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:

Your doctor is basically the only person who needs to know your biological sex, which forms part of the picture alongside a lot of other information, when providing healthcare.

Last I looked, voyeurism and flashing were crimes. And for good reason. I assume you'd like to legalise them.

Being used as a non consenting prop in someone else's fetish used to be considered a harm.

Anti trans people talk about how feelings should not be prioritised

Ok, if feelings aren't being prioritised there are zero grounds for these males to be validated as "women" so we should just stop doing it.

No it's not.

Because men who wanted to be women have always existed. But we didn't say they were actual women and that sex is irrelevant!

Rachel Dolezal benefited from accommodations that were reserved for black people, on the basis that they are discriminated against. Discriminated against by white people, people like her.

she was utilising the fact that she wasn't black, to benefit from racism!

in the same way that men are are taking awards meant for women. Designed for women in order to address the sexism that women face.

Look at the film awards. As soon as you take away the categories male and female, guess who wins? Clue, it's not women. That's sexism.

Look at sport. As soon as you allow men to play women's sport, women won't win. That's biological reality.

You seem to imagine that ignoring the sexes will eliminate sexism. It doesn't. It just hides it. Neither will it eliminate men's physical advantage.

And your friend? If they are not, to you your mind, inhabiting any female stereotypes, why do they think they are a woman?

What is your honest answer to that? And please don't say, you'll have to ask them. Using your entire imagination, what do you actually think could be the reason?

They don't have any female biology, and have not grown up with a female body, so it's not that they are identifying with.

So what is it?

Apparently @ForCoralFox has no problem with the exclusion of Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women from spaces that can no longer be guaranteed to be single sex.

We all have to share public spaces with people who make us uncomfortable in different ways. That isn't coercion and isn't harm, in any meaningful sense.

They're following the wrong religions - old skool uncool ones rather than the new special religion.

I see. So a woman being retraumatised finding a male in a space they believed was safe and only female is having their 'harm' dismissed and redefinied as 'them not liking it and not actually harmed'.

Women and girls who don't have confidence that their needs are being met will self excluded. This has been evidenced in the past. You have now declared that this too is not 'harming' them.

So, you have on one hand demanded evidence of harm, or 'hurt' so I also assume that means physical harm, from women. And absolutely no demand for evidence of harm of exclusion from any male who wishes to enter that they would suffer using either a unisex toilet or the male toilets.

You have prioritised a male person's feelings over female people's needs. This prioritisation is misogynist by the way.

In every case in the BSA, women's support for transgender rights is highter than men's, and that's aside from the large poll which showed, of every group, it's lesbians who have the most postive attitude to transgender people. These were standard samples which reflect the number of transgender people in the population - so a tiny fraction.

You clearly didn't read what I said. I suggested that in every way but one left-wing feminists oppose their allies on feminist issues. Otherwise, I would have said literally the opposite of what I said below.

"The only thing left-wing gender critical feminists have in common with these groups is attacking trans rights, and that seems to trump every other feminist goal."

Confused - do you mean that if a transwoman is using a women's changing space she's automatically guilty of being a 'voyeur' and 'flashing' by dint of being trans, but a cisgender woman who was actually being a voyeur and a flasher in the same space wouldn't be?

We all have to share public spaces with people who make us uncomfortable in different ways. That isn't coercion and isn't harm, in any meaningful sense.

It is, because we are being told that our need for a single sex space when women are routinely disadvantaged and harassed by males is outweighed by a male's claimed "woman" identity. It's coercion, violation of boundaries and profound disrespect for women and girls.

@DadJoke you continue to confuse "attacking trans rights" with "defending (natal) women's rights".

but a cisgender woman who was actually being a voyeur and a flasher in the same space wouldn't be?

A woman isn't going to be flashing her cock, is she?

Really?

You don't think women, who want a single sex space, being ignored, their consent being overridden, and their boundaries being violated is harmful?

Does any part of you, ever, think about the women in this scenario? You, who seem to have an opinion about feminism?

20% of women will be sexually assaulted or raped. When they are taking their clothes off, it's the work of a second for a man to intimidate them by his presence. He doesn't have to do fucking anything.

But guess what? What exactly do you think would be the characteristics of a man who went into a female space against the women's consent?

Overrode their objection and ignored their boundaries?

Do you think, for one tiny second that the women might not want that man removing his clothes, in their space, when they are at their most vulnerable and he knows it.

Are you male?

@izimbra - I'm sure you can provide us with statistics of natal women convicted of voyeurism and flashing and comparable statistics of natal men convicted of voyeurism and flashing to back up that theoretical possibility.

Honestly.

The fucking misogyny of it never ceases to amaze me.

"Women may not like men in their space when they're getting undressed, but unless there's actual harm, defined by me, then they have to fucking suck it up"

Such feminism.

No female person previously was expected to share a single sex space with a male person. There is a very significant difference between 'feeling uncomfortable' with another female in the space versus a male being in the space.

Safeguarding is based on assessing the risk associated with the sex of the person in question. There is a valid reason for this. It is based on the risk of male people committing sexual offences.

Can you please link us to the evidence where a male at any stage of transition has less risk of committing a sexual offence than any other male person in the UK?

Then, can you please link us to the evidence where a male at any stage of transition has less or the same risk of committing a sexual offence as any female person in the UK?

If you cannot, why can't you?

Decent men don't invade women's spaces.

I don't think that my feeling of being a woman is entirely based on my biology. It's much more about social factors. That will be different for other women of course. I don't fully understand what it means to be trans and don't need to. I'm happy to accept things I don't understand.

If a male is deliberately using a female-only space then he's already disregarding boundaries, and putting his own desires above women's needs. So if he then chooses to undress in such a space, that's the context in which he's doing so.

While gender critical views are often framed by gender critical people as "defending women's rights" they are not the same thing at all. Saying out loud what you are actually doing doesn't sound so good.

We've established up thread that most GC people want to exclude transgender people from spaces to which they currently have legal access. That is an attack on trans rights. You don't agree that they should have those rights, so attacking trans rights is perfectly accurate.

And it's the kind of smug, self righteous disingenuousness that comes with it, @Datun. I just wish people were more honest that they don't believe women are as important as men.

why would a male insist on being in a female
only space, despite the females
in that space saying they didn't want the male there @DadJoke ? What would
the male person's motivation be in insisting he uses those spaces regardless and when there are other facilities available?

We've established up thread that most GC people want to exclude transgender people from spaces to which they currently have legal access.

We haven't established anything of the sort, because men don't have "legal access" to women's spaces. It's not a right granted by any law.