Restoring Sanity Takes Time - Helen Joyce

[RethinkingLife]

A bracing read. I am still in a state of some despair about how long this will take. As several people have observed, in the last 10 days, the BBC (in common with other media) disseminated unscientific propaganda that male galactorrhea is better than mother’s milk, repeatedly called a deeply disturbed killer a woman while disdaining to acknowledge the alternate reality as a cat, and has publicly reprimanded Justin Webb for plain speaking that was probably helpful to many listeners.

What will it take to bring bigoted employers to heel? Part of the answer is time. During the past decade, the trans lobby has been stunningly successful in selling false analogies to HR departments: that separate toilets for men and women are like racial segregation; and that insisting people can change sex is “gay rights 2.0”.
Lazy, power-hungry HR managers and staff working in “EDI” (equality, diversity and inclusion) pronounce that the arc of the moral universe is bending towards denying sexual dimorphism, and relish imposing their will on others.
…
Imagine you’re an HR professional belatedly wondering if you’ve got the wrong end of the stick on the whole sex-gender thing. You might turn to A Practical Guide to Transgender Law by two barristers, Nicola Newbegin and transwoman Robin Moira White.
But that might not save you from serious missteps. The first edition, published before the binding Forstater judgment, enthusiastically endorsed the faulty lower court ruling. The second grudgingly acknowledged that yes, gender-critical beliefs were protected, but claimed that “manifesting” them — letting others know you held them — wasn’t.
Even before the recent string of judgments to the contrary, that was obvious nonsense. The law about freedom of belief expressly includes “manifestation”. And anyway, it takes but a moment’s thought to realise that the law can’t possibly concern beliefs that are never manifested, since it can’t reach inside the privacy of our heads.
…
At bottom, the mindset of the narcissistic identitarians joining in workplace witch-hunts is that of the Crusaders, who made converts at the point of a sword. They do not respect other people’s sovereign consciences, nor accept that their belief system is just one among many. And like the Crusaders, they need to be consigned to history.

https://thecritic.co.uk/restoring-sanity-takes-time/

Adding in a good read about the Meade and Phoenix rulings:

She seems to be a disturbed individual given what she reads on a public train. What are her true motives? Questionable IMHO.

This is in line with your typical posting but I'm checking that this is the sum of your engagement with the content, yes?

Never change, mishy, you are utterly predictably hilarious.

Excellent article, every word of it. Thank you for posting and well done Helen Joyce. Depressing to think how long it’s going to take for the tanker to turn.

HJ resorts to saying this happened within a decade but with take longer than a decade to unpick.

I'm minded it will take a generation. I very much hope that I'm wrong because it will continue to distort the workplace and accustom people to acting, speaking, and thinking in compelled ways. It feels like one of the precursors described by Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/hannah-arendt-papers/articles-and-essays/totalitarianism-the-inversion-of-politics/

Do you regard everyone who read '50 Shades' on bus, trains etc as 'disturbed individuals' with questionable motives or do you get to be the arbiter of which shitty fan fic with sexy bits people are allowed read in public without question?

She hates you.

Blimey Mishy, is that all you've got?
Lack of reasoned, well thought out rebuttals here.

Are you judgeoshaming? For shame, educate yourself and do better, you bigot.

The fact that 'woman reads legal written material on a train' is the take, rather than that a man took it upon himself to zoom into unconsented photos he took of said woman on said train to see what she was reading and then published the photos online to shame her, says much.

I think HJ is right, this ideology has been and is pushed by puritans who have no room for other people's views, needs, or rights. They won't back down, or golden bridge, they can't.

Ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of a failed argument.

HTH

Mishy never fails to entertain.

HJ's piece in the OP and the side-discussion feel like companion pieces to Sidelsky which feels like Havel in a university setting rather than a greengrocer's.

I and a group of like-minded academics set about creating a “Committee for Academic Freedom”: a forum for UK lecturers of all political stripes to speak out about what is going on in our universities. To date, 306 have put their names to our principles. Admittedly, it has not been easy. Fear and mistrust run deep. Many are convinced that “freedom of thought” must conceal a toxic right-wing agenda — as if the left had no possible interest in intellectual freedom.
And even those alert to this sort of Stalinist jugglery can be deterred by the thought that others will number them among the toxic. “If I sign your principles, I will be sent to the Siberia of my field” one historian wrote to me. At least he was honest. Harder to swallow are the frequent silences and evasions, the unanswered emails, the strange non sequiturs. One has to remember the pressures people labour under, the burdens of status, position, etc.
Still, there are compensations. “At every meal that we eat together, freedom is invited to sit down. The chair remains vacant, but the place is set.” Thus wrote René Char, French poet and resistance fighter, recording his experience of life in the Maquis. Of course, England in 2024 is nothing like France under the Nazis, yet the freedom Char speaks of — the glorious unrestraint of those who have thrown off some hated system of inhibitions, internal as well as external — is something that we have come to understand and appreciate. It is a great treasure, which we may lose but can never renounce.

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2024/its-time-to-stop-the-rot/

Havel quoted: https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

To be fair, she said was reading non-consensual erotic fanfic featuring children in a large font on public transport for research. She describes it as both arousing and disgusting.

However, having read her other work, I’m not sure research is really her thing. Her article her is wrong in both fact and law. It’s not all manifestations of belief which are not legal, it’s discriminatory manifestation in a work context.

Is that large font? I couldn't read the text on someone else's phone on a train from a cross the aisle, no matter how large the font was.

DadJoke Her article her is wrong in both fact and law. It’s not all manifestations of belief which are not legal, it’s discriminatory manifestation in a work context.

It's annoying that the sequence of links seems to interfere with whether or not they appear. However, the link that can't be seen in the OP is this:

https://www.employeecompetition.com/conflicting-beliefs-and-balancing-rights-lessons-from-meade-and-phoenix/

It would be helpful if you were to lay out your argument about HJ's piece in the context of this article by employment lawyers.

The mention of HR Managers in that first quote makes my spine shiver. HR people are never the brightest in an organisation (by some degree). And they've been the ones in charge of supporting this nonsense...

I see the posters relentless monitoring women have arrived - anything to divert attention from her message. It's very Victorian to police women's reading and phone use in this way. Although I believe the Taliban are now banning women from phone use & contacting the media so they're in sync with some men world wide.

It’s not all manifestations of belief which are not legal, it’s discriminatory manifestation in a work context.

So what is discriminatory manifestation in a work context? Asking your employer to provide female single sex toilets? Objecting to surveys on why there is little female management asking for gender? (I did that, got a load of waffle back, I told them why their waffle would never get them any insights why women don't even apply for managerial positions, they didn't listen, still no female management)
Telling the DEI head that him, a white male, was probably not in the best position to comment on making maternity leave policies 'gender neutral'? Having a discussion during lunch break about the idiocy of males in female sports team (everybody agreed btw that it was stupid and dangerous)?

None of the these are illegal or discriminatory. So I am curious what you think is, @DadJoke

Lols. No point getting into arguments with those who are so embedded in their point of view. Still, who does research on that kind of material, on a public train? There are some serious questions to be answered.

She did not describe that particular text as arousing.

Oh I don't agree with it at all. But you can't hold yourself up as a moral crusader, while delving into that sort of material. Not even sure if it is legal to do so, and certainly not on a public train. I can see her being side-lined from here while others step up to engage. Everytime now she speaks, there will be TRAs questioning her very foundation. Can't wait for her researched Harry Potter fan fiction podcast drops....!

It doesn't matter. No-one should be consuming such things - especially in public. I mean that TRA, if it was one? I guess so who took the screen shots. Was pretty easy to read. Careless in the least. It does need to be looked into, and if she is cleared then so be it.

No it's not a distraction. Her arguments we can criticise separately. But what happened there does need full review to determine if such material is suitable for consumption., At the very least, it calls into questions of bad judgement, and whether she should be near children until cleared.

The messages and the writer - hard to distinguish. I know of no scholarly undertaking that would allow that sort of research.

And as the TRAs have pointed out. HP fan fiction not likely to be consumer by those questioning their gender! Has a bit of a disconnect I think with those in that community again due to the stance of the author, which many on here will applaud, and her body of work.

I do hope this is investigated so she can clear her name of any assertions being made.

Although I believe the Taliban are now banning women from phone use & contacting the media so they're in sync with some men world wide.

No one wants to ban HJ from using her phone, if she wants to read erotic school child material just do so away from minors.