GC Ultra / GC Lite?

[Catsanfan]

Hi all

I keep seeing these used on X. I'm not totally sure what they mean. Is it in a nutshell GC Ultra = Posie Parker GC Lite = people who think Debbie Haytons a decent bloke.

Or am I totally on the wrong page? So much terminology these days!

TIA

However, mounting evidence has shown that people's empathy is often biased toward (i.e., felt more strongly for) others that they are close or similar to, igniting a debate over whether empathy is inherently morally flawed and should be abandoned in efforts to strive toward greater equity.

Bloody hell that's a grim suggestion.

Overcome your instinct to love and protect those close to you? How? By enforcement obviously would be the only way.
**
I get the idea empathy isn't necessarily linked to morality like we assume and we should remember that and our biases.

But abandoning empathy in efforts to strive towards greater equity sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

I guess now we know that pronouns are going to be a tricky topic and will respond accordingly.

Courtesy pronoun usage has and will continue to be a point of controversy because of

• the different spheres in which they're used (private and public)
• the consequences for public understanding of health information, new stories, and, increasingly, basic science
• crossovers with compelled speech and thought
• the legal Gordian knots it has created.

I may be wrong but I think I wouldn't recognise most of the people embroiled in the brouhaha on TwiX. I'd be startled if a resolution evolves there although people have quoted thoughtful snippets here (as Utopia above and others have). Maybe useful ideas and perspectives are helpful to glean from TwiX and the remainder set aside as it's distressing to some and doesn't seem to lead to a useful evolution of thinking or discussion?

But abandoning empathy in efforts to strive towards greater equity sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

Doesn't it just? And it's an interesting provocation to consideration about the plausible reality that we survived because of families and friendship groups. There's a substantial literature about friendship groups in animals and pro-social behaviour.

We are presented with many examples, however, about why people in public life with decision-making duties or influence, might need to be aware of the impact of empathy bias. (COVID-19 PPE contracts, MPs influenced by moving stories who forget about the impact for others, Yogyakarta that forgot about women who weren't in the room).

I absolutely agree that Twitter tends to propagate unpleasantness and yes, Edie was also perhaps rude. That was just the Tweet that led me to look at Christina Buttons.

It was mostly the response to Wildfire whispers’ post that shocked me. Calling a woman crazy for expressing a perfectly reasonable view in a rational manner is unecessary, under any circumstances. Even in anger, I would not respond that way. It’s simply arrogant and nasty. The words “we’ll have to agree to disagree” were made for this situation and Christina Buttons instead decided to call a woman crazy, without any attempt to address what she said

'With respect to the current discussion, I found a tweet from Mattie Watkins that made me think that this division is heavily related to Hayton being considered as part of a social circle by many public GC campaigners.'
I think this is very plausible, particularly regarding GC journalists and, if they said this was the case then I wouldn't have an issue - I'm not interested in how people address their friends. But I do think they need to be clear about it, in fact I thought it was considered good journalistic practice to always declare when you have an interest?

I've only seen a few snapshots and the thing that struck me was how genuinely painful people are finding this.

The mudslinging is easy but some people are feeling almost bereft at being sidelined from something which it seems to have given them such meaning.

Twitter almost reduces people to the most basic emotions. Rage and pain.

I absolutely agree that Twitter tends to propagate unpleasantness and yes, Edie was also perhaps rude. That was just the Tweet that led me to look at Christina Buttons.

You're plainly finding it a source of distress and it's not adding to clarity of the topic of "ultra," "lite" beyond demonstrating that the terms are unhelpful. I can only speak for what I'm taking away from this.

I find it remarkable however that even when we're constantly warned to be on our guards against misinformation and disinformation, false flags etc., we still have the power to have our perspectives of a topic skewed by a high noise, high disruptor, tiny minority.

I don't know what tiny percentage of posters are using objectionable terms to squabble with others, but it seems to be leading to the creation of disproportionately large outgroups and no golden bridges. In general, it's a good idea keep talking to each other and encourage exchanges of ideas on a platform that is largely free of that heat and light. And to keep golden bridges in mind.

Thanks Prion. I have watched parts of this yesterday and it is highly charged. I am however now quite concerned about the false defining of the rad fem position by Buttons. It explains perhaps though some of Colin’s reaction that I found confusing.

I have seen that there seems to be a couple of accounts who have used very emotive words that look like misandry. I thought they were trolling. It was when Andrew Doyle was feeling attacked. And I know Alessandra Asteri claims she was being wrongly blamed with the alleged trolls work and forced teamed. I had not seen all Alessandra posted but she seemed not to be making misandrist comments. Maybe she was.

From there it seems to have spread that radfems are misandrist. But how much of that is from actual feminists and how much of that is trolls I haven’t worked out. But that long tweet from Christina buttons seems to be misunderstanding the ‘message’ generally and, then making some pretty wild accusations, in my opinion.

It is now a worldwide schism it seems. I think that the ones who will remain unscathed may be those who just went on with business. A little like Helen Joyce has continued to do whenever someone has tried to pull her into denouncing others. Ie. She acts professionally and keeps on focus.

Anyway, thanks for the screen shots.

Yes I certainly think that one result of all of this is that the those with high profiles who've been attacked such as SOM, AD, JT and those that have supported them are going to be very wary of the 'radfems' now.

That might have positive outcomes for the 'radfems' in that the 'GC elite' know now they'll be kept in check and wiill try to avoid rousing them. But also negative in that they'll be outsted from the inner circles.

Julie Bindel supported AD though didn't she? Did she support JT?
Is JB now a GC Lite?? 😂

And the TRAs continue to chuckle with glee.

From there it seems to have spread that radfems are misandrist. But how much of that is from actual feminists and how much of that is trolls

I agree. Nobody knows. On the scale of election rigging or COVID misinformation or similar, I doubt it would attract the attention of Marianna Springs or a comparable body. (There's an academic who is outstanding on the topic and influence of social media bots but I blush to admit that I don't recall the name right now.)

those that have supported them are going to be very wary of the 'radfems' now

See above, without validation, that feels understandable but unwise.

Hells - I think that the ones who will remain unscathed may be those who just went on with business.

Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon has a passage near the end of the book, that retells an encounter in which West is listening to her husband having an intense political argument with a Yugoslavian.

Just then my eye was caught by two large, loosely formed spheres in neutral colours, one blackish grey, the other brownish black. These were the behinds of two peasant women who were employed by the municipalities to weed the flower-beds at the corners of the square. They were being idiots, private persons in the same sense as the nurse in my London nursing-home, who was unable to imagine why the assassination of King Alexander should perturb anybody but his personal friends. They were paid to pull up weeds, and they wanted the money, so they continued to pull them up, even when the students raised a shout and brought some gendarmes down on them not fifteen yards away. As I looked at those devoted behinds, bobbing up and down over their exemplary task, and the smug face of the automatic rebel, I thanked God for the idiocy of women, which must in many parts of the world have been the sole defender of life against the lunacy of men.

And I am not defending Edie Wyatt as I don’t know much about her but the use of the term scab is, of course, about crossing picket lines. It is an emotive term, as is traitor. In the past, I did think she had a point about Janice Turners new phrase ‘ultra’ because Edie pointed out what she perceives as a power differential between Janice and those she labelled.

So the term scab seems to fit that scenario. Not that I would use it personally. And it is obviously divisive.

I think the Australian and New Zealand women who have been fighting very hard there to raise the alarm may feel even more alienated than people in the UK and USA. I know that my friend considers the women fighting in Australia to be hugely problematic because they are using language she didn’t like. Like saying ‘no child is born in the wrong body’ as an example. She mostly agrees, it seems, but doesn’t ever want to be associated with listening to them or discussing their points.

I doubt it, they have their own schisms too. Twitter isn't real life, thank goodness.
I think this is what happens once political movements reach a certain size you get factions splitting off. Humans are tribal, that's what we do.

KJK is right as usual. Preferred pronouns are one of the reasons we are in this mess. It's a wedge issue from the TRAs. Once you're calling men, women, you've changed language and gained access to women's rights.
Being kind is how we got here, the academics have got to stop being kind, it muddies the water

" I would also wonder if empathy bias towards friends can lead us not only to resist those who we perceive to be criticising a friend (shades of acting as flying monkeys for narcissists or rescuers in TA persecution triangles) but overlooking the valid concerns of people outside that friendship or empathy circle. It's playing out more widely here because of the crossover of the personal and public sphere."

Another take on this is that when you know and like people who belong to a group different to your own, you have a more informed view of the different group (or subsets within it).

The group 'Transwomen' is multifaceted. There are those with and without AGP in it, there are those with and without narcissistic traits, and some who are very vulnerable and some who present risks. The tendency to form views about the group will be influenced by who is held in mind when thinking about/talking about the group.

It seems to me that some say that a blanket approach is needed as the 'worst cases' needs to be centred, others are saying that a nuanced approach is needed due to the 'best cases'.

Has anyone ever gone from only using correct sex pronouns, to the chagrin of TRAs, to compromising and using wrong sex pronouns to be nice? I can only think of people who started off being nice and then realised the problem with it.

These academics will get there. Eventually.

I sometimes use preferred pronouns, I sometimes don't use any and use names instead.

When I used preferred pronouns I am not calling men women or vice versa. When I do so, this doesn't cause confusion about the trans person's sex by me doing so. Their sex is very evident.

This is only a wedge issue because some people are making it one. I don't think it need be.

I think that this is why there is such a schism. I view the use of courtesy pronouns as a key element that gave so much else the legitimacy we are now having to push back against.
Hard to argue why someone shouldn't use the women's toilets if you've been calling them "she".

I don't think it is hard to say (or understand) that some people you refer to as 'she' mustn't use female only provision/services because access shouldn't be determined by pronouns.

I don't think it is hard to say (or understand) that some people you refer to as 'she' mustn't use female only provision/services because access shouldn't be determined by pronouns.

I think we'll need to agree to disagree on this one (and hopefully not have a big ugly public fallout instead, lets lead by example).

If the English language developed without sex specific pronouns (or gendered pronouns) this would not resolve the issues we face relating to sex v gender.

"I think we'll need to agree to disagree on this one (and hopefully not have a big ugly public fallout instead, lets lead by example)"

Absolutely Japan. Not only that, I expect there is a lot we also agree on. Also, it's not as if I think that I would/could ever come around to your way of thinking. I am just not convinced to date by the evidence I have encountered!

That should say 'never', not 'ever'.....I don't know how to edit using the app!

A public fall out it not a bad thing when the people with the strongest voices are presenting a position that conflicts with the grassroots.