Skip the bridge though
This week Index on Censorship took the unusual step of legally intervening in an employment appeal tribunal. As always our focus was on the core principle of free expression and protecting free speech in law. The tribunal has now concluded and has reserved judgment – we expect to learn the result in the coming months. Much will be discussed and written about in the coming days regarding the Maya Forstater tribunal, but for your information on what Index provided to the court please access our skeleton argument here.
Whatever the outcome of the Employment Appeal Tribunal the toxic nature of the current conversation on gender and trans rights is doing little to build bridges or solidarity. As promised by our Chief Executive, in the coming weeks Index will seek to provide a platform for considered debate and engagement. We plan to publish the words of those people who are being silenced and provide a space for people to highlight their lived experiences without fear or favour. So watch this space.
To be perfectly honest I’m not as worried about building bridges or solidarity as I am about being free to tell the truth. I don’t really want to cross a bridge that leads to people who want to force me to call men “women.” I don’t want to sign a treaty or make peace or give concessions on the question that should never have been a question, “are women the only people who are women or can men be women too?”
As has been pointed out many times, it’s a kind of blackmail or con game. If Boris breaks into your house in your absence and changes the locks and won’t let you in, you don’t have to build bridges with Boris. You just get Boris out, and that’s the end of your dealings with Boris. You don’t owe him anything and he doesn’t get to commit an outrage against you and then offer a “compromise.” Boris is the aggressor and thief and Boris gets nothing in reward. Women don’t owe men anything for refusing to agree that men too can be women if they say so.
It’s not women’s job to build bridges to men who have stolen the word “women” from women, and refused to give it back, and flung threats and insults at women, and gotten women fired and shunned and socially punished, merely for continuing to say that only women are women.
Excellent article at the Smirking Chimp today:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/96400/want-to-disagree-with-wokies-dont-even-think-about-it
(Not closely relevant to your post today, but if I wait for an ideal context I’ll forget.)
Why do I get the feeling that their “open discussion” means “open to those who agree with trans dogma; no TERFs invited”? And the idea that the trans and trans advocates are not getting their voice heard? This person obviously isn’t listening.
By the way, Athel, great article. I second your recommendation.
While I can sympathize with your position, gender-critical people and activists for trans people still have to reach across the aisle to achieve a comfortable majority (at least in the US).
What aisle, to do what, majority comfortable in what sense?
This smells a lot like “bothsiderism.” Both sides, however, are not equally responsible for, or targets of, the toxicity being decried, unless one employs a skewed exchange rate under which “Sex is immutible” is equated to “Choke on my girl dick,” and “Men cannot become women,” is just the same as saying “Kill all the TERFs.” Notice how the “current conversation” is apparently only about “gender and trans rights,” not about sex-based rights, and how the word “woman” does not show up anywhere in this statement.
Why do I doubt this? Why do I distrust the standard that’s going to be used to determine who is being silenced? Oh, right, the above noted example of the use of “toxicity,” and the failure to include the concept of “sex” as being germane to the “current conversation.” Also the alleged need for “bridges,” and “solidarity,” built upon a foundation of STFU, inspires little confidence. Is the Index on Censorship going to set up ground rules on permitted points of discussion in this space? If this is the case, who gets to have input on what these rules are? As for “debate” and “engagement,” does this person not know that one side’s position is actually “NO DEBATE!” ? How does one “engage” with that position? Why do I get the feeling that the use of the phrase “lived experiences” is going to translate into the privileging, prioritizing, and “centering” of some TIM’s reality-denying bullshit?
Indeed. I am willing to be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
I’m prepared to give IoC a little more benefit of the doubt than some of you, but it would be foolish to hold my breath and I’m not going to. My suspicion is that, rather than embracing both-siderism, they believe that reasoned debate will show the bullshit for what it is.
In other words, I don’t think they’re close to being prepared for what’s about to hit them.
@Ophelia Benson #4
The Democratic Party. Yeah, Biden won a majority of the popular vote, but it was way closer than it should have been. Also, polling has the majority of Democrats as pro-trans.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/446373-poll-majority-support-law-allowing-transgender-people-to-use-bathrooms-that
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/16/987765777/republicans-and-democrats-largely-oppose-transgender-sports-legislation-poll-sho
Why, when I hear the phrase “lived experience,” do I think this means “the experiences of transgender people” and not “the experiences of the gender critical?” Women (and men) have stories of the need for single-sex spaces, have been assaulted or made uncomfortable, and have undergone harassment and bullying. There’s lived experience on both sides.
I think it’s because it’s so popular to think trans rights are like gay rights, and transphobia like gay phobia. Once we learn how nice, or normal, or happy, or unhappy the transgender are, we’ll realize that they’re okay. And therefore gender is more important than sex, and transwomen are women and trans men are men. It’s as if they think the problem is an “ick” reaction, or fear easily laid to rest once we know their personal story. Whereas every transgender person could be lovable and safe as safe, and the issue unaffected.
Just as every religious believer could be wonderful, and God still not exist.
I strongly suspect that the majority of the “pro-trans” Democrats don’t actually understand what that means… they think they’re being kind and fair to a minority. They’ve no fucking clue what that minority is actually like and what they want.
@BKiSA #9
The average Democrat might not be that gender critical, so they might accept the notion of psychological sex.
The average Democrat might not be aware that most TIMs never undergo surgery, and remain intact males. My understanding is that support of trans “rights” to access female only spaces declines when poll questions are designed in such a way (like the Staniland Question)* as to bring this fact into the awareness of those being surveyed.
*“Do you believe that male-sexed people should have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with women and girls?”
Yes, in fact it was Helen Staniland who crowdfunded and organised that survey. Stupidly, my bookmark to the results is a link to Twitter, which she was thrown off, but I think this is it.
https://fairplayforwomen.com/poll/#a9
I don’t have time to check now, I’ll try to remember to do so later. But yes, that poll showed (as does this one) that when people realise that ‘trans woman’ can and often does mean ‘man with a cock and balls’, their tolerance for trans women in womens spaces dramatically declines.