Thread by @RoisinMichaux

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/
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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/

Alasdair recalls a social media post saying "All men want to rape women." Imagine what boys think when they see this. @marcuse99903226 says young people are acting out the rebellion through their bodies as part of individuation, self-actualisation. The assertion of yourself. 4/

@marcuse99903226 says: Boys I see, their masculinity is associated with their aggression which they want to get rid of - rather than dealing with it. "It's a violent defence - I want to get rid of it." 5/
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And @jburgo55 adds that some of them feel failed as men because they *don't* have this aggression. Big laugh when someone (Alasdair?) says Twitter can be an outlet for aggression lol. Brings us to video games, spending too much time online. 6/

Alasdair says we all know the saying that if Barbie was real she would snap - but have you seen Iron Man? Male ideals are also crazy unachievable. I grew up with Roald Dahl, he says. In every one of the stories, something bad and permanent happens to a child. 7/

There's a happy ending in all Roald Dahl stories, but there is pain, the children always had to live with bad things happening to them. Hollywood stories are absurd, there are no decent stories to model yourself after. 8/
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@marcuse99903226 says you have to dream. You have to feel that kind of omnipotence, or else you would never (for example) organise a conference like this. But what happens when you're faced with difficulty? The comic heroes never face limitations. 9/
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Miranda Yardley, a trans-identifying man is on. @stellaomalley3 introduces him as "she" (because she's lovely) but Yardley immediately takes the mic and goes "I'm a bloke!" (laughs) and someone goes "Well that was quick!" lol. 10/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

(All male panel is full of banter! May I say I love men. Not sorry.) #GenspectBiggerPicture

Miranda Yardley's talk is serious, about winning rights. The underlying message of the post-50s sexual revolution was: worlds were open to all women, she can be her true self. What you can do is not defined by who or what you are. And this is where he trans lobby went wrong 11/

Rather than the progressive message: our sex must not dictate or personality, says Yardley, the trans activists say personalities dictate our sex (think I got that right). Regressive. 12/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

@HJoyceGender says when she's sympathetic about trans boys, someone always says "they're AGPs!" She asks the panel: why do you think there's so much resistance to the idea that there's a novel presentation of trans for teen boys like there is for teen girls? Good question. 13/

Alasdair Gunn says: black and white thinking. And also too many talking heads who all have an opinion on it. But @jburgo55 suggests the typical (very visible and vocal) male trans rights activists are probably not helping. 14/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

@SarahVaci: she's painting portraits of 100 detransed women. She goes into radfem spaces, and when she says she cares about the boys too, she gets hounded. We need to learn more about the boys. We need to change the dialogue. 15/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

@BenjaminABoyce mentions (some guy) who was on his podcast and his own viewers were just calling the guy a pervert, AGP. He said these boys are often damaged and very hurt, and they need to express their pain. Listen. Listening is not loud. 16/

Yardley: trans women are kicked out of the man box and they become the business of women. Men could be nicer to trans women. Gay culture could be nicer to feminine men. 17/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

Ball-busting between men is one way we love, says @BenjaminABoyce. Alasdair says men all over the world are doing weird pervy stuff, don't put them in a box or they will get stuck there. Well said IMO. 18/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

@VincentPsychSA mentions anorexia in men. He himself suffered through it. As he entered adulthood he saw his father in the mirror. It was like a death to look/be like him. He starved himself. Another ideology he held close, collapsed. He began to question himself. 19/

@marcuse99903226: The idea you can triumph over what you've been given, it's a powerful force. You need a setting in which you figure out what's driving it, but you don't want to stop and think. You might collapse if you stop - you want to push on because collapsing is scary. 20/

@cwknews calls out the bumbling male idiot trope in movies. Also boys have to choose between being the alpha male or beta - of which there is no equivalent for girls. 21/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

A woman in the audience says she doesn't want people to think that having a bad father relationship is what drives this - her own son is an example. But Corina Cohen says sometimes boys cannot connect to their fathers and that might not be obvious to the mother. 22/