Tim Stone & the 'gender critical position'

Sarfrin 2020-11-16 18:28:52 UTC #81

But Tim isn’t employed by RPS. He’s a freelancer.

Grizzly 2020-11-16 18:34:25 UTC #82

I realize that not everyone is up to date on how ugly the anti-trans discourse in the UK has gotten. I will mention off-hand that it’s not “very online”: The bigotry is oft espoused in leading newspapers like the Gaurdian and by people like JK Rowling. You don’t have to reside in queer subreddits or on 4chan to pick up on the discourse, though you’d probably have to exist in the pseudo-intellectualist circles of the anglosphere. The discussion as it is in the UK simply does not exist in the Netherlands, for instance.

But ultimately that doesn’t really matter here since this is more about a person who works for RPS upsetting a bunch of other people who also work for RPS.

alison 2020-11-16 19:19:32 UTC #83

A few weeks ago I went to a dive bar in a rural town, a bar that has a reputation for violence. Many of the people who go are working class, most are not white.

I sat down and had a few drinks and got to playing pool with a group of laborers. After they saw me go to the women’s toilet and we had gotten to a point where they felt less shy about asking awkward questions, one of them asked if I was really a woman.

I told him “I’m not sure bud, but I do have an F on my license”. It helped to break the ice.

After that I went through the 20 questions that every trans person since forever has had to go through. “Do you have a dick?” “When did you get it done?” “Did it hurt?” “Are you saying you have a clit now?” Bla bla bla. A younger, less tolerant version of myself would have been outraged that they were reducing me to my genitals. An angrier, more bitter version of myself would have hurled abuse in their direction or immediately dismissed them as irredeemable. A sadder, lonelier version of myself would never even have gone to that bar in the first place because obviously it is not an echo chamber for the fourth wave queer trans cyber feminist discourse that dominates social media.

But the person I am today, after living for over 20 years as a woman in society, understands that most people are not consumed with spite. Most people are not secretly trying to undermine trans folks’ very existence. Don’t get me wrong - I have also been in exasperating real-world conversations with folks who sit there telling me to my face that I have an untreated mental illness and am suffering from delusions. Which is almost funny because I also have an actual mental illness that has caused me to suffer from actual delusions and I can’t believe “actual delusions” is a thing I just had to type. It’s alarming to come face to face with someone who truly hates you and everything that you are. Fortunately, in my personal experience, that is very much the exception and not the rule.

So, I’m talking to these guys and then it becomes a joke of the evening and now they’re talking about their own genitals. Because they’re men! And then one of the guys becomes the “big clit guy” and we all laugh. And one opens up about how he watched a documentary about trans people once, and it turns out he was quietly the expert in the group, but he’d never mentioned it to his buds before. They all said they’d never met a trans person in real life. I told them that guaranteed they had, they just didn’t know it. We talked about passing and gender non-conformance and detransition. They thanked me for being open.

Me sharing my experiences helped them to trust me enough to open up about theirs, which I won’t repeat here because that’s their story to tell, but suffice to say big, tough construction workers got struggles in society too.

I like to think they will go home with a more open mind. I like to think they might be just slightly better husbands, or better fathers for having met me. Maybe not, I dunno. But maybe.

And I have had these conversations over and over again, all over the world, with people of many different cultures and backgrounds. They usually turn out well. I accept that they’re going to say shit that is insensitive and problematic because they just don’t know better. I don’t correct them, because to me building a connection is more important than challenging their use of language.

Now, I know meeting people outside of work is a different situation to having a conversation at work. Work - especially white collar work - is a fraught environment where colleagues are expected to uphold a (not always formalized) code of conduct. I’m not sure that the current trend of creating the illusion of a casual and friendly workplace that actually is as restrictive and punitive as any other is entirely good for the workers’ mental health, but that’s another conversation. This is the current reality, so I get why Tim’s comments were not appropriate for work. In my opinion, neither were other contributors’, but that’s beside the point.

What I object to is not a workplace dismissal. What I object to is the clown car of (mostly cis!) bystanders who cheer this on like it is some great victory for trans rights. It is not. Will Tim and Roman and all their family and friends and fans come out of this with a better understanding of trans people? Will they really go “man, the scales dropped from my eyes, we totally should make it easier trans folks to access hormone therapy and get their surgeries done”? No. They will come out of it thinking that their guy got fired by a bunch of trans activists because he cared about women’s rights. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now the actual hate-filled scumbags who want the discussion to be framed in the most polarizing way possible have a new group of folks to try to radicalize. How does this help trans people? How does this protect trans people? Next time I am traveling outside of the safe urban bubble, some guy might punch me in the face because “my people” got his bud fired.

Anyway, I am really tired of all of this. I have lost sleep all week over this issue. Last night I removed RPS from my favorites and my browser start page because this has taken too much out of me. I am so tired of having my voice ignored or dismissed just because I am not part of whatever social media in-group lays down the law. I think badgerbadger was very astute in pointing out there is a big split here between people who spend a lot of time on social media and people who don’t. I carefully pick the media I consume because I don’t have the energy for all the petty, dogmatic wars that erupt in certain corners of the net. I like walking sims and adventure games. I want to travel, I want to meet new people, I want to have dialog, I want to hear stories. I don’t want to fight. Guess that makes me a stooge. Oh well.

To those of you on this forum who were also fellow commenters on the main site, thanks for the years of funny pun threads and enlightening discussion. For now, I am out.

Aerothorn 2020-11-16 19:55:39 UTC #84

I have always appreciated your contributions to RPS comment threads and am very sad to see you go, though completely understand it. If you have a blog or other place where you post, please let us know!

Graham 2020-11-16 22:38:39 UTC #85

I posted this in a comments thread, but I’ll paste it here because it’s relevant to most of the discussion above.

i) We didn’t name Tim in the tweet precisely because I didn’t want it to be so easily Googled. It’s the same reason why we didn’t do a front page post. We regularly excise full names from people we write about, to spare them abuse or life long Google results, and the same applies here.

ii) At the most basic level, if you work for a website, maybe don’t comment on said website to publicly criticise said website. I’ve worked with Tim in some capacity for 15 years; he had my email address.

iii) If you use a platform afforded to you by your employer to say things which upset and anger dozens of your other employers, don’t be surprised if there are consequences. A lot of the comments here and elsewhere suggest we did wrong by Tim in the face of political correctness from a faceless mob. But the sadness, disappointment, upset and anger people felt in response to Tim’s comments was sincerely felt, and the mob in this instance included not only several hundred of our readers, but other writers, freelancers and founders. To do “right” by Tim in this instance, in the eyes of some of the people here, would have been to do wrong by people such as Alec Meer, Richard Cobbett, Tom Bramwell, Jay Castello, Sin Vega, Natalie Clayton, the entire current full-time staff, and many more.

iv) Several people have mentioned Sin’s sad departure as a recent example of RPS not being as good as it used to be. How long do you imagine we’ll continue to attract writers like Sin if we do nothing in this situation?

v) There is debate everywhere on these “issues”. People are free to ask questions and have conversation and to learn by doing so. It’s different if you’re doing that at your place of work however, as a person with a platform.

vi) Tim and all our freelancers were given a pay rise last year. When our budget was slashed in half this year, we reduced or cancelled every weekly column except for The Flare Path. I feel that we have treated Tim fairly throughout his time working here, and Tim has said as much in comments since his departure.

vii) Tim was asked to apologise, and did not offer an appropriate apology. He and I traded a dozen long emails on the subject. I wanted to find a way forward, but we were unable to do so.

viii) I agree there are no winners in this situation. It is sad.

alms 2020-11-16 23:02:51 UTC #86

Sitting on the sidelines, I can’t see how it would have been possible to ‘do right’ by Tim: in my book, those asking RPS to capitulate on trans rights are effectively pushing for them to pack their bags and go home, as other sites have disintegrated over stuff like this.

Letting him go was a decision that made sense on both the human and business levels, also because doing otherwise would have compromised RPS’s reputation, as others have cleverly suggested.

Painful, but if there were any alternatives that didn’t involve some form of self-destruction, I don’t know and would like to hear about them.

Some narratives were certainly astute and fascinatingly weaved together, and that’d be all I have to say on that matter for now.

Aerothorn 2020-11-16 23:11:38 UTC #87

I can only imagine how frustrating and impossible the entire affair was to deal with as the person ultimately responsible for making decisions, and the trade-offs involved; in particular I’ve thought a lot about the trade-offs between being professional and not unduly disparaging anyone involved, and keeping your readers informed as to what has happened to a long-time writer for the site, and there are definitely no easy answers. As always, I appreciate you sharing as much as you’re able; it really does mean a lot to me and others who care a lot about the site. For me, it’s always a lot easier to accept conclusions if you know how they were reached.

I am just another reader and won’t add in my two cents on the whole thing, because that’s not helpful to anyone, but I did want to raise one question, which is more of a “food for thought” question than a “I expect an answer” question:

In the announcement tweet, you wrote that “we strive to create an inclusive space for all people.” And yet the announcement was about excluding someone from that space in service of making other people feel comfortable in that space. It read to me that what you wanted to write was “we strive to create a safe space for all people.”

I mention this because one thing I’ve learned is that while people often talk about both “inclusive spaces” and “safe spaces,” and both are necessary in a society, they are actually two opposite poles on a spectrum. A maximally inclusive space - one in which literally every person on planet earth was welcome - would be genuinely unsafe for an enormous number of people. On the opposite extreme, the most safe possible space for a person is an armored room that grants entry to no one but themselves.

Trying to be both safe and inclusive (the ideal) is tremendously difficult, and inevitably there will be cases (like this one) that force prioritizing one over the other. I think the best RPS can do is be clear as possible to all stakeholders as to how they strike that balance, and what the rules are for a given group (e.g. employees vs. readers in the comments section).

Sarfrin 2020-11-16 23:13:13 UTC #88

Well there it is.

I appreciate all of the post above and commend you for the way it was handled, but this reads like Sin decided to leave which is not the case at all.
.

Aerothorn 2020-11-16 23:16:32 UTC #89

For what it’s worth, I don’t read Graham’s post as implying that at all.

Sarfrin 2020-11-16 23:17:26 UTC #90

It seems odd to imply you want to attract the type of person you’ve just made redundant.

Aerothorn 2020-11-16 23:20:19 UTC #91

Not really - Graham and everyone else have been crystal clear that they hugely valued Sin as a writer, and that the redundancies were forced upon the site. It makes total sense that if fortunes get better in the future and they can once again hire new writers, they would want writers like Sin (if not Sin themselves!)

alms 2020-11-16 23:22:01 UTC #92

I think you both have some fair points (although that part about the panic room would betray Aerothorn as an American even on Mars I’m afraid :P). I can definitely see where Sarfrin is coming from, there.

I guess if willing to extend the benefit of doubt, you could also read that sentence as him saying that Sin might not have accepted an offer to come back, knowing that the staff still included writers advocating a ‘gender critical’ (political correctness, they say…) stance.

But yeah, it is worded in typical Graham style, if you don’t mind my saying that.

Cheeetar 2020-11-16 23:22:11 UTC #93

Thank you for the response here Graham.

It seems relevant to say that Sin has recently written for the site: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/11/16/the-falconeer-review/

Graham 2020-11-16 23:37:44 UTC #94

I think that’s fair. But I also think that people understand what is meant by “inclusive for all people”, and that it necessarily excludes certain groups.

In general I think of this as the split between “safe space” and “free speech zone”, and we’ve always firmly been in the former.

Graham 2020-11-16 23:40:58 UTC #95

It wasn’t my intention to suggest Sin left voluntarily. But I also want to make clear that Sin being made redundant had nothing to do with the type of person she is, or the quality of writer she is.

We went from two staff writer roles on the team to one - or rather, six staff writer roles within Reedpop to four staff writer roles within Reedpop.

We continue to want to attract great writers and diverse writers, both as freelancers and, hopefully when we’re in a better economic position, as full-time staff.

Graham 2020-11-16 23:41:49 UTC #96

With hopefully more to come in the future - including one further article this week.

Graham 2020-11-16 23:42:40 UTC #97

And this is worded in typical alms style

Aerothorn 2020-11-16 23:44:28 UTC #98

It’s not so much about being American as it is being autistic. To paraphrase Tony Atwood (an expert on high-functioning autism - I can’t find the exact quote): There is actually a very simple cure for autism. You put the autistic person alone in a room, and close the door. (His point being that autism is only a disability when evaluated socially). In a literal sense, it is generalizable to neurotypicals, though - I’m referring to a safe space one temporarily inhabits, not being trapped in solitary confinement!

Aerothorn 2020-11-16 23:52:02 UTC #99

Yeah, I got you - I definitely understood what you were writing. But this itself is an example of language being used within a specific framework of shared understanding rather than literally, and people without that shared understanding and/or people who read things more literally (either because English isn’t their first language, or they’re autistic, or whatever) would definitely be confused by the apparent contradiction.

But cutting through entrenched political identities and I think you are absolutely right, that almost everyone understands that “free speech zones” are not condusive to running a business or any other sort of organization, and so then the question simply becomes what groups you are trying to be conciously inclusive of (because sadly, there are even times where including one marginalized group necessitates excluding another marginalized group, a fact that is partially behind American fights over whether affirmative action should be legal), and the minimal amount of exclusion necessary to achieve that. There definitely isn’t a formula for it, so as I said, I feel you.

RogerMellie 2020-11-17 00:04:38 UTC #100

I appreciate the replies here, and the general lack of mudslinging. I’ll try to engage in a similar manner.

I’m in my 40s, and things have changed massively for the better in the last 20/30 years in terms of rights. Jimmy Greaves calling people poofs on a Saturday afternoon show now seems unfathomable. Things have also changed slowly. Way too slowly.

In the last few years, it seems to have gone at warp speed.

We may well end up at a place where everyone subscribes to the trans rights crowd’s world view. For many though, there are valid points brought up by people like Helen Lewis, Suzanne Moore & Ross Tucker. Often in the UK’s most prominent left leaning paper.

According to a YouGov poll, a lot of UK folks agree with similar things to what Tim has been told he needs to apologise for.

Old folks like me are very aware that society may well end up where trans rights folks want us to be, but calling people bigots and hounding them out of places they’ve been for 13 years seems unlikely to get us there faster.

It’s not that long ago I was involved in a thread where the word ‘faggots’ got moderated to ‘bundle of sticks’ FFS. It’s not like RPS has always been consistent on these points. Times change thankfully. I bring that up to show how things change so fast.