Lmao at JOB dealing with Cass

[m00ngirl]

Incredible umming and ahhing on James o'Brien's LBC radio show this morning about Cass Review. After being part of the witch hunt now of course he's doing a Mr Rational word salad devoid of self reflection.

"How to be right" my arse.

Turning this insufferable crap off now but would be quite funny were it not so serious.

Mishy, there are some things which are difficult to prove conclusively as you say.
However that doesn't mean you lower the bar, stamp them proven, and declare a win as was done to further the cause at the expense of the children.

That's not how science works, but is the method favoured by most other religions which is why it may seem attractive and familiar.

I would say that the point of the Cass Report was to separate facts from wishful thinking and dogma.

I believe at the same time that people can be born in to the wrong body

This never gets the scrutiny it needs. Do they genuinely believe in a kind of religious soul that transcends material physicality? Or are they talking about someone having a personality that is "wrong" for their body? Or just that the person dislikes their body?

They're never asked to establish exactly what they mean but as far as I can see - and genuinely happy to have it explained - to think this you need to be quasi-religious, alarmingly sexist or just be referring to anyone that doesn't like their body (which many people do, because bodies can cause pain, inconvenience, heartache... ).

Exactly - what does he mean? Is it a spiritual thing? Is it limited to sex or can it extend to other things too?

@popebishop I was listening to The Rest is History on a long journey recently and they were talking about Martin Luther and 100 years of war which arose from basically a disagreement about whether or not Jesus actually turns into bread and wine in the Eucharist or whether it is a metaphor.

The presenters drew the very clear comparison...

Conclusion - when religion gets to that point, there is no common sense

I believe at the same time that people can be born in to the wrong body

I read it as meaning there's wiring in the brain that tells you your body should be male or female. If you're trans, that wiring is giving you the wrong signals, and there's nothing you can do to retrain it. It must be a very strange and discomforting sensation and you'd think it would be obvious from the earliest days, with toddlers reacting to their own bodies with distress.

I don't get the impression 'transgender' is that, though. It's more about feeling you're in the wrong social role. Then the sense of your body being wrong comes from that - because it's the wrong body type for the role you want to play.

But there isn't wiring that gives us a feeling we are male or female, any more than it does us having blue eyes or brown. All we know is what we feel like, and we cannot know "what it feels like" to be the opposite sex.

At best, it is similar to body dysmorphia where the a person feels discomfort thinking about their own body. But that isn't evidence of anything else, let alone that they are actually (or "should have been") the opposite sex.

I always remember the story by Oliver Sacks about a man who suffered brain damage and became convinced his left leg didn't belong to him. In his mind, someone had attached it to him. When he first developed the delusion, he was rolling around screaming with horror because someone had fastened this repulsive thing to him.

So maybe transsexualism involves a sense of horror about your own genitalia. Your brain is telling you they don't belong to your body map. Brains do map out the body (there is the cortical homunculus) so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that something in there expects a particular type of genitalia. But if that were true then transsexualism would be very obvious from an early age, and it would have been known about and documented in all cultures throughout history.

That also doesn’t take into account the completely asymmetrical and uneven impact of gender - E.g. socially acceptable for a woman to wear men’s clothes, but not vice versa; cultural expectations of how men and women should behave varying across societies and over time.

I loved the Oliver Sacks book (The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat). One of those books that forever changes your perspective on the world!

What comes up for me re your brain map thought experiment NotTerf:

If that was the case, why would it ever be 'fluid'?
Why would a male desire the addition of breasts- when they don't grow until puberty (so a different body map to pre-puberty)? And why have breasts but keep penis as many do?
And why-if it is a form of body dysmorphia -(as this explanation would be), would it be treated differently to other forms of dysmorphia (not amputating limbs)?
And why would clothes and make up so important if it was just about brain-body map and gentalia?

I’m really surprised that he belives in ‘Born in the Wrong Body’ because my first impression is its lack of engagement with evidence just feels so… ‘Brexity’. II doesn’t take account of all the people included under the trans umbrella - are gender fluid people only born in the wrong body on some days? - or science or the impact of society and culture - or engage with the fact that for people who want same sex services it’s the body that makes the difference, not the soul.

But then I’m making the obvious mistake of believing that Remainers are intrinsically pragmatic and completely forgetting about Zoe Williams and Jolyon Maugham. People can also be tribal faith based Remainers, regardless of whether I think the facts support some of their opinions. His show seems to be based not on listening to opposing arguments, but on finding people who give him the opportunity to express his existing opinion.

Jobbie has got quite the ratio going there. No supportive comments that I could see, either.

I can't fathom out how he reached the belief that children and adults can be born in the wrong body.

I’ve just written to him this morning. Have posted a copy of my letter in a new thread if anyone’s interested.

Just fed up with no-one listening to those in the midst of it.

I’m still surprised that he can’t understand this issue.

He says:

“I would be unable to explain to a trans woman, proven let's say to be a brilliant carer for other disabled women, why this was fair.”

But you could replace ‘trans woman’ with ‘man’ and the argument wouldn’t change.

When somebody requests same sex care they aren’t making a judgement on carers of the opposite sex, they just want same sex care.

It depends on whether trans is biological (incorrect brain wiring) or psychological - a person for some reason feeling drawn to the social role of the opposite sex, which then leads to them thinking their body is wrong. Genderfluid and non-binary can only have a psychological explanation. A lot of trans cases as well - teenage girls unhappy with being sexualised or just feeling like they don't fit in; gay people unable to accept their sexuality; men acting out a sexual orientation where they enjoy 'being a woman'. In fact, it's quite common now in transgender circles to say you don't need to have sexual dysphoria to be trans. But that doesn't rule out a biological explanation in some cases. Even then we can't be sure - there could have been a psychological change so early in life, it's always seemed like it was embedded in the brain.

And if you go with the ‘wrong body’ narrative, where do all these other people stand? I suppose it’s at that point in the argument that a humble man like James gets to absent himself on grounds of ‘toxicity’.

He can't understand the issue because he can't get the hang of the idea that care is patient-centred. Nor can he grasp that the ethical requirements in care are a hell of a lot more stringent than in whatever jobs he mentally slots care roles in with.

Frankly, it doesn't matter what sex you are; if you need explanations and justifications for why when you've been told a patient doesn't want you washing them, you need to be sacked.

It's standard that disabled and elderly women don't want strange men washing their privates, and it's deeply odd for any man to either fail to understand that or feign a failure to understand that.

I do feel judgemental about people who let their own ego drive their interaction with other people. That doesn't just apply to (some of) those who are trans - extreme fashion victims, anorexics, self-styled alpha males, bullies generally and many others fit in the box. But the good carers I've come across are all extremely self-effacing, putting the needs of the person they care for first, and setting their own feelings aside while they do the job.

It reminds of my feelings about Myra Hindley when Longford and others were trying to get her released from prison because she was now religious and reformed. I felt that a really religious and reformed person would have put the needs of the bereaved families first, and accepted her own punishment so as not to cause further pain to those she had already harmed so heinously. With a side order of giving more information on burial sites.

The way people act and present does reflect the level of respect they have for others, and the self-absorption encouraged by some TRAs is unhealthy.

I read it as meaning there's wiring in the brain that tells you your body should be male or female. If you're trans, that wiring is giving you the wrong signals, and there's nothing you can do to retrain it

So you physically feel you have a vagina/penis when you don't, kind of like phantom limb syndrome? Yes that's also possible, but no-one has ever says that this is what they mean when I ask. You would have to have to have quite severe proprioception issues along with this, I would think.

I follow the r:detrans subreddit (I NEVER comment) and tbh almost all of the young people on there who have been through transition/ de-transition just talk of normal teenage woes and being told that they can solve everything by transitioning and butchering themselves - they are mad at the lies they have been told by medics and counsellors, even parents. It is really really sad.

Reading these accounts, it doesn't seem much more than ideology capture - a terrible permanent awful way to resolve anxiety of growing up and accepting your pubescent body, often in a setting of trauma, ND etc.

Anyway, JOB, I really really try to listen to people with opposing views but he is one I get an instant allergic reaction to. I know these left leaning beardy liberals in real life, they often have some median level education, they play around at being 'good men', but they have this arrogance, patronising tone; a way of instantly dismissing anything you say, they also have absolutely NO SENSE OF HUMOUR. None, Everything is totally serious all the time - everything taken literally, even if you might be joking. I need to work on myself because I cannot bear to listen, be around or look at these JOB types of people.

If there is a difference in brain development it needs to be discovered and used as a diagnostic tool.

That trans activists want self ID and ‘full body autonomy’ rather than objective diagnosis and proper medical supervision seems to suggest that even transitioned people do not believe in the brain difference theory.

JOB has used a block chain on X to block most women who disagree with him on the gender issue. He’s created an almost perfect echo chamber. The way he treats GC female callers ‘I don’t want to hear about gametes!’ Is extremely hostile, while he fawns over ‘transwomen’ who call
in very frequently for the fluffing he provides.

This call (with KJK) from several years ago now, which I heard live at the time, still makes my blood pressure soar when I think about it. Misogyny off every scale.

Really disappointed in him, I quite like listening to him years ago when discussing Brexit and/or lockdown. Not sure what I saw in him before. Am so embarrassed by myself!

Oh come on, even you cant be seriously trying to go down the 'discredit a detailed report by an expert that took 4y route'. Especially when all it is saying is that evidence based medicine wasn't used, records weren't kept and studies weren't done.

He might be a chaser.