Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I have suggested to Rhyddical they should be more concise in their posts too, months ago, but clearly it had no effect.
London Anarchist bookfair 2020
- Thread starter Treacle Toes
- Start date
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
This is going off-topic, but most of the aggro around trans women in sport comes from sports women themselves. I only mentioned this because it may be the area of life which brings the wider issue more into public discussion, where dogmatic assertion, no-platforming and threats of physical force will have less impact. But what do I know? Being a new member on here would seem to completely invalidate any points I make, according to some people. Or maybe it just makes me a suspicious character with somewhat murky motivations?
Apologies to you too Pickman's model for not keeping all your posts in mind.
Personally, I prefer a long post that I can understand to short posts that require you to know enough context/history to make sense of them.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Some posts need to be longer than others but size is less important than content
Why would any have told me gender is a social construct? Biologists don't study gender, you're thinking of sociologists, biologists study sex (among other things). I've asked two I know from our skeptics forum and one of them referred me to the blog of Jerry Coyne as I've linked to above. All of them assure me that sex is not a social construct and that mammals which produce the small type of gametes are of the male sex and not the female sex. If you wish, on the other hand, to discuss sociology and gender then you are free to do so but you'll have to discuss it with someone else as I'm not interested in that, I prefer the natural sciences, I find discussing gender as boring as discussing nationality or any other such socially-constructed identity.
But I'm also not particularly interested in arguing whether the assertion that transwomen are women is true or not, I just gave a quick overview of the reason why I hold it to be false but have no interest in convincing you that it is false - why should I care if you believe that or not? Given that not holding this assertion to be true (or at least expressing a disbelief in said assertion, for example by sharing media containing such) appeared to be grounds for exclusion from the bookfair I, as someone who holds this assertion to be false and who has been following this thread to decide on whether I would still bother with bookfairs after the shite at the previous one, obviously had a couple of specific questions for the new organizers, in particular:
1. Is this assertion required to be held true as an article of faith? Apparently the answer is yes, it is to be held dogmatically.
2. Are there more articles of faith? Apparently the answer is yes, the articles of faith are any superset of {"transwomen are women", "llons change sex", "anyone who says they've seen 'sex is a social construct' being peddled about has actually seen 'gender is a social construct' being peddled about", "biologists merely 'assign' sex to organisms", "any biologists who disagree are pseudoscientists who are bad at their jobs and need to be taught some basic science"}
3. How strictly will the articles of faith be enforced? As someone who A) does not subscribe to said articles of faith but B) doesn't give a shit if others do or do not subscribe to them, I'm not particularly going to bring it up either, so the answer to this question would determine whether it would even be possible for me to go to the bookfair. This still seems unclear but apparently expressing disbelief in the articles of faith is grounds for expulsion whereas merely holding such disbelief while not actually expressing it is fine.
Plenty of people believe plenty of things. It is much rarer for requiring others to hold such beliefs - dogmatically no less - on threat of expulsion from a major event. I mean, I don't remember any bookfair where people who don't believe that natural science is a social construct were asked to leave.
Don't worry, my questions were answered to my satisfaction and I agree I'm not going to come to anarchist bookfairs anymore. Presuming to have the authority to tell others what they have to dogmatically believe just doesn't seem the right kind of anarchism for me.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
That's as maybe. But you can't just dismiss an epistemological debate that's been rumbling for over two and half thousand years out of hand.
Well, you can I s'pose seeing as you just did
But, anyway, much as I'd rather discuss the philosophical roots of Relativism than retired this trans argument - again - it's probably a derail too far (even for this thread) so I'll leave youse to it.
Last edited:
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I don't think you'd benefit from attending the anarchist bookfair. You seem utterly bewildered by people being transgender.
I benefited from the other ones I went to, plenty of transgender people there and no bewildering, most of them were very nice. Like I said, I don't give a shit if people are transgender or not, I mostly consider the whole gender thing just boring. I am bewildered that the assertion that transgender people (or any other mammal for that matter) actually change sex is considered required dogma, though, as well as apparently a range more of dubious-at-best assertions.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that this has something to do with transgenderism per se but if the organizers had said something to the effect of "anyone who is seen expressing disbelief in the article of faith that natural science is a social construct may be asked to leave" then I'd have questioned them about that just as well, given that I do not subscribe to that belief either and I'm not going to just because a couple of random people imagine themselves to have the authority to demand me to believe it dogmatically. There are plenty of assertions I do not believe in, such as "2 + 2 = 5" or "the Earth is flat" and if the organizers had gone with one of those we'd now be discussing that instead, so it seems a bit disingenuous to pretend that this is about "being bewildered by people being transgender."
Last edited:
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
For someone who affects to consider the topic boring you seem surprisingly happy to witter on about it at great length
I have not written about gender at all, other than to point out to you that it is not something studied by biologists but by sociologists. I've written a bit about sex, though. I've also written to answer silly claims like "you seem utterly bewildered by people being transgender" and now the claim that I've purportedly written on about gender at great length. And I definitely don't consider the main topic boring, namely on what anarchist basis would a self-selected group assume itself to have the authority to tell people what epistemic positions to hold on pure dogma...
bimble
floofy
As you observed earlier in this case it seems to be about compelled speech or rather compelled silence (on that day or is it enough to have done a wrongthink prior I dunno) rather than anyone telling you what to actually hold to be true in the privacy of yr own brain, which is impossible to do anyhoo.
Last edited:
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Cba life's too short
Last edited:
Yes, but since I'm not going to actually lie about whether I believe such assertions when I'm asked directly, I have to weigh the probability of being asked directly against the effort of going to the bookfair. It never came up before, but then those other times it also wasn't grounds for exclusion.
Well you could have saved both of us a lot of time had you just answered my simple and explicit question "is 'sex is a social construct' a required article of faith?" with a simple and explicit "no it isn't."
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You could have saved yourself a lot of time and me a few minutes if you hadn't introduced your strawman.
I wonder whether you know what a strawman is. I have 1) stated that I had seen the assertion 'sex is a social construct' being peddled about (a perfectly true statement) and 2) asked whether it is included in the required articles of faith (a perfectly reasonable question). I have not ascribed said assertion to you, ergo no strawman.
kenny g
Sheeple Awake!
Jesus.
Does not make a lot of sense. Are you saying that it is a perfectly true statement to assert that sex is a social construct or that it is a perfectly true statement to assert that sex is a social construct is being pedalled about? And if it is the latter what do you mean by the term "pedalled about"? And whose articles of faith are they to which you does refer?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
and you tried to gain some support for your tosh by claiming you'd consulted biologists when it turned out you'd chatted to some anonymous chums on a website you haven't named and read a blog.
I'm saying it's a perfectly true statement that I have seen that assertion being peddled about. Being "peddled about" includes at least one instance of one of those facebook fights about it. The articles of faith refers to the set of assertions that the bookfair authorities demand participants to hold true (or at least not express disagreement with), it apparently includes things such as "transwomen are women" or "lions change sex" or "biologists merely 'assign' sex to organisms" but, apparently, not "sex is a social construct."
You must think yourself very important to assume I care whether you believe such assertion or not, indeed, that I would go out of my way to convince you of it one way or another. Furthermore, chatting to some anonymous chums on a website is what I'm doing right now, and if you ever show a consistent track record of expertise in biology I may even consult you on a question in that field once.
You met them all did you? A handful out of a couple of thousand people. And 'most' of them were nice? You must get around.
If you want to talk about biology rather than the book fair policy why not do it on the other thread that is devoted to trans issues. This thread is for anarchists wanting to discuss the anarchist bookfair.
Rhyddical
May or may not look sexy in Hi Vis.
So one of these mysterious biologists told you that sex was a social construct?
"Gender is a social construct" is what people say in this discussion. Anyone who said "sex is a society construct" seems to believe that sex and gender are the same thing and interchangable. Which they are not.
A transgender women, is a women who was assign male at birth.
The corrolation of male - > man and Female - > Woman is an over simplistic one. Appied as an absolute in populations of millions, it is evidentially inaccurate with numerous accounts of people assigned male at birth who have a uterus and such.
Now that's the easy one.
You see what makes a male, male and a female, female is more than their reproductive organs and there are several stanges of sexual development in which the binary M/F becomes less distinguishable.
The perception of a hard-and-fast separation between the sexes started to disintegrate during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. In the decades that followed, we learned that about 1.7 percent of babies are born with intersex traits; that behavior, body shape, and size overlap significantly between the sexes, and both men and women have the same circulating hormones; and that there is nothing inherently female about the X chromosome. Biological realities are complicated. People living their lives as women can be found, even late in life, to be XXY or XY. For generations, the false perception that there are two distinct biological sexes has had many negative indirect effects. It has muddied historical archaeological records, and it has caused humiliation for athletes around the globe who are closely scrutinized. In the mid-1940s, female Olympic athletes went through a degrading process of having their genitals inspected to receive “femininity certificates.” This was replaced by chromosome testing in the late 1960s, and subsequently hormone testing. But instead of rooting out imposters, these tests illustrated the complexity of human sex. Students are often inaccurately taught that all babies inherit either XX or XY sex chromosomes, and that having XX chromosomes makes you female, while XY makes you male. In reality, people can have XXY, XYY, X, XXX, or other combinations of chromosomes — all of which can result in a variety of sex characteristics. It’s also true that some people with XX chromosomes develop typically male reproductive systems, and some people with XY chromosomes develop typically female reproductive systems.
Perhaps look up Anne Fausto-Sterling, whose article five different ways of measuring sex you may illuminating.
This mind is simply all about "sex". Which you seem to be struggling with.
I don't really want to start on gender which is much more complex and would require some abstract thought I do not have the crayons to explain to you.
In short, Gender is a construct to quickly explain the two most prevailant physical forms, next to ignored for most of history, becoming more evident with the advent of mass agriculture and post 14th cent social developments and subsequently the church. The notions of Man/Women making better strict social norms than they do robust explainations of the specturm varience of sex and gender
In short, what you were taught in school is no longer accepted as science, and I'm sorry to tell you this but Pluto isn't a Planet and there is life that exists without the sun (Chemo-Autotrophs and they are cool) also we totally have solid evidence of extra terrestial life which is cool but tangents...
Unfortuantly the language of the gender binary was core to Second Wave (some third wave) feminism. Unfortuantly for some of our sisters, this development in our understanding of biology was felt to be opposed to the political narratives they had built to combat patrirachy and the horrific abuses they had known at the hands of men. As Germaine Greer and others would comment, they felt that Trans women, we actually just men who were sexual deviants, perverts or simply mentally it and that they didn't obtain women hood by "cutting their dick off". Similarly Trans men we "just confused lesbians". These narratives in the age of the internet has lead to notable racist Posie Parker's lifted dictionary definition "Women: aadult human female" which was subsequently weaponised to direct sow the flase notion that trans women were mearly "cross dressers" and men trying to steal "womanhood". When other women repeat this lines, whether knowingly or not they are propping up a hideously racist politic. Many of these women don't actually hjave a problem with trans women per say ( similar to how you describe yourself) however they repeat those lines and various dogwhistles that build up the hostile environmental trans women in particular live in.
My close friend D, an anarchist who had dealt with transphobia from with the movement, read these words in a note from her mother, a year later, after going through trauma you are telling me trans women don't experiance, she was beaten into a state of depression and killing herself. She joins a very high list of women in Britain who after suffering abuse based on their existance suffer depression and end up doin themselves harm. To qoute a friend "At least in the US you don't really get TERFS, the transphobes accept that they are bigots and the right wing save you the bother and just murder you, sorta more honest eh?".
Now like you say, not all women with these concerns hold to the sheer degree of venom that others do. However they willfully parrot the words, share the memes, laugh with the outright bigots on Spinster and Mumsnet and refuse to "police" over bigotry of their sisters when they pile in to attack, dox and abuse people on twitter (as they did Bookfair 2020) where such notable faces as Helen Steel shared Transwomen are not women a single notification down from "trannies are fucking pervert rapists". She got a block for that. Not once did any of the probably hundred women and men spamming us correct a single line of the overt stuff. women n. btw is copy from the dictionary, a constantly changing volume of text - written by men - that until recently said that males couldn't suffer rape and that homosexuality was a mental disorder.
We are Anarchists, one of the key aspects of this political and personal position is that our ethics are not based on a codified body of tech, an instruction from a heirarchial order or even "general consensus" but guiding by our solidarity with the oppressed. We do not need to re-define oppression each time a minority comes to the fore and tho the Anarchists of a hundred years ago never had to contend with this issue in the way we do now, you can be assured that they would have sided with those who fought for equity and liberty against those who hated someone based on an aspect of identity. Mahkno's wife for example executed one of the Black Army generals when they found out he was an anti-semite.
When we hear the curious circumlocution and symantics of bigots to attempt to escape responsibility for their words and actions, it sets a certain tone.
This is part of the reason people drawn parrallels with Fascism, as UKIP supporters parrot C18 Nazis with the fourteen words or claim they arn'trr bigots that are just "critical of islam".
You are trying to conflate the overt nasty bigots with "women who are gender critical" and subsequently with women in general. This is disengenous and the mark of some really skummy political favouring in your manner. This unfortuantly is all to common place and the need to push your nasty bigotry which spits in the face of people who have spent their entire lives fighting oppression and bigotry, is directly harmful to people.
Just as if if Danny Tommo walked in and started demanding debates of some Arab anarchos, so too the nature of Transphobic women coming in demanding to be heard, especially as their starting ground is "trans women arn't real, they are perverts and probably want to rape women in toilets".
This does not mean that "all women with concerns" are banned, simply that specific individuals are not welcome, namely tho who have distrupted the event in the past - this is something btw that extends well outside the purview of this discussion to a fair few people and organisations which the LABC had also previously kicked out and told to fuck off.
Transphobia kills people.
It kills working class men and women.
It kills our comrades.
There is no space for that discussion at bookfair and any attempt to shout about and horrendous bigotry under the guise of protecting women will be dealt with in a swift, calm and proffessional manner. We will be making a point of asking attendees to leave it with us, if only for the damn optics of the matter.
My apologies to Pickman, Chilango and mobile users in general.
I'm hitting Ignore again now, coz fuck this dogwhistling transphobic BS.
Shame on anarchist that thinks it's ok.
I'll be returning to my "only talking about bookfair" line now x
Rhyddical
May or may not look sexy in Hi Vis.
BTW, your biologists seem to be shit. here are some better ones.
- James, P. A., Rose, K., Francis, D. & Norris, F. Am. J. Med. Genet. A 155, 2484–2488 (2011).
- Arboleda, V. A., Sandberg, D. E. & Vilain, E. Nature Rev. Endocrinol. 10, 603–615 (2014).
- Sinclair, A. H. et al. Nature 346, 240–244 (1990).
- Berta, P. et al. Nature 348, 448–450 (1990).
- Jordan, B. K. et al. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 68, 1102–1109 (2001).
- Tomaselli, S. et al. PLoS ONE 6, e16366 (2011).
- Uhlenhaut, N. H. et al. Cell 139, 1130–1142 (2009).
- Matson, C. K. et al. Nature 476, 101–104 (2011).
- Hughes, I. A., Houk, C., Ahmed, S. F., Lee, P. A. & LWPES1/ESPE2 Consensus Group Arch. Dis. Child. 91, 554–563 (2006).
- El-Khairi, R. & Achermann, J. C. Semin. Reprod. Med. 30, 374–381 (2012).
- Sherwani, A. Y. et al. Int. J. Surg. Case Rep. 5, 1285–1287 (2014).
- Tachon, G. et al. Hum. Reprod. 29, 2814–2820 (2014).
- Bianchi, D. W., Zickwolf, G. K., Weil, G. J., Sylvester, S. & DeMaria, M. A. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 93, 705–708 (1996).
- Maloney, S. et al. J. Clin. Invest. 104, 41–47 (1999).
- Chan, W. F. N. et al. PLoS ONE 7, e45592 (2012).
- Zeng, X. X. et al. Stem Cells Dev. 19, 1819–1830 (2010.
- Link, J. C., Chen, X., Arnold, A. P. & Reue, K. Adipocyte 2, 74–79 (2013).
- Penaloza, C. et al. FASEB J. 23, 1869–1879 (2009).
- Warne, G. L. Sex Dev. 2, 268–277 (2008).
- Baxter, R. M. et al. J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 100, E333–E344 (2014).
Similar threads
