A thoroughly dishonest debate

by Tom James

It’s hard to admit you’ve been wrong. Particularly if the belief you’ve chosen has led you to park your common sense and affirm not just its more deranged pronouncements and lies, but scrabble around for excuses when observing its most vile and irresponsible conduct.

Harder still if your own actions have led to the most egregious outcomes, promoting an ideology that causes undeniable real harm to others, and not some fluffball fantasy version of hurty feels.

Yet that’s where we are with the so-called ‘Trans debate’. So-called because debate is what’s been removed. By edict.

For the brave women who have spoken up, they’ve been met with the most blatant misogyny, constant rape and death threats, and all manner of endless harassment. Often by self-proclaimed activists with a #BeKind hashtag in their profiles and more flags than the UN building.

Of course, anyone resembling right-thinking would have immediately cast a suspicious eye at the desire to shut down debate as even the flimsiest grasps of history would tell you, that’s usually the first move on a totalitarian chess board.

In the last six or seven years, getting oneself into an entrenched position during a debate has escalated to put it mildly. Whatever your poison, Brexit or Remain, Trump v Clinton, Trump v Biden, to lockdown or not lockdown, vaccine v not vaccine, it’s proved hard for many to find common ground within the debates themselves. Many refuse to see any deficiency on ‘their side’ of the argument or reason in the other.

Perhaps time will heal, but that seems rather unlikely at the moment. The alternative views and nuance that lie in abundance in all those other disputes can be observed rationally and, in some cases, even taken on board. One could at least look to empathise with your opposing side rather than turn the hectoring up to eleven to find common ground.

And yet, it’s taken one of the most egregious and clear as day issues and the reprehensible behaviour of its most vehement protagonists to take us to a whole new level of derangement, dishonesty, and hubris.

The hysterical shrieks of bearded men are heard daily like toddlers crying until they make themselves sick, as they berate victims of abuse, campaigners for women and children’s rights, and lesbians, with their joyless, incoherent, hurtful, and un-scientific rhetoric, for daring to proclaim that women and children’s rights matter quite a bit actually and might be worth us all having a chat about it.

Middle class hysteria is a never-changing soup of the day on social media, and yet the same crowd who are now unable to define what a woman is, were found telling everyone to ‘LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE’ just a short while ago.

Polemists who, having found fame in division and provocation, need to plunge more coins into the oppression juke box just to keep the tune going. And if you’ve fed your ravenous audience on the approach of attack being the best form of defence, where can you go when this house of cards starts to fall? You’ve preached certainty in the face of doubt, and abuse, name calling, and flagrant muddying of the water when asked for reasoning. You’re stuck. You’ve thrown others to the lions; they’ll do the same to you if you show weakness.

However, for those of who have followed this maddening narrative where it seems the feelings of just one side seem to matter, there were a couple of things that were suspected would lead to ‘Peak Trans’.

One was the almost inevitable court cases that will ensue from the use of ‘affirming therapy’ and puberty blockers on children, particularly as now seems likely, the many who have autism.

Another was sport. And while it’s a tad sickening that the distortion and abuse of women’s sports punctured the public’s attention more than the removal of funding to rape crisis centres for not allowing men access to them, or women prisoners being raped by male inmates who have recently ‘identified as a woman’, something is surely better than the previous ambivalence.

The final smacks-you-in-the-face it’s so obvious moment was when average men’s swimmer and now champion women’s swimmer, Lia Thomas broke records and won an NCAA swimming title. It was ‘a first’ many hailed! Hooray for Lia! Those girls complaining are just sore losers!

But it turns out, seeing a tall, broad-shouldered, and lantern-jawed Thomas streak ahead of the girls in the pool, has made that Kool-Aid harder to swallow for some.

Former Olympian Sharon Davies has received various threats herself. And why? “Because I present evidence-based facts on the unfairness of male inclusion in women’s sport.”

“‘It’s not transphobic to want fair sport, it’s anti-female to not”

Sharon Davies

For the activists behind something like the transgender agenda, the question isn’t so much whether they know what they are saying is untrue or is causing harm, but more what is the incentive to do so? Is it simply that they’ve now had to convince themselves that despite the evidence to the contrary, they’re somehow ‘on the side of angels’? Except rather aggressive angels who particularly seem to hate women.

Screaming at middle aged lesbians, targeted abuse of women, is never a good look. To even the weakest of minds this clearly isn’t really a civil rights crusade for the Tik Tok generation. The quality of this debate, unlike those for gay rights, is La la la la la not listening to you!

The level of argument from those supporting trans women in female spaces and sports, has grown flabby and juvenile over a lack of debate and challenge. It’s lead to the one of the easiest open goals for right-leaning politicians and broadcasters as they simply state biological facts, or ask others to.

If the best defence you have of biological males being allowed in female spaces, despite the overwhelming likelihood that sexual and violent assaults will be committed by men, is “Not all trans women”, then your understanding of rudimentary safeguarding needs work.

When celebrities, a section of society that is renowned, nay defined, by its narcissism, starts shouting at women to ‘stop hoarding their rights’ and ‘being silly about letting men into their spaces you big transphobes’, it might be time adjust your stance.

It’s all too disappointingly predictable. Never let reality and consequences get in the way of a good faux angry self-righteous tweet, and so on they go cheerleading the likely sterilisation of children.

And don’t think those celebrities will hang around or show contrition when this dog’s dinner gets yacked up onto the Axminister. They’ve demonstrated themselves to be the most disloyal, duplicitous, self-serving stream of sewage. Throwing ‘friends’ under the bus and showing a shocking lack of self-awareness. They’ll simply move on to the next half-baked cause they half read so they can put their weight behind it via a few tweets without actually having to lift a finger.

But hang on, there’s bad behaviour on both sides! We need to detoxify the debate (as many politicians say and then find themselves incapable of stating whether women have cervixes or penises), everyone needs to calm down! More light, less heat!

Both sides…

‘Both sides?’ We can all see it isn’t. If you think calling someone a name online or using ‘the wrong pronouns’ is the same as being doxed, your employers contacted, physical assault, or having endless death and rape threats, then maybe you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. Then maybe start banging your head into said mirror until something like sense arrives.

Perhaps we make a mistake thinking trans rights activists believe what they say in this debate. Some won’t. This might be just about power for them, and not being ‘right’. It’s certainly not about standing up for anyone vulnerable, and that would include trans people.

If care were at its heart children wouldn’t be used as Guinea pigs in a way that defies safeguarding and clinical practice, and they’d be doing all they could to stop women’s spaces being made more dangerous.

If you’re uninformed and simply jumped on this bandwagon for virtue points, shame on you. But all is not lost. You can correct that course. You should though consider having a ponder as to why you have fooled yourself into believing clear untruths and dipped in when you felt like it so someone with blue hair can tell you how ‘awesome’ you are while fanning the flames of hate for women.

If, however, you are cognisant of the harm this ideology and accompanying misogynistic cult is doing, and still you attack those who don’t or simply want a civilised debate, then having a little think might not do it. You have fallen for a scam religion, people are starting to wake up to it, and you’re not going to look like some brave freedom fighter. You’re going to look like a bully.

First published here.