Stephen Fry - What a repulsive, condescending misogynistic turd

[Absentmindedsmile]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14820209/Harry-Potter-narrator-Stephen-Fry-turns-JK-Rowling-TERFs.html

Yuk.

What do you think is going to happen?

I am minded of Germaine Greer’s interview with Louis Theroux when she said that it was time that older people left the young to sort themselves out and stop getting involved in their affairs.

Maybe it would be a good idea, then for middle aged men to stop claiming children are part of the trans umbrella?

‘I also have a feeling that our methods for ascertaining gender and the way we think about it will be completely debunked in the near future.’

‘This is one of those statements that just tells me how little scientific literacy there is in large swathes of the population. Biology has come so far in the past few decades and at no point did our understanding of mammalian sex change. We can (and do) sequence just about anything that doesn't move fast enough out of our way, we have masses of gene expression data sets, we have fantastic imaging systems, we can detect the tiniest traces of chemical compounds. The idea that any (non-captured and honest) biologist in the 21st century is baffled by sex or that there will be a fundamental change of how we understand sex in the near future is absolutely ludicrous.’

No no @Igneococcus, the post is about methods for ascertaining Gender! Today it is pink dress and bow in hair = girl (see Dylan Mulvany for tips if unsure), blue shirt, trousers and big boots = boy, that sort of thing.

One can only imagine how this sort of scientific thinking will develop in future. So many possibilities. Biology is irrelevant - remember?

Grim.

Ha, yes, I did realize that the word used was gender although it's often unclear if someone means sex when they say gender.
I'm off to harvest my courgettes (not a euphemism) and I'll be wearing scruffy blue trousers for this, mostly because I have learned the hard way that if I wear one of my girly skirts, the nettles get me.

JKR is responsible for how men behave towards non-conforming men????????

That’s some level of blame to put at the feet of one women. Was she also responsible for homophobic violence from men in the 1970s?

Or have men have always managed to act in a crappy unthinking way all on their own.

Why are they so determined that the discussion does not focus on Stephen Fry? Have they been hired to protect him?

Not doing a terribly good job btw, the argument "I don't understand that thing (because I haven't done any reading), therefore nobody understands that thing" is classic ASD, but not a good look in a discussion.

Poor Brianna Ghey - who knows? I'd like to see all children with very severe eyesight problems get better protection from school bullies - they always have been prime targets, and it's horribly destructive. But I don't want boys and men in single-sex spaces, however thick their glasses.

Hmmm, I think that those expert in the field might be able to rule out some ideas as already being incompatible with what we already know. It isn’t open season on any fanciful idea that comes along.

My old uni professor said to me “don’t make the mistake of thinking just because you don’t understand something, it isn’t something already understood by people researching in that area”.

PopeJoan2

Lots of men are more vulnerable than others. Old men, disabled men, gay men, men with learning difficulties. Should they all use women's spaces?

Do you see the misogyny in this?

Women's spaces aren't just a dumping ground for men who feel more vulnerable in male spaces.

You're fine for great swathes of women to be at risk, or excluded from their own space, in order to accommodate a handful of men?

Apart from the fact that it only actually works in your own head. If you allow one man in, you allow all men in.

Or are you expecting women and girls everywhere to stand guard and ascertain the vulnerability of the males demanding entry? Even old women, disabled women, children??

And I hate to break this to you, but according to prison statistics men wearing women's clothes would suggest the opposite of vulnerability.

Honestly. For some people, women and girls really are just a fucking service. To be used for the requirements of men. No matter how vulnerable they, themselves are, no matter that one of the main reasons these spaces exist is because of male violence.

Ffs

PopeJoan2

And by the way, Germaine Greer was asked if she would ever accept a man as a woman and she said no, and when the interview said don't you think that's insulting for the man she said

I don't care

Be more Germaine.

DSD conditions are very well understood and each is documented along with known symptoms and causes and chromosome pattern.
And are a tiny fraction of 1% of the population.
Outlying extremely rare cases are not the best basis for making population wide rules.

As I said above, just because you don’t know about this sort of thing, it does not mean that it isn’t well understood by scientists in that particular field.

it is the young trans women I worry about, people like Brianna Ghey. I bet if you had met her irl you would not have objected to her using female changing rooms or toilets. I know I wouldn’t because we know how vulnerable she would have been in any other space.

Do not weaponised a very vulnerable kid to emotionally blackmail women. It's sick.

Brianna Ghey was failed by multiple agencies, organisations and individuals.

We should not be facilitating and enabling this level of failure through use of coercive methods which have an underlying tone that suggest 'if only we'd affirmed more Brianna would still be alive'.

Brianna was put in a unit at school with other very troubled teens. Arguably they should never have been in such close proximity. The fact that very vulnerable children with additional needs are put together with those who have the most violent and criminal backgrounds is something that rarely gets talked about. THAT'S what massively contributed to what happened. Brianna wasn't safeguarded. Difficult and vulnerable kids are just dumped together without thought.

Locally the issues that have been considered most have been ones about safety and safeguarding at pupil referral units. Not issues over trans identifying children and acceptance because Warrington has for many years been one of the worst funded councils for education in the country and this has had a massive impact on provision and infrastructure available for kids with additional needs. It's an issue that's affecting a wide range of kids - arguably those that carried out this hideous crime were also failed because of how poor provisions were for children like themselves - but they don't generate headlines and faux public concern do they? It's nationally that concerns raised by the case that have been hijacked by transactivism.

Not to mention how post Cass Review there are also many questions about Brianna's vulnerability and whether affirmation approaches are appropriate. This raises other questions about what might have happened had things been done differently.

To answer your point - no male should share toilets with females. And definitely not at school age.

In this particular case, this was a male teenager. Why the hell should a male teenager share with female teenagers? How do we assess who are 'the good ones' and who are 'the bad ones'. Never mind issues over how the teenage girls feel about their privacy and dignity when a boy they've grown up with suddenly decides they want to be a girl or the religious considerations over single sex provision. Kids who transition have complex needs and complex backgrounds - that makes them altogether more unpredictable and more of a risk on various levels - and that's ultimately what was found to be the case in Warrington. The risk is the child who was sexually abused who transitions and then tries to abuse others and this is arguably a foreseeable and known risk. Never mind the kid who tries it on because they can.

So to in answer to your question, if I had known Brianna in real life, yes I would have had a problem with their use of girls toilets. Same as I have a problem with other male people close to me, I've known for years and ultimately trusted and liked using female facilities. Because it's not ok and doesn't consider how this in itself is a harm to those people (doesn't address the issues they have with dysphoria), can make it harder to detransition, raises questions about internalised homophobia/autism/unaddressed trauma or abuse, harms the safeguarding of women and girls and removes their dignity and privacy.

And this still happens if it's a really nice trans identifying child rather than a creepy middle aged sexually motivated predator. Indeed these kids are actively being used to legitimise and as cover to emotionally blackmail women in order to facilitate the desires of the creeps. That's abhorrent on many levels.

To sum up: it suits the purposes of trans activists to ignore the systematic failures of the educational system and mental health system for children just so they can use the child harmed as a stick to beat women with and tell them they are harming vulnerable children by not accepting all males who want access into women spaces. That's seriously fucked up and has absolutely no consideration for the well being of these children and those around them on any level - never mind the trans identifying element.

It has been fascinating to see how this case has followed through on a local level compared with the mainstream media. Stuff that is completely off radar to those who don't have understanding of what's changed and happened since and hasn't necessarily been reported.

Go away with your continued misuse and abuse of a child who deserved better.

Honestly. For some people, women and girls really are just a fucking service. To be used for the requirements of men. No matter how vulnerable they, themselves are, no matter that one of the main reasons these spaces exist is because of male violence.

Quite. It's absolutely disgusting.

Women are not shields or emotional support animals for men.

I wonder if Fry is thinking I wish I'd thought twice about slagging off one of the biggest defenders of women's rights ever.

It's my impression that hispopularity has waned, and now people aren't backward in coming forwards about his witterings on underage boys.

Quite! I do keep trying to bring it back to the point of the original post. Though I enjoy the bits in between, as always. ❤️.

‘A disturbed mind masked by comedy?’

https://devilslane.com/theres-something-strange-about-stephen-fry-isnt-there/amp/

On another tangent, my DS showed me a talk from SF about mental health, and he expressed his shock and sympathy for the young people who were self harming. He just hasn’t made the link between the self harming and trans IDing in young people.

I agree.
There are some things in science that we absolutely do know, whatever the postmodernists say. We know this because we rely in our daily life that the science works the way we understand it. We built entire communication systems that allows us to talk to each other on here from anywhere in the world based on our understanding of the relevant parts of physics, or navigation systems. We built chemical factories that produce the exact chemical we want based on our understanding of chemistry.

Binary sex in mammals is another area of science where I'm absolutely certain that there will be no big or small surprises at any point in the future.

Great post. Thank you red.

Most people have a gut feel when they are being emotionally blackmailed by the issue of Brianna Ghey. But because Brianna was a victim, and clearly vulnerable, it shuts down conversation.

As it's meant to do.

It's the entire point of using Brianna.

And yes it's fucked up, and utterly coercive.

So it's very useful to see you unpick it, analyse it, and put it all back together.

That's why I don't think he's very bright. Good at following instructions, and with a retentive memory, both useful skills for an actor that will get you to a certain level in school, but not any good at independent lateral thinking.

I do however think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that no revelations will ever be made in the future about the functioning of the human body.

No one has suggested such a thing.
However, we can be pretty sure about is that it will never be possible to turn a male person into a female version, or vice versa, by using medications, surgery, or the power of wishful thinking.

Gift token for an amusing opinion piece about fry and jk

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/b577df58f9c6cb0a

So to be fair, maybe Stephen Fry isn't a repulsive turd, but he is undoubtedly a condescending misogynist, he's an old man, very much 'of his time', and not all that bright.

Fascinating that a poster upthread seems to be in the process of re 'discovering' auras. The 1970s energy is strong on this thread.

1970s energy was very hard on women and children.

That thread about Fry's time at school is very sad - particularly that having gone through that he seemed to decide to join the system rather than speaking out.

‘Sir Stephen Fry, the renowned psychoanalyst, says he believes that JK Rowling “has been radicalised”. I must say that I for one was somewhat taken aback by this diagnosis.

Because, if Ms Rowling has indeed been “radicalised”, that means she harbours beliefs that are “radical”.

In which case, would Sir Stephen be so kind as to tell us which of her beliefs he has in mind?

Take, for example, Ms Rowling’s belief that women don’t have testicles. Or her belief that men can’t give birth.

Is either of those beliefs radical? Extreme? Wildly at variance with established medical science?’

😂

It's a subject that becomes off limits isn't it?

The Chilling Effect.

And that's why it's so essential we talk about it.

Brianna was failed. So we're other children at the same school who were not trans. Brianna was not the only child targeted. Brianna was the vulnerable child who was the one who was harmed but it might have been a different one.

The children that murdered Brianna were failed. Their issues were not taken seriously enough. Concerns about their behaviour were not addressed. Various parents did flag it. But nothing was done.

It's a very sad case, but it's a case about online harms (both that affected Brianna and Briannas transitioning and the content of what the children that carried out the murder were accessing), it's one about the suitability of SEN provision, it's about the safeguarding of children across the board, it's about the failure of society to deal with children from very troubled backgrounds who have demonstrated violent behaviour. It's about a particularly badly funded council for education (things have improved in recent years but Warrington has been below the 600th council out of just over 600 councils for educational funding for well over a decade in the last 20 years or so. It's not a coincidence that this problem happened in Warrington)

It's NOT really about transrights as much as activists would like.

Going back to the OP. Stephen Fry also has a special status as a gay man - the reflections of another gay man on Stephen Fry's opinions and world view bring this heavily into focus. The Chilling Effect is in play once again.

We should talk about it and stop fearing what others might thing. We are missing absolutely crucial and devastating issues because of this failure to talk about the taboo even when there is a compelling and obvious need to do so.

It's a failure to ourselves and society if we don't speak up when we see something that's not good. Look at behaviour not identity. What is that telling you? It gives you a whole host of other answers... Don't be blinded.