Kathleen Stock - "These people are just a bit thick"

[Another2Cats]

So, Kathleen Stock has just made her views on people like Joylon Maugham et al known.

She started off with a tweet that said:

"Never mind the serious reputations, the accents, the swagger, the BBC connections, the Guardian column, the KC status, the rave book reviews, or whatever it is - like no other issue, trans ideology shows up people who are really quite stupid."

Which, not unsurprisingly, got a lot of replies. Some in support and some defending these people.

In reply to those defending these people she then had this to say. It's a different take on how to approach the argument. Don't know if I entirely agree:
.

I never do a long post but first time for everything. Lots of lively comment on my "they are just quite thick" explanation of Establishment transactivism capture (proposed hashtags #itsthestupidstupid #makeidiocymortifyingagain).

Also, some alternative explanations being proposed. I suppose my conclusion is: it doesn't matter if they really ARE thick, or just pretending/left-brained/lost in a cult/cosseted from the consequences/ smart in a way that makes them susceptible to motivated reasoning.

Having spent best part of six years (FML) arguing patiently with these people, a) I am not convinced of the more charitable explanations for notable characters, and b) either way, I don't care any more. If it walks like a moron, talks like a moron, it is – for all relevant purposes– a moron, and we should say so.

So for instance (just a small selection from timeline today):

• if you think transwomen (men) are to women what step-parents are to their children YOU ARE A MORON (think it through to the end: when was the metaphorical marriage? wtf is "womaning" as a verb? Wearing kneesocks?)

• If you think you can't know your own sex because you haven't seen your chromosomes YOU ARE A MORON (if that is the burden of proof, how do you personally know you have a brain?)

• If you think that the Supreme Court should have "consulted trans people" about their "lived experience" while interpreting existing law YOU ARE A MORON, this is not what courts do; and for good reason - how would it be workably scaled up?

• If you base your glowing view of trans ideology on what your daughter at private school and all her mates tell you (it doesn't affect us, Dad, why can't they just be kind?), then YOU ARE A MORON. What kind of general epistemology is that, exactly? You seem to be confusing having 360 degree insight into the intersection of law and social reality with them being able to use the remote better than you can.

I see so many people on here trying to shame the likes of Maugham, Campbell, Stewart, Harman (insert your most annoying establishment shill for transactivism here) on the grounds of their ethical failures and inability to empathise with vulnerable or respect basic fairness norms. It is hopeless. These people are utterly convinced of their moral rectitude, they automatically take disagreement as a sign of the limited mindset of their opposition.

We should forget all that, and hit them where it hurts: in the ego. THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST A BIT THICK. They are promoted way above their station, have blustered through on their accents, educations, and connections, and now the tide is going out, we can truly see who is naked. Let's learn from this, and never trust their so-called expertise on any other matter again.

https://x.com/Docstockk/status/1917165815339589823

The people who I've seen in my social life jump on the trans wagon are not the sharpest tools in the box.

I include professionals in this, so I agree, a degree is no certainty of critical thinking.

I wish I thought it was because they are thick. It's not. It is profound and gleeful misogyny. Not one of them thinks they have to 'be kind' to women of be concerned for women's safety or rights or protected spaces or hard won places in sports that didn't even deserve yo be funded until a few years ago. We don't exist, to them. We are ancillary.our purpose is to step back so that they can step forward and if we don't, they want to punish us as brutally as possible.

I am so sick of FB friends wringing their hands about the safety of trans women . No terf has ever threatened them with rape, murder, attack of their families. No terf has ever had them ousted from work for stating bio facts as opinions ( not coercing others to agree, just having own opinion).

The gulf between the two sides is huge and obvious. One is sane and angrily outspoken. The other is vitriolic and controlling, neurotic and threatening. That's not just thick. That's glee at having a socially ratified reason to bully women and ruin our lives. It's hatred. Don't downplay it.

'I wish I thought it was because they are thick. It's not. It is profound and gleeful misogyny.'

It's true. A FB friend of mine shared a cartoon of JKR with the heading 'Harry Potter and the Transphobic Hag'. That's what we are to them - hags, slags, bitches, bigots etc etc. Scratch one millimeter below the surface of all the handwringing and the 'be kind' bullshit and it's just raging misogyny

It the utter and unshakable believe that what they’ve said or posted is so intelligent and groundbreakingly succinct that always gets me.

the TRAs nod along thinking the poster is a sage……whilst the ‘non morons’ are reading thinking ‘Eh?????…. How did you even think pressing ‘post’ was a good idea on that total piece of completely unprovable bullshit!!!’

india willoughby is an absolute king as posting utter tripe…he who brushes his hair with a balloon should never be believed.

Balloon? I thought it was a toffee apple.

(Special thanks to the Glaswegian wag who shouted that at Boris Johnson).

I think it's both, tbh.
It's partly actual stupidity, often in the form of a lack of critical reasoning (like @sunat45degrees I have a BIL who expresses his opinions forcefully, despite crashing ignorance and without ever having thought deeply about the topic at hand, so I know they're out there).

And then there are the blokes who don't like women. Some of them know that they're supposed to treat women as equals, but this topic lets them take the gloves off, so we have the leftie woke bro phenomenon where all these right-on men turn into screaming women-hating loons who tell us to 'check our privilege' or whatever. (The privilege of knowing that most of the men we meet could physically overpower us. The privilege of being laid out with period pain. The privilege of - well, you get the picture.)

And there are also people who are just scared. Some of them are so keen to be seen as 'kind' that rather than risking engaging their brains and arriving at difficult answers, they nod along with TWAW and all the rest of the crap. Some of the 'be kind' squad are just people pleasers (often young women with limited life experience) and it doesn't even occur to them to think this topic through.

So it's a mix of factors, but stupidity is definitely amongst them, along with misogyny, fear and cowardice, and the impacts of female socialisation.

Edited for typo.

Everyone has different levels of intellectual ability. They just do, even though it's become somewhat taboo in modern society to publicly acknowledge it (I don't really understand why. Some people are book smart; others are adept or even gifted in non-intellectual pursuits. There's no moral judgement attached to this fact, or there shouldn't be, so what's the problem?)

One of the long term malign but (probably) unintended consequences of abolishing grammar schools is that we now have an elite (government, media, NGOs) who are in positions of power because their parents could afford to send them private and then had the social and cultural capital to get them into the best jobs.

Or to put it another way, many of our leaders and policy makers and culture makers are educated beyond their NATURAL intellectual ability. This would not have happened to such an extent had we still an educational system which allowed the Harold Wilsons of the world (lower middle class, scholarship to a grammar which enabled him to get into Oxford) to level up socially and educationally and take some of the positions currently occupied by wealthy morons, through a proper system of meritocracy.

As it is, we're ruled and led by posh morons who hide their imbecility with a patina of pseudo-socialism. This allows them to impose their stupid group-think ideas on the rest of us, whilst continuing to quietly keep amassing wealth and social capital, and 'atoning' for it by putting the trans flag in their twitter bio.

Althought there's truth in that historically, it's not particularly so with the current government, is it? I'd imgine Starmer's cabinet has fewer poshos and PSBs than most recent adminstrations, FWIW,

In formal terms, yes. Rory Stewart has talked about when he was considering going into politics before 2010, and he could just as easily have gone Labour as Conservative. I think he made a practical calculation that Labour were going to lose the 2010 election, but he probably also figured that one party had a prejudice against Etonians and the other didn't.

But there are a tremendous amount of Labour politicians who send their kids to the same few schools in north London that are officially comprehensive but really grammars in all but name - except that admission to them has more to do with connections than merit. The current lot of Labour ministers contains quite a few nepo babies, and the next generation will have more.

@SionnachRuadh
But there are a tremendous amount of Labour politicians who send their kids to the same few schools in north London that are officially comprehensive but really grammars in all but name - except that admission to them has more to do with connections than merit. The current lot of Labour ministers contains quite a few nepo babies, and the next generation will have more.

Not only connections, also being able to afford a house in the relevant postcode. The same applies outside London. You only have to look at Rightmove, 'This highly desirable property, close to excellent schooling options especially the highly popular Super School, in need of some modernisation but with superb potential...' And with a price tag tens of thousands then a virtually identical (and already modernised) house NOT in the Super School catchment.

Yup.

Most Labour MPs will steer clear of private schools, if they're old enough to remember the crap that Diane Abbott and others got for going private.

But it would be naive in the extreme to believe that ministers in the Starmer government are sending their kids to Steve Biko Comprehensive.

I was thinking about intelligent working class/lower middle people, rather than Starmer's cabinet.

What PPs have said about the London privilege is absolutely true and not sufficiently recognised in public life.

But really when it comes to the trans issue I am thinking more of the posh nepo dummies who populate charities, the media, the arts and the third sector. They were the ones who really took up the baton of magical thinking and waved goodbye to reality.

I see where KS and those of you who wholeheartedly agree with her - i.e. almost everybody - are coming from.

But I don't agree with calling people 'thick' or 'morons' because they can't see what KS, you, me, JKR, Sex Matters, For Women Scotland, the UK Supreme Court, and everyone on this thread, think is as clear as clear can be.

People with powerful intellects sometimes believe things that are daft:

Isaac Newton wasn't thick, but he believed in alchemy.
Carl Jung - not everyone's cup of tea, but definitely not thick - believed in astrology.
Thomas Aquinas - demonstrably not a moron - believed he could prove the existence of god.

I could go on - there are loads of men who have made valuable and significant contributions to science, literature, philosophy, science, medicine throughout the ages who thought that women were inferior creatures. Or believed in astrology. Or eugenics.

It's hard to understand how such intelligent people couldn't grasp things that seem so obvious to us. But does that make them thick, or morons?

There was that guy in Trump's previous government, a literal brain surgeon, who was a young earth creationist.

@MarieDeGournay
I think KS is giving an emotional response, and I can't really blame her.

Lots of the reading I do is about highly intelligent people in the past who believed all sorts of off the wall stuff. So I'm less inclined to believe that a person is either generically really smart (and therefore right about most things) or generically really thick (and therefore wrong about most things).

It also feeds into a credentialism that I dislike, as when people assume they know more than me on a subject because they went to Oxford, or they've got a PhD in a completely unrelated subject. They might know more than me on the specific subject, but that's got nothing to do with their credentials.

I've heard people say things like "Ezra Pound was an amazing poet, if only he hadn't fallen for antisemitism." As if it's unthinkable for a brilliant poet to also be an antisemite (looking at you TS Eliot). Poets believe all sorts of mad stuff, and we can't assume their artistry means they're free of human vice.

Eric Hobsbawm's Stalinism is not a minor flaw that's irrelevant to his brilliant historical work, it was a serious lifelong commitment that runs right through his work.

So I think what I see here is - people who are quite capable of reasoning intelligently but who deliberately choose not to when it comes to genderwoo. I'm interested in knowing why - maybe it's to support a friend or family member, or they sincerely believe it's TRSOH, or social desirability bias, or they take the Campbell route of believing women's issues are a bit silly and trivial and they'll outsource their thinking to the nearest woman they know.

Some I think can be reasoned with and some can't, but I'm interested in what causes them to be wilfully obtuse in certain areas. I don't think assuming they're generically stupid is helpful, even if it might be emotionally satisfying.

I think it's supposed to be an insult, specifically because the people she is criticising are paid for their wisdom and insight.

I adore Stock. Of all the heavy hitting TERFs, she's the most human and relatable. I loved this article and I love how her frustration with all this imbecility spills out from the page.

And she's right about some people. There are plenty of people who are articulate, 'well' educated but are total strangers to critical thinking and have been totally sidelined by this. Many senior Labour politicians for example.

But there are other dynamics too - and I feel that I've never been able to fully unpick them.

Cowardice is one. Rory Stewart is a prime example of this. He knows exactly the impact all this has on women, he voiced his concerns about women prisoners several years ago. But he is a complete, craven coward and won't stand up to his mates.

Misogyny is another, whether that's more blatant or more subtle. I'd say Campbell falls into this bracket. He can't handle listening to smart women who challenge him. Starmer is probably another example.

And then there's the overwhelming peer pressure. The idea that being pro-trans in a way that's anti-woman is what 'nice' / 'progressive' people think. For the life of me, I can't figure out how the TRAs established that meta narrative as successfully as they did. But it's been hugely powerful in suppressing basic common sense and logic. And its 'higher status' people who've been more susceptible to that.

Agree with it all, apart from the daughter at private school. Her private school friends all know it is BS, it's the state school ones that think they've "lost" something or other and we are all bigots.

FWIW I don't know why we have to be so polarised - if they can respect trans rights, surely they can respect women's rights (as 51% of the population vs 0.1% of trans)

Surely the whole point of life is to learn, grow and change. I think we all need to be aware we won't have fixed ideas for life and it is good to know we adapt. That's why I worry about the more deliberately obtuse ones, because I wonder what is driving them if they know what is real and pretend otherwise.

I think labelling someone thick is kinder than wilfully obtuse personally. Having a brain and omitting to use it is far worse than loudly not knowing how stupid you are.

So I think what I see here is - people who are quite capable of reasoning intelligently but who deliberately choose not to when it comes to genderwoo. I'm interested in knowing why - maybe it's to support a friend or family member, or they sincerely believe it's TRSOH, or social desirability bias

There's idealism here too. People who want to live in a world where people can magically change sex if they want to - and so they just don't want to acknowledge the problems when they're pointed out.

"Ovaries of Steel" would be a good name for an all-female Iron Maiden cover band 😁

This is a good point.

I think too the endless whining about 'it's complicated' is at heart moral cowardice.

"but it's complicated" was the whinge when women were raped in prisons and being made to undress in front of men who wanted it in their work place, and denied services or resources. They couldn't protect women because 'it was complicated' which sounded - vaguely - as if they cared there was a problem but their poor little hands were tied.

And now the law makes clear that they CAN protect women, and that those men can have equality and their own spaces without women being harmed - and still comes that teeth grating whine that they can't because 'it's complicated'.

They'd much prefer please to go back to women being hurt and harmed and subordinated to men while whining a bit about how complicated it all is. Because actually it appears that they were totes ok with the women being hurt and harmed and subordinated by and to men bit, that was fine, the whining was merely a means to not have to own it or take any responsibility for it and still feel like a good person.

Cowards.

Eric Hobsbawm's Stalinism is not a minor flaw that's irrelevant to his brilliant historical work, it was a serious lifelong commitment that runs right through his work.
A commitment so great that it didn't stop him leaving an estate worth, at current values, a cool £2.5mill.
I suspect another case of not wishing to apply uncomfortable critical reasoning to daily life...

For years my daughter came home from school wishing she was as "clever and brainy" as her best friend who was always top of the class in all subjects. Then, after the last biology class before leaving the teacher called my daughter's idol a sponge. She told her that there was more to life than being a sponge and that it was all very well being able to read and then faithfully copy work but thinking for herself would be the true test in life.

My daughter told me she realised this when her friend never managed to do anything practical in life. They shared a flat throughout uni but she was banned from cooking as nothing was edible on the occasions she managed to not nearly set the place on fire. Neither of her driving instructors would put her up for the test despite her parroting the Highway Code to them. Her driving was simply too dangerous.

I've never really come across anyone else who would fall under this but understand exactly what you mean when you say narrow intelligence (not the AI version). I prefer your wilfully stupid description, though, as I've met quite a few of those.

KS is pushing buttons... and I like it.

I am a bit like your DDs friend. I have a decent general intelligence but in numbers facts and memory, I am very good. This meant I sailed through education, and am very good at my IT job tasks.

However I have been accused all my life, not unfairly, of being all brains and no common sense.

Actually I am a slow learner in many/most areas, am practically blind socially, and my shortcomings are manifold!