No floating of views allowed

Another one of these:

Stephanie Douet says more on her blog today:

I have just been expelled from Outpost studios and membership for writing this post that their Committee describes as ‘explicitly transphobic and discriminatory’ and ‘causing discomfort and offence’.

My post may have been ignorant or insensitive, but it was neither transphobic or discriminatory, or was it intentionally hurtful.

My question is this: how is anyone ever gain any meaningful understanding, see someone else’s point of view or change their mind – without asking questions?

She includes a communication from OUTPOST’s board of trustees explaining why they have decided to shun her.

April 15th 2020

Dear Stephanie,

I am writing to inform you that your position as a studio holder at OUTPOST studios, and as a member of OUTPOST has been discussed by the trustees after a public online post you made was highlighted to us. The post contained explicitly transphobic statements failing to show respect and consideration to others. OUTPOST does not tolerate discrimination against individual’s protected characteristics.

What was it she said again?

I want to float my view that for someone to want to change gender is a failure of imagination and visual awareness. If you feel you are in the wrong body, surgically altering that body is not the only possible solution. There is more to being a man or woman than just looking like a man or woman.

For example, David Bowie was a pioneering explorer of what it is possible to do with the raw materials of flesh and hair, as are fashion designers from the wilder shores of creativity, playfully liberating themselves from the binary with cloth and face paint.

Can we instead consider the question ‘what does being a woman/man look like?’ – but consider it only having spent an hour looking through Vogue?” – 10th February 2020

She’s talking about, and thinking about, the ideas behind calling people “transgender.” It’s not “phobic” to do that. It’s more the other way around: it’s thoughtphobic, understandingphobic, analysisphobic, truthphobic to shun and punish people for trying to think about and analyze and understand concepts. Transgenderism is a concept, and it’s a very new and very rapidly expanding and enveloping concept, yet we are not allowed to think about and talk about and question the concept. That is ridiculous; it’s Trump-level ridiculous.

The censoring shunning Board continues, starting with another paragraph from Douet:

“I don’t have a moral or ethical stance with regard to trans matters – I know little about it – it just seems to open the door to possibilities of grief, pain and disappointment, all the things you want to protect your loved ones from” – 14th February 2020

We felt that this breached the studio license agreement in regards to the Key issue of compliance ‘(q) To have a duty of care towards other licensees, the committee and the building’ and jeopardizes OUTPOST’s “equality of opportunity and equal treatment of all persons involved with the organization” as stated in our Equal Opportunities Policy. As you are an active and outspoken member of the OUTPOST community on Facebook and beyond, this means that statements like this are not private but in fact are highly visible to others and to other studio holders. It is for these reasons we are also considering removing your membership of the charity.

It’s as if they’ve all been hypnotized and drugged and threatened and held hostage.

There is further correspondence; the Board’s side of the debate does not become any more reasonable or fair or adult.

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