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.

When I responded to your thread yesterday I was quite non plussed, I think I had glossed over the fact you were talking about Twitter, I assumed you were talking about actual real feminists and not just the anonymous voices on Twitter. When I asked for clarification about “GC feminists” being actual “GC feminists” I had used my own point of reference which isn’t Twitter, so I felt very shocked that actual feminists would say the things that you’d said they had. It was very difficult to see that, when no proof of an actual feminist saying terrible things and attacking Andrew Doyle had been provided. It wasn’t pathetic to be incredulous, it’s just my real world experience and honestly I do not know an actual feminist in any of my women’s groups that would say or even think the things you had said these GC feminists had said. Certainly not over pronouns. Women will need to use pronouns in certain ways around certain men in certain situations. That’s ok. That’s self preservation and should be a given, women must be allowed to protect themselves. I have no idea who is hounding Andrew Doyle and why, using homophobic slurs to anyone is reprehensible full stop. What does concern me is that this thread seems to be about attacking women for saying “No”. You have asserted that Janice Turner was attacked “even here on mumsnet” and this hate even went so far as women saying they would cancel subscriptions because she used female pronouns for DH. I don’t think that is an attack, surely that is women using the only weapon they have to voice their upset! Take away our monetary offerings. With respect to Andrew Doyle who as you say has put himself on the line time and again for GC women… why do we owe this man obeisance? His voice is appreciated but he has his own motives and has a platform loosely tied to it. For me I can tell you the names of many many women who have lost their positions, jobs, incomes and their communities because they quietly stood by their principles. They don’t have platforms, they don’t have access to voice their views in national newspapers or have television shows to discuss their opinions and they certainly don’t have the luxury to decide which pronouns to use for a self confessed man who has a sexual affliction that’s fed by seeing himself as a woman.
You may well think that all this is “just laughable”, or my thoughts make me a zealot, an Ultra or pathetic but that’s on you really. I am very sorry Andrew Doyle has had a nasty horrible time on Twitter but that’s not womens fault.

Duplicate post

Gingrich isn't one to dismiss. She been all over this debate for years and has done stirling investigative work following the money in the US trans movement to show where funding originates and how it got so influential so quickly. (Billionaire trans-bros in big pharma in case you're interested). You are right in that she is very US centric, and that debate has a different tone to the uk one, but she's worth reading simply for the insight on how these ideas seem to suddenly become accepted dogma in some circles. Not one to block imo.

Andrew has written about his perspective here:

unherd.com/2024/02/caught-up-in-the-gender-critical-civil-war/

Gingrich isn't one to dismiss

I read sheddinghairs as suggesting you block revfemstbeat, not Gingrich

If my critics are correct, and I am indeed a rabid misogynist, surely I at least deserve some credit for going to such elaborate lengths to disguise it?

From AD's article in Unheard. Link courtesy of WarriorN

and this, especially, as AD ends this important (in my opinion) piece

For all that, gender-critical feminism remains an essential force in protecting our rights in these maddening times. The genuinely bigoted elements of the movement may be aberrations, but they are increasingly being perceived as the norm. If this cannot be rectified, it will prove a disaster not just for women and gay people, but for truth and sanity itself.

What he describes is horrific.

I'm also again annoyed that there's this idea/ label of 'GC feminism.'

Fixed it.

The genuinely bigoted elements of the movement may be aberrations, but they are increasingly being perceived categorised by people like me as the norm. If this cannot be rectified, it will prove a disaster major win for Denton's playbook

See the neutral title here: Have the gender critical feminists gone too far? There's a remarkable resemblance to the early C19 novels about "the woman problem".

l

I said something like 'I'm just about done with my Times subscription' and that is true.

I took out a sub several years ago even though I'm not a subscription-y kind of person and I'm not the Times' natural reader demographic, because I wanted to support the excellent writing from JT and others in this area. They've been going off the boil for quite a while now and the DH puff piece was the final straw. I no longer feel like I'm getting value for money.

Why is that a problem for you? How on earth do you interpret that as saying 'horrible things' about JT? Am I supposed to just keep forking out for a paper I barely read any more in order to not be 'horrible' to Janice Turner?

That comes across as a very thoughtful and well balanced article. Especially as its him who was in the eye of the storm so to speak. Its the kind of perspective that it would be impossible to convey through Twitter though.

Twatter is a big issue..

It sounds like a horrible pile on. And that sort of specific homophobic abuse is bloody awful. And surely it goes against twitter guidelines. I hope they've all been banned?

From my point of view, and obviously this is only me, you've got two things going on there. Legitimate disagreement with pronouns particularly in this specific case and what looks like a bunch of unhinged nutters, to be honest. I certainly would not claim those people as being gender critical or feminist in any way.

For example:

One self-declared feminist confessed to being “a raging homophobe” and wrote: “I don’t like gay men anymore. I think most of them are miso[gynist] pieces of shhh [sic] that mock women and platform AGPs”

The gays are definitely to blame as well. First off, sticking a penis inside a man’s asshole is unhealthy. If you can’t admit this then you are part of the problem.”

I hate men in general”, and then clarified her misandry in an oddly specific way: “Gay MEN. Straight MEN. White MEN. Black MEN. All MEN. I don’t discriminate. I view you all with equal amounts of derision”.

I'm not on Twitter, but to me, they sound like the worst of the nutcases you get, thoroughly enjoying being aggressive and insulting. J. K. Rowling said she could paper her house with tweets like that. You won't get many gender critical women identifying as a raging homophobe, either!

It does make you wonder about humanity. Or maybe the way an anonymous screen enables the anger that's always just below the surface.

In terms of this specific incident however, with DH, autogynephiles are heterosexual not gay. Anyone who understands AGP would know that. Homophobic abuse is just that, homophobia. Worryingly tho, homophobia appears on the rise.

For me, there is legitimate criticism to be had about other aspects of Andrew's stance. I don't think Andrew Doyle understands AGP, for a start. Which, and I know I sound like a broken record, was the entire point of Debbie Hayton's PR drive.

As an admitted autogynephile — a heterosexual man who presents as a woman out of an erotic attraction to himself — Hayton is something of a hate figure for many in the movement.

I said this on day one. It would be repackaged as an internal sexual orientation. Not an external fetish, that relies and thrives on the unwitting participation of the public.. Including interviewers, his pupils, and his own family.

By conducting this interview I was deemed guilty of “enabling” and “promoting perversion”, in spite of Hayton’s gender-critical beliefs.

Case in point. Hayton doesn't have any gender critical beliefs.

Hayton uses women, because that's what they are, a prop. It's the opposite of gender critical. Hayton, quite literally, says that big tits make women more important. It's so fiercely gender uncritical, it's almost comic.

I never call male sex offenders she/her. But I will be courteous to those who respect women.”

He absolutely doesn't get it. Women's pronouns aren't a prize or a courtesy that you hand out to people you like.

And no, Hayton doesn't respect women.

Autogynephilia fetishises women's oppression. It's quite literally men getting boners at the thought of women's subjugation. Hence sissy porn.
And even that's a rather sanitised description.

This is why my women are so upset. Hayton has managed to turn the eroticising of women's oppression, into something that interviewers think is respectful!

Despite the onslaught, I should emphasise that this kind of sociopathic behaviour is far from typical in the gender-critical movement

Indeed. And Debbie H is not a representative of it.

They have shared screenshots of the worst tweets and taken this as confirmation of what they have been alleging all along: that the gender-critical movement is a front for far-Right homophobes.

My experiences this week have certainly alerted me to a dark element within gender-critical circles,

Not gender critical. And entirely unsurprising that people are telling you it is.

We've spoken on this board, over and over about the different reasons for not wanting men identifying as women in women's spaces.

There are loads of outraged men walking around saying no gays in my kids school because kids are coming out as trans and non-binary.

They're not gender critical feminists.

AD frames 'extremist GCs' as a mirror image of TRAs, insistent as they are that language alters reality.

I find this a little superficial - of course language can never alter the underlying reality of a person's sex. But we know that without the TRA movement's use of female language for men, it would not have achieved what it has. So their language use did indeed create different political, legal and material conditions for women.

I'd just really like to see the working - it's easy to follow the logic of calling a man 'he', but there's always a fuzzy area of itchy cognitive dissonance when people say 'she'. I've never seen a reason other than 'I don't want to upset him'.

This is a new username and I've had a bit of a break, but I've been involved in GC activism since 2016 and seen several waves of 'nice v nasty'.

I personally think that if there's a woman who hates all men, chances are, she has very good reason. That's one of the things that life has taught me - there are a lot of angry women who've suffered the most horrific ongoing abuse from their earliest life. Frankly, the surprise is that more women don't hate men.

Yes, when women have good reason to hate men. Something that many men don't always get. And Germaine Greer said women have no idea how much men hate them. This movement has certainly brought that home.

But Andrew Doyle shouldn't be the focus of that.

Gingrich isn't one to dismiss. She been all over this debate for years and has done stirling investigative work following the money in the US trans movement to show where funding originates and how it got so influential so quickly. (Billionaire trans-bros in big pharma in case you're interested). You are right in that she is very US centric, and that debate has a different tone to the uk one, but she's worth reading simply for the insight on how these ideas seem to suddenly become accepted dogma in some circles. Not one to block imo.

I think the poster meant the revfmstrtbeat poster Jennifer Gingrich was talking about.

Yes, when women have good reason to hate men. Something that many men don't always get. And Germaine Greer said women have no idea how much men hate them. This movement has certainly brought that home.

But Andrew Doyle shouldn't be the focus of that.

I agree, but it's always been part of the feminist movement. It's not new and exclusive to gender critical feminists.

But Andrew Doyle shouldn't be the focus of that.

Oh certainly not. I was just making a general comment on whether it's a very extreme thing for a woman to feel. On the face of it, it is, but in reality, a lot of women have very good reason if they hate men.

Barry Wall's take though not a comment on Andrew's treatment.

He makes good points about respectful debate and influence but I would personally debate in opposition to two points he makes.

One that DH shouldn't have been in the times.

Authoritarianism and no platforming is how we got into this scrape and it won't get us out.

There is nasty abuse on twitter all the time. Some of it is humans, some of it is bots, we can't tell and we can't tell the sex of who's posting unless it's a verified account.

When it's against women it's a shrug shoulders from the police 'not a lot we can do' even when it's explicit death threats.

When it's a man suddenly it's a terrible problem caused by some kind of organised group, and not just individual random nasty people. Rules of misogyny.

I'm sad as I didn't have AD down as a misogynist but that article makes it clear he is. Claiming it's 'GC activists' spouting abuse with no evidence it is some kind of group activity. Conflating actual abuse with women saying 'no'.

Fuck that.

Some women say nasty things, yes, we're not a fucking borg mind. The point of women having human rights is that we're not all treated as the same service being. And yet....

It's fine if AD wants to be a willing participant in DH's fetish, that's his choice, but it's also fine if women say they disagree with the expectation they should also do so. And speak up strongly against doing so. Women have LOST THEIR JOBS for not participating in this. AD hasn't.

'A small faction of activists won't tolerate dissent' - who's stopping you Andrew? No-one's stopping you participating in DH's fetish / AGP (MN - he has admitted this at length, in DH's case it's clear on his say so). You haven't lost your job, been made bankrupt, had people turn up at your door? You can just come off twitter?

It's YOU who is not tolerating dissent, we're not allowed, apparently, to call out the fact that by participating in DH's self confessed fetish with female pronouns that you're making it more difficult for women to say 'no'.

We live in a world where women have been abused, lost money, lost jobs and been physically attacked for failing to do whatever men who think they're women tell us to do. We're allowed to say it as we see it.

This is what men, who have no need to sanitise AGP, say about it.

I'm reminded of the fact that JKR has probably had the most abuse of all those in the spotlight.

I can fully understand why AD came off Twitter. It's probably also healthy and I often consider deactivating.

I also feel women are more used to dealing with abuse.

Barry makes the key point that DH got into that article the idea that children have agp.

And all this has definitely been an almighty distraction from that horrific nugget. DH probably knew that would happen with female pronouns. Trojan horse with bells on.

To me, Andrew Doyle is coming across as fairly typical of a lot of people.

Anyone who thinks that Hayton is critical of gender and respectful of women really isn't listening.

Crikey, it's terfism 101. The trans ideology couldn't function without the constant reinforcement of gender stereotypes. It's the whole point.

Without the hair, the frocks, the pronouns, the sissy porn and the big tits are best, 'Debbie' wouldn't exist.