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.

I do think part of the issue is that GB news and the Times are both news organisations. What pronouns to use/how to address people we know is a completely personal decision and should be a free decision for everyone. But when its The News there is (ideally if not in reality) an expectation of truthfulness/trying to find the truth. I think the question is whether using she/her for a man is "lying" or just a gesture of politeness when its obvious they aren't women.

I also think it distracts from Barry Walls (and many others) very serious points about the issues of connecting AGP to children's dysphoria/the use of preferred pronouns (including for AGPs) in schools.

edited to add I don't mean that the issues around pronouns is a distraction.

I've just had a bit of a realisation about this. The thing is - asking someone to use wrong sex against the rules of English pronouns CAN be part of coercive control.

To a woman who is being coercively controlled by a man demanding she bend her perception of reality to his demands, another person going along with his demands is participating in the coercive control.

Any time you do something that denies reality then you risk being an enabler of abuse in this way. If DH says 'down now means up' and AD goes along with that out of courtesy it's the same thing. Why would you? It's fine if he wants to participate in DH's AGP but I don't really understand why and I think it's useful to explore the coercive control dynamic at play. AD obviously isn't being coercively controlled but that's not really true of DH's pupils in school (does he still teach?) who don't have a lot of choice about how they address their teacher and where the power balance is all one way.

AD does have a choice but others don't and by modelling the reality denial for the demands of one person, you're potentially creating an environment where those who are powerless have no choice and will be in a coercive control dynamic.

I liked that Barry Wall video. I agree with pretty much everything he says, but especially that disagreement is fine. This is a living issue and a developing one so I really do believe that it's perfectly natural that there are many different approaches. The abuse AD got is wrong and I think we do have to find a way to disagree robustly but respectfully.

It's disappointing to see journalists miss the opportunity to demonstrate the courteous use of correct-sex pronouns for somebody who has actually given permission for them to do so.

It's annoying to see them fall for the harmless sounding 'attraction to self' language that Hayton is trying to plant in everyone's minds.

It's pretty normal to see people being unpleasant anonymously online, but why assume this is representative of GC feminism?

I realise this is a bit 'no true Scotsman', but I would apply the same reasoning to anyone. The reason I dislike TRAs isn't because of anonymous nasty tweets or even because someone got punched in the face. It's because it's a dangerous philosophy being pursued relentlessly by variously self-interested parties at the expense of the vulnerable.

Doyle is being unhelpful with the whole 'everyone's as bad as each other' thing. We're really not.

AD does have a choice but others don't and by modelling the reality denial for the demands of one person, you're potentially creating an environment where those who are powerless have no choice and will be in a coercive control dynamic.

That captures my position well. It normalises it, shifts towards preference falsification, and doesn't recognise power dynamics of those who are most likely to be affected by it in a striking way (e.g., luxury beliefs, Exiting the Vampires' Castle).

I agree.

One of the characteristics of this issue is how you think the scales have fallen. And then you realise they'd only just nudged down a bit.

As soon as I read the opinions of safeguarding experts, an awful a lot more became very, very clear.

So yes, if you have national newspapers, and influential interviewers participating in a man's fetish, out of 'respect', how the fuck do you expect children to stand up for reality, or themselves?

Or wives, or transwidows.

This is why I genuinely don't think that either Janice or Andrew believe they were participating in it.

Both of them talked about respect. Respect for what??

I wish they would just ask themselves that question.

What do they think is happening when a man says he's got AGP?

Never issued so many 'thanks' in a thread before. Duncan, of renown in these parts, has been good on X on this. Unlike Doyle etc al.

Any chance of a couple of screenshots genderwoo?

This is why I genuinely don't think that either Janice or Andrew believe they were participating in it.Both of them talked about respect. Respect for what??

Well it's respect for DH's fantasy but that involves disrespecting and acting against the safeguarding of children.

Telling children - even just by modelling it - that they have no choice about wrong sex pronouns is a slippery and abusive slope. It's very anti safeguarding. Let's not forget DH wrote guidelines for schools which embedded coercive control of pupils. So many red flags it's bunting.

Let's also not forget Andrew / Amy Miller. Indoctrinating children into the belief that they're bigots if they recognise men who want them to believe they're women as men is really a very dangerous thing.

Well it's respect for DH's fantasy but that involves disrespecting and acting against the safeguarding of children.

I don't think that's what they're telling themselves, though.

I think they're telling themselves that that he's got this terrible burden that he's trying to manage, and not upset women whilst he's doing it.

When the reality is that 'upsetting women', is the entire basis for his fetish.

they're telling themselves that that he's got this terrible burden that he's trying to manage, and not upset women whilst he's doing it.

When the reality is that 'upsetting women', is the entire basis for his fetish.

Can we get this printed onto fliers and distributed please

AGP depends quite literally and bluntly on women's subjugation, that is the premise the fetish is built on.

Just consider the phrase 'sissy porn' for five minutes.

I mean, ten seconds would do.

I find you inordinately persuasive and sound in your recommendations in the general course of events.

But, no.

I decline.

Hope that's OK.

Honestly its only by seeing the disagreements/disagreeing with people myself that I've been able to clarify my own thoughts on lots of issues (not just this topic). Its completely counterproductive when people either shut down agreement in the name of kindness/politeness or go the opposite way and get abusive.

Peter Boghossian discusses this well here. It's about the skill of critical thinking and discovering and being able to defend your ideas.

PS: I'm still going to the dots to 'quote' - I'll get used to this new-fangled and better method soon.

I'll have a chance for a better go later, right back to the furore close to real time, but the attached is what we are saying here, from the start.

Apologies if this has already been posted (or if the link is behind a paywall):

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

(Article by Andrew Doyle about recent events.)

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

Both GC people and TRAs know that language does alter reality. That is why both sides are fighting over it. By using language that applies to one category (females) for another catergory (males) you have destroyed in reality the ability to support women; single sex spaces are destroyed in reality, sex specific crimes figures are destroyed in reality, women’s sports are destroyed in reality, public health messaging aimed at saving women’s lives are destroyed in reality, data relating to women’s lives and the decisions that flow from it to support women is destroyed in reality… how can any of that be protected when the category ‘women and girls’ no longer refers to women?

You must be very comfortable to be able to pretend otherwise.

Both GC people and TRAs know that language does alter reality.

It's a form of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis in ideologies and cultures. As ever, it exists in strong and weak forms but, despite controversies, it's an hypothesis that persists albeit in new grounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

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

Saffron not sure if you're disagreeing with me or with Doyle there - I made the same point as you that language does alter reality. That's how the TRA movement was so successful. 'He needs to be in the women's changing room' would never have got anywhere.

Doyle seems to be saying that everyone can merrily go around exercising their freedom to call anyone of either sex 'he' or 'she' and it's ok because everyone knows sex exists really.

But everything you lay out has indeed happened - in reality - for women.

Doyle's making a freedom of expression argument - which I theoretically support - but theoretical is all it is. There's no real freedom of expression until the day when no woman suffers any negative consequence for referring to a man as 'he'.

Re Hayton - a teacher is in the national press talking in detail about his sex life.

All you need to know.

Doyle seems to be saying that everyone can merrily go around exercising their freedom to call anyone of either sex 'he' or 'she' and it's ok because everyone knows sex exists really.

Children know there are boys and girls. However,. If they are told that they can literally change from a boy into a girl or vice versa they will believe it if a trusted adult (like a teacher) is telling them. They will probably feel some level of discomfort as they get older and the facts of their eyes and ears don't match what they've been told. But they will believe it to start with.

This is why there is a whole bit in Keeping Children Safe in education (the statutory safeguarding guidance for school) about emotional abuse including introducing developmentally inappropriate concepts (like talking about sex and porn, or gender ideology that doesn't even make sense to adults).

I personally think forcing kids to use wrong sex pronouns for someone like Hayton who is obviously male bodied is emotional abuse. It's not a free choice, it's grooming them into denying the reality of what they see and feel because an adult wants them to.

Yes and then they will have to cope with the aftermath like the girls in the school reported on recently where it was kept secret that their classmate was a boy.

I think there's the freedom of expression first worldview and the child safeguarding first worldview.

Both are very important and they will inevitably clash.

I think men are broadly more likely to be in the freedom of expression camp and women in the child safeguarding camp as women are the ones who are involved much more practically with children while it's more theoretical for men.

One of the biggest thing that a lot of adults seem to need to re-learn is 'children are not adults'. We restrict both our own expression and that of children when parenting/working in education.

In order for there to be future functioning adults in society capable of making their own free decisions on how to express themselves whilst understanding reality, there have to be restrictions when it comes to children.

It may be freedom of expression when a man lies and says ‘I am a woman ‘ but it is very definitely NOT freedom of expression when others are required to go along with that lie.