The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity

[Ingenieur]

An interesting article in The Atlantic today, and a sign the tide might be turning in the USA.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-dishonest-gender-conversation-2024-election/680604/

Most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.

Baby steps

You seem to be saying that it will be our fault if right wing governments are elected, and suggesting that we should not express our opinions lest they be amplified on social media to bring that about.
In other words, you’re telling us to shut up. This is why people so vehemently disagree with you.

@borntobequiet you said exactly what I wanted to say but with many less words and less filter. I’m taking notes, thanks 😂

Seems to me that we're ticking quite a few of the Rules of Misogyny...

https://4w.pub/the-rules-of-misogyny/

I too have followed this thread without comment. I am sure there have been bots and influence from Russia etc. amplifying events and pushing narratives. You can see that in coverage of the war in Ukraine too. However, the solution is surely to ensure we have open and free debate in our democracies. Democracy Dies in Darkness and all that. This is my massive issue with the Left in the UK, Europe and US - they stifled debate. Not bots, not the Russians - real people on the Left/Liberal axis screamed '#no debate' and 'transphobia' at every attempt to engage. That is what the Dems should be addressing - how they came to be the authoritarian, anti-free speech party.

There's a very simple way of ensuring that the political right can't exploit concerns about women's rights to their own advantage.

Don't piss all over women's rights.

The Democrats and Labour should be the parties of women's rights. Instead they're parties that claim to be for women's rights whilst simultaneously pretending not to know what a woman is, explicitly prioritising male "women" over female women, and demonising any women who object.

The political right would have to be absolutely mad not to exploit that.

If you don't want them to be able to exploit your misogyny and general batshittery for their own nefarious purposes, there is a simple solution. Do better.

And what we're saying is you can't exploit people supporting a shit ideology, if they don't support that shit ideology..

And you have to remember, that it's hardly ambiguous - almost everybody on the planet can barely believe how absolutely shit it is.

And it's a waste of time talking to the women on here. A cornerstone of these boards is that you absolutely check your source. A bot really wouldn't stand much of a chance given the nature of the discourse.

If you don’t think there’s anything in it, why spend so much time on super-long posts arguing against it? That’s odd to me.

Because, as you say, concentrating on any narrative longer than a paragraph is far too 'odd' for some people.

If Labour don't unequivocally back off gender woo they are basically handing the next parliament over to Reform and/or a more hard-line right wing government. Labour foolishly think that all they have to do is improve the economy. They're so wrong.

To be fair, there is more than one poster that has been regular here who has a familiar pattern of posting such confident statements that turn out to be weakly supported personal opinions. Particularly after pages and pages of posts seeking clarity and getting told snide statements refusing to clarify. It is all too familiar.

It is not unusual, is it, to have posters dismiss the failures of the Democratic Party with the rhetoric we have seen here and the dismissal of the direct impact so many experience. Nothing to see here, it was mostly the bots….

The disconnected thinking between declaring the bots have had such a significant impact, while denying that this actively minimises people’s real life experiences of that impact which has grown dramatically in the past four to five years, and most importantly the work done by women to raise the issue is also not new. Sadly.

And yes, being ‘warned’ that our work will be used by the far right is all too common. It is directly in the same line of ‘your words declaring women need single sex spaces kill people’, in my opinion.

Same

It's the purity spiral with an extra twist or, if you like, an extra spiral.

There's always some bullshit reason why women have to put off talking, fighting for their rights. Always some sunlit upland when we can. Just not yet, because although they're important, don't worry your fluffy little head about that, this is more important. Your rights, that we men will definitely get round to, are just a distraction. In fact, your rights are currently helping the ill-defined enemy, in an ill-defined way. Anyway, don't you already have your rights, bigot!?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5203846-to-think-kemi-and-nigel-will-likely-win-the-next-uk-election-after-making-a-pact-of-some-kind-and-fighting-on-an-immigration-identity-politics-platform

a familiar pattern of posting such confident statements that turn out to be weakly supported personal opinions.

Quite.

The poster's first post on the thread being:

"The public really only say soundbites like ‘No men in women’s sport’ (although the occurrence of such is minuscule) because they’ve read them endlessly in media, and then repeat them mindlessly."

A weakly supported opinion, not borne out by any evidence.

And also rather ironic considering that poster complained about a detailed post being too long - the opposite to a soundbite in fact.

Nicola Sturgeon was asked at a news conference whether Isla Bryson was a man or a woman. After a lot of sighing, squirming and visible irritation at being asked such a mean-spirited question, she confirmed that the individual was rapist gender. There is no need for foreign governments to invest in troll farms when senior politicians freely confirm to the electorate what contempt they hold us in.

I'm sorry, but No Shit Sherlock.

The reaction you are getting is not because no one wants to listen, it is because we know this. It's bloody obvious. One of the eye opening things about finding one of your core values no longer aligns with your "tribe" is reading across the divide and seeing what bias is in the messages they are getting, and how that also illuminates the bias what your side is getting.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed by your suggestions of practical steps because honestly, it's what smart people do anyway, and did even before social media and manipulation ramped up the stakes. Trace stories back to sources you trust, to named people if you can. Constantly cross check taking different points of view, and with what you already know - do things still stack up? Argue with yourself constantly. Assume the people who disagree with you, while maybe wrong, are acting in good faith, and be aware the ones who align with you may not be who they seem, may have have an agenda.

Trust long, well argued posts over short ones. Play the argument not the person. Avoid thought terminating characterisations like "Facist" or "Woke" to make an argument and go back as often as you can to the first principles/values that you base your position on (hence the long posts).

A handy rubric for me is when you come accross a story that makes you go "Yes!", that seems to align to exactly what your own perspective is, either agreeing with you or gosh-darn just a great example of exactly what the other side get so wrong, be wary. The world is complex and there's always nuances, compromises and less-than-we-might-like.

It's a few years ago now I think, but FWR had a great accidental education session from a group of TRAs (there is statistically significant over-representation of trans identifying men in technology - did you know that? How do you think that has distorted the neutrality of tech platforms on this social phenomenon?) trying to use an early GPT to outsmart us. Spoiler - it didn't work, because GPTs do not form a logically coherent position to argue from so the longer you debate with them, the clearer the gaps in their logic are. It's worth finding that thread if you can - given your background I think you will be interested.

But as several PPs have pointed out, this has gone beyond just "what people are saying on the internet". Laws that undefine womanhood as exclusively female have been enacted. Women have been slandered as Nazis - Nazis - and hounded out of their jobs. Men have been taken part in Women's sports. Male rapists have been considered suitable for inclusion in women's prisons. Young women's understanding of Feminism and of the reasons they never seem to get the same traction that men do has been undermined by the diversion into gender identity politics, persuaded the belief that "a woman is more than her body" means a woman can have any body, as if allowing men to claim to be women will somehow defang the sexist stereotypes and biases women face. The Denton's docuemnt, unbelievable as it seems, was not a hoax, it was available on Denton's website for some time. I downloaded it myself.

No doubt the social pressures that pushed for these changes were inflamed by bad actors, but they did and still are happneing. Doing nothing is not an option.

The Democrats called this one wrong. They do need an honest converstaion on gender identity, one where they ask themselves "Why do we believe this? What does it mean for a person with a male body to be "a woman" and what does that mean for everyone who up to now considered herself a a woman because she is female. What does it mean for the rights and political voice of women and of female people, if womahood is a feature of the mind not the female body? How exactly did this belief that is so clearly full of gaps and contradictions come to be such a defining feature, even a test of loyality, for us and our supporters? Is this really who we are or were we fooled and lead here?"

BTW, I genuinely would like to hear your thoughts/analysis on the un-overseen powers that accrue to people in the tech industry and to mods of popular platforms - people who do not need to say anything or be visible at all to wield significant control over what people are able to view, and in the case of Reddit, TikTok, Facebook etc created the impression that almost no one was questioning the genderist position. Like many others I have seen this happen in real time as one side of a conversation was simply censored away, with anyone not there at the time it happened to see the actual posts that were made being given a completely different description of the event afterwards.

That's right. And how dare Russian bots amplify that Scotland's first minister invented a gender called rapist.

Sooo exploitative.

Spoiler - it didn't work, because GPTs do not form a logically coherent position to argue from

Nor do trans activists

Have you considered that these bots simply magnify already existing rifts and disagreements, rather than creating them in the first place?

Politics and society does not move in a linear fashion........trends in one direction, which end up going too far, naturally constellate a redress in another direction Actions provoke reactions and so on.

If there is a movement to the Right it is because matters have gone too far in the other direction. These sorts of movements and shifts have been going on in societies long before social media and communication technology existed or was so prevalent and influential.

If anything, it could just be that social media amplifies and polarises everything even further.....even if it does not itself create the compensatory reactions and responses.

I really wish people would just ignore derailers.I know it's hard not to get sucked in but it would be helpful to just ignore them and continue the conversation. It's like a toddler screaming for sweets - we don't keep rewarding them with attention we briskly acknowledge once then move on and we feel free to ignore even if they have a new tantrum in the next shop. Even if they scream more loudly!

This is a general reflection on the whole FWR board rather than this specific thread. It's just so tiresome seeing the same few names and doing an internal eyeroll, knowing that unlike most FWR regulars there won't be any thoughtful posts, just accusations, emotional blackmail, soundbites, DARVO etc.

(I await a new derail attacking my parenting skills 😂)

Yep. All too familiar a pattern.

@SquirrelSoShiny I get what you mean. However, I think it's important for lurkers (in real time and in the future) to see those derailment posts get answered, otherwise they hang around like difficult questions we don't want to answer.

I also think it allows us to keep restating and refining the core arguments, keeping them fresh in recent posts rather than fading into "we dealt with that a long time ago" - again not for FWR regulars but for other readers.

I have considered starting a "these things keep coming up" rebuttal thread, so when one of the (frankly very limited) selection of what TRAs assume are Gotchas gets brought up to derail, I can just link back to the relevent post in that thread (and if I feel tetchy, possibly links to all the other times I have given the same poster that link - not for the derailer but for the lurkers to show the derailer is acting in bad faith).

I will say I don't think Eye is a derailer exactly. The role of bad faith social media manipulation in pushing some of their support base into an extremist genderist position (seriously - Trans Rights has become a sort of test of faith for the US Left), and their response to adopt this all-or-nothing position, is absolutely something the Democrats need to include in their releflections and it is to me on topic. Eye has possibly been somewhat patronising in how they have raised it but the topic itself is relevant.

Interesting article
thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4983994-language-gap-elite-working-america/

ok so let's get back to the OP.

Who is in a position to start this conversation with the democrats? Does it have to be a grass roots thing, which slowly filters up through the heirarchy? Is there a senior Democrat with enough standing to start the conversation with honesty? Or does it have to come from both directions at once?

Both directions, I would say.

I can imagine that it will be difficult for the conversation to start, it is going to take some VERY determined people to stand up to the pushback they're going to get. So grassroots - it needs to be men and women because we know what happens when women speak.

I just can't imagine, though, who at the top is going to grasp the nettle.

Yes I think both but it needs a strong leader to emerge to say loud and clear 'The era of no debate is over it was undemocratic and we are the party that encourages open discussion.' That will give the grassroots the courage to speak out and destroy cancel culture.