[joel182]

I don't consider the Gender Critical to have anything useful to say on issues of trans rights and gender

"Gender critical" is not an agnostic position! It explicitly maintains that there's no such thing as gender identity and that being trans is not "real"

Are you both using "gender critical" in a different way to how I understand it?

"Gender Critical" is used as a label by people who oppose trans rights, in much the same way as Men's Rights Activists oppose women's rights and the Coalition For Marriage was anti gay rights.

[slab_happy]

I don't consider the Gender Critical to have anything useful to say on issues of trans rights and gender

"Gender critical" is not an agnostic position! It explicitly maintains that there's no such thing as gender identity and that being trans is not "real"

Are you both using "gender critical" in a different way to how I understand it? To my mind I guess it encompasses a fairly broad range of things, but one would be that sex and gender identity are kind of different, e.g. "that sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity" as per one of the first things that popped up on google (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/employment-tribunal-rulings-on-gender-critical-beliefs-in-the-workplace/#:~:text=Gender%2Dcritical%20beliefs%20include%20the,is%20distinct%20from%20gender%2Didentity. ) This seems to be how it commonly gets used in my experience of radio 4 or similar. But it doesn't fit with either of the above statements. I assume you are both using a more "hardcore" definition? What's wrong with just having sex and gender (or gender identity, I don't really care about the terminology that much) as different categories? (The gov seems to do this now on some forms - I had to fill out a diversity form for some gov funding recently that asked both questions)

Yup, I'm using "gender critical" to refer to the people who have chosen that name to describe their political beliefs, which may start with a fairly innocuous-sounding statement about sex and gender being two different things (though they sometimes also maintain that there's no such thing as "gender" as distinct from "sex" at all) but tend to rapidly escalate, usually via a series of bad syllogisms like:

Sex is biological and immutable and cannot be changed
THEREFORE trans women are not women
and THEREFORE trans women need to be excluded from women's toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, refuges, etc. (all of which they have been using legally and without problems for many decades) because they are inherently biologically dangerous to cis women
and THEREFORE the Equality Act should be rewritten to remove some of trans people's existing legal rights
and THEREFORE trans women should not be able to change their legal sex and be recognized as women
and THERFORE the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 (which allows this) should be overturned (they don't always go all the way to this point, but it's becoming increasingly common)
and THEREFORE I am being oppressed and persecuted if I am required to refer to trans women as "she" and "her" and use their actual names
and THEREFORE trans people thinking they are a different gender from the one they are assigned at birth is a delusion or fetish which needs to be cured

Etc., etc..

In some cases they go much further than that; I'm just covering the most common points.

There are a lot of people, such as Kathleen Stock, who like to claim loudly that they've been CANCELLED "just for saying that sex is real!", and then you look at what they've actually written, and it's like ... ah yes, Professor Stock, you did sign that declaration calling for the the elimination of any legal recognition of trans people's identities and the eradication of all trans-ness as inherently oppressive to women, you've explicitly advocated conversion therapy for trans kids, you want trans women to be banned from using any single-sex spaces, you've written that drag is "evil", you think it's oppression if university teachers are prevented from deliberately misgendering their students ...

And unfortunately a lot of major media platforms (like the BBC) are doing a very poor job challenging people on the details of what they've actually written and advocated.

[Gritter]

Surely the resolution to this would be to make all toilets and changing rooms unisex with private cubicles. Everybody is happy. A woman who is concerned about seeing another woman’s penis now has somewhere to hide and no one gets offended or upset. Despite what Joel says I like the soul metaphor and trans as a poorly understood metaphysical state.

[Oldmanmatt]

My partner works at a combined CoE/Catholic comprehensive. She’s the deputy Attendance and Safeguarding Officer. Interestingly, the kids are allowed to choose their own gender identity, pronouns etc. without comment or judgment from the school. In a school of 1200 kids, around 120 fall into this category.
They vast majority choose a gender neutral position. More than half entered the school apparently female. 90% of them have appalling trauma in their short lives so far. Only one is actually Trans and doesn’t have any known history of trauma. We’ve known that child since preschool and this is the first time they’ve been happy and performed well at school, had friends  etc, in all that time.

It’s, frankly, a confusing world out there, especially if you were raised, as I was, in a different one.

My Youngest has given up on mixed Football. In her words “Boys Figgin suck” (one hour picking up dog shit in the garden. We have three dogs). She passed her trials for Exeter City on Thursday and is going into the JPL+ next season. She also went out and bought her first dress, unexpectedly, with Danny (who is “not my pissing boyfriend” (dishes for three days)), on the basis that she “can be figgin pretty if I want” (there isn’t a hint of dog shit left in the garden).
All while my eldest (Bi), moved out to live with my sister two days before starting her A level exams, because we tried to talk her out of a situation with her boyfriend (three years older, trans F to M) who was  threatening suicide when she took more than five minutes to answer a text amongst a litany of other controlling behaviours and much worse. Apparently we were ruining her life.
Oddly, a week after moving out, she ditched the boyfriend and all of her Goth/Emo wardrobe. She’ll be 18 next month.
Pretty sure we’re liberal in our child rearing. I mean, my 16 year old lad’s girlfriend lives with us (after a long debate and discussion with her parents, summed up to, they’re going to do it anyway, it’s legal at 16 and probably better we all accept that and guide/help rather than bury heads).
Basically, my point is gender and sexuality, sex in all forms; is fucking complex (I’ll go pick up some litter) and society needs to grow the fuck up (ok, I’ll wash the car and lose my phone for two days). Live and let live.

[slab_happy]

Surely the resolution to this would be to make all toilets and changing rooms unisex with private cubicles.

Personally I'd have no objections!

Of course, I have to point out that women's loos already have private cubicles (and no urinals). Nobody is seeing anyone's genitals in the women's loos anyway.

And yet somehow a lot of gender critical people (and other anti-trans people) are convinced that the mere presence of a trans woman in there (with or without a penis) is a terrible threat and danger to cis women somehow.

So unfortunately this doesn't resolve the issue to their satisfaction.

[slab_happy]

My partner works at a combined CoE/Catholic comprehensive. She’s the deputy Attendance and Safeguarding
Basically, my point is gender and sexuality, sex in all forms; is fucking complex (I’ll go pick up some litter) and society needs to grow the fuck up (ok, I’ll wash the car and lose my phone for two days). Live and let live.

I think it's one of the things that's so complex it circles round to being simple again, if that makes sense.

You know, it's all complicated and weird, so I'm going to accept that other people's experiences of it are real even if they're different from mine and I don't personally "get" it, and allow people to get on with their lives as best they can.

[slab_happy]

Is there a name for someone...

The name for the person with those views would be 'the silent majority', I'm guessing.

I think that Shon Faye's Transgender Issue is essential reading for anyone in the UK trying to understand the topic (and it's shocking how much worse the discourse is now than in 2021 when Shon wrote the book)

From the prologue:
''Trans people should not aspire to be equals in a world that remains both capitalist and patriarchal and which exploits and degrades those who live in it. Rather, we ought to seek justice — for ourselves and others alike.''


Instant ignore sorry.

If you want your trans activism with a more capitalist flavour, you should Google Reed Erickson! Multi-millionaire (in the '60s, when that meant a lot more than it does now), engineer, investor, and philanthropist (I have seen him described as the trans Tony Stark). Owned a leopard named Henry which he took on aeroplanes with him. Mostly funded trans and gay rights causes, but also funded research into human-dolphin communication.

Sadly he didn't write a book, as it would have been wild.

This has absolutely no relevance to the discussion, btw, I just think it's a cool factoid.

[petejh]

Ha! Sounds like a cool character.. the Joe Exotic (tiger king) of the 60s.

It's unfortunate imo that seemingly many trans/woman's rights activists also espouse radical hard-left economics, or maybe they don't and it's just the ones who do stand out more to me. The two topics needn't correlate. I could go into an off-topic rant about how it's not sensible to extrapolate historical facts into the future but I'll resist.

[joel182]

Perhaps our economic system is set up in such a way that trans people tend to be systematically excluded from accumulating capital and often resort to marginalised, possibly illegal, ways of making money like doing sex work. Someone could probably write a few chapters in a book about that.

[petejh]

I've no doubt that's true - it's what I implied in my post:

I could go into an off-topic rant about how it's not sensible to extrapolate historical facts into the future but I'll resist.

If a vanishingly tiny number of the overall population of humans on the planet - trans people - feel that the least bad system humanity has yet invented for global co-operation and human progress (capitalism) doesn't treat them fairly, then it doesn't logically follow that some economic system other than capitalism is the obvious best solution. 

It does follow that improvements can happen.

[Wellsy]

Either that or capitalism sucks shit, which is my own personal viewpoint

You may disagree, although I'd point out, you're in the top fraction of a percent, globally, so you probably think it is a good system

[Gritter]

The Pritzker family have funded the trans movement, Jennifer and JB Pritzker particularly. American Billionaires, and I’m guessing successful capitalists. Jeniffer is a trans woman ex military colonel.

[joel182]

Kind of funny to see the transphobia posting become anti-semitic conspiracy theories without prompting and after like half a dozen posts.

Anti-trans and anti-semitic sentiment are so linked that the ADL blogged about it explicitly last year.

[danm]

Christ, reading that is fucking grim.

[petejh]

Either that or capitalism sucks shit, which is my own personal viewpoint

You may disagree, although I'd point out, you're in the top fraction of a percent, globally, so you probably think it is a good system

It's increasingly typical of members of your generation to think that.. go get em' you rebel 

But it's very much said like a privileged westerner without a better alternative.

Stats-wise, top 1.1%, not fraction of a % (although it doesn't break down the top 1.1% further..). According to this: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/distribution-of-global-wealth-chart/

Anyone in the UK with assets over £85k puts them, at minimum, in the top 11.1% of wealth globally. That's a huge number of people in Britain once family assets passed down from the declining boomers are accounted for, as they increasingly leave this world and your generation discovers that these things come in long cycles.

[slab_happy]

The Pritzker family have funded the trans movement, Jennifer and JB Pritzker particularly. American Billionaires, and I’m guessing successful capitalists. Jeniffer is a trans woman ex military colonel.

Jennifer Pritzker's made a donation to a university to set up a chair in trans studies, and supported WPATH, but most of the other stuff cited seems to be donations to organizations like the ACLU and GLAAD that happen to include some trans rights work within their human rights and LGBTQ+ rights remits.

And obviously the trans movement's been around for a very long time, and Pritzker only came out in 2013 (according to Wikipedia).

So it seems rather misleading to say that she or her family "have funded the trans movement."

I mean, I've chucked a few spare quid into the Trans Safety Network's Ko-Fi; that doesn't mean I personally can take credit for "having funded the trans movement", you know?

On a quick Google, I can't tell if J. B. Pritzker has donated anything at all -- the claims about his involvement all seem to be things like "he donated to Duke University, and Duke University has child and adolescent gender care clinics, so he probably secretly made them do that!"

There's also some really weird claims being made that since one of Jennifer Pritzker's companies has investments in another private investment vehicle that has acquired some companies that make medical devices, including some used for surgery, that proves she's MAKING MONEY FROM SEX CHANGE SURGERIES!!! and has a secret agenda to make more people trans so she can profit via this very lengthy chain of connections to companies selling medical equipment.

The person who's made most of all this is a writer named Jennifer Bilek, who has an infamous conspiracy theory that the trans rights movement is being secretly pushed by an evil cabal of Jewish billionaires (George Soros included, of course) who have "set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology" by promoting "Synthetic Sex Identities" as part of a "transhumanist" attempt to "breed a whole new class of slaves" and reshape the entire human species. I am not making this up.

Many people are of the opinion that this theory is ragingly antisemitic.

(Not to mention completely unhinged. This is Qanon level nonsense.)

Hopefully you weren't aware of any of those aspects and just wanted to cite Jennifer Priztker as an example of a very wealthy person who is trans (and who has made some donations in the field). Which she indeed is!

But it's worth being aware that some people are taking facts like that and running with them to some truly horrific places.

[Gritter]

Extremist propaganda exists on both poles of this divisive topic. The ADL piece being one example just as the this Daily Sceptic article could be considered another polarising work of propaganda

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/06/25/the-shameful-silence-over-dana-rivers/

[slab_happy]

Christ, reading that is fucking grim.

Have some more deeply grim reading! This time on the intellectual affiliations between the antisemitic alt-right and anti-trans campaigning:

https://progressive.org/magazine/antisemitism-meets-transphobia-greenesmith-lorber/

And Christa Peterson does a brutal breakdown of exactly how many prominent figures in the UK "gender critical" movement are cosy with Jennifer Bilek and/or drawing on her theories:

https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1366489983574413317 (thread)

[slab_happy]

I mean, I've chucked a few spare quid into the Trans Safety Network's Ko-Fi

And I'm 3/8ths Jewish! OH NO IT'S ALL TRUE!!!

Can't wait until I get issued my space laser.

[Gritter]

This is useful website when navigating the world of extremism and propaganda be it left or right. The ADL blog posted above is an extreme example as is much of the posting in this thread aping the propaganda.

https://propagandacritic.com/index.php/propaganda-examples/antifa/

[mrjonathanr]

Extremist propaganda exists on both poles of this divisive topic. The ADL piece being one example

It wasn't clear to me in what respect the ADL report constituted propaganda.

Could you explain that for me, please?

[petejh]

Between this thread and chocolate-gate, I'm left wondering is there anyone sane left on the planet.

[Fiend]

Yes. People with cool, firm, solid chocolate.

[Gritter]

Extremist propaganda exists on both poles of this divisive topic. The ADL piece being one example

It wasn't clear to me in what respect the ADL report constituted propaganda.

Could you explain that for me, please?

There's a full list of propaganda devices with explanations to work through on the link posted above, it's not hard to spot. The most obvious part is the linking of 'Anti-trans' to 'Anti-semitism' and a random act of violence perpetrated by one clearly disturbed individual to an extremist group think, usefully posted above to generate a link between anyone questioning trans ideology to violent antisemitic far right white nationalist conspiracy theorists.

The same thing can be said for the Daily Skeptic article which uses fear and name calling to link trans people to violent extremism and psychological disturbance and some sort of media denial / cover-up.

The article posted by slab-happy from the progressive online magazine was a relentless propaganda piece using all the key phrases, far right, extremist, white nationalist, antisemitic, conspiracy theory etc etc

All of this serves to create division and shut down any reasonable discussion.

[mrjonathanr]

The most obvious part is the linking of 'Anti-trans' to 'Anti-semitism' and a random act of violence perpetrated by one clearly disturbed individual to an extremist group think, usefully posted above to generate a link between anyone questioning trans ideology to violent antisemitic far right white nationalist conspiracy theorists.

Thanks for replying. If I get your point, it's that a single person's behaviour has been misrepresented as numerous people, who can then be said to represent a group.

There's rather a lot of different people quoted and referenced as commenting on the hospital information videos in a way that links Jews and transgender treatment in explicitly hostile and anti-semitic ways. For example:

You refer to - I assume -Catherine Leavy of Westfield, but the article alleges discussion by right wing media figures such Harry Vox and Tucker Carlson which links gender treatment and Jewishness and of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose views are well known, because she very actively makes them so.

There were rather a lot of video comments and posters referred to beyond those figures, for example

''Hysterectomies at Boston CHILDREN’S hospital,”

BCH videos were shared on Twitter by Libs of TikTok, with a caption claiming the hospital was performing hysterectomies on “young girls.

 Matt Walsh began sharing video

Tucker Carlson featured videos during his show, falsely stating that gender-affirming care is "the sexual mutilation of children.”


Stormfront and Vanguard News Network, posts from 2008 highlight users' opposition to gender-affirming therapies while referencing Dr. Spack: “Are you surprised it’s a JEW?”

The jews must go. The jews must die [sic].”

Jewby jewby jew,”

That’s a Jew.”


 The video description blames Jews for spearheading “transgendermania” and alleges that their goal is “the breakdown of the family and the supremacy of the Jewish people to replace American hegemony.”
“Jews are flesh mutilated dogs!”

“Is this just something they find amusing for the goy?’

Tommy Robinson posted the Yale video on his Telegram channel and described the doctor as “demonic,” then added “These people...need to be dealt with.

 “Pull the trigger.”

“Why are so many of these child mutilating supporters jewish?”

Another user suggested that the doctor was Jewish, followed by the statement, “every single time!”

Some responses to the Yale video also included more general antisemitic conspiracy theories. In one case, a user blamed Jews for their control over the “Deep State''

  Your explanation that it suggests a single individual is representative of a whole group of people is obviously untrue- as anyone who reads the article will see.

Did you actually read it?