Sarah Phillimore and Robin Moira White interviewed by Andrew Doyle

Here's another example of self interested adults influencing children. Gendered Intelligence (which gets 30% of their income from education), in addition to their lucrative "training" sessions for children in schools has a "service" where they will send in an adult to "mentor" a child of any age in an educational setting. The adult has unidentified "professional skills" in working with "young persons"
There's no mention of safeguarding, confidentiality, consent, parental permission / involvement, age appropriateness, boundaries or any of the normal aspects of safeguarding that need when you work with children and as usual, the word child is absent. Massive red flags.
The scope of what they want to talk with children of any age is unbelievably wide and crosses many so boundaries:

genderedintelligence.co.uk/professionals/mentoring.htm

They're a campaigning adult group that have relentlessly targeted children. It's hard to argue with OldCrone upthread when she points out that:

"Transactivism recruits children as a human shield to make ordinary people sympathetic to males with a fetish".

I always come back to the thought that if transwomen really knew what it was like to be a woman, they wouldn’t be campaigning to have access to our spaces. It just highlights even more how they’re not biological women

The lovely Sall Grover made the pithy point on Twitter that if tw really were women, they would immediately go to the female estate in prison.

GG UK are way ahead of the TRAs then. They responded to another poster that "Both cis and trans girls and young women are entitled to use girls’/women’s accommodation or changing facilities".

Ditto.

I've just logged on to find that a couple of my posts have been deleted - when I'm quite careful to stay within the guidelines.

But I must say, when I watched this, I suffered high levels of cognitive dissonance, and a resentment of mansplaining.

Shall.I.Explain.Very.Carefully.How.The.Other.Speaker.Is.Wrong.While.Not.Answering.Whether.I.Called.Women.Mad.

Yes indeed. I felt for her at that moment.

RMW claims to have two rape crisis centres as clients, one in Sussex, one in Edinburgh. I know about Sussex (if that's Sussex Survivors Network), anyone know about the Edinburgh one? Is that an old case or ongoing?

I'm not sure but wondering is it the Edinburgh rape crisis place where the man got the for women only job without having a GRC?

I mean Robin used that fact as some proof of "alls good" point when in fact it's the bloody opposite.

So sick of this shit.

👏👏

This is the tradegy of gender ideology. So many ways they could make life better for the gender non-confirming, whether that be challenging regressive gender roles by celebrating the huge variety of ways male-born people can be men and female-born people can be women, or lobbying for third spaces, or even the acceptance of sexual cross dressing as a glamorous and edgy but fundamentally mainstream kink that is only a problem if taken to the point that it starts to mess up your relationships with loved ones.

But instead of building for themselves they have chosen the route of appropriating what others built, and the social control and authoritarianism they need to keep it.

Heartbreaking.

What really got me was the um, explanation* about the Equal Treatment Bench Book.
We all know that it is a terrible document, written by transactivists.
It needs to be put right, not referred to deferently.

Oh, and the mention (twice) of the Risk Assessments that are carried out when moving men into the female prison estate. It has been explained to us that the Risk Assessment Tools available for use are designed for Female prisoners. These tools (presumably a computer system?? I'm just guessing) are not appropriate for use on men. Therefore, these men have not been properly risk assessed, because there is no tool available to do this.

But instead of building for themselves they have chosen the route of appropriating what others built, and the social control and authoritarianism they need to keep it.

Instead of building for themselves they have chosen to tear down others' buildings.

It really is Maoist. The West's Cultural Revolution.

Good interview.

oldwomanwhoruns · Today 19:29
Oh, and the mention (twice) of the Risk Assessments that are carried out when moving men into the female prison estate. It has been explained to us that the Risk Assessment Tools available for use are designed for Female prisoners. These tools (presumably a computer system?? I'm just guessing) are not appropriate for use on men. Therefore, these men have not been properly risk assessed, because there is no tool available to do this.

Thank you for that reminder. You are right. They are assessed not as men but as women, by a system based on female crimes and offending rates.

Someone explained that recently in an article I think but I don’t remember where. KPSS? Sonia Sodha?

Surely the risk assessment has already been done. And that’s why men’s and women’s prisons are separate.

100% nailed it.

I'm curious about this. Why did Sarah resort to verbal gymnastics?

Yes, here on Mumsnet we are careful about pronoun use. Them's the rules. And I think that 'misgendering' will still earn one a ban on Twitter, so the same thing applies.
But Sarah was on GB News, which do not enforce this.

So why the pussy-footing around?

Doesn't the Maya Forestater judgement mean that our beliefs are valid? We cannot be made to say that the Gender God exists.

Our speech should not be compelled. I really think that we should be holding the line on this.

Possibly in Robin's rider that Robin not be misgendered? But Robin can read between the lines, can't Robin?

#whobungledthebundle

I'm curious about this. Why did Sarah resort to verbal gymnastics?

My guess - diplomacy. Sarah could have used whatever pronouns she liked but it would have distracted from every other point she wanted to make. In a TV debate Sarah needed to be courteous or at least not choose words that she and everyone else know would cause offense. RMW would be able to take the high ground and make a fuss and make Sarah look spiteful. Describing a person who is present with language you know they don't accept, is deliberate offense.

It's not the same as having to call a rapist "she" because most people don't expect to extend courtesy to rapists or tell a social fib to appease someone they're accusing in court. But for opponents in a TV debate, they do.

I'm curious about this. Why did Sarah resort to verbal gymnastics?

I suspect it’s because once you use accurate pronouns for a male they and their activist supporters latch onto that and scream “hate speech!” and that then becomes the entire focus when discussing the outcome of the discussion. It wouldn’t matter how much sense Sarah spoke, how much truth or accuracy or considered her opinions were, or how much nonsense RMW spoke in return, all that would be discussed is when it was witch burning time for “misgendering” after setting the gender Stasi police onto her.

It’s an effective tactic from TRAs but sometimes you just have to play the game. Like I do here. I never refer to males as she in real life.

X post Amaryllis

I thought the clumsy language resulting from avoiding pronouns demonstrated the difficulties rather nicely. It was obvious that the sex of one person was being pussyfooted round, and it was obvious how that affected the flow of the discussion. The opposite sex individual may well consider that a victory, but it actually proves, rather starkly, how much women have to change their language in order to appease the opposite sex.

Not a good look, frankly.

RobinMoiraWhite · Yesterday 10:09

I care because I remember so very clearly how horrible a time it was for me.

It is horrible for most. Puberty is a physically, mentally, socially and emotionally disruptive process for everyone. The details may vary, of course, but the whole point of the process is to reshape every aspect of your life and body - that's never easy.

With the hindsight of half a century I might be permitted to know what the right choices for me would have been all those years ago.

But I agree that making the wrong choices would be just as bad.

Hindsight is not foresight. What you know now is not what you knew - or could have known - then.

Im not medically qualified but those that are tell me that some young people know themselves well enough to make that choice. I believe I would have been one of those.

See above. You may belive it, but you can't know it.

Studies show that the vast majority of children who feel trans before or during puberty will - in the absence of medical intervention - not do so by the time they are adults. Many will be gay/lesbian but virtually all will be comfortable with their sex.

There is no way to know beforehand which small fraction will still want to transition once they are fully mature. You may know now that you are one of those, but you could not have known that then.

So to close off that choice would, in my view, be very cruel.

Every choice closes off some possible futures. Some more irreversibly than others.

You went through puberty but were able to transition later. Children who are prevented from going through puberty live with permanent effects - if they have made the wrong choice not all of these are reversible.

Would you have swapped your few years of uncomfortable puberty for lifelong medical problems, the loss of your fertility and children, the loss of your career, the loss of the ability to form adult relationships or have sexual feelings, the loss of a lot of surgical transition options leaving only riskier and less successful techniques....?

But every young person contemplating such a choice should have the best assistance available, given the consequences

On that we agree (at least on the principle; I suspect we disagree on the details of what 'best assistance' consists of).

It is enlightening if this male barrister has used the Edinburgh Rape Crisis as a benchmark of ‘no issues’.

Or maybe it is selective reading by someone who relies on only reading ‘safe’ sources so as not to understand the material reality. That women have already stated publicly they are self-excluding. From a rape crisis centre set up for women! That is the opposite of ‘no evidence -no issue’!.

Yes, you are right of course, @AmaryllisNightAndDay and @NotBadConsidering .
Sarah was fabulous, and, as you say, made her point rather well.

It's just so frustrating that we are prevented from stating the bleedin' obvious...

I've just watched and listened. Such a good interview and really impressed that the interviewer really knew their stuff and was able to actually facilitate the discussion. Really glad everyone spoke clearly and not over each other. Thanks to all involved.

Really interesting that the wins for RMW are spelling out that we already have no actual ability to ensure our safety and privacy in single sex spaces, services and sports and they are ok with that. "It's not me guv, it's the law," The Law that you're advocating for and not speaking up against despite the obvious dangers and harm's (including to trans people).

Robin, you say, repeatedly that you are unaware of issues or game playing around self ID, and you present the prisons issues as satisfactorily dealt with by the PS and you are unaware of loopholes being exploited. You were given 2 examples only moments before in the interview and we can help you with more - Karen White, Katie Dolatowski, Sally Dixon... Try and remember these so you don't constantly say there are no examples when there are loads.