Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

[Rolfe]

I just found this twitter thread. I had never heard about this case before. It's horrifying.

https://twitter.com/OceanbreathCafe/status/1619716405838086145

 

[Rolfe]

In case you wanted to do just that, here it is (LondonJohn seems to have forgotten to link to it, no doubt an oversight on his behalf):

https://twitter.com/CalumA_Steele

It describes him as General Secretary @ICPRA (International Council of Police Representative Associations), Past President @Euro_Cop (eurocop.org), General Secretary @Scotspolfed (Scottish Police Federation).

Weirdly there's no mention of his work as an "anti-transgender activist".

I had a quick look, and followed him. Seems like a good sort. He retweets a lot of the accounts I retweet myself.

 

[Matthew Best]

I just found this twitter thread. I had never heard about this case before. It's horrifying.

https://twitter.com/OceanbreathCafe/status/1619716405838086145

That thread quotes someone called James Morton thusly:

As James Morton said, "By enabling the (prison) service "to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances, we would be able to ensure all other public services do likewise." "In other words," he continued, "if horrible things happen to female prisoners, no one will find out (or even care), so we can "prove" to the NHS or schools that self-ID is risk-free."

His words verbatum [sic]

There's no link to him saying this, and the reason is because he didn't say the second, more damning half of it at all. The words actually come from an article in the Times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...8?shareToken=6d484543e602975dbd6f964af78fc46f

James Morton, head of the Scottish Trans Alliance, formulated the SPS’s rules. By enabling the service “to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances”, he wrote, “we would be able to ensure all other public services do likewise”. In other words, if horrible things happen to female prisoners, no one will find out (or even care), so we can “prove” to the NHS or schools that self-ID is risk-free.

Everything after "In other words" is not what Morton said at all, and certainly isn't "his words verbatim". It seems Ocean Breath Cafe is unable to read an article and tell what words in it are quotes and what are responses to that quote.

I'll be interested to see if anyone takes this "quote" and runs with it. It would be a mistake to do so.

 

[Rolfe]

That's absolutely true, and well spotted. I read the article in the Times and that was the writer's interpretation of the implications of Morton's policies, certainly not a direct quote. I hadn't noticed that it was presented as a quote in the thread. It's a bad mistake, but whether it's evidence of bad faith I don't know.

My main interest in the Twitter thread was the description of the case of the woman who had self-identified as a man in order to serve her sentence in a men's prison, which could be done close to her home and allow her to keep in contact with her children, rather than be sent to a women's prison so far from home that she would have lost contact with them. I had never heard of that case. If that's true, it's an appalling situation on multiple levels.

 

[lionking]

I could write better English than that when I was ten.

That's the rigorous safeguarding protocol LJ keeps banging on about.

In retrospect I was being unkind to work experience students. It takes a special type of stupid to put that “policy” together, and to have someone in authority sign it off is mindboggling.

 

[d4m10n]

It's kind of depressing that the best data we have on the advisability of self-ID is coming from actually trying it out in womens' prisons, rather than from any unfettered attempt to study the problem scientifically in an ethical way. Even LJ has no idea if self-ID is a good way to treat gender dysphoria.

I thought we'd established that "transgender identity" ought to be accomodated regardless of psychiatric diagnosis, according to those on the right side of history? Which is to say folks like LJ aren't arguing about diagnosis and treatment so much as social affirmation for self-discovered identity.

(I cannot object to such affirmation, of course, so long as it is voluntary.)

 

[Rolfe]

In retrospect I was being unkind to work experience students. It takes a special type of stupid to put that “policy” together, and to have someone in authority sign it off is mindboggling.

I do recognise the style. It's someone who has to put something together but isn't sure either what that something is or how to express it. So they stitch together some words and phrases that sound as if they would be appropriate in a document like that, and call it job done.

Surely any competent civil servant would have vetoed that on sight?

 

[Rolfe]

That thread quotes someone called James Morton thusly:

There's no link to him saying this, and the reason is because he didn't say the second, more damning half of it at all. The words actually come from an article in the Times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...8?shareToken=6d484543e602975dbd6f964af78fc46f

Everything after "In other words" is not what Morton said at all, and certainly isn't "his words verbatim". It seems Ocean Breath Cafe is unable to read an article and tell what words in it are quotes and what are responses to that quote.

I'll be interested to see if anyone takes this "quote" and runs with it. It would be a mistake to do so.

I see now that Wings pulled Ocean Breath Café up on this earlier this morning and has put the correct version of the article into the thread as an image.

https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1619992633795022849

 

[LondonJohn]

I thought we'd established that "transgender identity" ought to be accomodated regardless of psychiatric diagnosis, according to those on the right side of history? Which is to say folks like LJ aren't arguing about diagnosis and treatment so much as social affirmation for self-discovered identity.

(I cannot object to such affirmation, of course, so long as it is voluntary.)

Do you also believe that, in order for society to consider a person to be homosexual, the person requires diagnosis and treatment?

 

[Elaedith]

I see now that Wings pulled Ocean Breath Café up on this earlier this morning and has put the correct version of the article into the thread as an image.

https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1619992633795022849

Odd, Ocean Breath Café seems to be doubling down and claims that the thread was written before the article was published.

I've actually seen the chapter written by Morton and it does not explicitly say anything like that. The section on prisons is a small part of the chapter. The first quote about the strategic importance of prisons is accurate.

 

[Rolfe]

I hadn't seen that part. It's blindingly obvious that the Ocean Breath Café version is a misreading of the Times article. Not good if they're doubling down, it puts the rest of what they have to say in question.

 

[Rolfe]

Kevin McKenna has published an article in the Herald that doesn't exactly miss Sturgeon and hit the wall.

Why is Sturgeon now acting like a Poundland Trump?

 

[Elaedith]

Do you also believe that, in order for society to consider a person to be homosexual, the person requires diagnosis and treatment?

Stop being ridiculous. Gender dysphoria may require diagnosis and treatment, which is why it is a DSM-5 diagnosis.

'Transgender identity' without dysphoria should not require any diagnosis or treatment (but note some clinicians, especially in the US, advocate that trans people, including minors, should be able to medically transition without dysphoria, to make their bodies 'match' their identities). People are not yet advocating that gay people should get surgical alterations so that their sexual characteristics 'match' their sexual orientation (although given the correlation between same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria or cross-sex childhood identity, this may occur in practice). If people were openly advocating this, diagnosis should be required.

No diagnosis or treatment is required for somebody to have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, just as no diagnosis is required for any sexual orientation to be a protected characteristic.

Safeguards are advocated for obtaining a GRC because it allows the creation of a legal fiction by changing information on a birth certificate to indicate that the person was born as the other sex. There is no parallel for homosexuality. Come back with this stupid comparison when people are advocating that having a sexual orientation should permit falsifying information on a birth certificate.

 

[Rolfe]

Just suppose that "transgender identity" was recognised as a disorder that required treatment. Then just suppose that it was agreed on the basis of clear evidence that giving men suffering from this free legal no-questions-asked access to all women's single-sex spaces and categories (from toilets to prisons to sports events) was the best treatment for this disorder.

Then ask yourself, even in that case, is the good that derives from giving these men these rights enough to offset the discomfort, distress and fear caused to women by allowing the men such access? Nobody ever seems to ask that.

Then consider that once you have granted any subset of men free legal no-questions-asked access to all women's single-sex spaces and categories, you have de facto granted any man who wants it free legal no-questions-asked access to all women's single-sex spaces and categories. Including perverts, voyeurs, flashers and rapists.

Is it still worth it?

Sadly, a lot of people, mostly but not exclusively men, will say yes.

In fact though, we have no evidence that granting such access treats any mental health condition, and we're being told that it isn't a mental health condition at all.

If we really drill down to what benefit all this disruption to society and destruction of women's rights will confer on trans-identifying men, the answer seems to be that it will spare them a bit of embarrassment. And you know what? They're going to be embarrassed any way you play it, because a man in a wig and lipstick seldom looks anything like a woman, and that's the incongruity that people see daily. Not the incongruity between the wig and lipstick and a birth certificate that hardly ever has to be produced.

 

[Rolfe]

I do recognise the style. It's someone who has to put something together but isn't sure either what that something is or how to express it. So they stitch together some words and phrases that sound as if they would be appropriate in a document like that, and call it job done.

Surely any competent civil servant would have vetoed that on sight?

More amateur hour at the London Palladium drafting, this time in the risk assessment form. It's not an assessment, it's a wish-list for the convicted person.

https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1619755562035724289

 

[Rolfe]

I remember reading this article right back at the beginning when I woke up to what's going on with the trans agenda.

Inauthentic Selves: The modern LGBTQ+ Movement Is Run By Philanthropic Astroturf And Based On Junk Science

The transgender movement is not marginalized voices finally being heard; it is a case of large amounts of money being heard.

 

[theprestige]

I thought we'd established that "transgender identity" ought to be accomodated regardless of psychiatric diagnosis, according to those on the right side of history? Which is to say folks like LJ aren't arguing about diagnosis and treatment so much as social affirmation for self-discovered identity.

(I cannot object to such affirmation, of course, so long as it is voluntary.)

LJ is pretending the two things are separable. Even though gender dysphoria is a real condition. Even though AGP is a real condition. Even though people who suffer from these conditions, if they go untreated or mistreated, are likely to commit self-destructive and anti-social acts. LJ asserts that the moment anyone suffering from such a condition self-IDs, all question of such conditions, and all question of treatment, must be discarded.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, if they don't need treatment, they don't need to be "affirmed" by having society reform itself around their desires, do they?

 

[theprestige]

Well, if they don't need treatment, they don't need to be "affirmed" by having society reform itself around their desires, do they?

That's what we keep coming back to. But of course LJ doesn't like that conclusion either.

Anyway, it seems simple enough to me:

A man says he identifies as a woman.

If he suffers no distress from this dichotomy, then he needs nothing more than common courtesy, and certain protections in housing, employment, and access to public services - which he already has. Not by virtue of being trans, but by virtue of being human. This humanity is the valid lived condition he shares with homosexuals, by the way.

If he does suffer distress from this dichotomy, then he needs medical attention and ethical treatment for the condition he suffers from.

In neither scenario should transcending sex segregation ever come up. It's not necessary to alleviate suffering in the first scenario (because there is no suffering in the first scenario), and is not known to be an effective or ethical treatment in the second scenario.

 

[d4m10n]

Do you also believe that, in order for society to consider a person to be homosexual, the person requires diagnosis and treatment?

Homosexuals aren't exactly clamoring for access to irreversible medical or surgical procedures, are they? Some analogies are subtly flawed, but this one is disanalogous in a fairly obvious way.

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