So, which side is catholic, and which side protestant ?

[SerendipityJane]

Just browsing a couple of podcasts about the reformation, and I was suddenly struck by the parallels in language and commitment to a world view between the early reformation (crispy catholics etc) and the current spat with TRAs and science.

To the extent that either I am alone in my own little universe (which I am quite happy with, thank you) or someone else must have noticed.

Anyway it does provide for a brief distraction if you want to not only examine the parallels, but suggests which side equates to which.

I guess someone, somewhere is working on a PhD around the western christian manifestation of the current transgender discussions. If not they have have that one on me 😎

The GCs are surely Martin Luther questioning beliefs.

I think comparisons only go so far, to be honest.

However the spectacle of Joylon Maughams spittle flecked invective against JKR is certainly a simulacrum of how Elizabeth I (who was really a hermaphrodite, remember 😀) was vilified by the Pope. Who eventually put a hit on her for her presumptuousness

Does that make it ok?

Well you've got me here. Tricky since both sides claim to have the correct line back in the 16th century.
Rev Giles Fraser thought Brexit was like another Reformation. Just to confused things even more....

You beat me to it.

"Tricky since both sides claim to have the correct line back in the 16th century."

And both sides don't today?

Contrariwise. as a(n English) Protestant you had to believe that the monarch was the head of your church and to not accept that was heresy and treason.

Head of church/treason wasn’t to do with Protestant beliefs though - it was to do with power. It is the reason why monarchs and heirs were not allowed to marry Catholics - because that would mean the ultimate (earthly) ruler of Britain would be the Pope not the King of England/Britain.

Josephine Butler and William Stead are interesting on this. Butler campaigned against the Contagious Diseases Act, which treated prostituted women as a public resource of particular use to the armed forces, and Stead revealed the trafficking of young girls into brothels (mainly maison close) on the Continent - he went to gaol for trafficking but also brought about the demand to have the age of consent raised to 16 from 12 (afaik at this point and until recently the age of consent only applied to girls), having described his activities in his newspaper under the headline 'The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon'. Butler is a another forgotten heroine.

If we consider Transideology embeds in regressive gendered expectations/sex stereotypes/misogyny then it is others who have broken the historic mould over the last century and TRAs are like a counter reformation.

I think that you may have solved the OP’s question, despite it giving a theologist a nosebleed. Genius.

Because it is the women of mumsnet who bake the traybakes. This is unpaid labour of middle-aged women. So the logic is that traybakes are Terfy.

I think I see what OP is trying to understand. In some ways you could map gender ideology onto either Protestantism or Catholicism I suppose. Except they both believe in forgiveness and redemption I think.Whereas compassion seems to be absent from the make up of TRAs. Perhaps some US offshoot of Christianity like the Westboro Baptist Church would be a better fit.

I reject the premise of Protestant traybakes. Fifteens are the classic Norn Iron traybake, but their appeal crosses all communities.

Classic Northern Irish No-Bake Fifteens - traybakes & more

The reformation created the divide that the British civil war fought over. A divinely appointed Monarch pitted against a teaching that obeying a pope was close to pagan superstition.

Cynics of history should look at the map of Leave/Remain overlaid on the 17th century map of England.

Not quite.It was the battle and the way it was fought, not the causes I am drawing attention to.

If you look at the continent, German (and later Scandinavian) protestantism under Luther's Reformation was, in part, motivated by the desire for regular Germans to read the Bible in their own language, interpret scripture on their own without the intervention of a priest. Luther and his Lutheran Reformation saw Catholic building funds, taxes to Rome and indulgences as a massive grift, much like we feminists see Big Pharma and unscrupulous gender doctors, not to mention all the non-profits/charities who take money because poor vulnerable trans folk.

Lutheranism also wanted to counter misinformation by priests who spoke a then dead language of Latin ("cis" "deadname" "pronouns" "trans females," etc.) so the common folk didn't have the means to critique the pope, or even understand what was being said in church. Lutherans created schools for all children regardless of class in order for them to learn to read their Catechism without the 'translation' of the priests (Stonewall, new progressive Democrats). In many ways, Lutheranism established the concept of public schools for all by establishing education in German because language literacy was French for the elites and Latin for the priests/monks/nuns.

I'd say that Luther brought the sunlight to lies by Catholic church much like straight-talking feminists brought sunlight to lies of WPATH, Stonewall, etc., The Rules of Misogyny was like Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 Theses and then JKRowling's essay kicked off the 30 Years War.

Another analogy I'm noodling:
Today's conservative men who hate feminists, steal our ideas and spout GC ideals out one side of their mouths while preaching trad wife and anti-abortion out of the other are not unlike the witch hunters who loved to have an excuse to hate on women.

Today's conservative men who hate feminists, steal our ideas and spout GC ideals out one side of their mouths while preaching trad wife and anti-abortion out of the other

I don’t think conservatives spout GC ideals though. That is conflating GC with biological realism. Conservative men are biological realists and recognise that people can’t change sex, the importance of sex, and the pornified stereotypes of trans identified men, the harm of the ideology etc. But they are not critiquing the idea of gender - that men and women should fulfil different roles.

True. But I think you could argue that the TRAs are actually the mad fringe element of what started quite reasonably (to most people’s thinking today) with, basically, challenging gender stereotypes and wanting people who felt more comfortable presenting as the opposite sex to be able to do so. I’d say gender-critical women saying ‘no, we don’t want any men, no matter how they present, in our single-sex spaces’ are more counter-revolutionary since they represent a return to a clearer restatement of what had been an accepted norm.

Oh, sorry, I did say sacred texts. But other texts are, if not sacred, important e.g. for Catholics the works of the early Fathers of the Church etc. And some of the Apocrypha are semi-sacred, I think, depending on which branch of Christianity one adheres to.
Pretty thick Protestants talking about people being heretics, since they are heretics!😄

It's very common - maybe it's inevitable - that a reform movement will generate a lunatic fringe. Usually the fringe stays fringe, but sometimes it becomes significant in its own right.

So the reformers who started out with a position of "we want to address some of the blatant corruption in the church" might have been more cautious if they'd foreseen, say, Calvin's rule in Geneva.

It's very tempting to say we are the radicals and they are the conservatives, but it doesn't always work, and it blinds people to what happens when reformist or revolutionary movements go wrong.

Perhaps I'm a little sensitive about that because I've known too many people who worshipped the memory of the mass murderer Leon Trotsky.

I'm not sure ( may be not interested is closer to the mark) which side is which. But the parallel I see is that the extremes on both sides are so very busy shouting at each other that neither they not those occupying the middle ground, can be heard.

No argument was ever truly won based on who shouts loudest. And most arguments, it seems to me,can only be settled when both sides calm down and actually listen to each other.

excellent point.

Religion is the opium of the masses an all that.

YABU

You can't ask the question, of Catholics and Protestants;

which one is the irrational, intolerant, power-grabbing, violent, misogynist, homophobic one...

...and which is the other one?

without causing fisticuffs.

From the atheist POV, they are virtually identical (yes, I know there are doctrinal differences; but they're all about made-up metaphysical stuff anyway).

And they've both had their empire-building, heretic-burning phases. That's how they got big. Non-coercive religions stay small.

This is why I initially said I didn’t think there were any parallels. I think the Protestant reformation is a very different thing to transideology.

Another poster mentions middle ground - I think where Protestants and Catholics now are is pretty close to middle ground. The Roman Catholic Church moved substantially after Vatican II Though many Catholics would say subsequent popes and teachings of the Catholic Church are heretical.

And they've both had their empire-building, heretic-burning phases. That's how they got big. Non-coercive religions stay small.

How would you explain the huge growth of Christianity in China where they have been prosecuted for decades?

There must be another factor giving it 'spreadability'. I don't know much about China so wouldn't like to speculate. What do you think it might be?