Stock leaving x, what have I missed?

[antigome]

Not sure what I've missed as I've been away from socials for a couple of weeks.
But what's Happened? Stock is leaving twitter, KJK posted about the disappointment of your generals giving away what you e fought for.
Is this about pronouns?

I think you will find that behind this is the same group of "personalities" that caused the friction at FiLia which was discussed at length on FWR (title was something like "Elephant in the room").

There is one thing being quite purist about your politics ie would you invite DH to speak or would you not ie WPUK vs Lesbians on Chairs, but quite another when those political differences are touched by the green eyed monster because those on the "other side" always seem to get the media coverage, whilst ignoring you.

Just said this on another thread, but really being on twitter is a trap. It seems to attract those who want to be noticed and responded to as an end in itself.

The reality is that twitter is one of the least used social media platforms, and I very much suspect that the MSM makes it appear more important than it is, because in terms of society or change or influence it is a cul de sac. And better still keeps people, or in this instance women, who actually be being effective, from having their time taken up with an activity that is pointless.

The bottom line I believe, is holding the line, being cogent and consistent with regards to saying No to biologically inaccurate pronoun use.

The most important value I believe is putting the mental and physical health of all children first.
When I remember this, it's crystal clear.

The rest is just a storm in a Twitter/Xitter cup.

I don't personally perceive the general situation as people " fawning" over him. I think they are simply trying to treat him, as a human being, with a certain level of respect. I don't personally feel that using 'she' pronouns was a necessary part of that, and I wish Janice Turner had not felt it necessary.

Just said this on another thread, but really being on twitter is a trap.

and I very much suspect that the MSM makes it appear more important than it is

Agree.

It’s the aspect of this which I’ve found really quite bemusing. In almost every thread on here you’ll read posts which say “do you have a screenshot? I’m not on xtwitter”. Lots of people aren’t on xtwitter. And for good reason - because it’s a cesspit.

And now we are seeing all this drama and offence taken and victimisation claims. Because of xtwitter. And the people involved are reacting as if things kicking off on xtwitter is something unexpected and shocking, as opposed to baked-in. I mean, have they not been paying attention to what JKR has been coping with all these years?

To be clear, I’m not saying that xtwitter abuse is acceptable. It isn’t. Abuse is never acceptable. But, on xtwitter, it can hardly come as an unimaginable shock and surprise, surely?

I do think Janice may regret some of her language and adjective choices in a few weeks time. Much of the damage occured on twitter- where people do not pause before they post and as a result emotions can get very heightened and people go on the defensive. I know her most recent piece came hot on the heels of that, as did Stephanie Hayton's.

I think both she and Kathleen Stock and anyone else really is best to vacate that space. So much potential for hurt; for harm and for a lack of reflection before posting. And none of that is beneficial to our collective goals.

I don't think DH is a source of infighting, the issues raised would still be there, and they'd come out at some point.

It seems to me there are actually two separate questions. One is the best social practice and medical practice for people with AGP, as well as other types of dysphoria. Personally, I think the whole idea of transition as a way to deal with any of these isn't scientifically supported, and goes against everything we know about treating similar kinds of psychological issues. It's bad for the people with the problem, and also bad for the wider society.

However - we live in a pluralistic society, and a democracy, and at this point in time there is significant division among doctors, experts, politicians, and regular people of all kinds. So there is no consensus on the social norms. So there is also the question of how to respond to people who have different views on this, or are themselves transitioned either medically or socially, which could be for a variety of reasons (AGP men, gay men, women, etc.) So apart from whatever people think personally there is how to deal with a variety of views in places like the workplace, medical settings, schools, etc.

To be clear, I’m not saying that xtwitter abuse is acceptable. It isn’t. Abuse is never acceptable. But, on xtwitter, it can hardly come as an unimaginable shock and surprise, surely?

Such as those now on Xtwitter saying IamSarah doesn't have the right political goals in her court case, and some really considerate contributor to FWR has then posted this unsubstantiated claims against Sarah on Sarah's own thread here.

Its like hearing someone mouthing off in the playground against someone and then rushing round to their home, repeating the insults and demanding that they answer them.

Unbelieavable.

I am not really on Twitter so can’t get into the rights and wrongs of this. At the end of the day, Kathleen Stock was (rightly should still be) a professor of philosophy and at the centre of one of the major events of this struggle, so she should have a voice. Janice Turner is a female columnist for the paper of record, so she should have a voice. Kellie-Jay Keen is a grassroots activist who has spoken out in unique ways about this issue, so she should have a voice.

But wasn’t it this kind of infighting that eventually killed the second wave feminism movement?

I think the issue is, some people think that pronoun use isn't significant in putting the health and well-being of children first, nor is it instrumental enough in relation to the fight for single sex spaces to warrant the controversy that accompanies it. They express these views and people disagree. I don't think that the disagreement is a problem to JT or KS, they are familiar with it. I think it's the level of hostility towards them for holding these views and the accusation that they are harming others by holding them. In my book, this form of attack is straight out of the TRAs play book.

I feel that the battle over pronouns is the TRA's latest trump card. It divides not just GCs, but those not typically engaged in the debate.

I draw parallels with the 'toilet debate'. Around 2018, the TRAs kept steering the debate to how TW don't cause harm when using female toilets. Some GCs would be dismissive of the toilet argument and suggest a focus on hospital wards or sports instead. At that time, some GCs would be incandescent about people minimising the significance of males being in female loos.

Sometimes, though, what you are calling a compromise - as in a " sell out" is actually a part of a necessary political strategy. Sometimes it is necessary to adapt and modify your approach in line with what is amenable to the general public. After all - if legal and political change is what you are after, certainly in the shorter term ( modify or repel the GRA in order to ensure that biological sex and 'gender identity/re-assignment' are made distinct from each other) then you have to be palatable to the public.

Obviously the longer term goal is to push back against the encroachment of gender ideology and its boundary pushing agenda when it comes to women and children - but if you go in too hard line from the off you are in danger of losing support and creating divisions, which can threaten your shorter term goals.

It mirrors what tends to happen in political parties when you get the centrists trying to hold the line against the more radical extremes and ideological purists. It usually results in a right mess -with internal fighting and plotting and animosity. Look at the Labour party as a perfect example of this in action.

There is a very high probability that Labout will be in power by the end of the year. What can we realistically hope for in the short term, and how can we achieve that? We're not going to get a radical over-throw of gender ideology - it has become too embedded. That is the goal of a much longer term strategy, and it will be incremental.

"Janet Inglis posted quite an interesting tweet about The Recent Unpleasantness™️ - I think it addresses the idea of what exactly is expected from us by the GC names in the media: do they want unquestioning support, do they see the ‘relationship' as only running in one direction (from us to them), or do they fail to understand that we’re real people who are angry about being ignored by almost everyone in the establishment already and don’t want to be further ignored by those supposedly speaking in our name?"

I think this highlights the problem. I don't think JT nor KS are seeking to speak in anyone's name. They share their own views and opinions. They do have a platform, that others don't have, and use it in line with what they think is best. I don't think they want unquestioning support and I think they are open to alternative views. What I expect is difficult to tolerate is incorrect assumptions about their motives/ suggestions that they are selling out women. I imagine that kind of accusation is grim and will hit them where it hurts - and not because it's true.

Janet Inglis' seem to reflect extreme frustration that her views are not reaching the media. But, this isn't KS and JT's fault. There job isn't to communicate views they don't share.

This is probably an obvious thing to say, but what's so terrible about all this is that people have resorted so quickly to being angry and abusive. I can see both sides of the pronoun debate - I don't agree with Janice's choice on Hayton, but I don't think that makes her a bad person or a traitor or a middle-class out-of-touch snob. I just think she is basically a good person who has a slightly different view on this.

I'm sure if people discussed this face-to-face, they'd manage to be reasonably polite without hurling insults at each other.

I imagine that being told that your actions are inconsistent to your belief that you are campaigning to protect women and children would hurt. And I think that people who hold the inconsistency emotionally, because of a friend or because they want to be kind, need to take the time to assess whether there is truth in what is being said are the possible outcomes of their actions.

What is most important to me in the short to medium term is that he is challenging the notion that TW are women or that they are female; and is is revealing the fact that AGP is what motivates many men to transition. Plenty of the public are unaware of this. It is important that this is known that AGP has roots in eroticism and the sexualisation of women.

It is right that public awareness of AGP should be increased. However, I have a problem with a man publicly admitting that dressing as a woman is a sexual fetish, and then going into school dressed as a woman to teach children.

I don't think KS's actions are inconsistent with her beliefs. I recognise that they are inconsistent with other's beliefs- but that is to be expected.

I experience wide ranging emotions when others think and state that they know more about my thoughts and beliefs than I do. I expect this is what zapps KS's enthusiasm to engage.

I don't believe people 'know more about her thoughts than she does'. Do you think that people have stated that they know her thoughts better than she does?

I do believe that some people who believe they are protecting women and children don't think clearly sometimes about how the outcomes of their actions impact the protection of women and children. I do believe that sometimes people who believe they are protecting women and children will hold views that are inconsistent to that protection and not like others pointing out those inconsistencies. I fully support people holding those views, however, I don't support women who reasonably point out these inconsistencies as being extreme or not worthy of being listened to. Obviously, abuse is not something that I support.

I took the wording, 'being told that your actions are inconsistent to your belief' to suggest that the person doing the telling thinks they understand the belief better than the person who holds the belief.

I find it really difficult to maintain cognitive and emotional regulation when my thoughts, beliefs or feelings are misunderstood or misinterpreted. I find myself able to engage effectively with high levels of anger, hostility and sadness thrown at me, but people insisting they understand my views or belief and when they don't is pretty intolerable.
This is even more the case when those who don't understand insist that they do but yet what they say shows that they don't.

In these situations, after I have given it my best effort to explain, I have to walk away if I can't achieve this. This is what I imagine may be going on for KS.

I have been on both sides, where I know I am misunderstood and where I am convinced that another parties is blind to their faulty thinking but can't see it (and claim that I am the one not understanding them).

So, you are now imagining what may be going on for DocStock?

I think there is some rather clear inconsistencies in DocStock's actions on pronoun usage. But she is consistent. And she has not done what Janice Turner has done and become effectively abusive by coining a new derogatory term for people who feel that pronoun usage is not harmless or respectful when the outcomes are considered collectively for women and children.

I have no issue with DocStock, but there is inconsistency there between saying someone cannot change sex and using opposite sex pronouns 'out of respect'. That is fine, she is allowed to have that inconsistency. Also I don't believe she is also telling others what to do or shaming them when they point out this to be an inconsistency.

The thread is about what's going on for KS and why she has left/ is leaving X. I am offering an interpretation of what might be influencing her/ upsetting her.

I find her explanation for using preferred pronouns coherent. She describes it as a fiction that she is happy to go along with for reasons she specifies. I can understand others disagree and think her position is harmful. She thinks it's pragmatic.

I think the shame is this need to police other women.

Its not as though women / feminists are a confederation, political party, campaign group and are under instruction about what to say or think.

Time spent on making fairly obvious comments about someone who uses preferred pronouns and has always done so, seem completely unecessary as whoever it is is only answerable to herself.

The question is surely why spend time doing that, ie telling someone they are wrong to think what they think, rather than for instances proactively promoting, presenting, demonstrating your view point.

That's why in an earlier post I referred to the green eyed monster. ie that some women feel slighted because based totally on the unfeminist priorities of news media get reported some dont. Another of the negative aspects of twitter is that everyone knows that lazy journalists read twitter to be able to write facile stories about a tiny minority having an arguement with themselves. Far easier that doing actual reporting. And far too many join twitter because they hope to get noticed by msm media. ie it indicates priorities that aren't about trying to reach out to the widest number of women.

re the remark up thread about why what was the WLM fell apart.

It was almost the opposite. That there had been a vaguely shared objective to work together on shares issues, whilst also pursuing issues relivant to a smaller group eg an automously organised Lesbian Conference put forward a motion to include a demand about the rights of lesbians at a National Conference

But at what turned out to be the last National Conference, instead o trudging through the business of an agenda of items, it turned into an IRL bun fight of who had "control" whether of the agenda or in fact the mike, ending with physical tug of wars over the mike. Mainly by the few women who thought they were so right that they should enter into an arguement with others who equally thought they were so right

Meanwhile 99.9% of those attending, were totally excluded from why or how it had become this litelly struggle, resulting with most leaving saying they would never attend a National Conference again. Not trying to be flippant, because many women were left emotionally shocked and dismayed that something that had felt they were part of and were contributing to had disended into what was on one level a farce, but on another quite shocking. ie this was about a few individual imposing their ongoing vendettas onto the larger group.

Very different for instance to the National Conference where lesbians staged an intervention to object to the way lesbians were not part of / did not feel represented by what was meant to be a movement about all women.

My plea would be, dont encourge them.

Dont join in.

Dont retweet.

Obviously if you feel someone has said something that should be challenged that's different.

But sharing other women's snide side swipes or whatever doesn't help anyone.

The idea that Janice Turner - who along with James Kirkup brought this whole story into national papers at what at the time was considerable professional risk - has now "become abusive" because she's not a pronoun absolutist is absolutely laughable. Never has the MNism to "give your head a wobble" seemed more appropriate.

This.

I didn’t like JT’s DH article and thought her use of pronouns was utterly jarring. It was also wrong of her to call those who disagreed with her “ultras”. But some of the name calling going the other way is also pretty wild.

Personally I think it’s the name calling rather than the disagreement that is harmful. That sense that you can’t have a point of disagreement without being told you are a safeguarding risk or a bad feminist or harmful or an ultra or authoritarian is what stifles debate. It prevents people who are still uncertain about their position from participating through fear of getting it wrong and that is not a good thing.

Most of us do. But how do you translate that into a short term, achievable political goal?

This, and this....

"that you can’t have a point of disagreement without being told you are a safeguarding risk or a bad feminist or harmful or an ultra or authoritarian is what stifles debate"