Andrew Doyle

[MalagaNights]

Anyone been following this on twitter? He's been attacked for calling Debbie Hayton she in an interview.
Some horrible homophobic stuff and he has left twitter.

https://x.com/fem_mb/status/1754747745967988982?s=20

The attacks on Janice Turner, Stella Creasey, Kathleen Stock and now Andrew Doyle, people who've been at the forefront of putting themselves on the line over this issue, for years, is so utterly depressing.

Sure, disagree with their decisions make your point but accept good people, really good people in these cases, may make come to a different decision to you sometimes. Particularly when it's complex, tricky, and still being worked through.

Some GC feminists are really revealing themselves to be as authoritian as the TRAs.

Its completely understandable for Andrew Doyle to be upset about this and IMO its also unrealistic to expect anyone outside of the loop to be able to spot accounts which aren't really one of the real GC crowd.
I'm not saying all of the accounts that piled on Andrew are fake, but there are some dodgy accounts out there.

Well...

Its about Russia but its very useful in general - especially the bit about Belorussia and saturating the information environment and creating divisions.
You don't need to be a super sophisticated state or organisation to do it. Small groups or motivated individuals can do it (see sealions that appear here). Also 4chan. But also I think the way Twitter works encourages this to happen organically (random homophobe poster could be a troll, they could be exactly who they said they are. Its impossible to tell. The effect is the same)

It was clearly tempting for Doyle to portray the criticism of his DH interview as coming from a Feminist, GC POV. I have no doubt that much of the criticism he received came from homophobic and anti feminist posters.

Unfortunately him calling that out would not go down well with his anti-woke🙄 GBN viewers.

Hmm, Waldo looks pretty suspect tbf but I'm sceptical about it all being a conspiracy by TRAs.

Some thoughts off the top of my head about this:

• I like and respect Andrew. He puts a lot of thought and effort into campaigning for sense in the areas of free speech and gender vs sex.
• I hate the idea that anyone took the opportunity of this discussion to be homophobic towards him. It’s disgusting.
• I disagree with him that being anti-surrogacy or disliking drag is homophobic, or is hating gay male culture.
• I disagree with Andrew that people telling him that we felt frustrated by his going along with the pronoun game is attempting to control his speech - it’s trying to get someone in the media to take on board the argument that sex-based pronouns are not disrespectful and it’s arguing for someone to test it out in the mainstream media as an example of doing it respectfully and correctly (particularly as in this case, the interview subject has no stated preference for pronoun use), otherwise we’re going to be stuck on this bloody issue forever.
• I dislike that active, effective GC campaigners like Andrew are falling on their swords to protect D Hayton. For a supposed ally, Hayton’s actions have been at the centre of a number of these disagreements and fractures over the years. Hayton always comes wandering out of the ensuing dust cloud smelling of roses, somehow…
• Some men who claim to be pro-women but in reality strongly dislike feminism (Billboard Chris, Billy Bragg etc) will take any opportunity to malign GC feminism as man-hating - it doesn’t mean it is true, it means they have an axe to grind and are seizing an opportunity to grind that axe by making use of Andrew’s feeling attacked and vulnerable. They’re shameless.

As I said on another thread, this is a traditional Twitter clusterfuck.

The thing is it could be anyone. But there's a risk that that develops into another side argument/distraction because I don't think its likely we will ever learn the motivations of all the people posting the abuse. It becomes another distraction.

@UtopiaPlanitia
I dislike that active, effective GC campaigners like Andrew are falling on their swords to protect D Hayton. For a supposed ally, Hayton’s actions have been at the centre of a number of these disagreements and fractures over the years. Hayton always comes wandering out of the ensuing dust cloud smelling of roses, somehow…

I see your point there. But the only way to avoid falling into the Hayton trap is not to engage. When people immediately go on the attack it just blows up into another divisive argument. At the end of the day Doyle is free to fall on any swords he wants and use any pronouns he wants as we all are. I wouldn't like being told "don't defend that person". It would make me more likely to do so not less.

I was unnerved at the reaction to the Debbie Hayton article. We’ve spent so long resisting being told how people should use pronouns and now GC journalists and commentators were being bawled out for their pronoun use. It was so inflexible.

Well it wasn't me, he blocked me years ago.

I see what you’re saying and I agree that telling Andrew how to conduct himself is not something I would recommend - he is free to conduct himself in line with his own preferences and ethics.

He’s a thoughtful man and he loves a debate so what I’m advocating is stating a case (to him and other GC bods in the media eye) for accurate pronoun use especially in this case; it’s a way to make lemonade out of the lemons inherent in the 'Hayton Trap'. Demonstrating respectful and accurate sex-based pronoun use would be a model for others to consider following and it would make GC campaigners look a lot less inconsistent. Currently, it often looks like they employ sex-based pronouns only for people they dislike and reward those they view as allies by complying with the pronoun game.

I also wish this hadn’t become another divisive argument but I also saw a lot of people making valid points about this and if journalists or campaigners like Andrew are claiming to speak on behalf of women, children, and gay people I’d like them to make decisions based on effectiveness and not whether they’re acquaintances with someone. What they do privately when speaking to or discussing Hayton is not my business but public speech needs to move the discussion forward and I don’t think the argument of 'pronouns for politeness sake' stacks up well against losing opportunities to speak effectively and clearly.

There are always people who will complain bitterly about their political opponents being authoritarian, or unwilling to understand that reasonable people can come to different conclusions about some things, even when they broadly agree about a lot, or about them being unwilling to have a discussion and agreeing to disagree with good intent - but the moment they are in a position to do the same things they are all over it like white on rice.

@UtopiaPlanitia Oh I agree! I just hate that people always try to have these discussions over twitter. It never works because the reasonable points are being sent at the same time as the unreasonable and at the same time as the unbelievably vile. So it all turns into one amorphus pile on. Like you said its a clusterfuck.

Why can’t Twitter be more like FWR, eh?! 😬🤘

Edited to add: at least the opinion-columnists on both sides of the argument have things to write about this week after this blow up. Nobody ever considers the constant need of those poor people to be considered relevant 😈😉

I also think it's worth remembering that people can decide to go along with pronoun requests for a lot of different reasons. Many of us know people who have family members etc caught up in this kind of thing where there isn't really a good choice no matter what they do.

For someone doing an interview, there are other considerations as well. There may well be blow-back from readers whichever choice is made - what is most likely to get the most important information to the most people? What is the role of an interview with a subject, anyway - does it always have to involve directly challenging the interviewee? Are there times when it shouldn't, even if the person doing the interview has qualms? Etc.

Its madness to blame women for comments made on twitter. It's individuals intentionally trying to hurt him, not an official stance from an official organisation - the women can hardly take away the GC card of these individuals.

I thought Andrews interview with Hayton was pathetic- it was obviously just advertising haytons book. And for someone who used to teach, his lack of understanding of the safeguarding concerns with hayton is troubling. But helps me see how schools have fallen to the ideology.

Doyle was upset that he recieved negative reaction to his interview, and understandable upset to recieve homophobic abuse, but its not fair for him to conflate the two.

Im sorry he recieved abuse, but im baffled why he thinks women should take responsibility for something they haven't done.

If you’ve seen the Doyle - Hayton interview I’d love to get your analysis of where you see those caveats you mention coming into play in that particular interview.

If you haven’t seen it, no worries - I’m not trying to set you homework 😊😀

I'm not sure what you mean by caveats?

I'm not that interested in the interview so not inclined to watch, but any time a journalist or pundit, or whatever it is we want to call Doyle, does an interview they have to make decisions about how they are going to approach the person. Sometimes the person sets out what they will accept to agree to be interviewed too so it may not be limited decision if the interview is going to go ahead at all.

In general, in my experience, interviews related to book publications tend to take the approach of exploring on friendly terms what the person has said in the book. Basically allowing the person to speak for themselves and questioning in a way to draw that out. Typically they aren't that hostile or even challenging. I think that is a fairly standard approach to that kind of interview.

It's also pretty common for an interviewer to put aside a lot of their own personal political views, religious views, etc, and take an interview from a relatively neutral position. It can still be challenging but not in a personal way IYSWIM. They aren't functioning in an activist role, and to do so could somtimes be inappropriate.

How to deal with requested pronouns is still very contested in the general public, and even among people who are broadly GC. Many will do it in some settings but not others, or will avoid them altogether. That being the case, Doyle might have felt that using male pronouns would make that the issue of the interview, which isn't what he wanted it to be about; or that it would have created a challenging interaction when that would work against the kind of discussion he wanted to emerge; or that it would have been too much a reflection of his personal politics, rather than just covering the story.

I don't see it as being a lot different than other instances where people interview a controversial figure they have differences with, for example religious differences. Yes, sometimes they might be directly confrontational, but often they won't be.

I am trying actually to think of an interview with an author which was really unfriendly, and the one that comes most to mind was Gian Gomeshi interviewing Terry Eagleton. And Gomeshi just came off as an ass and it wasn't very interesting to listen to because you couldn't get much sense of what TE was about.

Recently, I have found more zealotry and intolerance of different opinions within the GC movement.

I don't think having GC and/or being female makes people immune to being obnoxious and unpleasant.

As with all groups, those who are being nasty bring disrepute to the group, by association.

The issue is, people hold different ideas about what counts as being nasty, and about which ends justify which means.

Gay male culture can’t be above scrutiny, surely? Does he really think that all criticism of gay male culture is homophobia? If all criticism is homophobia then what happens if something bad is happening?

Gay male culture can’t be above scrutiny, surely? Does he really think that all criticism of gay male culture is homophobia? If all criticism is homophobia then what happens if something bad is happening?

No group or culture should be above scrutiny. This goes for gender criticals too.

Posters on this board often suggest / believe that those disagreeing with them are victims of female socialisation, internalised misogyny or ignorance when I see the disagreement as symptomatic of drawing different conclusions.

I agree with Brainworm's point that gender critical feminists are human beings like any other and all of humanity has a dark side.
I'm a bit nonplussed by the 'no-one on our side would ever do that' kind of responses. We don't know and I think it's unwise to jump to conclusions.

He’s back, but only to say he won’t be on xitter much any more

https://twitter.com/andrewdoyle_com/status/1755133064051630317

I don’t think people are saying ‘no one on our side’ or ‘no one GC’. It’s clear there are many different types of people united in biological realism.

But the women on this board can be short and sharp, can scold at length and disagree passionately, but I don’t think I’ve seen abuse.
It’s just a different communication style.

People get deleted for saying wrongthink rather than anything nasty.

I agree it seems untypical but we're an anonymous site and we just don't know. I'm trying to keep an open mind about it. I thought Janice Turner was being needlessly defensive with her remarks on Twitter on Monday and I'm trying to avoid falling into a similar kind of trap.