Helen Joyce, writer of ‘Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality’, appeared on the ‘Women with Wine’ YouTube stream where she argued for what University Professor, Sally Hines, has described as ‘being complicit in eugenicism’.
Helen Joyce, a woman who self-Ids as neither a feminist nor ‘of the left’, has been heavily involved with anti-trans activism for a long time. Indeed she wrote a book about it, although many accused her of plagiarising ‘work’ from Jennifer Bilek, ‘work’ which has also been described as anti-Semitic, prompting Joyce to threaten lawsuits previously.
This time, she is threatening lawsuits regarding comments made about her appearance on a YouTube stream.
The ‘Women with Wine’ stream is hosted by Helen Staniland, an anti-trans activist who is most well-known for having spent five years spamming people with the same inane question. Worded far more provocatively, using rhetoric designed to get the answer she wants to hear, the ‘Staniland Question’ asks if trans women should be excluded from women’s spaces.
Helen Joyce’s recent comments on the show caused a massive controversy as she argued to “reduce” the population of people in the group she finds to be “damaged” and also “difficulties for a sane world”.
This tirade included all transgender people, whether they were “happily transitioned” and even those who had detransitioned.
The full comment reads as follows; “In the mean time while we try to get through to the decision-makers we have to limit the harm. And that means reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition, and that’s for two reasons: one of them is that every one of those people is a person who’s been damaged. But the second one is, every one of those people is basically – you know – a huge problem to a sane world.
Like if you’ve got people that – and whether they’ve transitioned, whether they’re happily transitioned, whether they’re unhappily tansitioned, whether they’re detransitioned – if you’ve got people who’ve dissosciated from their sex in some way, every one of those people is someone who needs special accommodation in a sane world where we re-acknowledge the turth of sex. And I mean the people who’ve been damaged by it, the children who’ve been put through it those people deserve every accomodation we can possibly make. But every one is a difficulty.
I mean I know that sounds heartless. I’m trying to say the exact opposite of sounding heartless. I’m saying everyone of those people for 50, 60, 70 years is going to need things that the rest of us just don’t need because the rest of us are just our sex. So the fewer of those people there are, the better, in the sane world that I hope we will reach.”
Writing to Twitter, Sally Hines said; “Interrupting my holiday silence to say that Helen Joyce is an absolute disgrace. Anyone who does not condemn her recent tirade is complicit in eugenicism”
To be clear on “eugenicism”, she has since explained that; EugenicISM is a system of thought (which identifies and seeks to foster desirable and by turn undesirable population characteristics). Eugenics are practices (which can be subgrouped into positive, negative or social).
Joyce is asking for Hines to retract and apologise for the tweet and, at the time of writing, Hines has not done so. Instead, she’s asking Joyce to help her understand how what she said on the stream is not eugenics in order to formulate a genuine and proper apology.
Very kind Sally! Very thoughtful!
Many in the LGBTQIA+ Twitter community are also asking the same question.
Helen Joyce very clearly names a group of people she describes as being “damaged” and “requiring support others don’t need”. She is then heard using that to justify her position that the population of that group should be “reduced”.
It’s hard to see how saying this is a eugenicist take is an unreasonable inference to have drawn.
Helen Staniland has attempted to do so on Twitter, likening transitioning to being in poverty or being homeless. But this is a false equivalence and rather tone-deaf given the disproportionate amount of transgender people we see represented in homelessness and poverty statistics. Trans people are simply just trans people; you can’t ‘support’ us out of being the way you can with the above issues.
It’s like transphobes view who we are as something they can fix and no, that’s just conversion therapy.
Curiously, the media have so far been silent on this subject. Which is surprising since it was only last week they were kicking up a fuss about the supposed ‘threat against free speech’ at Universities.
Previous threats of lawsuits from Joyce don’t appear to have gone anywhere, and the act of threatening them caused uproar in the community, who immediately got the wheels turning on ‘the Streisand effect’.
It appears the same as happened this time around, with multiple people chiming into support and repeat what Hines had said in an act of belligerent queer solidarity worthy of Pride month.
It is unknown whether Helen Joyce will pursue this legal threat. However, Sally Hines has been repeatedly targeted by anti-trans activists for not being transphobic before, so if you’re around on Twitter send her a little love right now! (Do not engage with the transphobes in the mentions though. No one needs that!)
