The outrage over 'birthing people' definitely has a lot to do with the right pushing the culture war. Otherwise the prevailing sentiment would probably be something like "that's dumb, but whatever".
Transgender rights discussion
- Thread starter crappycraperson
- Start date
The outrage over 'birthing people' definitely has a lot to do with the right pushing the culture war. Otherwise the prevailing sentiment would probably be something like "that's dumb, but whatever".
NHS to close Tavistock child gender identity clinic
The NHS is to close the UK's only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people.
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been told to shut the clinic by spring after it was criticised in an independent review.
Instead, new regional centres will be set up to "ensure the holistic needs" of patients are fully met, the NHS said.
The trust said it supported plans for a new model due to a rise in referrals.
The changes will take place after an independent review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, said the Tavistock clinic needed to be transformed.
The new centres - one based in London and the other in the North West - should be fully open in spring 2023 and would run in conjunction with leading children's hospitals, including Great Ormond Street and Alder Hey.
They will aim to help support young people under the age of 18 who are struggling with their gender identity, and be linked to mental health care and GP services where relevant.
There will be no immediate changes for people already under the Tavistock's care.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62335665
Thought this may be the best place for this.
The NHS is to close the UK's only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people.
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been told to shut the clinic by spring after it was criticised in an independent review.
Instead, new regional centres will be set up to "ensure the holistic needs" of patients are fully met, the NHS said.
The trust said it supported plans for a new model due to a rise in referrals.
The changes will take place after an independent review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, said the Tavistock clinic needed to be transformed.
The new centres - one based in London and the other in the North West - should be fully open in spring 2023 and would run in conjunction with leading children's hospitals, including Great Ormond Street and Alder Hey.
They will aim to help support young people under the age of 18 who are struggling with their gender identity, and be linked to mental health care and GP services where relevant.
There will be no immediate changes for people already under the Tavistock's care.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62335665
Thought this may be the best place for this.
In other transphobia-related news today, it's emerged that, according to their own records, only 7% of the LGB Alliance's 4502 subscribers identify as lesbians. That means LGB Alliance, an organisation with the stated goal of promoting the rights of lesbians, has around 315 lesbian subscribers in total.
could just be that
1) Lesbians are a smaller % of the population
2) lots of non lesbians care about LGB issues for example there are probably more white BLM supporters than black due to population spread.
More on the closure of Tavistock:
Speaking of the LGB Alliance, here is a (long) thread on Allison Bailey's case, which was recently decided:
LGB Alliance ally Posie Parker giving up abortion rigths to own the Ts:
She's also an associate of Kathleen Stock, an LGB trustee and former professor who has popped up in various PC gone mad threads
She's also an associate of Kathleen Stock, an LGB trustee and former professor who has popped up in various PC gone mad threads
England just brought it home, let's use this to talk about trans people.
Nick Cohen is under investigation for complaints of harassment made by female colleagues.
This is the Telegraph's way of reporting it.
What's this, the types who attempt to surreptitiously blame 'TRAs' at every opportunity are not actually in it to support women but to propagate their own shitty stance on the issue, right up to the point that they will actively cover for allegations of sexual assault against women? Say it aint so.
Actually I always thought it so - gotcha. They've always been total fecking creeps.
Actually I always thought it so - gotcha. They've always been total fecking creeps.
What's this about?
The Globe theatre will be showing a play on the life of Joan of Arc, and have made the creative decision to portray Joan of Arc as non-binary.
This has caused uproar as an attack on feminism and all women. Here's Julie Bindel's take: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-the-globe-making-joan-of-arc-non-binary-
Dan Hodges, he of the Mail who has terrible opinions, has decried that the world has gone mad.
Many people have pointed our that:
a) Glenda Jackson is his mum (news to me!), and
b) Glenda Jackson, a woman, portrayed a man in King Lear, and no-one thought the world had imploded.
Equally so when Patrick Stewart starred as Othello in 1997 when Othello was white and the rest of the cast was African American: https://playbill.com/article/patrick-stewart-stars-in-race-reversed-othello-in-dc-nov-17-com-72158.
Perhaps a separate thread on transphobia in general needs to be created since a lot of the content in this thread isn't about J.K Rowling anymore.
Or this could just become a transphobia thread? Which does sound like I am advocating a hate crime...
Not sure those points in bold carry any weight.
Women taking opportunities away from men should generally be applauded, in terms of correcting historical imbalance. The converse is obviously a completely different scenario.
Casting a white man as Othello would get you absolutely crucified if it happened today. With good reason. So whatever happened in 1997 isn’t particularly relevant.
Meanwhile, in Floridastan...
I'm on the fence. Artistic freedom and experimentation is a valid and important element. The white Othello in an otherwise black cast is an interesting setup - and one that potentially challenges an audience to see the dynamics at work. Glenda playing Lear is just a twist on men playing women in drama in the past. In both cases they present challenges to typical scenarios of under-representation and the lack of good roles to certain groups.
I guess Joan of Arc bothers me, because she is actually a challenge in herself - she's more or less a classic example of a gender non-conforming woman. However, the leap from being a woman who doesn't fit the stereotype to non-binary or trans feels like the co-option of that historic and dramatic rarity a strong woman.
It's hard to get past the idea that the message is that if you're strong, you're not a woman. I'm sure that isn't the intent of the drama. It might not even be how I'd actually react to seeing it performed. Still, my first instinct was it was taking a rare female heroine and explaining her away.
Would help finding topics of interest. I was hoping to see some thoughts on a documentary making it's rounds in the US , by a pretty obnoxious conservative media group , but which also has quite a few positive remarks from all sides of the coin
Race reverse casting has been used fro Anthony and Cleopatra and in 2014 in Death of a Salesman too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race-reversed_casting
I am not sure that this is not an example of correcting an under-representation of non-binary characters on stage.
For me, every version of a play or story involves some element of re-writing. Casting decisions, directoral interpretations, stage instructions all go towards a unique performance of whatever original material is being presented. I think Richard III and its many adaptations are a good example - Kenneth Branagh, Antony Sher and Ian McKellen play widly divergent versions of the same figure, even if the source material is the same.
Another reason why I personally view the blowback over this decision as out of proportion is that Joan of Arc is already an LGBT icon. The fact we don't know with certainty about her sexuality has led to many people (legitimately in my view) reinterpreting her life and 'filling in the blanks'.
For example, there is a whole wiki site dedicated to her sexuality, cross-dressing and gender identity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dressing,_gender_identity,_and_sexuality_of_Joan_of_Arc
She was subject of a 1931 biography which claimed she was a lesbian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Joan_of_Arc_(Sackville-West)
Articles on whether she was genetically male: https://glreview.org/article/article-577/
Defended as a queer saint: http://saints.queerchurch.info/?p=56
Defended as a lesbian: https://365daysoflesbians.tumblr.com/post/174405676674/may-30-joan-of-arc-1412-1431 (this also shows indivduals and celebrities dressing as Joan did as a performative statement)
And portrayed in a tonne of art as LGBT: https://qspirit.net/joan-of-arc-cross-dressing-lgbtq/
Joan has even been defended as a trans activist.
This is despite the lack of historical evidence, not because of it.
I am not posting this to convince you or anyone of these views or opinions. I don't agree with them all. But it does show that a historical figure is being interpreted as part of the LGBT community.
Yes, this is a play, and not an article in an academic journal or a piece of art (you may feel that's a key difference, whereas I do not), but I do not see how this has crossed a line, or is providing a radically different interpretation to the story than all the other portrayals above.
Moreover, it is one version of a play. If it is unsuccessful, it won't be run again. But my criticism of the reaction more generally (not yours specifically) is that this is somehow an unreasonable portrayal of a historical figure, when we have had decades of similar portrayals.
I do understand the bolded.
All I would say is that Joan is probably one of the most represented historical figures in stage, screen and in the written word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_Joan_of_Arc
And I few interpretations of her are already unfair and present a negative portrayal of who she was and what she represented.
In Henry VI, Part 1, Shakespeare introduces her as a pious young woman but at the end outs her as a witch who is justly executed. In 1801 Schiller gave her a helmet which rendered her invincible, but this stopped working when she fell in love and she was killed in battle.
This new play may - as you say - end up negatively portraying the figure and sending a problematic message. It may also just be terrible and cancelled. But if it does (and I obviously hope it does not) then (sadly) it would not be the first performance which takes a feminist figure and reduces her to something that she was not.
I want to stay away from the topic because some people may trigger me. I have a trans nephew that was born a girl
No worries at all and my apologies - I only asked as I saw you were online.
Maybe just a thread title change to offer a wider discussion on the topic?
Ironically, I think this reading requires on an anachronistic application of a relatively modern concept of gender and feminism to a world in which they simply didn't apply. Generally speaking, our society is at least somewhat accepting of the idea that women are perfectly capable of doing stereotypically manly things, or disliking stereotypically womanly things, without it being a shocking affront to natural law. This was not the case in Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages.
When she wore women's clothes, Joan of Arc was not simply seen as a woman who didn't conform, she was seen as a woman who had fundamentally transgressed against the laws of God. Her wearing of men's clothes was one of the reasons she was able to be charged with heresy, and her continuing to wear them after abduring was the pretext to reopening her case and having her charged as a relapsed heretic and handed over the English for execution.
With that in mind, I think the metaphor being made in the play is quite obvious. It's drawing an analogy between the way Joan of Arc was treated by the church as a woman transgressing the widely accepted gender roles of Christian Europe at the time, and the way AFAB non-binary people are received by many elements of our society (particularly journalism and politics) for transgressing the widely accepted gender binary our society subscribes to. I certainly can see a tinge of something akin to religious fundamentalism in the way some people talk about AFAB non-binary people "denying biology", "betraying their sex" etc. The way someone like Julie Bindel rails against "gender ideology" she might as well be a 14th century Bishop railing against the latest heresy.
Now, I don't know if this play is the best way to make that point, but it's just a play. It's not claiming to be a documentary and there are thousands of other interpretations of Joan of Arc's story which are likely just as inaccurate, albeit for different reasons. I'd say the fact that this specifically has garnered so much publicity and stirred up so much controversy, largely due the collective outrage of "gender critical" "feminists" in the media, probably proves the point the director was trying to make.
I agree with what you just said. And yet...
It also sounds as if you're describing the right of women not to conform to social stereotypes as if it's a battle won in the modern world, and that's where I think a lot of the misgivings expressed come from. It's not a battle won in big chunks of the world and even where it is, it's a conditional win - and sometimes even a transient one.
Sometimes it only applies to the young, single, childless (and not pregnant) professional. It's also very recent as well. Some of those who get angriest in the Twitter rows are women who didn't conform to gender driven dress codes, or behaviours, or interests, or who are attracted to other women. The older ones spent most of their youth defending themselves from, "so why are you pretending to be a bloke?" or "let's see what you've got down your pants" They're suspicious of things that suggest non-conformance is the same as pulling away from their womanhood.
It feels like it should be the case that the previously marginalised and discriminated against should feel safe and empathetic enough to welcome a minority group that's got a tough fight to get even a modicum of fairness - but I can see why it can be the opposite.
For me, I'm less invested - I did live more or less the life I wanted, and I want that freedom for other people. I see space in art and drama for exploration and challenge, but I also see why others would take that challenge as an attack on their own hard fought right to be who they are.
It's not. Don't really understand that line of thought here.
I feel like a different way to have gone about this would have been a new play written about a non binary protagonist...something derived like...In the Heights I think it was, which was based off Romeo and Juliet but set in a more contemporary New York borough.
Do you have a link to the documentary?
Is that the ‘what is a woman’ doc?
Yeah I don't disagree with you. I did half-write a bit in my post addressing the point you make in your first big paragraph, but cut it as it felt I was going on too much. I think that's a valid point which I'd have a lot of sympathy for if someone from one of those parts of the world was making it to show that we tend to universalise the experiences of certain types of people and assume battles are won which demonstrably aren't for many others.
But as far as I can see, the people who are riling this up into a controversy are the same bunch of rich, white UK-based journalists who leap on any excuse to engineer false conflicts between non-binary people and women. Their intent clearly isn't to contribute in good faith to the discussion this play raises, it's to torpedo the play by labelling it anti-woman and thereby shut down that discussion.
I sort of understand the POV you're describing in your second paragraph, but where it falls down for me is that polling shows that the majority of women, and the vast majority of lesbian and bi women, don't think that way. The view that trans and non-binary identities are instrinsically harmful to women is a minority one, but one we hear a lot because it's adherents are massively overrepresented in the media.
Yup that's the one. I watched it coming in without much knowledge on any of the dialogue, except for what I've seen in Dave Chappelles last few specials which isn't exactly ideal. Definitely has a bit of condescending tones which isn't a surprise given the producer. But what did surprise me was the specific interviewees. I wish that I could discuss this openly somewhere without being shamed, with some thoughtful discourse to help me better understand whatever the fck is going on.
No I know what you mean. I saw quite a lot of it. There’s not a lot in there that I disagreed with if I’m being honest.
It obviously is not but the whole left vs right is about stupid point scoring on social media.
Nuanced discussion has taken a hit and it is all about who is “winning”.
so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
and it’s over 1000 pages long
Always easier to write what you know.so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
she is so fecking pathetic honestly
so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
I almost want to read it.
Imagine having all that money and still wanting nothing more than to post online.