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Comment by gyrovont | Hacker News Reader

It's a very good read. Helen Joyce's Trans and Kathleen Stock's Material Girls are also excellent critiques of this movement.

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Joyce pushes an antisemitic conspiracy theory. She claims she made a simple error with the names of two charities. (George Soros made a very large donation to a human rights charity, and a very much smaller donation to a pro-trans charity, and Joyce swaps these around to make out Soros paid huge amounts to pro-trans organisations). But, we know it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory because we know where Joyce plagiarised it from - Jennifer Bilek.

If you haven't already, please educate yourself with Joyce's rebuttals of these false claims: https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/a-wild-ride

She's wrong though. We know she's wrong because the mistake she made is the exact same mistake Bilek made.

Bilek claimed Soros had made a huge donation to a pro-trans organisation.He hadn't, he'd made a small donation to a pro-trans organisation, and a very much larger donation to an international human rights organisation.

Joyce repeated those without checking - and it would have been a simple fact check.

When ever anyone talks about shadowy funding from Soros it's almost always an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and Bilek's later comments are very clear: she believes transition is a plot by Jewish people to spread post-humanism.

Obviously Joyce is now feeling a bit uncomfortable about having platformed and promoted this person, and she's back-peddling her support a bit. But the fact remains, she used to support Bilek, she spoke to Bilek frequently, she reposted comments from Bilek, and she included Bilek talking points in her book.

Rather than being honest and admitting she made a mistake she's simply lying about events and using legal threats to silence critics.

https://twitter.com/Chican3ry/status/1416557294595231744

https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/141659996421444813...

Helen Joyce is an eugenics advocate who has stated that she believes it is necessary to reduce the number of transgender people, even happily-transitioned ones, because she sees them as "damaged" and "a huge problem to a sane world" because they require "special accomodation".

She is not a eugenics advocate. That is a truly nonsensical summary of her viewpoint.

It is a straightforwardly true description of what she said.

Here's a link. [ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/06/03/helen-joyce-transgende... ] It contains direct quotes and video of her statements. Her statements quoted in the first section constitute support for involuntary eugenics; this means she is an eugenics advocate.

No it's not, and no she isn't.

She's talking about reducing the number of transitions. As in, discouraging or limiting the medicinal and surgical interventions that people who are unhappy with their sex sometimes pursue.

She is not advocating for people to be exterminated or sterilised or anything like that. That is an absurd reinterpretation of what she actually said.

She is advocating for reducing the size of a population that she sees as "damaged" because she believes that they place a burden upon society, and she is advocating this in opposition to that group, who would like to continue to exist as they are. I see these as sufficient conditions to call her position "eugenics advocacy". But if removal from the gene pool is a necessary condition in your view, then there are multiple studies linking access to various kind of gender-affirming care with lower rates of suicidal ideation. It's easily Googleable,

She does not specify any sort of medical procedure, and refers to people "dissociated from their sex", so she's probably talking about all trans people, including people who merely change their name, pronouns, and mode of dress.

That she specifically includes those who are happily transitioned shows that this is not motivated by compassion. By including them, she is making it absolutely clear that she wants to prevent people against their will from being able to transition. Most people who transition describe it as enormously benificial. She wants to reduce their number because she describes them as a "problem".

Again, that is a wildly inaccurate reinterpretation of what she was actually talking about.

When criticizing what someone has said, please consider addressing their actual viewpoint, rather than some fantasy you've invented.

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