JUSTtheTalk has moved

I've decided that after 12 years, it's time to move on from JUSTtheTalk. When I originally built the site back in 2011 I couldn't imagine life without the community, without being part of that community. Now I no longer feel that there's a place for me. My life has also changed and it's now centered around my dogs, donkeys and chickens here in rural north west France. I do want to explain a little about my decision. Sorry if this is a little long-winded.

Growing up as a gay man in the 80s and 90s was pretty grim. The most common slurs were that gay men were paedophiles and/or sexual predators. That's not the end of it; The Sun offered money to gay men to emigrate ("Fly away gays and we will pay"); the Daily Mail hoped that gay men might be aborted as foetuses. These attitudes caused me decades of mental health problems.

Imagine, then, my horror, when the same slurs started being used against trans folk, people who, like gay men, had existed forever and, by and large, did nobody any harm (but were nonetheless highly marginalised). Over the last 5 years the anti-trans rhetoric has ratcheted ever further upwards and has been driven ever further into the mainstream by populist demagogues, far-right activists, christian fundamentalists and libertarian billionaires. It is a key focus of the current culture wars and it is the moral panic of the 2020s. Every day it gets ever more and more intense, to the point that just a couple of weeks ago, a young trans girl was murdered. It is now at fever pitch.

All the while the real villains, the people who really are curtailing women's rights are getting a free pass. Even The Guardian is now publishing columns giving Andrew Tate a free pass (currently in custody in Romania on suspicion of trafficking women) while attacking anybody who dares criticise regressive and ill-informed Gender Critical ideology. This is no way to end the patriarchy or toxic masculinity (and that's no coincidence).

I can't be part of this. When I started JTT it was an inclusive and progressive community but over the last couple of years a significant and vocal minority just will not leave the subject alone. They were corralled into a single thread but when I dipped into it I found the most awful transphobia. When given limits they pushed right up to those limits. When I threw my toys out of the pram over the subject some posters left the site but anti-trans sentiment still bubbled up all over the place. Personally it takes me back to the time when I felt I was hated, someone who should be strung up, for something I never asked for and never wanted.

While I appreciate that most people on the site don't hold these values (and many wouldn't go near the subject with a 2000ft bargepole), the community feels to me to be irrevocably tainted. I can't sit and do nothing but this is really personal. All the same, I just don't have the spoons to fight every ideologue when for most of them, this has become part of their identity; it's not possible to argue people into a new identity.

Two things strike me. Firstly I don't own the community and it's up to the community to seek its own destiny, whatever that might be; also history favours progress. To this end, and rather than just killing it out of spite, I have passed the reins on to a new team who I think can credibly provide it with a home. I also hope that in time the wheel of history will turn again. Progress means understanding that we are all different and accepting that difference and accepting that too many people who feel different have suffered in silence for too long. I hope one day this latest moral panic will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Sadly somebody else will then be at the helm. I'm done.

From 1st March 2023 the stewardship of that home will be pass to REASONABLE DISCOURSE LTD (registered in England and Wales no. 14547426). I have no connection or contact with or influence over this company or its officers.

You should be redirected to the new site and you should update your bookmarks accordingly. If you are not redirected automatically click here.

In the meantime I'm off to feed my donkeys.

best,

JohnnyTheSailor