Sally Hines

[WandsOut]

https://x.com/sally_hines/status/1836778288112370076?s=46

"I wish I knew whether the high profile GCs who have a political and policy background and a level of legal knowledge, and yet repeatedly use mantras such as ‘sex based rights’ and ‘GC beliefs as protected’ are wilfully engaging in disinformation practices or are wildly ignorant.

The first is shocking and the latter pitiful. I’m not thinking about the shock jocks and grifters such as KJM, but GCs with a policy, research and/or academic role. Do they make things up knowingly or get things very wrong?

I’m not talking about theoretical or political understandings or perspectives which are to be invested and believed in - or not. But substantive factors. For eg, whether or not there should be ‘sex based rights’ is an opinion, a normative question.

Stating that these rights exist though is wrong. And this is why there is so little GC research published in academic journals. It’s not silencing, it’s incoherence and falsehoods. The ideal public arena for GC thought is the shock, and tease, tabloid opinion pieces.

But if one wants to be active in research, policy…

You really can’t go around just making things up and get a reputable publication. You can fool the Tories and you can be used by the far right, but you can’t get past Reviewer 2"

Is she fucking stupid?

It wasn't the best day for TAs yesterday - JKR making sense while their day in Court in the US didn't exactly go well because people kept asking questions. Apparently gender experiments on kids don't stop suicides. Who knew?
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5222777-us-supreme-court-thread-united-states-v-skrmetti-december-4th

fromorbit · Today 09:25

Here we go.

Damn JKR with her facts, logic and reasoning! Hines seems not dissimilar to a poster here, who's been arguing on the TERFs are not the problem thread that trans men concealing their sex from sexual partners is for the best.

Talk about going unarmed to a battle of wits.

@TempestTost I think Hines has admitted in the past to posting on Twitter while very drunk.

Continuing.

Could be an interesting conversation if Sally Hines can argue in good faith.

All JKR is trying to do is to get Sally Hines to explain what a gender identity is. She can't do it. Nobody can ever explain what a gender identity is because they all know it's nonsense.

There are two reasons why that won't happen. Intellectual honesty and ability.

😂that's hilarious, Snowypeaks😂
I'll never look at a muffin again without thinking of Sally Hines... oh wait..

😨that's awful,Snowypeaks😨
I'll never look at a muffin again without thinking of Sally Hines

😂😆

Is Sally Hines a bargain-bin Judith Butler?

Thanks, now I have a nursery rhyme earworm to try to extemporise. I hate you all.

Pfft. How should I know?

I'm not your bloody therapist.

(Oh how I howled at that response).

JKR is pwning her.

The back and forth between JKR and Sally has been joyous though. JK is on fire!

I think what Hines is saying is that 'gender identity' is how we relate to the ideas of 'gender'. Whether we wish to conform or not to the bundle of characteristics described as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. And we can measure our own antipathy or enjoyment against the cultural standards and stereotypes and expectations.

The trouble is that those bundles are arbitary, they change depending on history, culture, context. There is no fixed set or definition, and 'gender' or the things we desribe as 'gender' don't map directly, clearly, or uncomplicatedly onto sex.

It's trying to hammer a nebulous, shifting, vague and contested academic theory onto a very simple, material and immutable physical reality. The two things are immiscible.

It's not possible to say that anything is inherently 'masculine' or 'feminine', because it is subjective and subject to change, constantly in flux. We can step back and say how we feel overall about any arbitrary set of stereotypes, for sure. But all that means is 'gender non conformity'.

I'd say that 'non binary' and 'gnc' are the only logical outcomes of 'genderism', really. Because you just cannot relate an infinite, changeable, and arbitrary set of characteristics onto two immutable sexes.

The disconnect is in trying to suggest that 'gender' is a fixed material reality, and that 'sex' is a mutable theoretical quality. It's the wrong way round.

So is Sally simply saying that if you have more masculine traits then your gender identity is man and if you have more feminine traits then your gender identity is woman? So it's no longer possible to be a woman who wears trousers and is an engineer, or a man with long hair who likes cooking?

What happened to breaking down gender stereotypes, Sally?

I think she's saying (I'm cribbing from Arabella's summary, I haven't read the book) that if you like and feel comfortable wearing trousers and having short hair, have a traditionally masculine job and hate housework, then your GI is masculine. How masculine and how much of a man you are, depends on how much you embrace masculine-coded behaviour and presentation. Ditto feminine-coded behaviour and presentation. Hence the spectrum.

So it's not quite as silly as claiming that the mere act of wearing trousers etc turns you into a man, but it's a fundamentally flawed analysis nonetheless.

So if I am a woman, it is not acceptable to be assertive, without endangering my identity as a woman? .

I am in the middle of a large construction project and am having to be very assertive with the surveyor. Structural engineer and contractor are on my side so it is both correct and necessary that I am. However would the surveyor have the right to claim I was not feminine enough?

(He is a plonker - so if he could he would.)

Ah so gender identity is putting people into stereotypical boxes?

Great, so why are we basing laws on stereotypes?

Actually, maybe the arbitrariness and mutability of gender (she means, but doesn't want to say, stereotypes) is not a weakness.
If the gender identity is your relationship with gender (stereotypes), then she might argue that it's about how you feel about whatever "gendered" behaviour and dress etc happens to mean at the time you are alive.

But this still relies on there being such a thing as sex, because otherwise how do we know whether something is masculine or feminine coded? That's the constant - that we keep dividing people up into two groups with (mostly) different dress and behaviour expectations, so we must have a way of telling which group is under which set of stereotypes.

I wonder what she says sex is. Not enough to buy the book, obviously.

@lifeturnsonadime & @Needmoresleep

It's all about you, and how you feel about what you are wearing/doing, what your job is. If your intention is.
Apparently.

So laws are built on egos.

Fantastic.

Honestly I'm 100% fine if people want to be able to label themselves based on how they relate to the ideas of gender. I don't feel any need to dispute the ever-more-freewheeling explanations of gender feelings and gender identifies, the manifolds and shifting constellations and so on (in fact I quite like them), because at the end of the day everything they describe is obviously a different thing to physical sex, and my concern as a femiinst is ending the disproportionate social and economic marginalisation suffered by female people because of their physical sex.

My red lines are simple:

1. Feelings of gender are manifestly not the same as phyiscal sex so they should not use the same names as physical sex.

1. Feelings of gender are manifestly not the same as phyiscal sex so there is no justiifcation to have a legal status of the opposite sex based on feelings of gender.

1. A person's gender identity does not give them any particular insights into or commonality with the opposite sex and so we should not give their input into political, legal or social discussions about the opposite sex any more weight than those of any other person of their sex

1. A person's gender, being not the same thing as sex, does not confer them access to any rights, support or resources where the intention is to segregated by sex. The accident of the same name currently labelling two separate things (see point one) is not justification to treat the two things as interchangeable.

1. If someone believes feelings of gender are a more appropriate basis on which to segregate something than physical sex, they need to make that case explictly, explaining from first principles and without relying on the existence of a support based on sex, why it makes sense to replace that specifc sex-based support with a gender-feeling support, explainaing both why the gender feelings give rise to the need and why the sex-based need no long exists.

I don't think I could facepalm harder if I tried.

Its the circular:

Its not about gender stereotypes, but if you don't conform to stereotypes then you are trans rather than gender non-conforming.

And everyone else should be a sexist pig from theh 1950s but with new added glitter to make it fashionable and progressive.

And JKR firmly has her number on that.

FlirtsWithRhinos · Today 13:55

...they need to make that case explictly, explaining from first principles...

I think that ought to be first question in any debate on this. They'd fall at the first hurdle.