Janice Turner - Class snobbery is at the heart of NHS gender war

[DisappearingGirl]

Janice Turner article - headline looks interesting but I don't have a share token sorry!

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/class-snobbery-is-at-heart-of-nhs-gender-war-mz8pdsw3s

Does anyone have any more info on Jennifer Melle and the case of the Muslim woman? I missed both of these.

Yes well Upton with his middle class and middle class wannabe supporters versus working class Sandie.

And of course let’s not forget JR’s questions about how can poor working class Sandie afford a case like this. Sort of implying justice is only for those with the right background

...this postmodern conceit is no joke. A nurse for 30 years, she was suspended, put through internal disciplinary hearings and at this tribunal has endured scrutiny of every intimate matter, from her menstrual cycle to whether she loves her lesbian daughter, just for upholding a basic truth: sex is real.

I should think CLC would be the best source of updates on Melle.

https://christianconcern.com/?s=Melle+

I don’t recognise your other reference.

Great post @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g . I think much the same when someone posts about their terrible neighbours, people jump on them and tell them to move somewhere detached, there's not an iota of understanding that some people don't have money so have no choice in life.

A light bulb moment as someone of team “the ancillary people who confront biological sex in every backside they wipe.” That critical thinking is only acceptable when you fall in with the received wisdom.

I wonder if Kate Searle felt in order to survive as a woman in the system they felt coerced into siding with the captured ideology or lose their job. They would be coming after her next.

I would like to add a caveat that I'm not defending racism. If Sandie said those racist things then they are not okay. I think it's possible Sandie is generally a decent person and good nurse but with some dodgy private views on race. It's also possible she's not a particularly nice person - I've no idea, I don't know her.

Same for Beth Upton - I definitely don't agree with their views on sex/gender but I know several people with those views who are otherwise genuinely lovely people. Beth may well be a perfectly good doctor.

I think it's a shame that this case has to be about the individual people, because really I'm interested in the general principle that females deserve a single-sex space. Incidentally I'd also support aiming to provide a gender-neutral space for a trans employee wherever possible.

I'm another of those centre-left bubble-dwellers guilty pre and post Brexit referendum of not fully appreciating that a heck of a lot of people did not see the world as I did. It was a wake-up call. While James O'B and others quickly took up the "you were lied to" position to try to relate and engage (not entirely incorrect), many fewer journalists and commentators acknowledged that some Brexit voters understood perfectly well what they were voting for and went ahead anyway.

It reminds me of David Cameron's "I met a black man once..." yarn. The working class people my former fellow bubble-dwellers know also went to university, work in the same professions, have acquired the same political views (possibly joke about the views of those they have left behind). Sandie Peggie is an unwelcome reminder that the UK is, to a large extent, a small c conservative country.

@Crouton19 the you were lied to argument works at both ends of this issue. My DPs voted for the Common market ( as it was called then) because it was sold as trade agreements and nothing else. My DF was pretty angry over the amount of interference in UK laws, if he'd lived long enough he'd have voted for Brexit in a heartbeat

Presumably she doesn’t do much pro bono work then?

Except I think she has, because as Julie Bindel pointed out her bio has the hilarious typo “bro bono”.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

i think that lots of people are not racist, so my take away is slightly different to yours.

i think it’s about the Overton window having moved too far.

I think that there are some quite big parallels with the trans debate. I look at some of JKR’s tweets now and I think that they are actually strident to the point of being potentially quite unkind; I don’t think that JKR is a transphobe - in fact, I fully agree with her and the essay she wrote. But she actually expressed herself very moderately to start with and was pilloried and now gives no fucks (quite understandably) and the fact that she expresses herself so freely and goes in hard now keeps the issue live in the debate we are having. She isn’t a subtle voice though.

I think it’s the same with immigration - for a long time, people who didn’t have the chance to gatekeep their own communities were told by those who did that they didn’t get to decide who came, that who came was an unqualified good (because it was great for the privileged to have cheap labour) and they were racist if they didn’t enjoy competing for resources and had concerns about their own community life.

Was there prejudice there? Yes, maybe (not all trans women are predatory and the debate does centre on this - lots of immigrants assimilate and contribute). But also are those concerns legitimate? Yes (safeguarding and fairness etc does require single sex spaces - there are issues where immigration is not properly planned and we haven’t been strong enough on trying to ensure that we run a system that has adequate controls and respect for communities and values).

Those people who like Nigel Farage because he “says things others can’t say” are not necessarily racist. They are frustrated and willing to tolerate a level of “unkindness” to get their message across. Is this a good thing for society? No, not really. But if politicians and liberals had listened sooner to more subtle messages on single sex spaces and immigration, we’d be in a better place right now.

I agree with a lot of your points @matresense

@Daleksatemyshed The EEC/EEA etc trading bloc morphing into the vast political machinery of the EU was not on the cards at the start and I think my late father would have agreed with yours. It's a shame the 'soft Brexit'/single market option wasn't on the ballot.

@matresense the standard 'No Debate' approach!

I spat out my coffee 😂

Middle class people express their racism in different ways: very visible during Brexit were the Guardian posters ‘explaining’ that leaving the EU would mean that the European (white) migrants would be replaced by non-European (not white) migrants.

The idea that people voting for Brexit might be worried about the level of both white and non-white migration didn’t seem to occur to them. Nor did it occur to them that wanting European migrants but not non European migrants was racist.

I agree that Brexit was a bit of an awakening, but for me it was the discovery that supposedly progressive liberals were not only completely unaware of their racism, but that they were capable of expressing views on the working class that would have made a Victorian mill owner blush.

With brexit, immigration, trans, and lots of other issues, the government and supporting media framed one extreme/side as the norm or middle, allowing the otherside with no other option but to be seen as 'out there' at best.

Its a form of no debate, because the other view is not only fighting to get their opinion voiced, but to get acceptable people to say it. If, by definition, saying something against brexit immigration or trans makes someone an -ist or phobic then how does anyone platform a resonable person to say it?

I'm not sure about Upton being a decent person tbh. He fabricated professional concerns about Peggie which speaks to a sly, manipulative type of personality as well as a wholly entitled male attitude. His views have impacted on other people on so many ways.

Peggie has objectionable views but there's no suggestion they have ever impacted anyone. Challenging a top-down policy isn't in the same ballpark.

Someone came at me with "she's a racist" and I just said "I don't know Sandie, or any of her views but if we consider Rose West, a woman we can agree is dispicable and evil, I would fight for her right to single sex spaces. The "quality' of the woman does not matter, all women are entitled to this, do you not agree"
silly arguments
"Oh ok, so in prisons you believe that rape and assult are part of a 'punishment process' - I have heard this from hard line right wingers in the US but not in gteh Uk before, can you explain why?"
and basically batter them down with logic till they stfu

This.

Gaspode is my spirt animal. 😍

I'm figuring that if Upton had been a nurse and decided he wanted to change, and watch others change in the doctors changing room, this whole thing would have been shut down a lot more quickly.

Class (or at least perceived class) has definitely played a part.

That’s the wrong lesson. What your side should be taking from it is that you found a tactic that works, in calling things racist, and overused it to win arguments against people like Gillian Duffy.

But every time you did that, you weakened the power of the word and now, as surely as night follows day, you are going to find out that people no longer care about being called racist, and all the arguments that you used to win will come back to life again – and that includes things which are actually racist, because guess what? The big taboo will no longer work.

I thought that was what I was saying. People no longer care about being told they're racist because they won the referendum vote and that made some outright racists feel that they were now in the ascendant. I'm certainly not implying that everybody who voted for Brexit is a racist, but there's no denying some of them were.

Overusing words is indeed a big mistake. It's happened a lot in the last ten years or so. Ordinary disagreements labelled as 'hate', people expressing a minority political or social opinion accused of 'hate crimes', people trying to point out the flaw in an argument told they are bigots, something-phobic or -ist, uneducated or all three. It has to stop. We have to have grown up debates and conversations where we start by finding common ground and proceed from there.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g Sorry, that’s my fault then – I had read it as you saying your side still think the Gillian Duffys were racist, and are now slightly horrified to find out that you hadn’t changed their minds at all.