Simon Jenkins - reliably wrong

[rebax]

A piece in the Guardian today:
The few trans people I have encountered are discreet. They avoid controversial situations and do not march for “trans rights”. They understand that they are exceptional and that it will take time for many others to accept them for who they are.
Rights are always sensitive, but there should be few cases that require litigation.

Simon Jenkins is 82 years old, very wealthy and lives in a very small media bubble in Kensington.

I don't understand why the Guardian continues to give him a column or what he could possibly advise the UK population on.

I'd say that background is a perfect qualification for writing a column for the Guardian. It's a paper run by people who think that Sir Michael Palin (82) counts as an expert on the working class because he was born in Sheffield.

I can easily believe Jan Morris was good company at dinner parties, I'm just not sure how that makes Simon Jenkins, or anyone else for that matter, an authority on single sex spaces.

I really hope someone shows this thread to Simon Jenkins! I am so tired of ‘nice’ men trying to soothe us into silence. Also, this patronising ’beeee kiiind’ nonsense seems less forgivable every time I hear it, as the years pass and the evidence mounts up against it.

it will take time for many others to accept them for who they are

The problem is they are demanding others accept them for what they aren't.

10 years ago, I think I would have agreed with this article. In large part becuase, like Simon, the only trans people I'd knowingly met or engaged wtih, or seen in media and popular culture were exacrly as he describes. And I would have felt sorry foor them and like it didn't impact me as a woman.

Now, I know that sadly, thats' simply not true. And that the transwomen he thinks (and I thought) were a) hugely hugely small nmbers and b) super discreet and deserviing of support are actually the minority even of the trans community. And that actually, way too many of the (not as small as I thought it was) community are actively out there to take away women's rights.

Meanwhile, this sentence always fill sme with dread: Trans people have a right to dignity and respect.
Of course they do. I don't dispute that at all. But why must I be the one who provides this? If they have that right, what are men going to do to make sure that trans people feel comfortable in THEIR spaces?

That phrase "give me the confidence of a mediocre white man" is often unfair, but seems deserved in this case. It's not just being white, of course, it's having the kind of privileged background where you learn to assume that you are cleverer and better-informed than everyone else, even if you have no experience of the topic at hand and even if you haven't bothered to research it or find out anything about it. You see it in people like Boris Johnson and David Cameron and, well, anyone from that kind of background, really. They've been told all their lives that they're special and it has never occurred to them that it might not be true.

Simon Jenkins has written several columns for the Guardian about why maths shouldn't be compulsory in school, because it doesn't have any use outside school. His absolute ignorance is no bar at all to his belief that he's right.

also this.

It's so fucking boing. Average female columnist - even the ones I loathe - are generally competent, good at their job etc. Average male columnist? Often half of what they write is incomprehensible.

Another misogynistic, bigoted left leaning man who thinks women should STFU and let men have whatever they want.

Colour me surprised. How many more of these cretins are going to reveal themselves? 🙄

I don’t want men in women’s spaces, no matter how discreet they are they shouldn’t be in there. I also wonder if the definition of discreet involves a soft voice, a head tilt and a tinkly laugh.

But children at the age of three are already fully capable of identifying the sex of a stranger, and they are always right. And no-one calls these toddlers "fascist bio-essentialist reactionaries" for it. Even dogs seem to know who's woman or man, those grubby TERFS.

Heck, even I, who does not have a great sense of memory for faces, can always tell who the "transwoman" in any given photograph is, because there is something about men's eyes and gaze that they cannot seem to surgically change. Perhaps some guys lose this visual ability to clock sexes as they grow older because their hormones cook their brains. Or because the sum of lipstick + bolt-ons + pantomime of a weird submissive gaze that no female does in real life genuinely equals "womanhood" to them.

Sex as defined as biological sex should clearly apply to physical sports, but less so to most women’s clubs or job quotas or competitions or restaurant loos.

But why?
Can someone be "a little bit woman"? For some things, but not other things?
The definition should apply to physical sports, but not to competitions? (whatever competitions means here?)

This is just utter drivel that makes no logical sense at all.

Man goes to bat for other men
Plus ca change...

That reliable trope, the "toxic debate", 🙄

Have you actually thought about any of this, Simon? The court cases and tribunals, the schools, the swimming pools, Sandie Peggie, etc?

It blows the mind that these supposedly intelligent people can support this level of nonsense.

So a man can be a woman 'sometimes' Simon? But not other times?

Jesus wept 🙄

I think Simon Jenkins is a classic example of the man who's so clever, he doesn't realise how dumb he is.

I read the column earlier and came to see if anyone had started a thread on it. Thanks!

What absolute twaddle it is. I realise the Guardian has an agenda but Jenkins’s reasoning is just … non-existent? It makes no sense at all!

It's always Jan bloody Morris isn't it?

William Dalrymple on the Empire Podcast has revelled in how trans-friendly he is due to his friendship with Jan Morris.

None of them wonder why Jan Morris was hanging out purely with other ex-public schoolboys and not in the kitchen making tea or doing the laundry with the other women.

And theres also a chance he's being manipulated by the men around him.

It makes sense to be charming around journalist, media types and politicians. In a way they wouldn't bother with women without any contacts.

Hadley Freeman on X has quoted Nora Ephron on Jan Morris and what JM thought a woman was.

https://x.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1999516641160200304/photo/1

"And I wonder about all this, wonder how anyone in this day and age can think that this is what being a woman is about" (Nora Ephron, 1974)

I could forgive it more if it was Amanda Lear. Then they would be old men leaning into the counterculture of their youth.

Of course, Amanda has blotted her copybook by vehemently denying being trans.

But citing Jan Morris as your example is just so bloody public school.

Jenkins' penultimate sentence, "This is a real mess", links to an article by Jess O'Thomson, which is indeed a mess, though that might not be what Jenkins meant. But Jenkins own piece is even worse. He doesn't seem to know what a GRC is for, or what the issues are with the WI. He uses "common sense", "clearly" and "plainly" to avoid having to justify his assertions. While he complains about "fudge" and calls for "nuance", he doesn't say what the difference is. He says "change comes about fastest when the least fuss is made", but surely making a fuss can accelerate change as easily as it can put the brakes on? He really doesn't seem to have given any of this much thought at all, and doesn't seem to have even wondered why women might want or need single-sex spaces.

“…and I find myself thinking, it would be a man …”

Nora called it. In 1974.
Us "terfs" have always been here.

Bloody hell. So he’s an innumerate who doesn’t know how much he doesn’t know? I wonder what other depths of ignorance he plumbs? That suggests he’s never read a scientific paper or anything involving statistics with any understanding.