Miranda Yardley
Willing Warrior.
It was a balanced, compassionate piece she wrote and she was hung out to dry because of it.
Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?
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It was a balanced, compassionate piece she wrote and she was hung out to dry because of it.
MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
At the time I just felt bewildered. I read the article, saw nothing controversial and put it down and thought the whole thing was just silly. It's only now I see the idea was to, in effect, shut people up.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I thought that article made plenty of fair points and as a call for dialogue it certainly wasnt something that would make me start ranting at the author.
I'm not sure I can call it entirely balanced and compassionate though because it really wasnt even pretending to cover every other position properly in the article, it didnt even pay any lip service to issues trans people face or real transphobia.
For example, I think it is important to make the point about women being affected by the proposals. But why the need to say they will be most affected? I would have thought trans people would be equally affected at least, but they dont even exist in this point.
I'm not sure I can call it entirely balanced and compassionate though because it really wasnt even pretending to cover every other position properly in the article, it didnt even pay any lip service to issues trans people face or real transphobia.
For example, I think it is important to make the point about women being affected by the proposals. But why the need to say they will be most affected? I would have thought trans people would be equally affected at least, but they dont even exist in this point.
elbows
Well-Known Member
And no, I'm under no illusion that if the points I've just made had been taken into account in that article then there would have been no abuse hurled at the author. Things are way too polarised, at least at the edges for that. I was just responding to the idea of it being balanced and compassionate.
edited to add - and I certainly am not demanding that such articles must be utterly balanced and inclusive. Plus we've seen what we get with media legislation that claims to enforce balance, its bad comedy most of the time and no less lopsided. But I would describe that article as interesting and not abusive, as opposed to balanced.
edited to add - and I certainly am not demanding that such articles must be utterly balanced and inclusive. Plus we've seen what we get with media legislation that claims to enforce balance, its bad comedy most of the time and no less lopsided. But I would describe that article as interesting and not abusive, as opposed to balanced.
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Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Kiri Tunks supports Dr Radfem’s speaking tour, has tweeted approvingly about the sue Labour fundraiser and is or has been convenor of the “Socialist Feminist Network”, an organization primarily devoted to lobbying against expansion of gender recognition rights (every single article on its webpage bar one is about trans rights from an, ahem, “gender critical” perspective). The “just asking questions” routine is cynical horseshit whether she was doing it or or people on this thread who actually have very firm answers are doing it.
And here she is signing herself as convenor of the Socialist Feminist Network
Violence has no place in transgender debate | Letters
The website of the SFN, almost all of which is devoted to opposing the expansion of trans rights:
SocFems.net
And here she is signing herself as convenor of the Socialist Feminist Network
Violence has no place in transgender debate | Letters
The website of the SFN, almost all of which is devoted to opposing the expansion of trans rights:
SocFems.net
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I remember ranting about that org some weeks ago. Was just trying to be fair about a single article. Not entirely sure why I bothered.
Maybe its because the accusations of bad faith on both sides are further poisoning things. Efforts to get round this are bloody hard though, especially when I'm invited to shed a tear for transphobes.
Maybe its because the accusations of bad faith on both sides are further poisoning things. Efforts to get round this are bloody hard though, especially when I'm invited to shed a tear for transphobes.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
.
This tends to be the giveaway with TERFS. It's never just one post/question/point. It's relentless. Nothing gives them pause, they just keep at it.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
I almost never block anyone on twitter but I had to block a SFN person last week. They don't half pile on in the nastiest of ways.
Cloo
Banana for scale
This is a really good point, you don't know what they're saying. For all we know, they could be saying 'People *think* it's like this, but it's not.'You are right. The issue with the crude graphic usage here is that no context in terms of how it is being used what is being said etc can be given. Just pointing at it and saying looooookkkkkkk seeeee what they are using!?!?! without even knowing the what and how is pretty shit. The discussion around that image within a presentation like that is really important to know before anyone can have an informed response to it and value/devalue the teaching method.
..but posting the tweets and FBposts from those in the thick of and driving some of the nastier sides of the debate...not so important apparently.
MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
You can think whatever you want about the article. I was referring to the holier than thou attitude inherent in only pointing out the worst of so called TERF's on twitter as somehow nastier than trans activists when there are plenty of examples of trans activism leading to as terrible consequences as the ending of a longstanding bookfair, to give yet another example.
In this thread, for example, every tactic is employed to get away from discussing very valid points of concern, from picking on bits of posts subjectively deemed unsavoury to somehow escape actually discussing the others, to wholesale dismissal on the flimsiest of grounds. There are people who only come in to snipe at other people or insult them. Frequently people seem to deliberately to miss the points actually made as if they can only read what they want to read (see my very first encounter with HoratioCuthbert which included Rutita1 asking me a question I had already addressed; my last with smokedout and Sea Star 's last to kabbes ).
Anyway those are just examples and this is a mere microcosm of what's going on out there from what I can see, albeit with a lot less trolling, and my own perception is that there are a lot of people invested in not having a proper debate which heightens my suspicion that there may be more to this than meets the eye. Other factors don't help. Off the top of my head: that some proponents of the change to self-ID in AWSs in the Labour Party (some of whom involved in the TERF witchhunt and in urging CLP's to expel anyone who may disagree with self-ID) have also been longstanding opponents of AWSs in the first place; that parents worried about GD dysphoria therapy are dismissed as conspiraloons and then reading this which includes further info links which help to work out their fundamentals as I did this morning; seeing trans people dismissed as self-haters, the equivalent of traitors and tokens of TERFs as I have in this very thread when they don't toe the "genderology" line; the conflation of criticism of the ideology with hatred (which always reminds me of 2002/3 criticism of the plans to invade Iraq being equated to treason in the US) and everyone making similar criticisms being automatically said to be allied with the worst haters; the fact that people who have personal accounts of transitioning and detransioning having to give their testimonies in anonymity;
I was listening to people whose families were torn apart by a police state before I read my first political book. Some were little older than my mum (who had me quite young herself). It's really hard not to see undertones of a very uncomfortable form of authoritarianism here especially when I read of people conducting witch hunts in a political party. Why is it necessary to go so overboard regarding the rights of any group of people. I'll keep asking questions and trying to find out. But I don't think I'll do it here.
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bimble
floofy
If it was that it'd be great. Only it wasn't. It said on it (under the barbie - gi joe thing, with body shapes to match the gender identities) "Gender identity is a spectrum. Where on the spectrum might your gender identity lie?"
I honestly cannot imagine any context at all in which that graphic with that message is ok. But deja vue, i think we've done this already.
Sea Star
have you ever explored your dark side?
Early on when I was a newby to being openly trans, I used to try to field every question I received on Twitter and give an honest answer. Then as I became better known the volume of questions coming just kept growing and often it was the same questions and similarly worded put downs that gradually turned into abuse as I kept my responses civil. Then I had a period of waking up and my timeline being filled with abusive or semi abusive messages. After my name was mentioned in a national publication I had to resort to TERF block bots. Even now I get a trickle of abuse from various quarters: religious, MRAs and US conservatives, and UK extreme right wingers, as well as TERFs.
Oddly one of the first lot of harassment I got online was a group of self identified 'anarchists' who'd found some old pictures of me online and were mocking them on their social media. It was a really odd period. I met a couple who knew these people, knocked around with them for a bit, they got the others to stop attacking me. I thought they were nice people. Then I noticed the guy was getting a lot of flack from pro trans feminists. Soon after he turned on me, so did his wife. Thinking back this lot could well have been linked to the current group of anti trans campaigners. I'm not going to use any identifiers here because the guy sent some seriously nasty threats my way and I took them very seriously.
And at the same time I had no less than Cathy Brennan attacking me and setting her minions on me. None of this was about having a discussion, it was just heckling, calling me names, some abusive, some not.
And I'm a nobody in trans activism. I've seen others actually go into hiding over what they've received, just by trying to help other trans people, or try to challenge the shit storm of crap that fills the media on an almost daily basis.
Yeah, definitely not both sides are the same. We are not as a rule as obsessed with them as they are with us. Most of us would rather be doing other stuff. I wasnt even standing for trans rights in 2015 when I stood, I was standing on a few key policies that were relevant to my area, including housing, transport, pollution, NHS, protecting open spaces and was the only woman who took part in a local hustings about women's rights, and was by far the most feminist person in that room. And yet, I was still undermined and attacked by TERFs just for taking part in the political process as a woman which is my right, effectively helping UKIP and other far right groups who were competing for votes along side me. Makes you wonder what their true motivations are doesn't it?
ETA - I met a good friend of mine last year from Seattle over here visiting, in a pub. She was with a group of her friends. 6 months later she tells me that the woman who got punched at Hyde Park was a friend of hers and I was actually sitting next to her husband at the pub. Small fucking world!!
Also - more synchronicity - the person we'd gone to see giving a talk in the pub was a trans woman.
Anyway she's no longer friends with those people!
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Regarding that Labour NEC self-id AWS statement that didnt happen yesterday, the main evidence that could be seen to support the claim about what happened was the silence instead of the expected statement.
I noticed that the Huffington Post article has been updated at the bottom and now includes this:
So yeah, they were not able to address self-id stuff explicitly and played for time with this statement. I wonder what sort of consultations there will actually be.
Labour To Confirm Trans People Rights To All-Women Shortlists
I noticed that the Huffington Post article has been updated at the bottom and now includes this:
So yeah, they were not able to address self-id stuff explicitly and played for time with this statement. I wonder what sort of consultations there will actually be.
Labour To Confirm Trans People Rights To All-Women Shortlists
bimble
floofy
No outrage, a bit of 'we were right then' (as the point of the dispute was about self-id without certificates).
elbows
Well-Known Member
Cheers, I will have a look for myself in a bit.
Sorry also because I changed the wording of my post a bit after you'd already quoted it. Because I didnt want to create the impression that there might be another statement beyond what the Huffington Post quoted from a spokesperson.
Why shouldn’t people be allowed to fight for their rights if they believe they’re about to be eroded?
It’s almost as if anything other than questions are off bounds.
Sea Star
have you ever explored your dark side?
Good question
It works both ways, true.
But it’s a clash of ideologies.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
Fight. Transgender people. For their rights. Relentlessly.
((((((Class politics))))))))))
Women are a class though if we’re doing class politics.
Daft of you to bring up class tbh. IDPol works better.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
Not so. Posters on here have taken care to distinguish between radical feminists and socialist feminists. Butchersapron, Jim W to name a couple. As of yet there has been no such distinction made with transgender activists or even transgender people in general.
A lot of people- myself included- use terms like identity gender and cis and identify etc. It is hard not to, the transgender phenomenon, it's causes basis etc is poorly understood by everybody in every field. But we need some kind of language to explain what is going on wi wurselves. It isn't the best way to tell if someone is radical or socialist though, this language on this subject. Most of us are not dogmatic as fuck.
I hope as people become more familiar with this "new set of people" these issues will be ironed out a bit more.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
I was being sarcastic.
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