviour becoming embedded. These children and young people need interventions to achieve this. Throw gender identity in to the mix and it's even more important that it's tackled for both girls (mostly the danger to themselves) and boys (the danger to themselves and society).
There is also the psychologically dangerous aspect that isn't touched on in this article: the narcissist. Sometimes autism will be a factor, sometimes they are just narcissists with personality disorders.

I once saw an exchange on X between Aaron Terrell and Ritchie Heron, where Aaron was insistently telling Ritchie that he had AGP and was in denial!?! It was a very uncomfortable exchange, which Ritchie handled very well. With that exchange in mind, there was some muddling up in the article IMO about the young men who are same-sex attracted who Aaron argues generally keep their genitalia. By implication, Aaron is suggesting the others don't. I think Aaron is wrong on that. Maybe that's why Aaron was trying to shoehorn Ritchie in to the second category. Either way it was odd and very badly handled by Aaron.

All that said, I agree with you on this @VeronicasMonocle
But still interesting, especially in conjunction with Dr Az's work, and worth a read I think.

All of this together, including all the valuable insight that the transwidows bring on the older men and the narcissistic control, helps to build an emerging picture. I also think you're right that Genspect is too broad brush so far to get in to this one. I think they are doing the right thing by talking to AGPs to hear more from their perspective but I'm concerned that their broad brush understanding leads to them being victim to the empathy trap. Which in turn, leads to the framework being compromised by influencial narcissistic AGPs.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes they make in their approach on understanding the light green and pink sections. Or if they are distancing themselves from the pink entirely, as suggested by several PPs above. If they want to stay in the bottom section only, they will be compromised.

I also follow SEGM on X and am glad that there are more voices in the clinical side. Genspect have done some great work to help parents and children but it remains to be seen whether they will continue to be the lead in this area. I hope so, given what they have done so far. But they really need to sort out this blind spot.

My take on the pink section is just that feminists and conservatives have a particular interest in centring the harm to women and children from men because of the structure of their world view. It's not that the philosophical liberals wouldn't include that harm but they wouldn't centre it. Bearing in mind that all these positions are constructs for the sake of the diagram as others have pointed out.

I'm not massively interested in the diagram (in contrast to the article) but I think it's at least helpful in countering the idea that gender critical people are either right wing or taken in by fear mongering/brain washed. And clarifying the groups of people working together and why they might agree/disagree.

(I came back to this thread to grab and save the URL that VeronicasMonocle had posted to the Aaron Terrell article. I can't see that comment anymore - all I can see is my two comments back to back but there is no sign of a deletion between them on the thread. What happened to it?!)

I didn’t see a post from VeronicasMonocle on this thread, and your response on this thread looked as though you were replying to a comment on a different but similar thread. Was the article you were after the one linked into the OP on this thread? https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4998802-4998802-article-on-agp-by-dr-joe-burgo-sympathy-for-the-devil-autogynephilia-as-psychic-retreat

Reflecting on this article and the Venn diagram, I think positioning themselves as philosophical liberals is an attempt to dignify a tenuous and treacherous line they need to hold for pragmatic reasons.

Their true position is consciously and deliberately placing the needs of ‘gender distressed’ people as paramount, because they see such people essentially being political/ideological footballs caught in the middle of it all.

Its obvious that while different positions thrash it out, people are being medically and psychologically harmed in real time, and there is a sense of urgency to do something now, particularly while WPATH spread ideas which come across as harmful madness, yet are being taken seriously by powerful institutions.

However, ‘gender distressed’ people can be fragile, volatile and unpredictable, and care needs to be taken when engaging with them to avoid triggering their feelings of shame, antisocial resentment and fear, sexual guilt, and so on.

Genspect needs to have a non-judgmental approach to bring ‘gender distressed’ people on side, in order to justify their claim that they can offer an alternative advocacy for this group to WPATH.

The elephant in the room, is that this group can and do present a danger on a societal level - for example Stephen Whittle has done so through activism with WPATH, and also on a personal level, thinking about the trans widows and trans orphans left behind as just one example.

Genspect essentially mean ‘no we don’t think about that bit - the dangers presented by ‘gender distressed’ people - otherwise they’ll desert us and we’ll lose our justification’ - but calling this pragmatic wilful blind spot ‘philosophical liberalism’.

☝️ Spot on @Metamorphosising

As for the missing (?) comment... Although I'm also on the Joe Burgo thread, it was definitely on this one. Screenshot below of my notification, showing the title of the thread. I had been quoted, as a response to my first comment on this thread.

How odd.

It's a shame the whole comment isn't here (I'm very confused.. where is it?!). It made similar points about the blind spot, which is what I built on in my response.

How odd.

@mnhq please can you look at what happened? I appreciate I'm probably meant to post this request on the site admin board (sorry!) but it was a useful contribution to this thread and it would be good to see it back.