Is this woman a transphobe?

[Border Reiver]

View attachment 260842

Type 2

Charles Raff[3] draws a distinction between three types of incorrigibility:

• Type-1: It is logically necessary that, when the statement is sincerely made, it is true.
• Type-2: It is necessary that when the statement is believed to be true, it is true.
• Type-3: It is necessary that when the statement is true, it is believed to b

• Not really fair. I nearly posted here a while ago about Keira Bell's case, but decided against the grief in the end. It is a shame that we've reached the point where nobody will raise it here because she is an extremely thoughtful person with a lot of very interesting and relevant points to make. Keira Bell very much does see things as co-op describes, with non-affirmation of gender classified as 'conversion therapy' and so not to be done. From her website:

  Who "updated it"? With what authority?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Type 2

Charles Raff[3] draws a distinction between three types of incorrigibility:

• Type-1: It is logically necessary that, when the statement is sincerely made, it is true.
• Type-2: It is necessary that when the statement is believed to be true, it is true.
• Type-3: It is necessary that when the statement is true, it is believed to b
• 
  Who "updated it"? With what authority?

I don't know. You tell me.

You demand a lot but give precious little.

 

[Border Reiver]

I don't know. You tell me.

You demand a lot but give precious little.

Sorry messed up the coding. Was a reply to the Memorandum.

 

[Border Reiver]

The memorandum of understanding that Keira Bell talks about was endorsed by Stonewall.

Memorandum of understanding on conversion therapy in the UK

Problem isn't so much with the text itself as with its interpretation on the ground, I would think. It starts off with this:



But it does later on say this:



tbh my problem with it is the idea that there is an equivalence between sexual orientation and gender identity. These don't obviously appear to me to be the same kind of thing, but the idea that they are is assumed to be true by this MoU.

It seems that the original is still the policy agreed by the Psychotherapists. The additions are not accepted by the original writers.

 

[smokedout]

On a dull autumn day in 1964, two NHS doctors strapped a 17-year-old boy into a wooden chair in a dark, windowless room and covered him in electrodes. During hours of so-called therapy, they repeatedly electrocuted him while showing him images of women's clothing.

Trans conversion therapy survivor: 'I wanted to be cured so asked to be electrocuted'

As a teenage boy, Carolyn Mercer had electric shock therapy on the NHS in the hope she would be "cured".

www.bbc.co.uk

“So, to treat Bradley, Zucker explained to Carol that she and her husband would have to radically change their parenting. Bradley would no longer be allowed to spend time with girls. He would no longer be allowed to play with girlish toys or pretend that he was a female character. Zucker said that all of these activities were dangerous to a kid with gender identity disorder. He explained that unless Carol and her husband helped the child to change his behavior, as Bradley grew older, he likely would be rejected by both peer groups. Boys would find his feminine interests unappealing. Girls would want more boyish boys. Bradley would be an outcast.”

Reparative Therapy for Trans Youth: Kenneth Zucker is Different from George Rekers How?

Watching this recent CNN story on reparative therapy and the damage it did to George Reker’s poster child (Kirk Andrew Murphy), I was struck by the similarity of this story and a child that N…

www.transadvocate.com

Of the three, Dan attempted the most resistance techniques. This included playing dumb to run out the clock on sessions, giving long rambling non-answers, and claiming that his tampon was about to leak when things got too mentally dangerous in order to escape to the bathroom. He understood that they were trying to “slowly worm their way into my head”, in order to “get you to believe you’re not trans”.

Privileges were withheld if Dan wasn’t cooperative enough. He told me that they stopped giving him food he was capable of eating as punishment for being found wearing a binder that had been smuggled in, and claims that when he started, he was 125 lbs, and only 87 lbs when he left. No one is ever “cured”; he said, they “leave when they turn 18 or their parents won’t pay for it anymore”.

In the end, none of them stopped being transgender, and they still have their trans masculine identities. Conversely, all of them admitted that conversion therapy experiences left them traumatised and emotionally scarred.

Trans men share brutal accounts of conversion therapy camps, where they were abused and forced to carry heavy rocks

Trans men have described the treatment they underwent at 'conversion therapy camps', where therapists tried to convince them to be cis.

www.pinknews.co.uk

This is what conversion therapy looks like. This is what people want to ban, and given the way the rhetoric is going in the UK then that's understandable. Zucker amongst others is very popular in some gender critical circles.

 

[The39thStep]

Well-meaning but misguided social liberals, who aren't typically on the left i.e. committed to class struggle, but who are occupying the space left by the retreating old left (meanwhile the right have always embraced identity politics).

That's a very decent attempt but lets face it there are loads on what passes for the left these days who aren't committed to class struggle. In fact, for quite a few the dream would be socialism without the working class

 

[Shechemite]

These are all horrific. The example from the U.K. is from 1964.

ECT is still used in the U.K. - eg for ‘treatment resistant depression’ (I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of ECT) but it’s not used now as conversion therapy (either for gender identity or for sexual orientation, and there are no plans to use it for such purposes, unless I’m mistaken.

Trans conversion therapy survivor: 'I wanted to be cured so asked to be electrocuted'

As a teenage boy, Carolyn Mercer had electric shock therapy on the NHS in the hope she would be "cured".

www.bbc.co.uk

Reparative Therapy for Trans Youth: Kenneth Zucker is Different from George Rekers How?

Watching this recent CNN story on reparative therapy and the damage it did to George Reker’s poster child (Kirk Andrew Murphy), I was struck by the similarity of this story and a child that N…

www.transadvocate.com

Trans men share brutal accounts of conversion therapy camps, where they were abused and forced to carry heavy rocks

Trans men have described the treatment they underwent at 'conversion therapy camps', where therapists tried to convince them to be cis.

www.pinknews.co.uk

This is what conversion therapy looks like. This is what people want to ban, and given the way the rhetoric is going in the UK then that's understandable. Zucker amongst others is very popular in some gender critical circles.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I agree it's a great post, but am having trouble with the "the left has increasingly focused on individualism" thing. Is that quite what happened, or was it the split between the left and the working class that led the left in the direction of intersections between minority subsets, gradually boiling the soup of class conflict into something very granular?

I’d argue it was both, but this isn’t the thread to get into a debate on it.

 

[Shechemite]

There does seem to be a growing anti-medical quackery industry - especially in the states. I take the point that it’s important to be vigilant about this stuff.

 

[Shechemite]

I’d argue it was both, but this isn’t the thread to get into a debate on it.

I thought the frustration was that we weren’t getting into the politics of identity but rather spending too much time discussing the natureof dysphoria?

fwiw I experience near constant dysphoria. I’ve grown up in a society where my dysphoria doesn’t equate to others changing their perceptions of shared reality. I think that has its pros and cons.

I think when you’re just used to having other people’s (hardly disinterested) perceptions form an ‘objective’ account of your identity, you learn to live with it. I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s been able to have a medical or psychiatric dx added or removed from their records by simply stating their preference.

a big, and increasing, part of NHS mh care over the last 15 or so years has been to convince people who say they are ill that they are in fact not ill (with all the loss of support, and and all the moralising that goes with dealing with ‘malingerers‘ (cheers Szazs!); and has seen the rebranding of those formerly with ‘psychotic illness’ with ‘personality disorder’ (try getting them off your records through self-identification! ). Is every recovery college an example conversion therapy? Every NHS ‘complex needs‘/personality disorder service? I’m honestly not sure which part of mental health care doesn’t involve the risk that your over valued ideas won’t be challenged

 

[Clair De Lune]

It depends doesn't it? Who is talking to who, when, why with what motive. But in my view, especially with young people it is part of a proper therapeutic response to not simply "affirm" the self-diagnosis of being trans. But this is being called conversion therapy by Stonewall now. The reality is that it has been decades since there was any serious attempt at converting gay people by medical or therapeutic practioners in the UK. Of course there probably still are - crackpot religious converters trying it in the US, but here in the UK there is an absolute non-problem with conversion therapy and gay people now. Tons and tons of really shitty and hostile social pressure & contempt of course but absolutely no actual "conversion therapy".

So why has Stonewall launched this great campaign now? Because they've done what they always do now and smooshed "gender identity" in with "sexuality" and are trying to prevent any approach to young people presenting self-diagnosed as Trans except "affirmation". The real conversion therapy ironically is turning gay people straight by transing them, and the charge is being led by Stonewall. It's fecking surreal.

No therapy should set out to change the client. It's a place to explore, not impose the therapists views on the client. Counsellors aren't going round telling young people they are trans, they just aren't telling them they aren't.

 

[Funky_monks]

Twitter is a pretty absurd thing though. Privatised free speech.

Sort of like internet bulletin boards?

 

[8ball]

Sort of like internet bulletin boards?

Twitter doesn’t do free speech and neither does urban. Except for being ‘free’ in the monetary sense.

There are plenty of places where you can say what you like on the internet, though.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Not really fair. I nearly posted here a while ago about Keira Bell's case, but decided against the grief in the end. It is a shame that we've reached the point where nobody will raise it here because she is an extremely thoughtful person with a lot of very interesting and relevant points to make. Keira Bell very much does see things as co-op describes, with non-affirmation of gender classified as 'conversion therapy' and so not to be done. From her website:

Its perfectly fair. Yer man has claimed that Stonewall's campaign against conversion therapy is about treatment of trans children rather than about Bible bashers praying the gay away. Yet when challenged refuses to give evidence. And he gets challenged a lot and he never produces evidence.

 

[Dystopiary]

What consensus was that? If you don't want to join the thread just put it on ignore.

And thanks for making assumptions about my sexuality and gender identity.

You're under no obligation to tell anyone your gender identity, but a lot of posts refer to you as male, to which you haven't objected, and blokes telling women how to do feminism is not on imo. I'm a woman btw.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

You're under no obligation to tell anyone your gender identity, but a lot of posts refer to you as male, to which you haven't objected, and blokes telling women how to do feminism is not on imo. I'm a woman btw.

This line of argument gets no-one anywhere. When the area of disagreement is fundamentally about sex and gender, and a commonly used slogan is 'trans women are women', and some would say that one can self-id as either gender, or none, or both, or whatever, then your claim to be a woman proves what exactly?

 

[SpackleFrog]

This line of argument gets no-one anywhere. When the area of disagreement is fundamentally about sex and gender, and a commonly used slogan is 'trans women are women', and some would say that one can self-id as either gender, or none, or both, or whatever, then your claim to be a woman proves what exactly?

Well by that criteria the whole thread gets us nowhere, because the purpose of the thread is simply to restate the disagreement by repeating that trans women are not women and that biological sex is all that matters as often as possible, no matter the level of tedium and annoyance caused.

"Some would say" is an interesting phrase by the way. "Some might say". No one on this thread has actually claimed you can identify as both genders, or 'whatever' but don't let that stop you. Are you going to ask every woman if their claim to womanhood is valid by the way, or just those you suspect might be trans?

 

[Dystopiary]

This line of argument gets no-one anywhere. When the area of disagreement is fundamentally about sex and gender, and a commonly used slogan is 'trans women are women', and some would say that one can self-id as either gender, or none, or both, or whatever, then your claim to be a woman proves what exactly?

It doesn't necessarily prove anything, I just think men stirring the pot about trans women, ostensibly in the name of caring about cis women, is a bit iffy.

 

[BigMoaner]

Cognition and emotion are separate from reality.

That's an incredibly problematic statement in itself, one that has bewildered philosophers for centuries. Mind body problem in a nutshell. Your statement is a religious one. The materialists would say that cognitions and emotion are as real as rocks and flowers.

 

[BigMoaner]

Anywau have no opinion on the wider thread! Carry on!

 

[krtek a houby]

Let's not forget that the far right indulge in identity politics quite enthusiastically.

Very strong feelings on plastic potato toys, Dr Seuss cartoons and Disney genderless greetings, currently.

 

[Spanner]

Compares being trans to thinking she's black because she listens to Bob Marley.

I think she’s asking the question whether it’s a comparable argument, rather than comparing being “trans to thinking she’s black”.

“Ask yourself this question, is it OK for me to identify as black because I feel black and I listen to Bob Malrley?”

I get the impression her answer is she feels that neither scenarios are true, i.e. you are whatever your birth gender and colour identifies you as, and you can’t retrospectively change it because how how you feel.

 

[Spanner]

“I believe in biological reality and do not subscribe to the notion of gender identity”

The presumption in the post is that trans people do not exist and people who say they are are frauds. That‘s transphobic.

You added the word “frauds” to bolster your point.

If I say: “I believe in Jesus Christ, and do not subscribe to the notion of Islam or any other God”

Does that statement make me an “Islamophobe”?

 

[Raheem]

You added the word “frauds” to bolster your point.

If I say: “I believe in Jesus Christ, and do not subscribe to the notion of Islam or any other God”

Does that statement make me an “Islamophobe”?

It makes you really bad at analogies.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Without reading most of the thread, the tweet quoted in the OP says 'outed as a T*RF' which puts 'TERF' on a level with terms of racist abuse etc which are too upsetting to quote in full.

Which is bullshit. Puts my heckles up straight away. If you really believe that word is too heinous to be written down, then don't write it at all.

 

[bmd]

I am really grateful for this thread. This is a big part of the reason why I'm here, to learn stuff like this. I fully fully fully support natural born women's (I don't even know if that's offensive to trans women?) rights to mark out their own agenda, separate from any other. Also, I never ever want to see anyone be discriminated against. I do not understand the issues in any meaningful, I can explain them to an other, kind of way. So, yeah I'll be reading this thread with interest and learning.

 

[bmd]

Both "gender" and "sex" are constructs. Neither are "natural" categories.

I have read this most often, recently, with regards to trans rights. I always wonder what a natural category is? Please imagine Google doesn't exist btw, it's really hard to find a succinct answer that I can question (sorry). I have been taught, all my life, that there are 2 sexes. That being born with certain chromosomes means that you are one or the other. That seems natural to me. Why isn't it?

 

[19force8]

Without reading most of the thread, the tweet quoted in the OP says 'outed as a T*RF' which puts 'TERF' on a level with terms of racist abuse etc which are too upsetting to quote in full.

Which is bullshit. Puts my heckles up straight away. If you really believe that word is too heinous to be written down, then don't write it at all.

I had difficulty concentrating on the passage quoted in the OP because the neighbours' dogs were going ballistic.

 

[Athos]

I have read this most often, recently, with regards to trans rights. I always wonder what a natural category is? Please imagine Google doesn't exist btw, it's really hard to find a succinct answer that I can question (sorry). I have been taught, all my life, that there are 2 sexes. That being born with certain chromosomes means that you are one or the other. That seems natural to me. Why isn't it?

There's two aspects: first, not everyone neatly fits into XX or XY; secondly, sex can be defined other than by reference to chromosomes e.g. physiognomy, or with reference to gamete or hormone production.

With regard to the trans issue, though, it's a bit of a red herring; there nothing to suggest the vast majority of trans women are a different sex from cis men on whatever measure you pick.

Which makes it a bit of a dead end. Better arguments for treating trans women as women (in terms of gender, if not sex) in some circumstances (whether or not you think they are women) include the threat of male violence shared by cis and trans women. That's something people could agree on, whereas trying to tweak women's understanding of sex (often with far from settled science) just alienates many women.

 

[bmd]

There's two aspects: first, not everyone neatly fits into XX or XY; secondly, sex can be defined other than by reference to chromosomes e.g. physiognomy, or with reference to gamete or hormone production.

With regard to the trans issue, though, it's a bit of a red herring; there nothing to suggest the vast majority of trans women are a different sex from cis men on whatever measure you pick.

Which makes it a bit of a dead end. Better arguments for treating trans women as women in some circumstances (whether or not you think they are women) include the threat of male violence shared by cis and trans women. That's something people could agree on, whereas trying to tweak women's understanding of sex (often with far from settled science) just alienates many women.

Whilst I appreciate your taking the time to reply, my experience of you has been of someone who likes to fuck around with a version of the truth. So thanks but no thanks.

eta: If I had enough knowledge to throw your words in the air and know which was wheat and which was chaff then I would be fine with your post. But I don't so I have to go on the knowledge I do have.