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So...there is a court case in the UK going on about the trans issue that I think will determine whether the fever is breaking or not
Basically: Mermaids, a pro-trans advocacy group is suing to remove the charity classification of another charity - the LGB Alliance. Mermaids alleges that LGBA (focused on gays and lesbians and against gender ideology) isn't a legitimate charity and will undermine Mermaids' work...and this apparently provides grounds to strip other charities in the UK?
What's fascinating is how bad Mermaids' showing during questioning is. A few of its members admit to not reading the full Cass Report that was so harsh on current gender affirmation in the UK and led to the Tavistock institute being shut down. Stuff like the following is common (TribunalTweets is covering the trial):
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that you cannot specify that you only want to meet female bodied people you are being denied service by the dating site based on your sexual orientation.
No real answer, just willful ignorance and obfuscation on basic topics and leaning on dogmatic phrases ("well, if transwomen are women").
Mermaids' simultaneously tries to hold the laughable position that they're not medical experts when questioned, despite all of their advocacy on sensitive issues like puberty blockers the rest of the time, including during questioning.
They also have no ability to reconcile their new beliefs with old progressive dogma (e.g. that men pose a significant threat to women due to their size and aggressiveness - hence the push for single-sex spaces for women under stuff like the Equality Act in the UK and Title IX in the US), which I think is why they want to shut down progressive critiques like LGBA.
I'm not surprised. Trans activists themselves have noted that they have more success if they can directly appeal to elites and make them feel as if this is the inevitable next move in progress. When you strip them of any aura of morality and just try to get basic answers things go harder for them cause they demand absurdities.
It's a shame that this isn't being televised because I believe some of these answers would quickly turn off not just normies but even median progressives. Especially last night where, upon being asked if a male with a penis could be a lesbian, the LGBA rep being questioned apparently go so emotional they had to adjourn.
From a purely strategic level, crying women (especially crying minority women) may be exactly what's needed to wake some people up. Men are just too easily written off as aggressive and hateful. People seem to care about female and minority concerns more. Presumably the fear of this is exactly why Mermaids is trying to crush the LGB Alliance in the cradle.
Much like the Kentaji Brown-Jackson confirmation hearing, I can't really tell what the strategy or motivation is here. It comes off as just pretending to be really stupid, but are there actually people that sincerely believe that they don't know what "woman" means due to a lack of university-level biology education? Or that are sincerely unsure about whether there is any biological difference in the average size and strength of men and women? I'm not trying to be sardonic, I really can't tell if there's a dishonest ploy going on or if people have actually become confused about these remarkably simple topics as a result of political conditioning.
My position can probably be accused of being uncharitable but I think it's multiple strands of bad thinking/maneuvers coming together:
An absolute refusal to ever "validate" the opposing side by granting them anything. You see this in how progressives rage at saying the right thing at the wrong moment (e.g. David Shor being fired for citing research that showed riots were bad for Democrats) and their constant demands to "read the room" So, if your opponents are right, just never answer the question or you will be "validating" their position
People actually telling themselves this stuff enough to the point of believing it. Or, if not believing it, enough to silence the incredulous parts of themselves in the name of "being kind".
Most importantly (for us) It's a gambit of false humility; by stating that they're not qualified to define "woman" they're also implicitly saying that their opponents are not qualified to do so either. Who is qualified? Well, professionals whose institutions are at risk of political capture (or have already thoroughly been coopted)..
I would argue that there's an even more sinister upshot to the last point: the expansion of leftist elitism and managerialism. Sex is one of the most basic, most salient things in any society. We all have opinions on it, rightly so. This position implicitly robs the average person of any right to claim a reasonable opinion except insofar as he parrots the opinion of supposedly-but-manifestly-not-unbiased "experts". Given the absolute salience of sex to so much of life, this would be ceding your intellectual independence and discernment on a bunch of fronts; dating, child-rearing, social interaction, basic speech and so on, to whoever is declared an "expert" (highly influenced by progressive activists and media). We've already seen how this ideology is being used to weaken the rights of parents.
Of course, the most important part is that it's just a lie. They are involved in trying to shape medical opinion. Full document here
Yup, rhetorical tactics 101.
I don't think that's the implicit point. I think it genuinely just cuts to the point about "only credentialed experts can define these things". It does follow from the broader "trust science" rhetoric we hear.
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