John Nicolson in the chair
John Nicolson MP is the witness today. KM is Karon Monaghan KC – Counsel for LGB Alliance.
KM – outlining the panel, fairly stringent requirements
Now going on to proposed reforms.
KM – may apply for a GRC if 16,
JN – you can vote in Scotland at 16 that is the motivation
The use of the word child is ’emotive’ and that person has adult responsibilities.
KM – Legally ‘child’
JN – You would agree that a child is not allowed to vote
KM – I’m not here to answer your questions.JN – repeats point. Then can we agree ‘young adult’.
KM – I will say child.
JN – I will say young adult.
Naturally. Words are magic; that’s the whole point. A man is a woman if he says he is; a kid of 16 is an adult if John Nicolson MP says she is. Meanwhile whatever you call the person age 16, the reality is that her brain is still a work in progress, and people her age are not generally fully equipped to make drastic decisions that will change the course of their lives for the next 50 years or more.
KM – brief discussion of interim vs full GRC (to do with persons who are married)
KM – prepare a declaration, born in Scotland, lived in your acquired gender for 3 months, intend to live in acquired gender. That is all. That is a fundamental change is it not?
JN – the objective is to make it easier and less intrusive.
KM – and highly controversial
There are some things that shouldn’t be made easier and less intrusive for very young people. Driving a car for instance. Drinking gin. Owning a gun. Getting married. Having babies.
It seems John Nicolson talks too fast and not always on topic.
(Struggling to keep up with JN responses to KM questions)
JN – explains his role on parliament committee, and overwhelming support for LGBTQ persons.
KM – asks JN to focus on questions and answer them, interrupting JN to do so.
KM – (back to question)
KM – asking the question again, ‘it is a model that is usually called self id or self declaration’
JN – yes
KM – it sets the bar lower for changing sex
JN – lower is an emotive word. Less intrusive is better.
KM – the concern is that it will erode sex based rights.
Sir, sir, “less intrusive” is also emotive. It’s not the emo you object to, it’s the direction of emo. You want to direct the emo your way: in the direction of “being trans is awesome and teenagers should be encouraged to embrace it in every aspect.”
KM – when a person does not have a GRC they can be excluded from a single sex service with a lower bar. Do you understand that?
JN – I understand that those without a GRC can be excluded.
KM – so getting a GRC is an important thing.
JN – It is such an important thing for someone who is born into the wrong body, that’s why it is such an important progressive piece of legislation.
There’s no such thing as being born into the wrong body. That’s a fairy tale; it’s an absurd thing for adults to be invoking with a straight face.
KM – perhaps I will have to take you to what MM and the DoE say about the wrong body narrative.
JN – what do you mean narrative. It is their lived experience.
Oh good god.
KM – do you understand the view of LGBA is that sex matters and that this reform will undermine sex based rights.
JN – I know that LGBA has expressed extreme views and tweeted abuse at me, calling me a pedophile and a rapist enabler.
KM – I do not believe there is one piece of evidence before the tribunal that supports that.
JN – of course they have, and it is a minority view.KM – you understand that individuals are entitled to campaign and comment on matters in the public domain.
JN – refers to section 28 period, abuse in public, free speech.
KM – so I take it you agree that members of the public and civil society are allowed to comment.
There’s some quarreling, during which the judge tells Nicolson to answer the questions.
KM – sorry, I meant, it is reasonable for them to express this view.
JN – yes, but some of things they express in this document are expressly false. Especially ‘danger to children’.
KM – I will come on to that. ‘Believe in respectful polite debate’. Nothing problematic there?
JN – except its a very coy statement and it runs counter to how they are campaigning.
KM – are you saying there are hidden messages?
JN – they don’t want their supporters submissions to be rejected because they are aggressive
KM – next page sets out current position.JN – implies that people are whimsical in their decision to change their gender,
KM – says it will be much easier and become automatic
JN – you say easier but it is incredibly traumatic to change your gender.
KM – and access risk, with a GRC you can access spaces.
Wait. It’s incredibly traumatic to change your gender, but young teenagers should be completely free to do it. Isn’t it possible that the incredibly traumatic part is a reason not to let children make irreversible changes to their developing bodies?
Skipping ahead a bit –
KM – do you agree that sex based rights are at risk?
JN – and I’m going to completely disagree.
KM – a male that gets a GRC, and is a heterosexual, does that make that person a lesbian?
JN – I just do not understand this obsession with people’s genitalia, LGBA appears to think about nothing else from the moment they get up in the morning until they go to bed at night.
He talks like a Twitter jockey, not an MP.
KM – do you accept that changes in legislation should be debated and discussed in the public domain.
JN – ‘this will allow predatory men’, straight out of the Section 28 playbook, debate needs to be respectful, truthful and not hurtful.
KM – you accept that this is discussing men, all men, not gay men.
JN – men don’t need a GRC to access women’s spaces and they do it now. Nobody in my experience goes to M&S and is asked to prove their gender.
So blithely unconcerned with what women might worry about.
KM – you understand why there are women only spaces?
JN – I understand that lots of women do not want to be naked in front of men in public spaces.
KM – do you respect that ?
JN – I have always and will always respect that.
KM – do you understand that women are concerned that predatory men will use a GRC in order to access women’s spaces?
JN – Predatory men is scare mongering and no evidence from other jurisdictions that this is happening, there is no ‘epidemic’.
He will always respect that, except of course when he doesn’t.
KM – do you respect the views of women who worry about this?
JN – I always respect minority views.
Hey! We’re not a minority!
KM – do you respect their concerns?
JN – yes.
KM – this advertisement is not aggressive and uses measured terms.
JN – it dogwhistles aggression towards trans people and LGBA are whipping up fear and trepidation. Scaremongering, deeply offensive.
So that’s a no.
JN – they are linking predators to transpeople, that is prejudicial.
KM – they are linking men to predators.
JN – prejudicial to transpeople.
KM – looking at these documents to see if we see anything aggressive. Making observations about sport, hospitals, GIDS and the impact of maligning lesbians who are concerned about this as transphobic. You profoundly disagree with LGBA and there is nothing problematic about that.
JN – full of false statements, untruths, scaremongering, trans people do not simply grow up to be gay.KM – Have you read the Cass Review?
JN – I have read a short summary.
KM – asking for a break.
JN – I have other duties, we are 90 minutes in and we haven’t yet discussed their charitable duties.
KM – if the witness would answer the question we could finish more quickly
They took a break at that point, so I’ll end the post here.
I agree that predatory men is an important point. But to me, an even more basic point was made – some women don’t like getting naked in public around men. (A lot of us don’t even like getting naked in public around women.)
And, of course, predatory men are not the problem in sports. I guess that’s why JN continues to harp on the predatory narrative. He doesn’t even want people to really see any of the rest. If he can find one TiM that is not predatory, he will claim that proves the risk isn’t great. Then he can note that men can get into the spaces now, and that takes care of the rest of it.
While I think everyone here would disagree with that argument, that he can’t present solid evidence of no increased risk to women is something we have all seen, I think we would also agree that it is only part of the argument. Sort of like rape and incest in making abortion legal. The problem is, while those issues need to be dealt with, the opposition is too deft at diverting attention solely to them as if it is the only argument we are making.
I won’t even say they’re setting up a straw man, because that involves attacking the weakest part of the argument. They are thinking if they can dispute this part, the rest of the GC argument will fall of its own.
They are not debating in good faith.
Oh yeah, very much only part of it. Personally I mind the whole usurpation/pushing aside part way more than the risk part [but I spend little to no time in public places where the risk could come into play so I have to correct for that form of “privilege”].
Has JN looked at the statements of people on his side?
Right here. This is a tacit admission that TiMs are male. If they did not believe this, they would not make the leap between “male predators” and “transwomen.” If they really believed TWAW, they would not make this shift so quickly and easily.
Here’s the thing, it’s not even necessary to start with predatory men.
Arguendo, transwomen are women. It’s possible for a man to claim to be a transwoman. Assuming we care about keeping men out of women’s spaces, we must distinguish between transwomen and men who claim to be transwomen. How do we do that?
I’ve been asking how we distinguish between trans women and men who claim to be trans women for what feels like centuries.
So? I don’t know if it makes sense to speak of raw human experience detached from the stories we tell ourselves about it, but we can still at least attempt to distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity. “I was born in the wrong body” may describe how some “gender” (sex) dysphoric people attempt to make sense of their feelings of alienation from society’s gender norms and from their own bodies, but nobody should be required to validate the stories other people believe about themselves. It’s the “lived experience” of some Christians that Jesus is their close personal friend. I used to have a neighbor whose “lived experience” was that another neighbor was invoking demons to bedevil him.
I hate the term “lived experience” even more than I hate “journey.” It’s a thought-terminating cliche wrapped in a deepity inside a tautology.
What is this “Cass Report” you keep asking about? Damning that witnesses so far have failed to read (or don’t admit to reading) any more than the summary. If they admit to having read it, then they have to answer questions regarding its conclusions, when they’d much rather say “LALALALALA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!”
These comments I came across on Twitter sum up the situation very well:
Something that has struck me is how consistently unprepared and sloppy genderists are when held to account for their actions. It’s not just a thread but a highway, running through the Forestater case, the Bailey case, and now this one. If you were to write it into a play, novel, or movie, nobody would believe it. And yet, we have seen this blinkered, naive smugness in their confident purity play out again. And again. And again. You would think that someone or some organization claiming to do work on a social justice issue would be able to explain exactly what they stand for, what they do and why they do it. They would welcome the opportunity to do this, to bring attention and spread awareness and knowledge of their goals and need behind them. I know of no legitimate social movement that is at a loss for words when the Those testifying are so sure of the righteousness of their position, and its self evident truth, that they are taken completely by surprise when they encounter those who do not share this belief, and who do not see the manifest Evil of those who oppose them. Outside of a sympathetic audience of true believers, they are incapable of supporting their beliefs, or the actions they take on the basis of those beliefs. Outside the hothouse bubble of online trans activism, they are led like children to betray their own cause by answering questions they never imagined they would be asked. In a neutral arena, their actions are seen for what they are; deliberate, targeted persecution, harassment and injury.
This case has become an embarassing unforced error, an own goal that would not have happened if Mermaids & Co. had had the sense (and decency) to leave LGBA alone. But that would have meant accepting the end of the hegemonic hold they claimed over the LGBTQetc. “community,” and that was just more than they could accept. So “No LGB without the T” it was. In a bizarre coupling of delusional overconfidence and desperation at the prospect of losing power, they’ve launched a fanatical, defamatory attack against people who are better prepared, better informed, and more confident than they will ever be. Far from demonstrating their clase against the charitable status of LGBA, they have revealed how careless and incurious their own organization is in regards to research and findings touching the area in which it claims specialized knowlege and competence. If there was any justice, this proceding would result in Mermaids own charitable staus being forfeit.
Genderists’ inability to define their beliefs to any reasonable standard reminds me of theists’ inability to do the same. How many times have you run into a wall where a definition of God (or even god) should be? Or prayer? Or any number of other seemingly core terms in their belief systems?
By now, the comparison to religion is so familiar and obvious as to be boring and cliche, but damn me if the movement isn’t best understood in terms of religious psychology, especially cult psychology.