Róisín Michaux Profile picture
Apr 29 15 tweets 7 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Heather Brunskell-Evans (@brunskellevans) is here to talk about "the transgender child" on @genspect day 3. She was in the academy in the 90s when queer theory emerged as dominant. Intersectional feminists called her a "biologicial essentialist", the "TERF" of its day 1/
I was first introduced to the transgender child in 2015 in a personal context, she says, when a friend's daughter who came out as a boy. The woman was petrified and ready to support her child in the lie, (because suicide) #GenspectBiggerPicture 2/
@brunskellevans wondered about the clinical-sounding gender dysphoria - I wasn't convinced that the transgender child had any real verifiable existence - rather that @wpath and GIDS and the activists were helping to shape and construct the child. 3/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
She put together a collection of essays. Her own essay called the trans child a fabrication - they were brought into being and then harmed. 4/#GenspectBiggerPicture
Starts getting into Foucault. Dangerous territory in this room, everyone laughs. #GenspectBiggerPicture 5/
She says, for example "the nymphomaniac", was invented into being by the medical profession. In her school, there was a girl being abused by boys and was called a nymphomaniac. She remembers thinking: "Musn't be like that girl. It helped police girls." 6/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
@brunskellevans brings up @andrewdoyle_com, who says Foucault is wrong about homosexuality. It's a radical misunderstanding of Foucault, she says. He's saying it *always* existed but it was viewed differently throughout history. " 7/
"Homosexual" arrived added to medical lexicon in 1890s. While the transgender child is a wholly constructed medical figure, very unhappy young people confused about gender and who refused its constraints have no doubt existed throughout history but took different forms. 8/
So the medical construction of transgender is experienced as viscerally real to those people. Individuals flock to it, declare themselves trans. Children flock to the Tavistock or trans women experiencing any critique of transgenderism as genocide. 9/ #GenspectBiggerPicture
The identity is felt as so real. When @IndiaWilloughby declared there was a genocide of trans people recently, he really probably feels that is true. 10/
But transness is iatrogenic - so puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones cannot relieve the kids of their distress because it adds to the construction of the identity is real, which is the source of the problem.11/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
Defends Foucault. Resents the throwing away fo the conceptual tools he provided to help understand how politics and medicine relate. Brings up @Docstockk who holds him responsible for gender identity and negates biological realities. 12/
Foucault urged the application of reason to the human sciences, says @brunskellevans. To understand where unreason exists and call it out. He does not negate the body - she mentions critics like @HelenPluckrose and @ConceptualJames 13/ #GenspectBiggerPicture
@wpath is pathologising sexual dimorphism. It needs to be shut down. That sounds so unlikely, but so did closing the Tavistock, says @brunskellevans 14/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
(Badly worded, Foucault is the one who is claimed to have negated biology)

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More from @RoisinMichaux

Apr 29
Goodbye from Genspect! @stellaomalley3says the 3 papers discussed will be published online. Slides will be available. 1720 viewers watching the livestream! Mentions some lovely wins. A @genspect member wearing her lanyard was stopped by a local who said the town was so proud /1
(running to catch a train to Dublin - will tweet final thoughts when I’ve stopped moving) 2/
Highlights for me, personally, at @genspect: meeting and shaking hands with @kaltial, who led Finland out of the darkness (at least for now) and led to Sweden and Norway stopping hormones for kids. Rumours are that Denmark might be next. 3/
Read 10 tweets
Apr 29
Last talk of the @genspect conference by @LisaMarchiano 1/ #GenspectBiggerPicture
Difference between young people going to war, or getting a tattoo is that we never tell people that this will solve their problems. Detransitioners blame themselves, but @LisaMarchiano tells detransitioners that adults told them this would solve their problems. 2/
Talks about a woman who helped her daughter transition and then started to get dizzy and disorientated when out for walks - the result of her falsification of reality, says @LisaMarchiano 3/ #GenspectBiggerPicture
Read 23 tweets
Apr 29
Here's @elizamondegreen: Have to thank @EuropeanPATH because they closed out their conference by blasting the song "Don't stop believin'" lol - she says it would have been a great title for her talk. 1/ #GenspectBiggerPicture
Eliza will be talking about the internet (*the cause of, and solution to, all of our problems, to paraphrase Homer Simpson). 2/
She trawled and analysed Reddit communities set up for "trans" girls/women. She says there is a lot of helping to prep for the medical visits to make sure they get what they want. Doubt is not welcome. Same at @EuropeanPATH. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Apr 29
The @genspect talk on autogynephilia by @jburgo55 1/ #GenspectBiggerPicture
Recounts the story of "David" who grew up with alcoholic/hoarder parents. He grew up in madness. He was full of anxiety about fires, collapse, monsters. He was constantly alert. Spent his entire life trying to ward off disaster. He's full of what @jburgo55 calls "core shame" 2/
David felt repulsive and ugly, a dumpster kid. Was able to fit in with others by observing them closely. When he first started watching porn, he found that degradation attracted him most. Couldn't identify with the men in the videos. 3/
Read 9 tweets
Apr 29
The Lost Boys panel at @genspect moderated by @BenjaminABoyce. Corrina from @heterodorx asks the audience to shout out his pronouns. A chorus of HE/HIM and laughs. He talks about lack of male role models and the role it probs played in is transition 1/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
He said he was lost. He wanted a way out. @marcuse99903226 says boys without fathers often can't find themselves, there is nobody to help mediate the relationship between him and his mother. @jburgo55 says messaging makes men out to be toxic. They feel bad about themselves. 2/
Escaping into a female identity is a way to escape shame about being predatory or other male tropes, @jburgo55 adds. I often point out to boys the ways that are masculine but who don't recognise as masculine. Vocation (work) helps, says Alasdair Gunn 3/
Read 23 tweets
Apr 29
Education: we have to resist the indoctrination of a generation, says @anliathluachra on the next @genspect panel. 1/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
@iseult: let's not ban books! All parents should have the option to opt out of the national curriculum. @ColetteColfer, who teaches at university level, got an all-staff email presenting the uni's new progress pride badges that staff can wear to show how open they are (!) 2/
Yes, says @ColetteColfer, let's teach *about* gender identity - but not that everyone HAS a gender identity. Same with flat earth, creationism, says Estelle Birdy. I'm worried about morality-based teaching, and I have concerns about sex education 3/
#GenspectBiggerPicture
Read 5 tweets

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