Tim Stone & the 'gender critical position'

[badgerbadger]

Thank you for this, Graham. Articulating why the announcement was so coded helps somewhat, though I wish more of the process could have been made clear. I don’t envy having to make this call, and for my part, I hope my posts have not come across as ad hominems.

I’m just tired. alison’s very articulate post expresses why so much better than I can.

The ‘transphobic’ label makes discussion on this impossible. If his words were ‘transphobic’, and Tim is ‘transphobic’, there can be no other outcome considering RPS’ makeup and readership. The labels obscure the actual people.

What else is there to say? This seems an appropriately 2020 way to cap the year off. I wish you and all of yours well.

[Sarfrin]

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

I’m in my 50s and the way some people are arguing for limits to trans rights looks exactly like the way some people were arguing for limits to the rights of gay people or disabled people back in the day. Trans people are people and they are entitled to the same rights as everyone else. If that ends up causing a problem then it can be dealt with, but we shouldn’t restrict the rights of a group of people because we assume there might be one.

[L_No]

Thank you, sincerely, for taking the time to write that out, Graham. I appreciate that.

You must’ve discussed it with other staff at RPS already, but what will be the line going forward? If RPS continues to write about topics like the one at hand, what is the expectation of authors? Should they refrain from commenting under their own name (an RPS tradition I consider valuable) on the off chance someone takes offense? And will someone taking offense be the ultimate measure when deciding if offering an opinion is allowed on RPS, for example when it comes to making disparaging comments about religion? Should it be?

I’m not asking these questions to provoke you in any way, Graham, let me stress that, but it seems like moderation and website policy is based on a very specific set of values that might not necessarily be shared by everyone, both writers and commenters. And in this case, it seemed to touch on a very specific UK-centric debate that most international readers would be unaware of (and that even the kindest and most polite British readers seem to have differing opinions on). The set of values, the public debate, and the language that is used change faster that many people will be aware of, judging by some of the responses here. How will we prevent more people ending up on the wrong side of the line?

[Sarfrin]

what is the expectation of authors? Should they refrain from commenting under their own name (an RPS tradition I consider valuable) on the off chance someone takes offense?

Well in this case the ‘someone’ was a large number of their coworkers. But regardless, if someone came out and said there needed to be a ‘reasonable debate’ about what rights black people should have or what rights Jewish people should have, there’d be no question that they should be let go. This is no different.

[Graham]

You must’ve discussed it with other staff at RPS already, but what will be the line going forward? If RPS continues to write about topics like the one at hand, what is the expectation of authors? Should they refrain from commenting under their own name (an RPS tradition I consider valuable) on the off chance someone takes offense? And will someone taking offense be the ultimate measure when deciding if offering an opinion is allowed on RPS, for example when it comes to making disparaging comments about religion? Should it be?

There’s no change in policy. Staff can and will continue to comment as themselves, as they see fit.

I don’t think the line is that ambiguous, really. It’s not like anyone in the comments in this instance was unaware that there was controversy: the RPS post itself was about Ubisoft removing content from the game for exactly this reason, and the comments that followed were of the form, ‘I know this is controversial but…’.

You’ve mentioned the Christianity related remarks in the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla review a couple of times, but I don’t think the two situations are comparable. For one, the line about killing Christ was a direct quote from the game. It is a thing that the protagonist shouts, and the game features serveral missions in which you rob and destroy monasteries. I can’t speak to whether this is historically accurate, but at the very least I think your criticism is better directed at Ubisoft. And to me, Alice was fairly clearly appreciating the game’s wantonly destructive energy in this hell year, rather than literally advocating for the killing of Christ.

In any case, someone taking offense is not the ultimate decider. The reality is that people are mad at us all the time, and often those people are acting in bad faith or are not actual readers of RPS. But certainly who and how many people are offended of course plays a part in our response.

[alison]

Thank you Graham for being open about the process here. It sounds to me like this was mostly a workplace dispute and there was good reason for handling it the way you did, even though it has clearly upset many readers. Understanding the process does help, though.

I just popped back in here to respond to Graham, but I have to make one last comment on the “rights” issue since it seems people still don’t understand why it is that trans people like myself are frustrated by how the narrative has been framed.

Trans people already have human rights. We never didn’t have them. We are humans, so obviously we have all the same rights other humans have. The only people who are advocating taking our basic human rights away are the most batshit of the right-wing conservative fringe. It’s really not helping our cause to let them pick the battlefield.

Please understand this. I am a UK citizen by birth, I have a UK passport. I transitioned over 20 years ago. My passport says F. I didn’t need to do a whole song and dance to get my passport changed, I just had a letter from a GP saying “alison will be living as a woman from now on”, it took 5 minutes at the doctor and 2 weeks of waiting for the envelope to arrive. That was last millennium! This is not a topic that is under any serious debate. Anyone who is curious about the present-day process, check out this link: https://www.airport-parking-shop.co.uk/blog/lgbtq-transgender-change-passport/

The proposed reforms in the UK would not make it significantly easier for people to change their passport, since that is already very easy to do. The current debate is specifically about birth certificate. Except nobody asks to see your birth certificate anywhere, no rights are denied to people based on their birth certificate, so it’s really more of an ideological battle than something practical. My birth certificate still says M, still has my old name, I don’t care. Why would I? That’s who I was when I was born. Some people do care, though, and right now those people need to get a whole ream of medical documentation to change it. They want it to be as easy to change as a passport. I don’t really understand why, but whatever, I guess if it makes them happy, it doesn’t seem that controversial to me.

People keep bringing up sex- or gender-segregated spaces as if that is some kind of “human rights” that trans people are being denied, but - aside from the fact that the vast majority of these spaces we were/are already there and nobody cares - segregation is implicitly a restriction of human rights! Before certain corners of the internet decided that “gender critical” now means something different than what it appears to mean, it could be boiled down to an argument for the abolition of gender as a patriarchal social construct. Abolish these gender-segregated spaces, because they are fundamentally oppressive! This is obviously a radical view, that’s why it is/was a part of second wave radical feminism. Some (but not all) of the older feminists you might read in The Guardian are still from that era and still think about gender like this.

Unfortunately talking about gender in the terminology of the second wave is now considered unfashionable, but that doesn’t mean that some of the ideas didn’t live on in a different way. Here is a contemporary feminist take on why sports should be desegregated, for example: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/against-women-sports-interview

It’s not about trans people. It’s about segregation being fundamentally unjust.

That’s why I want us to be excluded from this conversation. I think it was a strategic misstep for both radical feminists and trans activists to cede this ground to the ultra-conservatives who want the conversation to be all about dudes with dicks in your daughter’s hockey team. To me it’s unproductive to mindlessly repeat “trans rights are human rights” or “trans women are women”, as if those things were ever seriously being questioned by reasonable people. I think it’s more important for trans people to talk about concrete issues like how can we give guidance to parents of trans kids who don’t know how to deal with the situation, how we can improve the situation in countries where there is still fairly rigorous gatekeeping around access to hormones and corrective/reassignment surgery, are there still gaps to be closed around unfair workplace dismissal or hate crimes, can we provide better support to tackle the extremely high suicide rate amongst trans youth in the period before they transition etc etc.

Meanwhile, from the feminist point of view, I also think it is still important to talk about gender as social construct vs gender as a performance vs gender as an item of cultural or ethnic significance. Men, women, non-binary folks - we all need to be able to discuss the impact gender has on our lives and question the value of sex- or gender-segregated spaces. Personally, I am gender critical the same way that I am critical of religion, or nationality. I understand it has a place in society for cultural reasons, and I understand that some people believe that they could not live without it, but I see it as a dated institution that we should be working to abolish, at least from the public space. I know my view is radical, but the whole discussion is radical.

It’s a fascinating topic that I wish I could talk about without intolerant trans activists (or malicious transphobes) charging in to shut it down, or drown it out with their toxic arguments. Unfortunately both of these factions have taken over the entire room to debate, which is why up until this broke out in the comments thread of one of my favorite websites I have steered the fuck clear of any online discussions of the topic, as have many other trans people. It’s not a topic that is safe for us to discuss any more.

Anyway, as Graham pointed out up-thread, RPS is not about creating a “free speech zone”, or about creating a “safe space” for everyone. That’s fair. It’s just so sad for me to realize how many people supposedly on my side have let my whole identity get reduced to vapid, tautological slogans and a pointless internet shitfight that even when you “win”, nobody wins.

Okay, now I’m really logging out! Thanks again to Graham for explaining his position, and to the commenters both here on the forum and on the site who have provided so much entertainment over the years. Maybe someday I will be back, but right now it’s time for a break

[Spinoza]

Thanks alison. I do share you ideas. I don’t see them as radical. To me they just , unfortunately, for now, ahead of the time. But the time will come.

[Sarfrin]

Since I came across this thread on Twitter I thought I’d post it here as an example of someone who has experienced transphobia in the UK.
https://twitter.com/JayHulmePoet/status/1328994210599628801?s=20

[LexW]

For me all the suggestions that this was in some way an “innocent mistake”, or “a mere one-off error of judgment” or the like are completely and instantly obliterated by the decision to post on a public forum, as yourself, making suggestions/demands of your own employer (even if merely a contracted position), when you could perfectly well contact them off the record and likely have a vastly more constructive discussion. It’s perfectly reasonable to be sad, but to suggest RPS handled this badly is deeply unfair to RPS, and to suggest Tim Stone was some sort of innocent is beyond naive and into the realms of shenanigans. That doesn’t make him a “cryptofascist” or whatever, but it does mean that he was someone who was aware of what he was doing and implicitly accepted the consequences. He chose his hill, a metaphor he would surely appreciate.

I have to say I enjoyed @alison’s story, however some of her claims re: “how things are”, particularly re: the law, are very much opinions, not facts, and anyone reading her posts should be aware of that and not treat them as gospel. Also her usage of gender critical, whilst absolutely correct to a certain era, is to be contrasted with how the term is used by a lot of other self-described “gender critical” feminists. It is not “the internet” that changed the usage, but 50+ year-old self-described feminists (who, by alison’s theory, should understand it as alison describes it, but very evidently do not - several of them have expressed clear pro-segregation views).

Since I came across this thread on Twitter I thought I’d post it here as an example of someone who has experienced transphobia in the UK.

https://twitter.com/JayHulmePoet/status/1328994210599628801?s=20

Obviously this twitter thread is also lived experience rather than fact (though the author is factually correct on the precedent for criminal charges if you don’t explain your gender before getting busy with someone, thanks to an extremely poor judgment in a case not even involving a trans person - and there is also another twitter thread providing hard sources for pretty much every single statement), but it definitely reflects the experience of the trans people I know a lot better than the idea that Britain is such a trans paradise that we should stop being concerned about it and try to somehow influence “other countries” on the issue.

[alms]

Also Stone seemingly made no real attempt to put out the fire after lighting the match.

I feel like the act we’ve seen play out is only part of a larger story.

[Xelias]

For me all the suggestions that this was in some way an “innocent mistake”, or “a mere one-off error of judgment” or the like are completely and instantly obliterated by the decision to post on a public forum, as yourself, making suggestions/demands of your own employer (even if merely a contracted position), when you could perfectly well contact them off the record and likely have a vastly more constructive discussion. It’s perfectly reasonable to be sad, but to suggest RPS handled this badly is deeply unfair to RPS, and to suggest Tim Stone was some sort of innocent is beyond naive and into the realms of shenanigans. That doesn’t make him a “cryptofascist” or whatever, but it does mean that he was someone who was aware of what he was doing and implicitly accepted the consequences. He chose his hill, a metaphor he would surely appreciate.

Exactly yeah. The fact that one of his colleague is Trans is also what to me, seals the deal, along with pointing towards article of a known transphobe. He can’t be both naive and informed enough to have articles at hand to prove his point.

But even so, he could’ve had those discussion with the person he works alongside with, approach them and get their opinion, care about how they feel, rather than repeating shitty takes from Terfs, while in the UK, the right of Trans people are currently being threatened by a growing movement, thanks to shitty fearmongering.

This wasn’t a “cancellation” coming out of nowhere. Tim went in the comment of an article talking about it, got his take out and doubled down against a colleague that’s a part of that minority.

Honestly, how it has been handled show me RPS is still the publication I’ve enjoyed for a decade, despite the staff changing.