Subject: I see.
Author:
Posted on: 2019-01-21 14:57:00 UTC

Did you know there's at least one PPCer who frequents Mumsnet? You might want to consider how responding to 'looks like you're accidentally using a broad brush' with 'no, it's full of that' is going to feel for them.

~

Thank you for the article; I think it:

1/ Suffers a bit from trying to group a lot of loosely-connected details into a single narrative stream. The timeframe under discussion jumps around quite a lot, though by a weird coincidence three of the four actual years named are '2000'.

2/ Does a strangely lackluster job of discussing harassment and assault against trans people, which I know from other sources can only be describes as a vile flood of abuse right now. I think it only mentions 'who are themselves disproportionately vulnerable to violence' once, whereas there are repeated mentions of the idea of trans women as a source of violence. My guess is I'm either misreading the purpose of the article slightly, or The Outline works from the assumption that said vulnerability is going to be at the top of its readers' minds anyway.

3/ Highlights well, though through a strange mix of naming names, naming groups, and vaguely pointing at loose assemblages, that horribly large numbers of people behave awfully to and about people who don't slot neatly into the old-fashioned sex-gender binary. That's a terribly indictment on society and I wish it would go away.

4/ Seems to presuppose acceptance of the idea that sex is subordinate to gender. The phrase 'gender segregated hospital wards' is clanging quite hard against my skull: due to the way legal terminology has been changed, it's probably true at the moment, but they were pretty clearly originally sex-segregated (if a 1950s nurse had discovered that their patient was what would now be recognised as a trans woman, I'm positive they'd have transferred them to a different ward).

'Gender segregated hospital wards' is an idea that makes absolutely no sense to me; 'sex segregated hospital wards', given some of the stories Kaitlyn has told me about elderly patients, I can see some logic in.

5/ Is a showcase of hyperbole from both the article - it compares Mumsnet to 4Chan, which is laughable whatever you're comparing to 4Chan - but far more so from the people it's discussing. Claiming to 'debunk' what's basically someone's personality - or saying that you can get 'rigorous testing by someone in a lab coat' for it - is utterly ludicrous, and pretending that society doesn't (stupidly) treat men and women differently is not just wrong, it shows a dangerous disregard for experiences outside your (not your-your, obviously) own.

hS

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