[CONTENT WARNING: transphobia, sexual assault, death threats, the BBC] [Read more…]
Reprobate Spreadsheet
/dev/random, unless I make a hash of it
[CONTENT WARNING: transphobia, sexual assault, death threats, the BBC] [Read more…]
[CONTENT WARNING: transphobia, sexual assault, the BBC]
[CONTENT WARNING: transphobia, sexual assault, the BBC] [Read more…]
[CONTENT WARNING: TERFs, mentions of violence and sexual assault]
You’ve heard this meme before, that we need to block some/all transgender people from restrooms due to their inherently violent nature. It’s popular in TERF circles, in fact I’ve covered one example myself. There’s just one problem: it was invented out of thin air.
[CONTENT WARNING: anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric]
Looking back on her time in the “gender critical” feminist movement, [Amy Dyess] is unequivocal: it’s a cult.
A cult that groomed her when she was vulnerable and sleeping in her car; a cult that sought to control her, keeping tabs on her movements and dictating what she could and couldn’t say; a cult that was emotionally and sexually abusive towards her.
As Amy began to notice more and more red flags about the GC movement – like how it defended abusive women, how it wouldn’t let lesbians speak out about sexual assault perpetrated by women, and how it was forming alliances with homophobic groups – she started asking questions.
I definitely stuck a pin in this article when it popped up in my feeds. And yes, it’s old news by now, but I’m surprised so few people have discussed the central conceit: is the Gender Critical movement a cult?
[CONTENT WARNING: TERFs, sexism]
I think Garrett Epps nailed this.
The gendered subtext of this moment is, not to put too fine a point on it, war—war to the knife—over the future of women’s autonomy in American society. Shall women control their own reproduction, their health care, their contraception, their legal protection at work against discrimination and harassment, or shall we move backward to the chimera of past American greatness, when the role of women was—supposedly for biological reasons—subordinate to that of men?
That theme became apparent even before the 2016 election, when candidate Donald Trump promised to pick judges who would “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade. The candidate was by his own admission a serial sexual harasser. On live national television, he then stalked, insulted, and physically menaced his female opponent—and he said, in an unguarded moment, that in his post-Roe future, women who choose abortion will face “some form of punishment.”
In context, Trump promised to restore the old system of dominion—by lawmakers, husbands, pastors, institutions, and judges—over women’s reproduction.
And as they point out, the subtext has now become text with the allegations of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh. There are plenty of other reasons to deny Kavanaugh a Supreme Court seat, mind you, but the Republican Party has descended so low that corruption and a dismissal of human rights mean nothing when it harms them (but everything when it harms their opponents). Even Senator Susan Collins, considered to be on the liberal side of the Party, still twists in knots to defend Kavanaugh. These allegations of sexual assault might have been the straw, though.
Of course, now that sexual assault is back in the news, all the old apologetics are being vomited up. “Why didn’t she speak up?” “Boys will be boys.” “You’re ruining his life!” “There’s no evidence.” “This can’t be a common thing.” “Just trust the system.” It’s all very tired, and has been written about countless times before.
For instance, here’s a sampling of my own writing:
Evidence-Based Feminism 2: Sexual assault and rape culture
Debunking Some Skeptic Myths About Sexual Assault
Index Post: Rape Myth Acceptance
Christina Hoff Sommers: Science Denialist?
A Statistical Analysis of a Sexual Assault Case
Sexual Assault as a Talking Point
“There are no perfect victims.”
False Rape Reports, In Perspective
Steven Pinker and His Portable Goalposts
The evidence around sexual assault is pretty clear, and even in Kavanaugh’s specific case there’s circumstantial evidence that makes the accusations plausible. If people are still promoting myths about it at this point, it’s because they want to.
[HJH 2018-09-17: Added a few more links. Props to Salty Current of the Political Madness thread for some of them.]
[CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of Sexual Assault] [Read more…]
[CONTENT WARNING: The obvious]
I’ve been hoping for a good second opinion on this topic, and Zvan easily delivers. She has some training in psychology (unlike me), has been dealing with this topic for longer than I have, and by waiting longer to weigh in she’s had more time to craft her arguments. I place high weight on her words, so if you liked what I had to say be sure to read her take as well.
When we look more generally at how memory works, it quickly becomes apparent that focusing exclusively on the recovery of false memories produces lessons that aren’t generally applicable for evaluating memories of traumatic events. We need to continue to be on our guard for the circumstances that produce induced memories, and we have skeptics to thank for very important work on that topic.
However, it’s equally important that we, as skeptics, don’t fall into thinking every memory that people haven’t been shouting from the rooftops from the moment of trauma is induced. Recovered false memories are unusual events that happen under unusual circumstances. Abuse is a common occurrence, typically subject to normal rules of memory.
She also takes a slightly different path than I did. As weird as it may sound, I didn’t cover recovered memories very much in an argument supposedly centred around them; between the science on trauma, the obvious bias of Pendergrast and Crews, the evidence for bias from Loftus, the signs of anomaly hunting, and those court transcripts, I didn’t need to. I could blindly accept their assumptions of how those memories worked, and still have a credible counter-argument. Zvan’s greater familiarity with psychology allows her to take on that angle directly, and it adds much to the conversation. A taste:
Not everyone is susceptible to [false recovered memories]. Brewin and Andrews, writing for The British Psychological Society, characterize the situation thus: “Rather than childhood memories being easy to implant, therefore, a more reasonable conclusion is that they can be implanted in a minority of people given sufficient effort.” Estimates in the studies they look at (including Elizabeth Loftus’s work) show an effect in, on average, 15% of study participants, though they caution actual belief in those memories may be lower.
But enough from me, go read her.