I went to a discussion event in Brighton last week, and have been watching the furore around it on TwitX ever since.

This was an unchaired discussion between Hannah Barnes and Helen Lewis on child-transition, puberty blockers and the various controversies around that topic. Looking at the #TimeToTalk tweets on the night, these were the two most quoted comments I found:

“They didn’t try to find out what the costs and benefits would be.”

(This was referring to the loss of the once routine practice of medical professionals, of weighing up the pros and cons of a particular treatment in a particular situation, cited here in discussion of the fact that for some years in the UK, no-one at all seemed to be looking in detail at what happened to children put on puberty blockers.)

Which led to…

“Everything we know about adolescence and child development went out of the window.”

(Possibly the most shocking and damaging aspect of the ‘gender identity’ debate is that those of us who are over 40, and not suffering from amnesia, have to explain everything that (used to be) known about child development before even beginning a conversation on ‘gender identity’ and related issues.)

This was Sisters Salon’s preferred quote of the night:

A very successful event in real life. However, few days later on TwitX, those quotes were overtaken in some circles by cries of ‘betrayal’ and ‘compromise’. A fair bit of rewinding is needed to work out how that happened.

Wilfully ignorant

Later on in that evening in Brighton, talking about how far lessons have or have not been learned since the Tavistock clinic was found sadly wanting, and in the light of the interim Cass Report, came another much-tweeted quote:

“I think it’s wilful ignorance now.”

It came after what I considered a very apposite comparison was made between the somebody stop me breakneck panic that developed at the Tavistock clinic in its worst stage, and the long years of pain caused by the Post Office scandal everyone’s currently talking about.

In both cases, looking back, the most shocking element is all those professionals who ‘must have known’, people for whom seeing the truth was just so expensive – financially, emotionally or simply in terms of hard work – that they choose, sometimes for years, to stay in fantasy land.

And that’s where the title of my blog came from, although this article is about a lot more than what happened that evening.

Twitter-pated

I wonder what proportion of the population, on any given day, are going around being furious over something they thought happened because of something they saw on TwitX. Quotes taken out of context, photos of people the tweeter doesn’t happen to agree with in the audience or in the bar at an event, a few cries of foul, and anything can be presented as just about anything it wasn’t.

Blindly ignorant

The TwitX responders aren’t wilfully ignorant. They don’t stand a chance of knowing what actually went on. It would be nice if more people would get the hang of that. We all get fooled sometimes, but it’s such a waste of energy dealing with so many people who are in a constant rage over things that probably didn’t happen. Here’s the story of ‘TimeToTalk’. This is the organization that planned, booked, and started selling tickets for the event…

… that organization then received the usual treatment from Brighton’s #NoDebate crew, and cancelled. Someone from Sisters Salon, proud of the fact that the remnant of the #NoDebaters have never succeeded in preventing a debate on sex and gender related issues in Brighton, took over, booked a new venue, and ran the event on the night. Here is a mission statement from Sisters Salon, describing their work in Brighton:

They do run women-only events, but this wasn’t one of them; they are working for the benefit of women and girls, but that night’s debate was by, and for, anyone who chose to buy tickets. It was not restricted to one viewpoint. There was too much male presence for some, too much variety of opinion for others but I, notorious terf that I apparently am ( I got called ‘notorious transphobe’ by a Labour Councillor only this week ) found it to be a fascinating, enjoyable and enlightening event. Judging by the size and happy-nattery of the crowd in the hotel bar afterwards and the lack of visible protest or any kind of disorder, I should think just about everyone, including the venue owners were pretty happy with it.

The task that remains

So, to stick to the two topics I’ve mentioned (many more were touched upon that evening) we have seen off, for now, ‘self-ID’, the demand of gender-identity theorists that a person should be, legally and (impossibly) in fact, the sex they say they are and, thanks to a lot of determined campaigners and a television series, the world has worked out that a lot of postmasters have been treated cruelly and illegally, and redress is urgently required.

Those are two pieces of knowledge that have broken the surface lately but, between the polarizing nature of social media and the extreme timidity of many would-be event organizers, there are many other cases of wilful ignorance that still need an airing.

Certainly for those involved in the women’s rights campaign, continued ignorance by politicians and professionals means we now have an extensive cleaning up job to do. Everyone having a rant on TwitX may expose an issue but it does not actually solve the problems that negligence and/or ignorance created, as we can see, for example, from the vast numbers of uncompensated Windrush people who were, and still are, victims of the government’s ‘hostile environment’ campaign against – well, the government never were quite clear who they were aiming at, but we know who lost everything as a result.

Finishing the job

Activists, don’t give up your campaigns too soon. There are still a lot of people who urgently need help, whether it be gender-confused youngsters or school librarians wading through the sea of inappropriate, misinformed materials the likes of Stonewall and Mermaids have poured into schools; or penniless ex-postmasters or deported Windrush victims, and all sorts of people who continue to be ostracized, discriminated against and slandered for views which, if the world could only put two and two together, are now largely agreed with by nearly everyone.

What’s worse is that some of the wielders of wilful ignorance from the Tavistock are still in their jobs, and taking part in setting up the replacement services. Have they managed to see the truth yet? Should they be trusted again? Whatever else that #TimeToTalk event was or wasn’t, it alerted a large roomful of people to that alarming fact, and we’re on the case. Well done, Sisters Salon.

Every campaign needs to keep going until the relevant politicians, civil servants or other professionals have acknowledged, acted upon and solved the problems.

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Kay

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