Fr Ted creator/writer Graham Linehan Arrested over posts on Transgender issues

Exactly. It's like saying Christians exist, or Muslims exist. I don't have to believe what they believe to "validate" their existence. They can believe in their god and do whatever he wants them to do - but what they can't do is try to force the rest of us to "believe" as well. Same thing.

I'm sure there are trans people who genuinely believe they are whatever gender they wish they were, and that's absolutely fine, as long as they're adults, and with the strict limit that they can't use their belief, however strongly held, to remove anyone else's right to privacy, safety, fair sports etc.

The accusation of him encouraging trans child beating is a real reach around the bush

Yes I agree. I’m not a fan of his at all. Very petulant at times, shoot from hip remarks and whinges far too much about colleagues not supporting him etc.. he had a good moan about JK Rowling a while ago too. So, yeah. I’m not a fan.

Funny that this thread is another good example of double speak by stretching language meaning and inference to attack a trans critic.

Good old fashioned dishonesty to state something is true when it isn’t. Punch him in the balls = child violence. The comparison is simply nonsensical drivel. A clumsy attempt to put the argument on the back foot. Just more of the same drivel I read elsewhere.

There's nothing in his tweet about women in comedy, although you're entirely wrong about women not being disadvantaged in terms of getting gigs etc. High profile trans women (not just comedians) usually seem to wait until their career is safely established using all their male privilege and only then discover how oppressed they are. For instance Caitlin Jenner, Pip Bunce, Jan Morris and of course Deirdre McCloskey.

It's a joke? So the man who assaulted a trans child and criminally damaged her property was just joking?

This might come as a shock to you but some trans women do have balls, so your basis for claiming that it was a joke doesn't seem to stand up.

The poster that I was replying to is giving strange explanations for the existence of this trans woman, saying that either the mother or the father or a combination of the two made this child into a trans child. The poster seems to have ruled out the possibility that the trans child was just a trans child, and wasn't made trans by one or other of their parents.

The main crux of the debate here is people who never really gave a toss about women's sports or women's prisons suddenly finding a cause that allows them to lash out at people who's existence they just quite couldn't get their head around. The main crux of the Glinner debate is a fifty year old who encourages his rabid tribe of followers to assault other people in bathrooms.

It's not about his likeability. It's about him inciting other people to violent acts, incitement which seems to have worked.

No.

There is no recognised theory or school of child psychology which even contains the concept of a trans child. All of the respected child psychologists and educators like Maria Montessori or Jean Piaget spent years observing young children and never once came across a four year old that believed it was the opposite sex.

By all the theories of child development, a child's sense of itself as a separate being with its own identity only forms gradually. As the child becomes more mature, its sense of itself as separate from its mother, then its parents then its family and society develops.

Gender dysphoria is something that can develop as the child gets older, generally at the onset of puberty with changes in the body that make the child uncomfortable, and in most cases, GD begins with puberty and dissipates by the end of adolescence.

GD which happens earlier than that is often linked to a number of other issues such as autism (social awkwardness being almost the norm in low-level autism) and also child abuse. The children consulting at the Tavistock were TEN times more likely to have a parent with a record of sex offences than the general population. Around 35 per cent of its referrals presented with "moderate to severe autistic traits".

So no, a four year old cannot be trans. That's very different from saying that an adult may be. And in the case of Jackie Green, the fact of the homophobic parent who refuses to accept that he has a gay or "effeminiate" child is, sadly, a typical example of why some young children develop gender dysphoria. That may or may not be why Jackie Green is trans now, but it's almost certainly why the four-year-old Jack Green expressed a belief that he was in the wrong body.

This argument that someone can only care about fairness if one is personally affected is such a terrible argument.

I do actually care about women's sport, being a woman and having daughters, but hopefully I will never have to experience life in a women's prison, so by the poster's logic I should not care about women who are already vulnerable (most women in prison are victims, and are very rarely in prison for violence offences either - more often crimes of poverty and drug addiction such as theft)

But I do care and I would like to think that so do others - the alternative is so depressing.

As for inciting attacks in bathrooms - ask Tish Hyman, a US singer who was fairly "right-on" about trans people (she supports the Democrats) until she was harassed by one in a bathroom recently. Since then she's used her high profile to ask California politicians to take women's safety more seriously. I suppose a fair criticism of her would be that she only got interested when it happened to her. Still, she's making up for it now.

What age can a person be trans?

That's exactly what you're doing though, setting out your rules for exactly what bathrooms some people can use and how safe they can be in their sporting activities.

This thread is hilarious; imagine interpreting a joke about punching a predatory male deviant in the balls as incitement to violence against a girl.