Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
Always was going to be belboid to get something in about the Jooz here
Is this woman a transphobe?
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elbows
Well-Known Member
More awful detail on what Cade said here:
www.thenational.scot
BBC 'scandal' after interviewee goes on to call for trans women to be 'executed'
THE BBC has found itself in the centre of a “major journalistic scandal” after a woman it platformed in a heavily criticised article went on…
I know where you're going. But kids articulate that they are trans from infancy often, usually without any influence or knowledge of what that means. If a child suddenly started following the practice of a religion they had never been exposed to that would be interesting. But I'm not sure it's ever happened.
bimble
floofy
are you of the opinion, broadly, that people are born trans?
I honestly don't know but that's certainly what it feels like. Remember many of the previous generations of trans people, myself included, did everthing we possibly could to try and not be trans, usually with pretty devastating personal consequences.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Broadly speaking I dont usually find the need to distinguish between things that were true from the moment someone was conceived, things that were true at the moment someone was born and things that became so during some stage of child development. Especially as far as our own sense of self goes since awareness of that surely emerges gradually during said developmental phases quite some time after birth.
Kids receive the information of what gender is and how it is performed pretty much before any other cultural knowledge at all. They are saturated with cultural depictions of gender from long before they can even speak. I really don’t think you can say that by the time a child is capable of articulation, it has been free from influence or knowledge of what doing gender involves.
Indeed they have, They have been told they are one gender from the moment they were born. And yet a very small number, say no actually, that's not what I am from as soon as they are able to.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Yes, if people are interested to see for themselves, then they can put these URLs into archive.is Don't know if I even want to provide a direct link to the archived versions, because it is incredibly hateful stuff. Obviously, Cade is not the only person to engage in unhelpful rhetoric about this issue, but on the other hand if you call yourself "terfhunter" or whatever then you probably won't get invited onto the BBC as a voice of reason or feminism or whatever.More awful detail on what Cade said here:
BBC 'scandal' after interviewee goes on to call for trans women to be 'executed'
THE BBC has found itself in the centre of a “major journalistic scandal” after a woman it platformed in a heavily criticised article went on…
elbows
Well-Known Member
Its not 'unhelpful rhetoric' its incitement to murder and I sometimes wonder if one of the reasons these threads seem hideous and unbalanced is that we spend most of the time talking about people quibbling over details and dressing shit up with various justifications and allegedly reasonable questions and uncertainties, and not enough time looking at the most brutal of extremes and the level of deadly hate that can sometimes be seen lurking just below the surface. In that case it was not even below the surface and so I felt the need to mention it, but I dont have the mental strength to be trawling through such horrors on a routine basis.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Oh yeah, I see what you mean, but at the same time I was thinking about the fact that people on the GC side will often bring up examples of some random social media account/sign at a protest/whatever that uses violent anti-terf rhetoric, so I kind of suspect that focusing on the most brutal extremes could very easily turn into an unproductive exchange of "oh yeah but have you seen what terfhunter420 posted once?" Although I suppose it's an open question as to whether that'd be any more unhelpful than whatever's been happening on this thread so far. So I suppose... dunno, I'm tired and not formulating this well, but there's like a test of significance as to whether stuff belongs in the conversation? And to be clear, I absolutely think the Cade stuff passes it, because we're not just talking about one very unwell individual posting incredibly violent fantasies, the question is what the fuck happened for the BBC to decide that this particular individual was someone whose voice they really needed to amplify at this moment?
elbows
Well-Known Member
I suppose I'm suggesting we may need reminders of how high the stakes can be.
And that goes for both trans victims of violence and cis victims of violence. And probably a big part of why I lose my cool in these threads is when I see these things being pitted against eachother instead of being positioned on the same side. A dangerous and relatively transparent game. A disgrace in so many ways.
In some ways I think it is that simple, in other ways not so much. Getting bogged down is part of the trap, and I've stopped using some terms because I didnt want to end up adding to the very forces I'd like to undermine. I dont have all the answers, but it would be a lot easier to discuss some things with a sense of good faith coming from people with other positions if more people took the opportunity to condemn stuff that should be easy to condemn. Saying that may well lead to people saying that those comments were so obviously abhorrent that there is hardly a need for people to state where they stand on that, but since people still feeling the need to do so when it comes to all the other sorts of hideous deadly rhetoric and bigotry, I struggle not to end up taking the relative paucity of such things on these threads as a bad sign.
And that goes for both trans victims of violence and cis victims of violence. And probably a big part of why I lose my cool in these threads is when I see these things being pitted against eachother instead of being positioned on the same side. A dangerous and relatively transparent game. A disgrace in so many ways.
In some ways I think it is that simple, in other ways not so much. Getting bogged down is part of the trap, and I've stopped using some terms because I didnt want to end up adding to the very forces I'd like to undermine. I dont have all the answers, but it would be a lot easier to discuss some things with a sense of good faith coming from people with other positions if more people took the opportunity to condemn stuff that should be easy to condemn. Saying that may well lead to people saying that those comments were so obviously abhorrent that there is hardly a need for people to state where they stand on that, but since people still feeling the need to do so when it comes to all the other sorts of hideous deadly rhetoric and bigotry, I struggle not to end up taking the relative paucity of such things on these threads as a bad sign.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I have similar feelings when we move away from the most extreme side of things too. One of the most depressing things to me in various threads over the years was the number of clear and obvious opportunities there were for people to demonstrate where the limits of their 'reasonable concerns' were, for example by liking certain extremely reasonable posts that demonstrated where the common ground and common cause was, and which didnt trip over the red lines some people may have when it came to particular details or questions of safety. Those opportunities were often utterly squandered, and that contributed to a sense of bad faith and of hideous polarisation.
There are exceptions. Sometimes the cycle of these threads involve an explosion where a bunch of people feel compelled to speak out and the momentum temporarily shifts. Sometimes, but certainly not always, this creates a moment where other people become keener to explicitly state their desire to defend certain rights and describe the various ways they hope trans people can live a fulfilling life in safety without fear. But those moments dont tend to last, we struggle to build upon them, and the same old patterns of 'debate' gradually resume.
There are exceptions. Sometimes the cycle of these threads involve an explosion where a bunch of people feel compelled to speak out and the momentum temporarily shifts. Sometimes, but certainly not always, this creates a moment where other people become keener to explicitly state their desire to defend certain rights and describe the various ways they hope trans people can live a fulfilling life in safety without fear. But those moments dont tend to last, we struggle to build upon them, and the same old patterns of 'debate' gradually resume.
The 'survey' in the original BBC story formed part of a report in which the researcher quoted Janice Raymond's line that “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, appropriating this body for themselves”. So they aren't actually that fussy at the beeb.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I was somewhat surprised that the BBC article and the backlash didnt come up here till now. I groaned when I saw the title of the story on the BBC site when it was first published, and I found it hard to bring myself to even read it fully. I figured I would probably feel compelled to do so once it came up here, but then it didnt.
To clarify that here's what Angela Wild who produced the report and survey said to the BBC:
Here's what Angela Wild says in the report under discussion
You might have hoped the journalist would have picked up on this, given we are told the story had been in the works for over a year and held to exceptional editorial standards.
Here's what Angela Wild says in the report under discussion
You might have hoped the journalist would have picked up on this, given we are told the story had been in the works for over a year and held to exceptional editorial standards.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I wouldnt have that hope for the same reason I groaned when I saw the title of the BBC article. This stuff has been weaponised and its impossible to discuss the actual issues properly without quite some time being dedicated to the weaponisation and warning signs of such weapons being crudely deployed, and yet I hardly expected that to feature at all in the BBC article.
I still think media etc organisations that get in a big mess over this should spend more time thinking about the parallels to racism and what were deemed to be legitimate concerns worthy of an airing as opposed to bigoted tropes on that front. Studying the broader stance of the groups in question, and whether they put any effort into demonstrating that they are not bigots and that their motives arent sponsored by hate and ignorance, should be part of the basics. Plenty of those groups dont even pretend, they give themselves no real cover and yet are still taken at face value by far too many.
I still think media etc organisations that get in a big mess over this should spend more time thinking about the parallels to racism and what were deemed to be legitimate concerns worthy of an airing as opposed to bigoted tropes on that front. Studying the broader stance of the groups in question, and whether they put any effort into demonstrating that they are not bigots and that their motives arent sponsored by hate and ignorance, should be part of the basics. Plenty of those groups dont even pretend, they give themselves no real cover and yet are still taken at face value by far too many.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Plus I might hope that sufficient comparisons to racism might also help avoid problems that can arise if delicate issues in that area are shied away from too much in the opposite direction. eg some abusers within minority groups that got away with terrible things for far too long for a complicated mix of reasons that included authorities utterly botching their duty of care because of local power dynamics, politics and sloppy, malformed fears of being seen as racist. These arent easy areas to tread into, but nobody is served well when we look the other way. So I'm not asking people to do that, but I am asking people to recognise weapons of hate when they see them so blatantly deployed.
I don't think it was that at all. Transphobia has swept through a certain demographic in the UK like a virus, notably amongst those old enough to have been brought up in a culture saturated with transphobia and privileged enough to think trans women in women's toilets is the greatest threat facing humankind and preventing trans inclusion the most important political project of the day. That demographic runs the media in the UK. For those on the right transphobia is business as usual, or in some cases a way to exploit a conflict within feminism with the ultimate aim of causing as much damage to both sides as possible. For those on the left however,trans people represent a threat to their identity of themselves as lefty, progressive people - they are furious at being called transphobes even though that's what they are because it is in conflict with their political identity and how they see themselves. So they have to jump through all kinds of intellectual hoops to justify how they feel (when what is really causing it is simple latent prejudice).
And this is compounded by the fact within the media, these lefty progressive people think they run the left and always have. And they're all mates and hang out together and marry each other and went to the same schools and universities - so when they see one of their own under attack they side with them instinctively. For all their claims of being cancelled people like Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill, Janice Turner etc have huge amounts of influence within the media class, and what we are seeing at the BBC, Guardian and other notable left or liberal organisations is simply the media class closing ranks to protect their own - not just from attacks from trans activists, but from the upcoming generation of left wing media wankers who think very differently about this issue and are after their jobs.
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
It’s more than that.
Maybe you might have to be socialised as a woman for a long time to properly understand the righteous white hot rage that grows in many of us (especially in recent years) towards male violence and male entitlement.
I have that rage, but I don’t see trans women as men. That isn’t my starting point.
It’s possible to not have that rage, see trans women as men, and for your trans-exclusion to be detached and philosophical. Or even to be de facto “pro trans”. I’d suggest many of the cis male posters here fit Ito this category. And some of the cis female ones.
But when you combine that belief that deep down, trans women are men, with the justified rage against male violence and entitlement, you get a position that is fiercely driven. I think left and right in that context are entirely fucking irrelevant.
I’ve had to do a lot of intellectual and soul-searching work to understand why a minority of my intelligent, compassionate, left wing feminist friends were holding a position so far from my own. It has taken me years, and this is where I’ve got to.
I still disagree with those women. I still want to be a voice for what ime seems like an often overlooked majority of cis women who do include trans women into a broader category of womanhood… but I’m certain that in a lot of cases, the views opposing are not about latent social conservatism - they are about the trauma of a lifetime of structural violence and patriarchal oppression.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
This needs repeating often in this thread. This is not new territory.
mauvais
on reddit or something
I could probably shed some light on the BBC's culture but I'm not sure I could do so more candidly without opening myself up to problems - not that I understand it much of it anyway.
Firstly, try to remember that the BBC consists of a lot more than its news editorial teams, and the behaviours manifested in its news editorial do not necessarily reflect the rest of the organisation, including presence and diversity of different voices.
It is no secret that it finds it institutionally very difficult to apologise or change direction until forced to do so, and accordingly, has suffered some high profile, entirely predictable, drawn-out defeats on various subjects in recent years. It is beginning to suffer a fresh one on content raised here and the Cade element probably won't be the end of it.
Some of the problems it faces are classic 'oil tanker' institutional ones, such how to reconcile the tradition of bland corporate twiddling with increasingly serious errors in an increasingly unforgiving landscape. In this case it has a problem with reconciling its corporate ideas about what it thinks the problem is, lack of impartiality and not serving all audiences, with what the actual problem is: a lack of human empathy.
There has been considerable internal disquiet recently over that article and other episodes such as the Nolan podcast. Very senior leadership has begun to listen, in one particular new appointee's case very positively, but it remains to be seen as to whether they are willing to bring about change rather than offer platitudes. I personally have the opportunity to raise a grievance with one of them. I have no idea how that will go.
Firstly, try to remember that the BBC consists of a lot more than its news editorial teams, and the behaviours manifested in its news editorial do not necessarily reflect the rest of the organisation, including presence and diversity of different voices.
It is no secret that it finds it institutionally very difficult to apologise or change direction until forced to do so, and accordingly, has suffered some high profile, entirely predictable, drawn-out defeats on various subjects in recent years. It is beginning to suffer a fresh one on content raised here and the Cade element probably won't be the end of it.
Some of the problems it faces are classic 'oil tanker' institutional ones, such how to reconcile the tradition of bland corporate twiddling with increasingly serious errors in an increasingly unforgiving landscape. In this case it has a problem with reconciling its corporate ideas about what it thinks the problem is, lack of impartiality and not serving all audiences, with what the actual problem is: a lack of human empathy.
There has been considerable internal disquiet recently over that article and other episodes such as the Nolan podcast. Very senior leadership has begun to listen, in one particular new appointee's case very positively, but it remains to be seen as to whether they are willing to bring about change rather than offer platitudes. I personally have the opportunity to raise a grievance with one of them. I have no idea how that will go.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Being closer to the culture, what were your thoughts on that Nolan podcast?
Do you think that was a case of “let’s put this on and say we are taking a balanced and impartial view, when taken in aggregate”?
mauvais
on reddit or something
I haven't listened to it, I have merely heard about it. From what I have heard about it, it sounds like much the same root causes as the "lesbians" article.
I'm still trying to work out what those root causes really are, in the sense that I'm not totally baffled by it, but trying to decide where it sits between clumsy naivety and something more directed.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Thanks. I suspect a good bit of the former, but cannot discount the latter. I just read the “lesbians” article - obv can’t see what was said before it was amended. It’s quite different in subject to those bits of the Nolan thing that I listened to.
mauvais
on reddit or something
Ultimately I think you ought to ask yourself the same question for each: is doing [whatever this is] going to pass a basic check for empathy?
A slightly more specific litmus test for this seems to me to be: would I ever post, "ooh look at this - [whatever it is]" on my social media or work comms? Where people affected by this exist.
So, would I post:
"ooh look at this - a podcast investigating whether the BBC makes too many concessions to Stonewall"
or
"ooh look at this - lesbians being pressured into sex by trans people"
?
I'll let you guess the answers to that yourself.
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