Justin Webb complaint: “transwomen, in other words males”

[El Pollo Diablo]

Well, with some compassion, for a start. Rather than as sub-humans, perverts and molesters which is what most transphobes like Webb think of trans people as.

Webb has never expressed any such thing. You are just inventing libellous views on your own head.

If extremists label someone a "hate filled transphobe" for mentioning male biology, there's nowhere left to go when encountering real transphobes.

Nah, if he saw them as fully human, he'd start by believing them when they say who they are. Webb is a real transphobe. Transphobia doesn't involve just going out and punching the sh.t out of people dressing differently to how you think they should, it also involves a lack of compassion towards trans people, which Webb has demonstrated ably.

[lpm]

Such as?

Being able to fit in at a local chess club that's full of other boys/men and not having to face the sexism often inherent in groups like that.

Do you imagine a trans woman would fit in with these boys and men then?

There are no trans women in school chess clubs. It's the sort of thing when you need to be brilliant by 16, or even 11, to make it to elite tournaments as an adult. Hence what matters is the culture that children face at school, then when attending adult chess clubs as a child, then playing adults in tournaments as a child.

And the stories that emerged last year were awful. Teenage girls and young women reported back on the relentless bullying, sexual harassment, stalking and assaults. For many it was difficult to attend tournaments due to the need for a chaperone that made it financially expensive, and for elite players it was difficult to get male coaches due to prejudice and harassment.

Chess does not appear to be on a healthy place right now. Currently at the phase of refusing to look inwards at institutional issues.

[lpm]

LPM identified two of the largely irrelevant cases that transphobes like to bring up as hobby horses, and asserted that the debate was settled.

Why do you get to decide that these are "largely irrelevent"? Just because there is no relevance to your life?

Incarcerated women don't think it is irrelevant. Women in sport don't think it is irrelevant.

Women that I have discussed this with in real life don't think it's important. Including girls in US high school sports, which is probably the area where transphobes are yelling loudest about this.

Girls in US high school sports, and college sports, have been extremely vocal. I don't know what bubble you are in that's made you think they find it irrelevant.

[JQH]

Such as?

Being able to fit in at a local chess club that's full of other boys/men and not having to face the sexism often inherent in groups like that.

Do you think that sort of misogynist would be accepting of transwomen? And that transwomen would be able to fit in to such an environment?

[lpm]

Nah, if he saw them as fully human, he'd start by believing them when they say who they are. Webb is a real transphobe. Transphobia doesn't involve just going out and punching the sh.t out of people dressing differently to how you think they should, it also involves a lack of compassion towards trans people, which Webb has demonstrated ably.

Citation needed.

There are of course extremists who claim trans people are pretending. Or who lack compassion. Or think they shouldn't be protected from harassment. But when I went looking earlier I saw nothing like that from Webb.

[El Pollo Diablo]

I mean, I'm not the only person to have thought it, nor that recently either: https://schoolofsexed.org/blog-articles ... to-the-bbc

[Tristan]

Such as?

Being able to fit in at a local chess club that's full of other boys/men and not having to face the sexism often inherent in groups like that.

Do you think that sort of misogynist would be accepting of transwomen? And that transwomen would be able to fit in to such an environment?

already answered

[Stephanie]

Being able to fit in at a local chess club that's full of other boys/men and not having to face the sexism often inherent in groups like that.

Do you imagine a trans woman would fit in with these boys and men then?

There are no trans women in school chess clubs. It's the sort of thing when you need to be brilliant by 16, or even 11, to make it to elite tournaments as an adult. Hence what matters is the culture that children face at school, then when attending adult chess clubs as a child, then playing adults in tournaments as a child.

And the stories that emerged last year were awful. Teenage girls and young women reported back on the relentless bullying, sexual harassment, stalking and assaults. For many it was difficult to attend tournaments due to the need for a chaperone that made it financially expensive, and for elite players it was difficult to get male coaches due to prejudice and harassment.

Chess does not appear to be on a healthy place right now. Currently at the phase of refusing to look inwards at institutional issues.

Right, but I responded to a post about a hypothetical local chess club, from a link that talks about an international chess organisation. I've said nothing about schools.

[JQH]

Being able to fit in at a local chess club that's full of other boys/men and not having to face the sexism often inherent in groups like that.

Do you think that sort of misogynist would be accepting of transwomen? And that transwomen would be able to fit in to such an environment?

already answered

Yeah - I responded to your post without reading the rest of the thread so missed the fact that Stephanie had already made that point.

[dyqik]

Why do you get to decide that these are "largely irrelevent"? Just because there is no relevance to your life?

Incarcerated women don't think it is irrelevant. Women in sport don't think it is irrelevant.

Women that I have discussed this with in real life don't think it's important. Including girls in US high school sports, which is probably the area where transphobes are yelling loudest about this.

Girls in US high school sports, and college sports, have been extremely vocal. I don't know what bubble you are in that's made you think they find it irrelevant.

I don't know what kind of bubble you are in where you think loud transphobes are normal.

[lpm]

I don't know what kind of bubble you are in where you think loud transphobes are normal.

Well, I'm in a bubble where talking about male biology isn't considered hate-filled transphobia, and is merely part of trying to find practical answers for problems of competing rights.

[lpm]

I mean, I'm not the only person to have thought it, nor that recently either: https://schoolofsexed.org/blog-articles ... to-the-bbc

Huh? That's does not quote a single word from Webb, let alone any transphobic statements.

[dyqik]

I don't know what kind of bubble you are in where you think loud transphobes are normal.

Well, I'm in a bubble where talking about male biology isn't considered hate-filled transphobia, and is merely part of trying to find practical answers for problems of competing rights.

OK, so your bubble doesn't even understand when you are being bigoted.

Competitive sport is antithetical to any kind of genetic fairness anyway. All elite sports persons are genetic freaks. For example, I never had a chance at being a competitive distance runner, because I have the wrong muscle type. My build doesn't suit any particular common sport.

But your bubble thinks that only one particular set of genetic traits is unfair.

[lpm]

OK, so your bubble doesn't even understand when you are being bigoted.

Well that might have sounded good in your head, but you've just labelled as hate-filled bigots JQH, IvanV, jimbob, Bewildered and TopBadger.*

And you wonder why trans extremists are not winning friends and influencing people.

Every right-wing culture warrior scores easy wins thanks to your kind of ridiculous overreach and throwing around of insults.

* ETA and from comments made about sport on a previous thread you also label as bigots Martin Y, Nekomatic, Tessa K and Woodchopper. Believing male biology matters in elite sport is a conventional viewpoint.

[warumich]

Competitive sport is antithetical to any kind of genetic fairness anyway. All elite sports persons are genetic freaks. For example, I never had a chance at being a competitive distance runner, because I have the wrong muscle type. My build doesn't suit any particular common sport.

Quite. There is a larger conversation that sports as an institution needs to have, which it has shied away from for a long time. I have no answer or solution to this, but yes the fact that my dyspraxia disadvantages me when playing tennis is also unfair in a way. I have no particular solution to this, and I don't really care enough about sports to think this through any more deeply. There are enough academic studies that look into how big the potential advantages of being trans really are in competitive sport, but I'm not expert enough to sort through the google scholar hits and state confidently what the state of play here is. However, it doesn't look like there's a unanimous verdict one way or the other, so whatever it is, it's not clear-cut.

But professional sports is a relatively small area of life, and I'm a bit pissed off that often the conversation seems to go from "there is a difficult issue to solve to the satisfaction of all parties" to "they're not really women though are they".

[dyqik]

OK, so your bubble doesn't even understand when you are being bigoted.

Well that might have sounded good in your head, but you've just labelled as hate-filled bigots JQH, IvanV, jimbob, Bewildered and TopBadger.*

And you wonder why trans extremists are not winning friends and influencing people.

Every right-wing culture warrior scores easy wins thanks to your kind of ridiculous overreach and throwing around of insults.

* ETA and from comments made about sport on a previous thread you also label as bigots Martin Y, Nekomatic, Tessa K and Woodchopper. Believing male biology matters in elite sport is a conventional viewpoint.

As I said, your particular bubble doesn't realize it's bigotry, and tries to lump reasoned discussion in with itself.

[lpm]

But professional sports is a relatively small area of life, and I'm a bit pissed off that often the conversation seems to go from "there is a difficult issue to solve to the satisfaction of all parties" to "they're not really women though are they".

Yes, but the conversation also goes from "there is a difficult issue to solve to the satisfaction of all parties" to "you're a hate-filled bigot for discussing that".

And so there is nobody left in the sane middle to say "it's a difficult issue but I think we should do this for elite sport but do the opposite for Saturday Parkrun, what do you reckon?"

[warumich]

But professional sports is a relatively small area of life, and I'm a bit pissed off that often the conversation seems to go from "there is a difficult issue to solve to the satisfaction of all parties" to "they're not really women though are they".

Yes, but the conversation also goes from "there is a difficult issue to solve to the satisfaction of all parties" to "you're a hate-filled bigot for discussing that".

And so there is nobody left in the sane middle to say "it's a difficult issue but I think we should do this for elite sport but do the opposite for Saturday Parkrun, what do you reckon?"

Just to be sure I called neither you nor Tris a hateful bigot. I stand by my description of the passport official in Germany.

In general I'm happy to swear for emotional effect in my post, but I try not to call anyone names, that doesn't help things. I heartily disagree with you two (on many things), but that doesn't make you hateful bigots.

[discovolante]

But by then they will have had the advantages and experience that many girls and women wouldn't even have had till that point.

I suppose spending your entire life knowing you present as the wrong gender is a pretty fantastic advantage.

One thing that is bugging me is that these discussions frame women's rights so narrowly and reductively. This is a big topic but in many countries women's rights have come a long way in so many areas: economic, social, cultural - education, rights at work, presence in entertainment, marriage, property and so on. There is still a long way to go even where women's rights have advanced and they shouldn't be taken for granted but I don't see trans people having a negative effect on the progress that has been made. Quite the opposite in some cases. At what stage of protecting your own rights does it finally become acceptable to consider and potentially prioritise the rights of others, or is it necessary to constantly marginalise and punish every perceived threat (if that is how you see it) with the conviction that if you don't you'll lose everything?

[shpalman]

In the particular case of chess there doesn't seem to be any difference in ability once you take into account the smaller statistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_chess

In August 2023, FIDE attracted heavy criticism for issuing an order banning transgender women from women's competitions. This was seen by many chess players as having no purpose other than to discriminate against transgender women, as unlike physical sports, there are no concerns about biological advantages. American Woman Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade commented "It's obvious they didn't consult with any transgender players in constructing it... I strongly urge FIDE to reverse course on this and start from scratch with better consultants." French transgender player Yosha Iglesias, who holds the title of FIDE Master, described the new regulations as "unfair, exclusive, and discriminatory", saying they were contrary to the IOC guidelines that FIDE had signed up to.

Also on that wiki page is a summary of a study which showed that women played differently depending on whether they thought they were playing against a man or a woman.

[lpm]

In the particular case of chess there doesn't seem to be any difference in ability once you take into account the smaller statistics.

Yes. Which demonstrates the lack of female representation in the top levels of chess is down to cultural factors.

Similarly the lack of female representation in politics is nothing to do with ability, and is down to cultural factors only. So we have all-women shortlists to compensate. Positive discrimination and separated networking groups are an essential part of addressing imbalances.

[Tristan]

Something that I’ve observed recently is that there is a split that’s becoming more and more apparent within the GC movement, where there absolutely are some bigots as well as feminists who really aren’t. In much the same way that there are within many movements. It’s dangerous to lump them all in together as one and I do think there’s some responsibility within movements to reject those elements of it that go too far as well a responsibility from all to recognise the difference.

Kelly Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) is perhaps the main example of someone who’s going way too far and seems to have been radicalising herself and making dodgy bedfellows with people who do not have the best interests of any women at heart.

Lumping her (and people like her) in with perfectly reasonable feminists who have concerns about and want to talk about issues like self-ID and competing rights does a disservice to everyone.

There was a really interesting episode of Blocked and Reported podcast last week where Helen Lewis (firmly in the moderate camp) talked about this split to Katie Herzog (the other usual co-host, Jesse Singal, is off for a while). It’s well worth a listen. Takes about 30 minutes of talking about other things before they get to this main topic:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3dTvbP ... 8J-b1UteFw

[IvanV]

In the particular case of chess there doesn't seem to be any difference in ability once you take into account the smaller statistics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_chess

In August 2023, FIDE attracted heavy criticism for issuing an order banning transgender women from women's competitions. This was seen by many chess players as having no purpose other than to discriminate against transgender women, as unlike physical sports, there are no concerns about biological advantages. American Woman Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade commented "It's obvious they didn't consult with any transgender players in constructing it... I strongly urge FIDE to reverse course on this and start from scratch with better consultants." French transgender player Yosha Iglesias, who holds the title of FIDE Master, described the new regulations as "unfair, exclusive, and discriminatory", saying they were contrary to the IOC guidelines that FIDE had signed up to.

Chess was practically a Soviet monopoly during the cold war. And today still FIDE is still alleged to be in Russia's pocket. The current president, Arkady Dvorkovich, was previously deputy president of Russia. His predecessor was Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Kalkykia, a Russian "republic", ie semi-autonomous region. And his predecessor, a Filipino, Florencio Campomanes, "Campo", who was appointed in 1982, was corrupt and in the pocket of the Russians. He is dead, so people don't even bother saying "allegedly" any more. Back in Campo's day, there was a fairly obvious vote-buying system to get lots of small countries to vote like Campo wanted.

It is not surprising that the policies of FIDE in this mirror those of Russia rather than the wider world.

FIDE remains in firm control of the world championship, and through its recognition by the IOC, the chess Olympiads. It runs the rating system, and so forth. The rules for things like the world championship keep on changing in response to events, presumably to the convenience of FIDE's own interests. People complain they are mad, but I don't think they care. Fortunately, the great quantity of other competitive chess that goes on happens somewhat regardless of FIDE. The emergence of internet chess giants like chess.com and lichess.com, which have become de facto standards regardless of FIDE, mean that its practical relevance is reduced, as these powerful organisations take little notice of it.

So in practice Iglesias is able to compete in (many) women's events. Despite FIDE's position, she is listed in FIDE's ratings system as a woman. In January she achieved the requirements to become a Women's International Master, the next step up from FIDE Master. Such titles are subject to confirmation by FIDE, which takes a little while to come through. So we will see if that just goes through automatically, or whether FIDE decides to go grandstanding about it.

[discovolante]

Something that I’ve observed recently is that there is a split that’s becoming more and more apparent within the GC movement, where there absolutely are some bigots as well as feminists who really aren’t. In much the same way that there are within many movements. It’s dangerous to lump them all in together as one and I do think there’s some responsibility within movements to reject those elements of it that go too far as well a responsibility from all to recognise the difference.

Kelly Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) is perhaps the main example of someone who’s going way too far and seems to have been radicalising herself and making dodgy bedfellows with people who do not have the best interests of any women at heart.

Lumping her (and people like her) in with perfectly reasonable feminists who have concerns about and want to talk about issues like self-ID and competing rights does a disservice to everyone.

There was a really interesting episode of Blocked and Reported podcast last week where Helen Lewis (firmly in the moderate camp) talked about this split to Katie Herzog (the other usual co-host, Jesse Singal, is off for a while). It’s well worth a listen. Takes about 30 minutes of talking about other things before they get to this main topic:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3dTvbP ... 8J-b1UteFw

I listened to it and to be honest, it didn't sit well with me. The main thing that stuck out was that, although they both seemed to be of the view that use of pronouns isn't something they want to focus on, they spent a fair bit of time talking about it and it seemed quite revealing. Although they weren't exactly aligned their opinions about using people's preferred pronouns seemed to be mostly based on respectability rather than respect. They would use people's preferred pronouns in public but in private it didn't really matter (Helen Lewis seemed to be saying that she used them in private largely so she wouldn't forget to use them in public). They wanted to come across as respectful gender critical feminists rather than those nasty brash rude TERFs who were making the rest of them look bad. And the fairly horrible mocking of 'they/them'. I don't see how it's a sustainable position either. If you know someone is trans then you will take a position on whether or not you should use their preferred pronouns, but if you don't know, for example if they pass then...what? Do you try and find out? If so, that's weird, if not, why do you care at all? Is it more acceptable to misgender someone who doesn't pass or is otherwise openly trans than someone who isn't?

On the abortion point which was mentioned a couple of times...well yes, the situation in the US is frankly terrifying. Thank god (selfishly) that I don't live there. Aside from the fact that it affects trans people too, Roe v Wade was never about sex based rights, it was about a general right to privacy, and from there it's not hard to see how abortion rights and trans rights become aligned (and have become aligned).

[IvanV]

JK Rowling has been much feted in the right wing press in the last couple of days, after she said something a bit like Webb. She deliberately misgendered journalist India Willoughby, who sent a complaint to the police. The police declined to act. Misgendering speech might not be allowed on the BBC, but it seems isn't against the law.

I think the press's attention was more in relation to some feisty responses from Rowling that followed Willoughby's objections. Rowling, I think, is saying that she was being deliberately disrespectful to Willoughby, who in her view did not individually merit respect, not trans women in general. It is an interesting line of argument. It echoes something that I say when religious groups demand respect for their views - that respect is something earned not demanded. Though I realise that doesn't necessarily make it equally valid.

The liberal press have mostly been rather silent about it. Might be one of those things that is too dangerous for the Guardian to discuss. Though the Pink News gives a fairly thorough description of the exchange, though without really giving much detailed judgment on it.