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Piers Morgan - Transphobe

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    #26
    I second all of Ursus's post. That is really enlightening.

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      #27
      What a place OTF is, at times.

      Thank you, laverte.

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        #28
        Thank you very much, laverte. There's a lot to think about there.

        Is Mumsnet the site that gave us the image of a poster's husband who keeps a glass of water on his nightstand to dunk his penis in after having sex? Why can't all the posts be like that?

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          #29
          laverte, many thanks. Materialist feminism was gradually challenged by the idea that men like to dominate women sexually (anti-porn movement) and then social constructionism, following the popularity of Foucault's study of the origins of sexuality. None of these really challenged the gender binary as such (despite constructionism having the tools to do so) and I think trans studies have always stood out as a separate academic field partly for that reason. However, gender studies in the US is now embracing the fruits of trans studies so I think this is changing.

          The exclusion of transpersons from, say, rape crisis centres seems to be partly paranoia about feminist spaces being invaded and partly simply a territorial exclusion because feminists want to control the narrative regarding gender violence, despite the fact that transpersons suffer very high levels of violence. There's also the crap that "you can't understand women's issues unless you were born female", which is like saying white academics can't study racism.

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            #30
            Originally posted by Incandenza View Post

            Thanks. Ken spoke about the issue briefly on a Second Captains last week in a discussion about trans athletes, and remarked how there is almost no controversy around trans identity in Ireland.
            Well after much humming and hawing, and courtcases, we just passed a self identification law, in 2015 and hopefully that's broad enough and now no-one ever has to think about it again, and it's the new normal. It's a big deal to the people directly affected, but I'm not sure what it has to do with anyone else,and that would be the way that most people would think about it. Most people probably don't even know about it. Absent a bunch of bastards making some kind of deal out of it for bullshit culture war purposes, I don't think anybody really cares very much, unless they're personally involved. Someone deliberately has to make an issue of it. Our organized religions immolated themselves in flame so that's not an issue. And that whole institutionalized child abuse thing cast a lot of doubt on the moral value of their teachings. And the response among people who are aware of the weird turn in Graham Linehan's life either falls into two camps. "He's a cunt for being unpleasant to trans people", or "he's having some sort of health issues." I doubt that there are too many people in the "You know he might have a point here" camp. The thing he's become fixated on, just doesn't matter.

            The self-identification legislation route has a lot going for it. It's bloody basic good manners for a start, and you get an entirely pointless debate out of the way, you've removed an arbitrary and offensive obstacle from the lives of some people, and people can get on with their lives.

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              #31
              I have heard the likes of fuckin Pat Kenny try and make a Newstalk Both Sides bullshit controversy out of Trans athletes when getting a taxi (I think the O'Brien shills who replaced Garcia et al on Off the Ball may have done similar). I really hope the Linehan/Navratilova/Wings Over Hillsborough types don't gain a foothold in the 26 Counties. Already piss annoying MSP Joan McAlpine (along with Pete Wishart the kind of Nat areswipe politico that could make me a frothing Unionist) is leading a backbench backlash against the SNP Govt's enlightened proposed self-id law for Scotland, which had barely a peep of controversy when first mooted a few years back. Maybe Ireland legislating first will save it from the worst of the idiot/bigot backwash.
              Last edited by Lang Spoon; 23-03-2019, 00:07.

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                #32
                Apparently Iain Huntley, multisex toilets and cheating athletes will abolish Lesbianism or something according to noted feminist and Friend of teh Gays Stuart Campbell (who is the dictionary definition of punchable face) and that hilarious Linehan fella.
                Last edited by Lang Spoon; 23-03-2019, 00:17.

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                  #33
                  And what's wrong with abolishing lesbianism? Fewer fights at the pool tables.

                  Last edited by Gerontophile; 23-03-2019, 00:50. Reason: (Totally the wrong winky thing)

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                    #34
                    The Irish author, John Boyne (arguably one of the most talented contemporary writers in this country), has become embroiled in the transgender debate after setting his impending novel around the topic, but getting off to the wrong start immediately with a misgendered title (My Brother is Jessica). Anyway, he then angered trans activists by rejecting the term "cis" in an Irish Times article, and apologising to Graham Lenihan before quitting Twitter. Still, the whole saga may very put the average person, whether gay or straight, off commentary on the matter, for fear of misinterpretation.

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                      #35
                      i think you mean for fear of blundering into a topic they know nothing about, which is none of their business, and where their 'commentary' is likely to hurt and offend others while making themself look like a fanny.

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                        #36
                        John Boyne wrote the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas? If dodgy as fuck schmaltz like that gets you touted as the Heir to Colm Toibin if not Joyce, I'm glad I don't read much "literary fiction" anymore.

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                          #37
                          He strikes me as the Irish Ian McEwan after a cursory google. I can think of no more damning judgment, outwith being the Irish Will Self.

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                            #38
                            He also looks like Rory McIlory's bald big brother. The prick.

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                              #39
                              Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                              John Boyne wrote the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas? If dodgy as fuck schmaltz like that gets you touted as the Heir to Colm Toibin if not Joyce, I'm glad I don't read much "literary fiction" anymore.
                              In fairness, The Heart's Invisible Furies was a credible piece of adult fiction.

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                                #40
                                DR's post is inaccurate in a number of ways, starting with the title of Boyne's book ('My Brother's Name Is Jessica'). Here - https://twitter.com/Maebhcon/status/1118235945512460290



                                And here - https://twitter.com/JayHulmePoet/sta...19619901243400

                                the transgender debate

                                Dunno what this means. Is it related to stuff like this? https://twitter.com/Miss_Kitami/status/1118559470714540034

                                I mean, I know it's an expression that a very close friend of 30 years' standing used to me before telling me that she was concerned about the safety of women in refuges, with the clear implication that trans women might threaten said safety, and seemingly blissfully unaware that refuges have been dealing with this for a long time. She thinks she's trans-supportive. That was nice.


                                Originally posted by Diable Rouge View Post
                                Still, the whole saga may very put the average person, whether gay or straight, off commentary on the matter, for fear of misinterpretation.
                                !!!!!!!!!

                                I may as well note that I am genuinely wary of posting Twitter threads from trans people because I worry that someone hostile might decide to go and harass them. L*neh*n regularly sics his 640,000 followers on people.

                                On an unrelated note, I don't know what happened to the ability to hyperlink, or why the text keeps changing colour, but I preferred the old board.

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                                  #41
                                  More from Jay Hulme:

                                  https://twitter.com/JayHulmePoet/sta...20011014389761

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                                    #42
                                    delicatemoth: i don't know if it will sadden or cheer you to know that i'd have said something similar to your friend not so long ago. You're one of the people who helped me to learn to do better and to think better, when you took the time to engage with me on a thread here. Of course you shouldn't have to do that work, especially given the risks involved, but i wanted to remind you that you did and do make a difference, and to thank you for it.

                                    If it's any consolation, the Concerned Public is almost as ignorant about women's refuges as it is about trans people. If we rarely see a story in the media about violence or abuse in refuges, it's because the vetting and safeguarding processes are tight. By far the greatest risk to women in refuges is the one from budget cuts and the closure of specialist sites. (More and more refuge spaces are in fact empty council accommodation with little or no proximate specialist support.)

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                                      #43
                                      I also want to thank DM, from whom I've learned a huge amount including - ironically - making me to look up and realise that it's a thing: being a white straight cis man, I should not expect, and certainly not demand, any explanations from members of groups who already have a much tougher time just living their lives. It's not their job to do yet more extra work for the benefit of my education.

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                                        #44
                                        I thought the point of the "My Brother is Jessica"'s title was that it's written from the point of view of a kid who is trying to assimilate that his sibling is transgender, so therefore that is how they'd say it. (Please bear in mind that I haven't read the book, I'm just conjecturing). If that is the case, then I can see that. I'm 45, and have never knowingly known anyone who is transgender, and therefore would almost certainly make many, many accidentally insulting / patronising comments that I genuinely didn't mean when meeting such a person. So if this Joyce is writing from the point of view of a kid, then surely the title is admissable?

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                                          #45
                                          Yeah, without DM's posts I can imagine a parallel universe where Linehan and the Terfs would be making sense to me, at least in a bullshit Both Sides Have A Point way.

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                                            #46
                                            Originally posted by pebblethefish View Post
                                            So if this Joyce is writing from the point of view of a kid, then surely the title is admissable?
                                            It's certainly admissible. He can write it and call it what he likes, but it seems that we can't say "Hey, this looks like a clueless hack seeking to cash in on a media-whipped up controversy that has led to men threatening gender-nonconforming women (cis and trans) in toilets*, and we can tell because we've seen and heard this shit so many times before" without The Times (which is basically a hate sheet) screaming about 'trans fascists' (do you realise how offensive and potentially dangerous this is when actual fascists want to kill us?). Did you read the links I posted? It seems pretty obvious Boyne (not Joyce, though that made me chuckle mightily, thanks!) isn't acting in good faith. My understanding is that his book's plot concerns the trans girl's mother's bid to become Prime Minister being in danger because she has a trans daughter, so at the end Jessica, um, puts on a football shirt and grows stubble (I am not making this up). This is one of Ireland's most talented contemporary writers?! You know what, Beckett was actually French, Joyce was actually Italian and Flann O'Brien was English, cos Irish people obviously can't write for toffee.

                                            But then again, I haven't actually read it so can't say anything. Fuck, better not say anything about fascism or anti-semitism cos I haven't read Mein Kampf or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On the other hand, I am pretty confident I am the only person on this board, and one of a thankfully small number in this country, allowed to critique Ian Brady's, um, ideas cos I've actually read half of Gates Of Janus. Everyone else HAS TO ACCEPT that Brady was an ubermensch who was entitled to do what he liked. You HAVE TO, cos you haven't read it. Do you see how fatuous and despicable (and conveniently remunerative for bad writers) that argument is?

                                            The really curious (and great) thing about this is that normal people, who don't work in the media or belch out cultural commodities for cash, tend to be a lot better than those who do. I had a great day today, which is why I had the mental strength to come on here and educate without swearing at people. I got the bus to Camden. A woman and a small girl (I think granddaughter, though I'm not certain) sat in front of me, playing I Spy. The girl kept glancing round while I was reading my book, and I heard her ask her guardian "Is that a boy or a girl?" Without looking at me, the woman kindly told her not to be rude ("You don't like it when people are rude to you"). The girl kept glancing round. Now, although I've never wanted my own, I really like children. My natural impulse would be to smile at her, make a funny face, maybe bob up and down to make her laugh etc. But there's this moral panic whipped up about how people like me are a threat to children. So I had to try and clock body language cues from the woman to see if it was safe for me to interact. Does that remind you of anything? It reminded me of how women, cis and trans, try and check cues from men in the vicinity to see if they're a potential threat. Anyway, the woman seemed cool, so I decided to start doing some rhythmic clicking noises and bobbing around to try and entertain the girl. This emboldened her to ask me "Are you a boy or a girl?" Resisting the temptation to start singing The Barbarians, I replied "Does it matter? I'm a girl, but it's a bit complicated." The woman was indeed cool, so we started chatting about stuff. "She's just curious", "Yeah, I know, it's fine" etc. We got off at the same stop, and the girl once again asked "Are you a boy or a girl?" Us adults both burst out laughing (I actually felt bad about this, cos when I was small I didn't like it when grownups laughed heartily at things that didn't seem funny) and said our goodbyes. I said "It was a pleasure, and I really mean that" and as they walked off I heard the woman say, kindly but very firmly, "She's a girl." The encounter put me in a great mood for my trip into town, where to my chagrin the Extinction Rebellion folk had not stopped the traffic so i couldn't blissfully wander the streets like I did when Reclaim The Streets took the City ten years ago. Oh yeah, and I held the door open for an older woman at the chemist and she said "Thank you, young lady" and I thought 'I'm forty fucking six! Alright!'

                                            *I really, really wish I'd posted the Twitter thread by a cis woman talking about how, after 20 years with short hair, she's growing it out because she was followed into a public lavatory by a man who proceeded to bang on her stall door and aggressively demand that she leave. But it's trans women who are a menace in the bogs.
                                            Last edited by delicatemoth; 19-04-2019, 03:14.

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                                              #47
                                              Now, going back to Boyne, there's a darker side to his hackery. It reinforces the idea that this is a phase, kids will grow out of it, or can be conversion therapied out of it, like Alan Turing was successfully conversion therapied out of being gay (we all know he's happily living with his wife in the nice house he was awarded by a grateful British state, don't we?) Almost every trans person will tell you this isn't the case. Respectable medical authorities will mostly tell you this isn't the case (I am not looking links up now because I have actually posted about this on this board before). After desperately denying these strange, appalling feelings from the age of 5 or 6 (I remember trying to fall down the stairs to break my leg aged 8 so I wouldn't have to be in the nativity cos my angel costume was too girly and I was terrified people would be able to tell I liked wearing it) I eventually broke down and started to accept myself in my late 30s - thank fuck for the internet (which transphobes really, really want to cut trans kids - and in some cases adults - off from). By the way, when I mean 'accept myself' I don't mean I started being bold enough to wear skirts and make up and what not. I was doing that from my teens, but despite what haterz think that's not the issue at all - just like cis people, trans people have a very wide range of gender and personality expression, and just like cis people, those trans people whose expression aligns with social conventions tend to have an easier time of it. No, by 'accept myself' I mean 'not consider myself a disgusting freak like society tells me I am'. But I still wanted to avoid transitioning, because it's terrifying and my mum would hate it and people might attack me and all that. So much so that it took until I was so depressed I was almost completely immobile, constantly suicidal and imminently going to be properly homeless for me to decide it couldn't be worse than what i was going through. That's 35+ years of giving myself my own conversion therapy. This just in - it didn't work!

                                              My experience is reasonably typical of many late transitioners, except that I was really lucky to have a family and social circle who didn't pressure me into trying to be masculine, beat the sissy out of me or any of that stuff. In fact I had pretty much the quiet acceptance, if not encouragement, of my mild assigned-gender non-conformity that 'phobes seem to think is all trans people need. IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE. Because I am not actually male. This, btw, is why I absolutely loathe 'identifies as' language. It's a subtly coded way of saying we're not really who we think we are. This, imo, is absolutely the dominant attitude of 'nice' cis people who really don't want to hurt us but still refuse to believe us cos it's common sense, innit. There are two genders, completely determined by what your genitals look like and something something chromosomes, and that's that. Cos scientific understanding is fixed, immutable, and never advances, and we've always forever known about chromosomes since 1956 when their number was correctly determined, which is obviously the dawn of science. From 1923 to 1956 it was mistakenly thought there were 24 pairs due to observational error, because science is fixed and immutable and never advances or gets corrected (yes, this is from wiki, sue me). It's pub logic, very often deployed by people who in other circumstances deplore pub logic, and yes I have been known to go off at (genuinely) well-meaning people who say 'identifies as'. Sorry. Can you see now why it pisses me off?

                                              So, in my early 40s I start to go through all the hoops set in front of me by a medical establishment that, while it accepts that being trans is a thing (because of stuff like peer-reviewed research and all that unscientific attention-seeking nonsense), remains reluctant to actually offer treatments that have been demonstrated to ease dysphoria. My mum (who is a hard leftie who gets absolutely outraged by racism, treatment of refugees and all vulnerable minorities apart from this one that I happen to belong to) is indeed pissed off. I tell her to do her own research. Six months into transitioning I tell her that I've gone from being suicidal 90% of the time to 10% of the time. Yada yada yada.

                                              I'm hoping you've noticed something by now. It's to do with time scales, and how they affect human bodies, which are at the centre of the issue here, and there are clues scattered throughout my two lengthy posts. I'm going to break to make tea before continuing. I'm hoping that some interested people are reading this, and if they think they have noticed what I'd like them to notice then I'd like them to post.

                                              I really appreciate the supportive posts from laverte (I always appreciate the posts from laverte, you're a fucking champion), SB and LS, as well as pebble's polite and perfectly reasonable observation/question. laverte, I absolutely appreciate and applaud people who do the research and realise they were wrong

                                              (Btw, I get on really fucking well with my mum now, she has absolutely done the work cos she is one cool woman. Still haven't seen her since my previous life though)
                                              Last edited by delicatemoth; 19-04-2019, 04:49.

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                                                #48
                                                DM, I wish I could share some of that. The bus story is fucking lovely.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Originally posted by laverte View Post

                                                  British second-wave feminism was comparatively slow to depart from its materialist origins. Whereas the first US activists emerged from anti-war activism and the civil rights movement, and French feminists from May '68, in the UK the centrality of social class and the influence of critical theory made it necessary to address, from the beginning, how the domination of women and the exploitation of the working class are related. i think the tradition of theorising oppression through the lens of the class struggle might have left a legacy both in the prevalence of binary thinking with regard to gender, and in the push for women to develop consciousness of themselves as a class, as a sex, as women.
                                                  My possibly naive understanding was that the main conflict in second wave feminism was between "socialist feminists" and "revolutionary feminists" in the 1960's and '70s over whether the primary axis of women's oppression was class or sex? I guess what confuses me with what you wrote is I'd view the materialists to be the socialist feminists like Silvia Federici and laid the groundwork for Marxist Feminism with its emphasis on socially constructed gender roles and the function of gendered labour within a framework of wider capitalist oppression. While the revolutionary feminists took a more essentialist/idealist stance - that sex was the sole/primary locus of oppression and feminists could only liberate themselves through seperatism?

                                                  But my understanding was that large parts of "revolutionary feminism" were, from their very origins, intensely transphobic (obviously as society as a whole was/is) - rather than, as you seem to be implying - that it became more evident later on as the movement was fractured? Obviously that's not to dispute that it wasn't very important in terms of its practical organising and contribution to theory, but to merely state that hostility to trans people was baked into parts of it from the very beginning.

                                                  e.g. this covers some of the violence experienced by trans women in US feminist movement
                                                  https://www.transadvocate.com/terf-v...ne_n_14360.htm

                                                  This (from a then revolutionary feminist) gives a little more colour about the conflicts between the two tendencies at the tail end of the WLM in the UK.
                                                  http://www.gaybirminghamremembered.co.uk/interview/41/

                                                  Obviously since then black feminist thought and post-colonial queer theory (in part taking its influences from Federici et al) has highlighted a lot of these contradictions and also challenged the colonialism inherent in much of the white feminist movement in the global north.

                                                  I think you could perhaps argue that the mainstreaming of transphobia/anti-sex-work feminism as the dominant rhetoric of some of the holdouts from the second wave revolutionary feminism reflects the marginalisation of their ideas from mainstream feminist organising and theory - as ideas and praxis borrowed from black/post-colonial feminism like intersectionality began to become increasingly important - which possibly ran along in tandem with the loss/co-option of radical autonomous feminist spaces in the New Labour-era that you identify

                                                  i dislike Terf because it associates radical feminism with transphobia, when plenty of radfems are trans-welcoming, and plenty of transphobic feminists are not radical.
                                                  Surely TERF was coined to specifically refer to the radfems who weren't trans inclusive?

                                                  The interesting thing about the contemporary transphobic movement is how divorced it all seems to be from wider feminist struggle. The activities of the members of my local TERF group are relatively limited: they harass, and direct their online followers to harass trans inclusive refuges, anti-period poverty campaigns, prison abolitionists, and an author of a body positive books for girls.

                                                  They also share photos for their followers to ridicule individual trans women especially those playing sport, promote US anti-abortionists (who are also transphobic), and share articles from alt-right websites (and the Times, itself pretty much an alt-right website, these days). They held an event where two of their speakers had recently flown from the US where they'd spoken at an event hosted by the Pro-Trump Heritage Foundation and the third used to run a school for a religious cult.

                                                  Most of their activists seem to be involved in the PTA of a school in the posh part of my borough. As far as I can tell, they aren't involved in any other political organisations apart from the labour party (they're all in the fucking labour party). I've not seen them support a feminist cause unless there's an anti-trans angle.

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                                                    #50
                                                    I'm reading and I'm sure that many others on here will too because, apart from anything else, you write so very well.

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