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:

I await your prognostications with bated breath.

Oh god, you chump, DadJoke.
'It inspires a mixture of disgust and arousal—a powerful and particularly unpleasant emotional state' in the young men of her previous sentence.

She's not saying she was aroused by it herself.

We may have to discuss the actual subject of the thread while we wait. Terrible, eh?

Anyway, it was a good piece. I particularly liked the concise summation of Shane Andrews.

No. She was talking in general about Harry Potter erotica and said it was arousing. This was Harry Potter erotica, but I concede I don’t know enough about the specifics of her kink to be sure.

Reread the bit you quoted, DadJoke. She is saying it produces an unpleasant state of 'arousal and disgust' in the young people she's writing about.

Don't bother explaining, he knows.

It's just his little dad joke.

It’s a quote from Helen Joyce in her article suggesting that Harry Potter slash fiction is turning girls (not young men) trans.

What’s funny is if it had been a transgender person reading slash fiction on the train, the po-faced kink shaming moral outrage would have been a sight to see.

https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/joyce-activated-issue-29/

Stalking's a predominantly male crime. Few if any women bother to check on written material men are reading on their phones
Creepy men however are salivating at the thought of a woman reading something they think women should not he allowed to access....

I'm just glad the good Lord gave us two hands, so one can reach for the smelling salts while the other is clutching our pearls.

I'm sorry what? Harry Potter erotica is a thing? And Helen Joyce is into it? Have I misunderstood????

No Helen Joyce is not into it. She's writing about it.

What’s funny is if it had been a transgender person reading slash fiction on the train, the po-faced kink shaming moral outrage would have been a sight to see.

Literally no one here but you and the other TRAs care if someone (anyone) is reading fanfiction and for what that purpose. No one here has a problem with fanfic.
I write slash fanfiction Dadjoke for Harry Potter. So do plenty of other MNers. Clutch your pearls about that, because you are the only one pretending to do so. You are talking about something you know absolutely nothing about and your pretence that fanfic is something niche or weird or shameful when it is now pretty mainstream is just silly.

all the pearl clutching about people reading slash fiction. I'm glad i'm out of the fanfic game (as a reader and writer) if it's all as bad as it seems it is these days (I wasn't in the HP genre though)

How about if it was just a simple m/m romance/sexy novel? would that be ok? (i know a few people who write actual published books in that genre, they started with fanfic, one i know of started on the original slash paring pre-internet)

I have been on a train with a man next to me watching porn on his phone. With earphones thank goodness, but whenever he shifted position i got a glimpse. Another was watching on his laptop (not the same journey) again headphones but angled so i could see it. I asked him to stop, and the chap opposite me actually reached over and closed the machine when he heard what i said. I had a quick chat with him about privacy filters that stick on screens.

On neither occasion did i a) take a photo or b) zoom in or c) post about it on twitter naming names. It is pathetic, tbh.

DadJoke's selective quotations are typical of TRAs. All fur coat and no knickers.

This makes infinity more sense

So yet another thread where men's rights activists have derailed from the actual point!

So I agree that it will take years to roll back on the harms done to women.

I do think though that there will be a tipping point and society will think what the fuck have we collectively done to women and kids that some changes will happen before 10 years are up.

Especially when things they say will never happen keep on happening and women keep being harmed as a result, like that paedophile up in Durham who was convicted this week for his 'activities' in women's single sex spaces. The more men who use the 'I'm a woman' line on arrest the more glaringly obvious it is. And whose to say this bloke isn't a woman? I mean all it takes is self declaration, right?

And whose to say this bloke isn't a woman? I mean all it takes is self declaration, right?

Don't forget it is not even a declaration for life you can 'modes' that you switch between whenever the paycheck mood suits you.
Nor is it presentation so they haven't exposed this guy as not Trans because he wasn't wearing lippy/heels/a frock.

Helen has made another excellent point about youth culture online: it’s a Lord of the Flies world/culture created by young people interacting without any adult supervision. This creates the perfect environment for harmful subcultures to develop and for children/adolescents to be taken advantage of by predatory adult men who develop controlling and inappropriate relationships with vulnerable young people.

In my experience, LiveJournal and FanFiction[dot]Net were the very early days of fanfic becoming interested in/enmeshed with gender identity theory and politics, and then Tumblr and now (in certain fandoms) AO3 attached rocket boosters to that development.

I’m extremely keen on free speech and freedom of association, I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of censorship too, but I’m beginning to think that governments need to legislate to make it so that children and teenagers shouldn’t be allowed unsupervised online access as there’s too much that can go wrong by allowing young minds access to so much stuff that’s harmful. The best and the worst of humanity’s thinking is online and it can mess with adult minds so it’s definitely not suitable or safe for children and adolescents.

Humanity has had ubiquitous internet access for around 15-20 years now and the internet is a place that bleeds into everyday life in both good and bad ways but, to date, society hasn’t done very much that’s effective in trying to protect children from seeing and reading harmful things online. If we don’t tackle this issue, it definitely will take a long time to correct the harms that have bled from the online world into wider society. I like to think the internet can be like Pandora’s box: full of awful things but there’s also hope that comes from people discussing and banding together to fight the danger.

What a wise post.
It's as if we've handed over children to the worst people in the world to influence child development. An environment full of adults seeking to groom children sexually, a wild west where anyone can claim to be anybody and working out how dangerous they are takes knowledge, insight and an adult maturity to evaluate and navigate.

The parents of the murdered children Molly Russell, Beck Bednar, Kayleigh Hayward have experienced the impact of online grooming on their children. We all need to be talking and tackling the ability of dangerous adults to use the online world to target children in a myriad of ways.

Quite. And look at how TRAs have turned on Esther Ghey, once she started saying that under 16s internet access needs to be curtailed. I saw a post archived on KF the others day, some TRA saying that parents trying to manage or control young people's access to the internet is child abuse, FFS.

We have evidence that a lot of adults struggle to deal with online life, and its interaction with real life. Yet kids are being left to try to navigate it, as usually their parents (and I include myself in that) are less competent in the technology than they are. I think governments will have to make an attempt at regulation, though how that would work in practice I've no idea.

I'm going to link this here - it's Helen Joyce's substack - this edition is free to read. It's a chilling expose about fan fiction - what she was reading on her phone that all the creepy stalking men have been whining about. She first wrote about it in 2016 for the Economist (she links the piece).
It's a compelling read about the dreadful impact aspects of this is having on teenage girls that has gone unnoticed - which may explain why certain posters were so desperate to derail this thread.

https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/joyce-activated-issue-77/

Thanks, MrsOvertonsWindow - a really fascinating and alarming piece. Helps to join yet more dots in the puzzle of young girls identifying as trans.

When will someone with authority finally grasp what's going on and do something about it?

Picking up @nothingcomestonothing's point:
"And look at how TRAs have turned on Esther Ghey, once she started saying that under 16s internet access needs to be curtailed. I saw a post archived on KF the others day, some TRA saying that parents trying to manage or control young people's access to the internet is child abuse, FFS".

I was pondering on the behaviour of those derailing this thread with their nasty little insinuations about Helen's character, like little boys running around shouting "mummy's said a rude word" 🙄
I realised that the tactic of shaming is so often used to try to bully women out of safeguarding. No women ever used the phrase "genital inspections" until men started demanding access to undressed women - and now that (male based fantasy) allegation is thrown at women objecting to men in women's showers, hospital wards etc.
Years working in safeguarding children and I never ever heard it called "right wing bigotry". Now men feel entitled to allege that against those safeguarding children (see Lord Cashaman in the House of Lords). Object to porn for children and you're a pearl clutcher, kink shamer and you're reframed as a child abuser. Just as seen on this thread.

Look at what Helen's exposed about aspects of fan fiction & the impact on teenage girls & ask, why are certain people so determined to keep this hidden from society & parents in particular?

I think maybe you need to learn comprehension since you seem to have complete misinterpreted that paragraph. But hey. That is really no surprise.

Unbelievable to read a comment like that about a woman on a feminist board. When a man shows you who he really is and all that....

I think that it is remarkable that some male posters lack the self awareness in just how their posts come across on a feminist board. It is like a demonstration each and every time.