I’m not seeing the confidence building part
How to do politics that is serious and honest:
Starting with honest – it’s not honest to say “the anti-trans movement” when he’s talking about Maya and the ruling. It’s not “anti-trans” to defend women’s rights, even when we are defending them in the face of actions and policies promoted by some trans activists.
Also, yes it is about trying to humiliate a person, when he singles Maya out for abuse and lies – when he calls her names and claims she’s doing things she’s not doing. Of course it is. His “honest” is not honest at all.
And then there’s the string of stupid abusive epithets for three prominent gender critics. That’s neither honest nor serious.
He’s very heads I win tails you lose, which is also not my idea of honest.
No, it’s the other way around. Gender critical describes our view of gender, and anti-trans is just an abusive lie. We’re opposed to the magical new dogma that says men turn into women by saying they are women; that doesn’t make us “anti-trans.”
I take issue with its use because it’s inaccurate, and malicious, and coming from a grown-ass barrister who says it and adds a lol.
I take issue with it because it presumes true the very thing at issue. Underhanded, that.
That too.
It’s very lawyerly, I suppose, but it’s the kind of lawyerly that gets a lot of objections in court…I hope.
I wonder who Cox thinks that he is fooling. Intellectually honest interactions are easy to to spot, generally speaking, as are their counterparts (the dishonest ones). Cox is not scoring any points on the honest-side by broadcasting his virtue with the use of pejorative terms favored by many pro-trans and anti-feminist activists, or by slurring his opponents for no reason. Okay, so he disagrees with Glinner–where is the “conspiracy” or even the demagoguery in his messages that sex matters more than self-identity?
Another pronoun packing hypester. I think he’s angling for a transsexual girlfriend. Maybe trying too hard at it too.
Whenever someone starts by proclaiming themselves “serious and honest”, I wait for the buffoonish, cartoonish lies. “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted the spoons.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Progressives seem to be thrilled to have found a ‘progressive’ way to hate women.
What is this “…no political background playing at politics.” garbage? Is there now a badge one must earn to be able to participate in the society? Do citizens have to be vetted by the Wokerati to be allowed to take part in politics now?
Southwest88, they do if they are a woman. Especially middle aged or older woman.
Cox – and he’s not alone – is obsessed with there being “leaders” and “figureheads” and with GC being a “movement” (movements are bad when they have letters in them that aren’t ‘T’).
We saw this in people who campaigned against the atheist and skeptic…erm…. movements, too.
People seem to like to have people to take cartoonish pot-shots at when they don’t have anything as fundamental as an argument. It’ was all a big ad hom based on straw versions of what those people said. I was tired of it then and I’m too old and intolerant to stand for it now.
Besides, most of those ‘leaders’ turned out to be sleazebags, start their own Secret, Global, Underwater, Intellectual, Paedophile-Associating Cabal of Brainthinking or dye their hair purple and say there are seven sexes of horse. Leaders like that we can definitely do without.
I mean, Helen Staniland as ‘dangerous’? Dangerous to your badly-stacked Jenga tower of bullshit, certainly, Simon: that’s why she was mass-reported off Twitter for asking an entirely reasonable question. But I don’t see her bombing Trans HQ or assaulting older women at Speaker’s Corner.
The people Cox mentioned – much as I admire them in different ways – aren’t leaders and make no pretensions of leadership. Or at politics, for that matter; they talk, they write, they organise. They say things, in other words, that Cox doesn’t want anyone to hear. They draw people together because of their pleasantness, humour, sincerity and the truth of what they have to say. But ‘leaders’? My arse.
Oh, and over on the other thread, Cox called Maya Forstater a “figurehead”.
Well, possibly: I just bought a t shirt with a figure of her head on it, after all. But Maya likely wouldn’t be prominent in this fight at all if she hadn’t been targeted by people like Cox in the first place.
When we talk about ‘making enemies’, we usually mean to have a difference of opinion leading to disharmony or aggression. But it can also mean the actual manufacture of enemies from raw materials through targeted bullying. That’s what happened with Maya and if TAs aren’t regretting it yet, it’s because they haven’t been paying attention. She’s formidable.
@8 good point; I’ve noticed this tendency to ‘identify leaders’ (presumably to demonstrate that they have feet of clay and therefore the ideas of the ‘movement’ are not worth paying attention to)–this was hilarious to watch during the Occupy protests. I appreciate the distinction you’re making between ‘leaders’ of a ‘movement’ and people, with their own backgrounds, areas of focus, sets of evidence, and media skill and savvy, who state their thoughts and opinions in public and in the media to the acclaim and approval of some and the outrage of others.
It’s reminiscent of the “Secular Policy Institute” with its glam shots of the “Thought Leaders” grinning and, in Shermer’s case, groping.
Cox is dimwittedly confusing name recognition with Leadershiphood. Rooky mistake.
If he had evidence for what he was claiming, he would use it. He would be repeatedly quoting the hateful words used by his opponents relentlessly and mercilessly. And if they had actually said any of the actually hateful things of which he’s accusing them, he would be entirely correct in doing so. But he can’t, because they haven’t. All Cox has is supposed dog whistles and euphemisms to fall back on. He can’t quote the Awful Things They Said because nothing they’ve said is at all awful.
It’s as if gender critical feminists and their supporters speak in code all the time, that their plainly spoken words really mean something else, and that something else is a) plainly understood by all their audience, and b) Unspeakably Evil. But somehow, Gender Critical Leaders carelessly allowed acopy of their Sooper-Secret Code Book that lets their actual words be translated into What They Really Mean to fall into Simon’s hands, but strangely, for some reason, he can’t share the formula for decryption with the world at large.
Ophelia:
Yes, them’s the buggers I had in mind. The Intellectual Dark Webbers and the various incarnations of what any given combination of members chooses to call itself from moment to moment. Sometimes while supporting women or hanging out with/accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein.
I’m not sure Cox is confused, though. I think his conflation is deliberate.
Retweeted by la scapigliata on twitter:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SonyaDouglas/status/1403687694904041476