Jolyon jumps the shark - is trans a cult?

[CantDealwithChristmas]

Jolyon 'fox killer' Maugham has been on one for 6 days straight now. It all started with Streeting's PBs ban and ratcheted up when JoMo sent Streeting a list of 25 questions which Streeting ignored - and on a Sunday too. As of yesterday JoMo, a KC (though Guido Fawkes reported his licence expired in May), was encouraging people to break the law by accessing banned PB drugs from abroad. As of today he has well and truly jumped the shark with the below, horrible post on X.

My question to this board is why do TRAs feel the need to ratchet up the emotional temperature of the debate so high? Why do they so quickly devolve the conversation to death and suicide? It's an ugly strain that runs right through all TRA talking points. I personally think TRA is an eschatological cult and the focus on death is a intrinsic part of that. Others may think it's all about emotional blackmail.

Either way, please use this thread to discuss JoMo, Streeting's unaccounably cruel ignoring of him, and TRA emotional hysteria / threats in general at this crucial time just after the PB ban was announced.

EDIT - could not upload the screenshot of JoMo's post but it reads as follows:

"And don't underestimate the political tail of Wes Streeting's decision. His colleagues will slowly be coming to terms with him locking them into a future of bereaved parents tipping ashes outside Number 10 and a revival of mass die-ins wherever they go."

“I also hope to live long enough to see LOJ finally admit that he's always been on the Wrong Side of History. But I don't hold my breath!)”

I don’t think even a Highlander would live that long!

Isaac Newton (in whose lifetime the Salem witch trials took place) and his pal Archbishop Ussher had lively inquiring minds which they set to analysing the problems and issues of the world around them. If some of the results they drew from their limited datasets seem 'wrong' to us, that doesn't mean they were 'wrong' in their own time.

But the whole TWAW thing is an exercise in deliberate self-stupidification, up there with the people who cling to the belief that Archbishop Ussher was right when he said the world was created on October 22nd 4004 BC, or flat-earthers, or racists. It is a denial of material reality in favour of the fantasy that there is an actual thing called 'gender' and that humans beings have to conform to that fantasy.

They don't and trying to do so harms them and those around them.

I'm looking forward to the Crichton/Spielberg fictionalised version.

This is such a good comment and yes it absolutely is an issue of datasets.

Empedocles believed everything was made of four elements and that's not becuse he was too stupid to know about atoms (although the idea of an atom was in fact posited by Arstotle). He was simply working with the dataset he had at the time.

Likewise the Victorian scientists who believed that the last thing a person saw before dying would be imprinted on their eyeballs like a negative. Again, working from the datasets available to them.

None of that has any bearing on a person's morality or intellect because they were literally making the best use they could of the data they had.

but in the case of TWAW...the data and science around human biology is well established, even before the science it was known that there are two sexes which differ in certain ways, this knowledge predates the evolution of homo sapients ffs....but they not only chose to ignore it, they chose to actively persecute anyone who dared to mention it.

To me, that has to come down to either an intellectual or a moral failing. No shade on anyone if its intellectual, we all have different styles and rates of learning and no moral judgement there (although I do wonder whether anyone stupid enough to believe in 72 genders should have a position of political power for example).

the moral failing...well that's worse and I DO judge it. Espousing a belief you know to be false, for career or social or monetary reasons, is pathetic at best and downright evil at worst.

I'm glad the comments address it, and hopefully she'll read them.

But it just goes to show that even if you are fully up to speed in one area like suicide ideation, you can be taken in by some of the rest of it.

Morris was, according to Blanchard's
typology, AGP. but there will be plenty of people who aren't even aware of it as a reason for transitioning.

But in situations like this, the knowledge that people are scamming you over suicide stats, will make the enlightenment so much swifter once you become aware of the concept.

Hmm, I don't think Libby Purves is ignorant of the issues. She wrote a novel decades ago called Passing Go that features a lovely young transwoman -- entirely passing, how could their family not have recognised that they were a girl, anguished about revealing their birth sex to new acquaintances, and, yes, attempts suicide on being outed to the world. It's a very sympathetic portrayal.

But the are several of Danni's 'world' who are described in much less sympathetic terms, and one who is called, I think, 'a nasty piece of work' by the saintly vicar.

Perhaps Owen Jones could get a gig in the House of Lords. He could get some advice from Baroness Fox , ex Revolutionary Communist Party , ex Brexit Party. They might not agree on twaw. But that's only a detail since they are both always right about everything...

Espousing a belief you know to be false, for career or social or monetary reasons, is pathetic at best and downright evil at worst.

Trans/allies I have debated it with genuinely seem to believe in it. I have no way of knowing whether they do, or whether they are lying to me or to themselves. (In many ways this mirrors the conundrum of whether someone claiming a cross-sex gender identity is lying.)

I know someone with an honours degree in a STEM subject who is a young earth creationist. I'm as sure as I can be that they aren't lying, even though it's even more nonsensical (I can just about believe in trans as a psychological phenomenon).

Is there anyone in the public eye that we think might be lying about this deliberately? How can we ever know?

Well, she doesn't see through Jan Morris. Which to me would indicate that AGP isn't on her radar that prominently.

Either TRA sympathisers truly believed TWAW, in which case their intellect simply isn't as advanced as those who understand the importance of empirical evidence and scientific enquiry, and favour that over blind faith systems.
**
Or, TRA sympathisers don't believe TWAW but still said it to get ahead, be fashionable or from fear of cancellation. In which case then I'm afraid their moral code simply isn't as strong as those who, at best, were brave enough to either openly question it, or, at least, kept their heads down and refused to mouth the platitudes.

@CantDealwithChristmas I’m not sure it’s just one of these two positions though. My colleagues won’t truly believe that TWAW, neither are they being fashionable or fear cancellation. They believe that they are being kind and inclusive. Naive possibly. As feminists involved in many social justice issues, this is another one for them that falls under EDI.

It is somewhat unreflective in not thinking through the wider implications of this doctrine. But many many women (especially in a HE setting) are unaware of the examples and impacts raised in these threads. Not to mention the very limited reporting by MSM on the one hand and a very widespread propagation of the message that GI is part of EDI on the other. Though admittedly I come from a setting that is explicitly ’queered’.

It is hard to overestimate the persuasiveness of Morris's writing. People are in awe of it. At the time it was a novel viewpoint.

But it is only persuasive writing. He was just very good at it.

It is not my sort of thing. 🤷‍♀️

Also, now we know that the facts were not necessarily the point of the writing, it must be hard to unravel that when you are coming from the the point of having been charmed by it.

I’m not sure it’s just one of these two positions though. My colleagues won’t truly believe that TWAW, neither are they being fashionable or fear cancellation. They believe that they are being kind and inclusive. Naive possibly.

While I see what you're saying, this could be filed under a combo of moral / intellectual failing.

Society can't simply prioritise the cause du jour. We have to think about what is right for society as a whole. Being 'kind' to TW is hugely problematic for women's safety. It doesn't take much considered thought to figure that out.

That's where I believe people have gone wrong here. They're looking for the next 'human rights' cause, without scrutinising if this really is that. Or thinking about what's good for society at large.

For anyone who hasn't seen it

Jan Morris was a trans pioneer — and a cruel parent
The reporter and travel writer’s gender reassignment caused a sensation in the 1970s, but at home she refused to answer her children’s questions. The Jan they knew was neglectful, bullying and sexist, writes her daughter Suki Morys
…
As I grew older, even more confusion took hold. I read Conundrum, Jan’s memoir, which was published in 1974 and serialised in The Sunday Times, and the story didn’t quite fit for me. Now I have read more of Jan’s books, I have come to the conclusion that, other than the portrayal of place, all her accounts are pretty much fantasy. More than a little artistic licence was used in all her articles and books. She romanticises anything that is remotely emotional, because she never talked about anything emotional. …
As I grew older, I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Jan wanted to be a “woman” when her view of “women” was totally the opposite of what she was. She wasn’t at all maternal; she struggled to even give her own children a hug, stiffening to a board when we tried. She couldn’t cook, I never saw her clean anything and she certainly didn’t want to stay at home and be with her family. She disliked the very idea of “family”. The honest fact is that she didn’t want to be a woman, at least not the way she saw women. And still I couldn’t talk to her about it all; I just got shut down.
…
https://archive.is/kWd8i

My colleagues have swallowed a lot of TRA propaganda/thought-stopping cliches. They think they are kind, inclusive and progressive. I think the progressiveness is key - the TRA agenda has sold itself very effectively as a ‘left wing’ position and as the next frontier of inclusivity. There is a type of person who couldn’t bear to be seen as in some way right wing. In the workplace, it’s especially difficult to counter the TRA cliches because it seems provocative, especially in a captured sector. Nobody wants to be sacked or cancelled. So people like my colleagues are not challenged by anyone they know to be essentially left-leaning, and continue in their ‘right side of history’ echo chamber.

Another cult characteristic is the fear of being cast out or shunned which, when added to the sunk costs of having espoused the movement for a long time, must be frightening.

Libby Purves specifically mentioned autogynephilia as one of the reasons underlying male transitioning on Times Radio last week so it's definitely on her radar. I just think she hasn't made the connection with Jan Morris yet.

Jan Morris's travel books are incredibly disparaging about women who are not beautiful and well-groomed. It's very clear that he does not give women much thought beyond appearances.

Yeah I think that's why I added the word prominently.

To me it's all but a gimmee that Jan Morris would be AGP. Heterosexual, late transitioner.

still, it's good that she's aware of it.

I agree with what you’re saying and see this played out around me. What I don’t understand is the increasing effort it must take for these people to ignore the very reasonable scrutiny that gender ideology is increasingly under, eg since the report by Dr Cass. Do they just shut down the questions in their own heads?!

I think they must. The days when it could airily be put down to 'culture wars in the Torygraph' have long gone now.

What I don’t understand is the increasing effort it must take for these people to ignore the very reasonable scrutiny that gender ideology is increasingly under

Thinking about conversations I've seen on here (or AIBU) - when nailed down, almost no one actively supports medicalising children, or men in women prisons, or even men in women's sports.

They just try to avoid the question mostly. Or if forced to face reality, present their position as totally different to those nasty GCs, somehow. Despite being exactly the same.

there are no questions in their heads. For that to happen you at least need to admit the possibility you might be mistaken. Do any of the grade "A" trans headbangers ever sound anything other than convinced of their own righteousness?

Whenever they've been directly asked, say how do you tell the difference between a man pretending to be a woman and man pretending to pretend to be a woman, they generally flounce, call us meanies and flounce, ignore the question, derail, or just vanish.

Alternate facts. In the TRAverse, gender ideology is not under reasonable scrutiny, it is under transphobic attack.

In the TRAverse, it is accepted fact that the Cass report is flawed and biased, that trans kids are already killing themselves from fear of puberty, that puberty blockers are safe because they are used for precocious puberty so the only reason they are banned for trans kids is because people hate that trans kids exist and believe banning pbs will force them to be cis, that Wes Streeting is throwing trans people under the bus to advance his own career and that Kier Starmer doesn't care about trans people because he has not thrown known transphobe Duffield out of Labour. In the TRAverse, challenging teaching gender ideology as fact in schools is no different to section 28. In the TRAverse they don't understand why people can't see this obviously transphobic agenda.

In the TRAverse they know people can't change sex, they just think sex isn't the thing that makes you a man or a woman.

(No, I have no idea why if sex isn't relevant to your gender identity it's also so important to transition/pass/be validated as the opposite sex.)

Or shriek "Transphobe!"

On a thread somewhere yesterday, I think, some one coined the phrase, 'if you build it, they will come'. If you provide a thoroughfare, through bad legislation or policy, bad actors will take advantage of it.