Online talk Thurs 25 April 2024: "Deconstructing transphobia" - Dr Natacha Kennedy

[yetanotherusernameAgain]

There's an online talk tomorrow afternoon hosted by the Institute of Education (part of UCL) by Dr Natacha Kennedy (from Goldsmiths).

The topic is "Deconstructing transphobia" - "Join this event to hear Natacha Kennedy give an analysis of the different strategies deployed by those opposed to trans people's human rights."

It's from 2.30-4.30pm (which partially overlaps with the Aston University online talk). I'd be interested to learn Dr Kennedy's definition of "transphobia" and who the people "opposed to trans people's human rights" are and how they're doing that. Unfortunately I'm not free to listen in - is anyone else free to attend and report back?

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/events/2024/apr/deconstructing-transphobia

Looking at the end of the self-co-authored paper to the works cited, you can see that targeting children and using the Trojan horse of anti-bullying work in schools to push this propaganda was an intention of NK/MH back in 2008 (when there was aggressive lobbying within the women’s sector to make SRE compulsory to try to teach MVAWG out of existence). Look where we are now, 16 years later.

Yes, this person deserves to be given no credibility at all.

What’s wrong with trans women getting pregnant? This [will?] be possible in a few years.) Treatment is almost the same as cis women trying to get pregnant. It’s fascism!

Fuck that. So growing humans in a bag is progressive according to this male academic?

@FlakyPoet

I have been into an online rabbit-hole where a man was claiming that taking female sex hormones was making his penis start to naturally invert and was on the way to becoming a vagina.

Please correct me if I am wrong (I'm not a biologist), but I thought it was the clitoris that elongated to become a penis in the male foetus, so this doesn't even make any biological sense. The vagina closes and the testes descend and the labia seal up to create the ballbag which is why there is a line down the middle of the bag. 🤔

Sh! 🤫 Stop all your boner-killing realism.

I find this theory very interesting and would like to know more. Can someone who’s read it please explain what cues the foetus picks up in-utero? Also how they are able to interpret those cues in terms of what it means to be their gender, given that they haven’t yet been born so therefore haven’t yet been assigned their gender at birth?

Suffragettes were a lot more violent. We [trans people] are described as being violent but we are probably the most peaceful movement.

<recalls TRAs with pictures of guns at a LWS event and the Black Pampers>

Peaceful my left foot.

If the foetus can pick up clues about gender and how they will be treated because of that gender, why are any girls born in extremely repressive societies?

Oddly, unless female foetuses are aborted, males and females are born at a pretty similar rate.

I think this person is batshit crazy.

Yes, N did say that. I’m not exactly sure when but it was shortly before a screenshot I took which is timestamped at 15:10.

It was soon followed by the statement that “a tiny number of trans children” stop being trans. (That’s what I wrote but it may not be verbatim. I took it to mean detransition.) A “very very tiny number” of [trans] adults stop being trans. 1% was mentioned but I’m not completely confident exactly what that refers to, nor the 99.8% figure which then appeared in a screenshot which said exactly this, comparing surgery dissatisfaction rates:

Actual Up-to-Date Statistics
• Adult continuation rate; 99.8% continue (Davies et al 2019)
Comparisons, surgery dissatisfaction rates;

• Rhinoplasty;
• 16.4%.
• Hip replacement;
• 10%+.
• Laser eye surgery;
• 4%.

I didn’t spot the figures about hip replacement at the time. I know probably a dozen people who have had hip replacements, all 50+, and every one has been very glad to have it done and has had their second one done if they had had problems with both hips. But that’s anecdata.

Intrigued by the claim that the fetus recognizes cues of gender acceptability (thanks @Imnobody4) I followed the references to the original articles.

Rogena Sterling’s article is called “Narrativity in Becoming Sex/Gender”:

Sterling, Rogena. (2022). Narrativity in Becoming Sex/Gender. 10.5772/intechopen.104247.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360349769_Narrativity_in_Becoming_SexGender

The claim is on page 8:

Gender development begins at the time of birth, though some cues are even learnt pre-birth. Late in the pre-birth process, the fetus recognizes cues of acceptability within society of what it means to be their gender [51, 52].

Reference [51] is:
Martin CL, Ruble D. Children’s search for gender cues cognitive perspectives on gender development. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2004;13(2):67-70

Reference [52] is:
Witt SD. Parental influence on Children’s socialization to gender roles. Adolescence. 1997;32(126): 253-259

I found the full text of both those articles but disappointingly neither makes any mention of pre-birth or fetus.

The youngest reference to age I found in Martin & Ruble is:

“Six-month old infants can distinguish the voices of women and men, and most 9-month-olds are able to discriminate between photographs of men and women”.

The words ‘fetus’, ‘foetus’, 'pre-birth', 'birth' and ‘baby’ don’t appear in the article at all.

And the youngest age in Witt is:

“One study indicates that parents have differential expectations of sons and daughters as early as 24 hours after birth”

and

“Children internalize parental messages regarding gender at an early age, with awareness of adult sex role differences being found in two-year-old children”

The words ‘fetus’, ‘foetus’, 'pre-birth' and ‘baby’ don’t appear in this article either. The word 'birth' only appears in the quote above.

At a stretch, did Rogena Sterling misinterpret “Six-month old infants can distinguish the voices of women and men” to mean six months post-conception, ie pre-birth? But then wouldn’t you infer that a 9 month old (post-conception) was a new-born baby, and would anyone really think a new-born baby can focus on photographs, let alone differentiate between photos of men and women?

Or perhaps the reference numbers are incorrect and I've looked at the wrong articles. Am I going to have to try to contact Rogena Sterling to ask for clarification?

Thanks for this. I'm becoming increasingly shocked by the state of research. Presumably, Researchgate is just a self-publishing platform with no scrutiny involved.

I'd be very interested in what you find.

And I just found this........
https://www.charlottecgill.co.uk/p/taxpayer-funded-job-of-the-week-gay
You may remember in March that I wrote about a research project titled The Europe That Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000, which was awarded £841,830 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a period of roughly three years (Nov 23-Oct 27).Well now it’s hiring for two posts “to help with archival and oral histories research on the circulation and impact of post-war gay erotica and porn magazines in Europe”… for three years:

This is almost certainly the wrong place to post this, but Yesterday I had a light bulb moment about what is going on when people (men, actually) adopt the appearance of another sort of being, in this case, women, for malign reasons. It has happened throughout history, or been believed to have happened, usually adopting the appearance of animals. There is a Navajo word for it, but JKR got into trouble for using it inappropriately in a HP spin off. (My friend watches TV progs based on it.) Presenting in the skin of another puts it better than werewoman, would, but it is what is happening. And no matter what they say about pregnancy or nipple secretions, or soft penises, they can be nothing more than a man in the "skin" of a woman. And up to no good.
Perhaps not all TWs, but too many of them.