It is. It is a moral panic. I wrote about my own disgracefully slow realisation, prompted by a family member and Bob Dylan, back in February 2021:
I’ve been thinking. I used to be a sociologist. I liked the way sociology asked questions, all the time, about anything and everything. Especially, I liked the way it exposed how entrenched power differentials explain the suppression of some groups.
I often say it changed me for the better and for good.
I think I may have betrayed my younger self recently.
In the debate on the trans community supposedly trying to possess the SNP, so busy with my thing – media bias – and the rest of my life, I’ve angrily batted away other issues that seem unimportant distractions but…
Listening to Bob Dylan tonight, ‘It’s alright Ma (I’m only bleeding)‘ a favourite, I heard a line that, not for the first time, slaps me out of geriatric lethargy and conservatism –
The hollow horn plays wasted words, proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying.
I’d been reading about the ‘trans threat’ to the SNP and that line somehow stopped me in my tracks. I’ve largely ignored the debate or sided with radical feminists against trans arguments. I haven’t read anything. That’s bad.
What if I’m wrong? What if this is just another moral panic where the deviancy of an oppressed minority is amplified and distorted to enable them to be demonised and kept down? I was a sociologist FFS, shouldn’t I be anticipating just that?
Anyhow, late though it was, I searched and quickly found this:
Sex wars and (trans) gender panics: Identity and body
politics in contemporary UK feminism
Sally Hines
Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
This article considers how sex and gender – as conceptual categories and as a lived experience – are subject to contestation and renegotiation in the contemporary UK. Exploring gendered shifts through the lenses of identity and embodiment, the article captures key moments where certainties have been undone within feminist and transgender thought and activism. Yet such
fissures resound with calls for a return to traditional understandings of the sexed body. The article pays particular attention to debates within feminism around transgender issues, and sketches out a climate of transgender moral panic whereby conservative thinkers and some feminist activists are joining forces with the aim of resurrecting gender binaries.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038026120934684
I’m off to read it. Let’s see what happens
Talking-up Scotland 
This gender issue is so simply answered
Male Trans hater to M to F
Trans
I am a straight, what kind of person are you
Short delay for reply
M to F trans- simple exactly the same as you
A Human Being
LikeLiked by 2 people
You know what will happen John, you’ll have to read something else, then some more etc. As an academic you should know that this is how it works – on every issue not just this one !
LikeLiked by 4 people
Retired academic? Gimme a break?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Send that to Private Eye’s “Pseuds Corner”. Why use simple words when you can show off your erudition?
LikeLike
I’ve steered clear of this debate too – it’s too overwhelming for me. Can’t get my head around it and don’t see the point in bothering now I’m over 80. I will leave it to the young. However, today on Twitter I found something from Stonewall that I just couldn’t ignore. ‘Research’ has discovered that a child as young as 2 years old is aware of transgender. That, to me, is just pure nonsense. If I’m wrong, and there really is a point to it, I’d be glad if somebody would enlighten me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I came back on this to basics – what would I want for my child if … and how can that be achieved in society with appropriate legal protections without unintended negative consequences for other, differently abled individuals.
We didn’t get to where we are in society today – far from perfect but better surely than before – by shying away from such tough issues and by not striving to find ways to assist and enable minorities and the less powerful.
Life is full of dilemmas – situations that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavourable or unsatisfactory by some. I try to avoid forming a fixed view too quickly on complex issues based on what I read of just one side or just one advocacy body, Stonewall or any other. Each adopts its own strategy or communications tactics to achieve its aim – I can agree with an aim whilst questioning a tactic.
LikeLike
stewartb
May i qoute from one of todays leading Buddhist
Philosopher’s
When asked as to his thoughts on the Lady Boys
His reply was
” They are most fortunate as in a past life they must have been a woman and as such they are able to understand the World from
Both Sides “
LikeLike