Substack: Unthinkable to Unwelcome: The Overton Window and the Transgender Conversation in the UK

[MyAmpleSheep]

This person argues that the recovery of women's rights in the last few years is based in a deliberate shift of the Overton window. Broadly I agree with the premise that as women (and others) have been able to expose the disadvantages and dangers of accepting the TRA narrative, it has become more and more acceptable to argue in favour of single-sex services and associations, and against inappropriate medical treatments for sex-questioning children.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/167883451

I should probably add for clarity that the author and I disagree on whether this has been a good thing or a bad thing.

Good job I'm not a Protestant then. Phew

?? So what?

Yes, Karen White and also Isla Bryson.

Yep - the public finding out about Karen white and other male rapists in female prisons.

J K Rowling (god bless her) pushed this into the public domain

I'll throw in another reason. It used to be "stunning, brave and inspirational", then images of what many of them are like and reports of their behaviour came to the fore.

1. Keep “radical” ideas visible.

Ensure your inclusion strategies still centre trans people—pronouns, gender-neutral facilities, transition support policies, inclusive data collection. Don’t let fear make you shrink your ambition.

Interesting to see gender-neutral facilities being pushed here. Is there a realisation that trying to get the whole male trans umbrella into the Ladies was maybe a step too far for the general public, once they realised that the vast majority retained their genitals?

That interesting misconception. That leadership operating "beyond what's comfortable" is all that's needed. The reality is that once #nodebate ended and the media finally started doing their job and reporting the reality of how the social contract and safeguarding children was being upturned. Leading the charge for men in women's showers, changing rooms etc, children on a one way path to sterilisation and the promotion of fetish are what's done it for transactivists.

The gig is finally up and the choice is either to start behaving as responsible members of a democratic society or to keep pushing for the indefensible and accept the NO that's coming your way.

I see he is repeatedly force teaming those with DSDs with the rest of the DEI alphabet under the distasteful "Intersex" label & WTF does the"A" stand for? Surely not "Asexual"?

You might be feeling it too: more hostile headlines, more invasive debates, more hesitancy from organisations who once proudly championed LGBTQIA+ inclusion.

Isn't it obvious that the overton window would shift? I think the vast majority of the public are tolerant and are happy to let people live their lives the way they want to. Therefore they are broadly supportive of LGBT rights. However, once people become better informed and realise that the rights the trans lobby have been pushing for negatively impact other people's rights, i.e. women's, then this support will be more limited.

And sports. I think that was the area in which blokes could see the problem and the unfairness. Nothing to do with ‘niceness’ or otherwise, not ‘moral panic’ - just plainly, demonstrably wrong.

There are things I agree with in the article but the timelines are extremely telling. 2010 as a point when the author’s version of trans inclusion was ‘radical, not discussed’ etc was also the point at which the Equality Act had given full legal protection for gender reassignment, the GRA was 6 years old, the IOC was 7 years into allowing male people who’d had genital surgery into women’s sports categories; Lauren Jeska was absolutely dominating English women’s fell running and male golfers and cyclists were proving their ability to make a living in women’s sport. It was also one year after a judicial review meant that a male prisoner convicted of rape and manslaughter was required to be moved to a women’s prison, one of the rationales for that being they couldn’t have genital surgery until they’d been ‘living as a woman’ in the sexist old phrase of the GRA and the only way they could do that was to be in the female estate. The defence by the Crown was that the move would be too expensive [because it would require a huge amount of additional security] and would mean the male prisoner was at risk of becoming isolated. The impact on other prisoners wasn’t even a factor.

The whole point in this issue is that the sequence of development that the author describes happened backwards. Policy was put in place when only a small group had even talked about the possible outcomes, usually with highly constrained public debate - I’m talking about the 80s and 90s here, when gay rights to equality were still a million miles from being fully realised and the Beaumont Society was obviously homophobic and sexist rather than pioneering.

Interesting.

Something to reflect on is the recent drama surrounding the Trans Rights Alliance inside Labour which are following this playbook to some extent by fighting back and refusing to debate and trying to seize control of the LGBT Labour group at the AGM. By refusing to accept the ruling of the Supreme Court they have created a backlash which has now stopped the AGM from happening. The drama is being widely discussed.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5370660-labour-tears-itself-apart-over-trans-rights-as-biological-man-breaks-party-rules-and-stands-to-become-womens-officer

These kind of overt tactics don't work now. What is still dangerous is the attempt to push gender ideas by stealth.

I agree. I was stunned when the BMA stated its support of TWAW dogma. I kept thinking I must be misunderstanding or missing something, as no sane adult with medical training could think sex was irrelevant.

But then I realised the whole NHS is riddled with transgenderist ideology. How could that happen? How could people in a caring profession put men (including at least one rapist that we know of) on a ward with vulnerable women, and demand that female staff undress in front of men?

very interesting read thank you. It was rather strange to read an article where I agreed with large chunks but am fundamentally opposed to the conclusions.

Because if we don’t recognise that the frame of “what’s acceptable” is actively shaped by media, politics, and cultural narratives, we risk mistaking public discourse for public will. We confuse what’s mainstream with what’s moral. And we fall into the trap of adjusting our goals to fit the window—rather than working to move the window itself.

Would Joanne think it was ever 'moral' to lock women prisoners up with men? or to sterilise and mutilate children who showed extreme discomfort with society's established rules about the behaviour of the sexes? To me such things are fundamentally immoral, even though 7 years or so ago they were considered acceptable.

Obviously Joanne has built his life around something fundamentally illogical, the idea that he can in some magical way become what he understands to be a woman. He must therefore be practised at fooling himself, at believing he is thinking deeply, but skating over the truths that mean his life choices don't hang together at all, that mean he is living a life where he is fundamentally dishonest with himself and others, All the more reason really for such a person not to be any kind of arbiter of what is moral.

I am glad he feels thwarted and stymied. Not because I wish him harm, but because the things he laments being rolled back have brought demonstrable harm to women and to children.

I think this post illustrates how completely TRAs misunderstood and misused the 'Overton' window.

Firstly, the Overton window is a libertarian idea - it posits that optimal policy solutions often fall outside the parameters of any given debate; it's the job of think tanks to expand the parameters of the debate by proposing unorthodox positions, those positions might rarely be practical in themselves but they stimulate discussion that does result in the formulation of creative solutions of policy problems that would have been intractable if the discussion had continued along the same, constrained course.

As others have mentioned, TRA tried to use the concept as a form of mind control, of using the content moderation mechanisms of social media platforms as a way to set hard limits on the Overton window (by deleted posts and banning users) and social shaming as a way to punish thought crimes against GI, including depriving the holders of those beliefs of employment. It's a grotesque, dark misuse of the concept.

What's interesting about the blog post is that most of what he talks about is simply to reiterating trans talking points that are already well inside of the Overton window: inclusion, pronouns, kindness, personal stories, etc. I suppose you could argue that what he's suggesting is a rearguard action to keep the Overton window from slipping even further to the GC side. (Not as though ideas seem to be going away any time soon!) Notably, he's not offering anything at all that expands the window. Instead he's advocating for TRAs to regroup and rally around their old tactic of trying to constrain the window by making certain topics off limits:

"1. Name the regression.

Don’t pretend the current climate is a balanced debate. It’s a backlash. Say so. Make space in your communications to talk openly about the coordinated erosion of trans rights.

...

"4. Challenge false balance.

Don’t platform “both sides” on identity. Inclusion is not a debate club. It’s a commitment to equity. Don’t give hate airtime under the guise of free speech."

To stretch the concept a bit further, since we're talking about what can be discussed, it's apparently still not possible for TRAs like the Lockwood to acknowledge the 'controversy' that some people think TW are men and that therefor TW's desires to use single sex spaces and services compete with women's needs to exclude men from them. The fact that that argument cannot be acknowledged in order to be refuted, suggests that TRAs also have an internal Overton window and that part of their current distress results from not being able to participate in the public discourse, because this misalignment between public and private windows means that straying too far outside of the internal window, even to refute assertions, has too much of an emotional cost.

They could do it because right back in 2007ish Dept of Health guidance on single sex accommodation and human rights was influenced, and in some cases written, by Christine Burns of GIRES and Press for Change.

The single sex accommodation guidance specifically allows trans people to choose their ward, based on self ID.