Portrait of JK Rowling
I was only able to handle a single sentence of Rowling’s screed — it was too stupid to bear — but if you’re unclear on why the rest of it was so awful, Ashley Miller slogged through the whole thing, and if you’d rather see it analyzed from a trans perspective, Dawn Ennis looks at it and the context of the response to it. As far as I’m concerned, JK Rowling is dead to me and I won’t be reading anything by her ever again.
I don’t find that a particular loss. When the Harry Potter books came out, I was happy to get them for my kids — they were enthusiastic, there was some peer pressure from their friends, it got them reading, although that generally wasn’t a problem with my nerdish offspring. I read the first couple. I didn’t care for them personally. They were just too formulaic — does every book have to revolve around Quidditch, a game which makes no sense — and Hogwarts as an institution was far too offputting, seeming to fit better with the kind of British culture that thinks sending kids off to be tortured for a few years in a boarding school builds character. The movies bored me, and if you asked me now what happened in any of them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Uh, um, there was a Quidditch match. There were monsters? Harry Potter is tormented, but never seems to do much of anything? I dunno.
She seems to be trying to churn out spinoffs from the Harry Potter universe now. I didn’t care before, I am actively repulsed now. JK can just toddle off to her mansion and her well-earned irrelevance, and the Harry Potter phenomenon can be recognized as the peculiar phenomenon it was.
I was put off by the whole *muggle” thing, classifying people into two distinct groups based oly on one single ability
From EoT:
https://youtu.be/1Khp8ibYkuU
Nope, never gave a shit about Harry Potter either. I was at just the right young age too, there and then when the series was maximum hype, but I was too busy reading Hitchhiker’s Guide actually. It pissed off the fundies right good though, so that was nice.
The thing that really annoyed me about the books when they first came out and I read them was how absurdly incurious Harry was. He just found out about a world full of magic and wizards and all sorts of fantastic things, and he actively avoids learning anything about it so that Hermione can tell him things he should already know, because that was literally her only purpose for the first two-three books.
What, you mean you aren’t charmed by Rowling’s countless announcements which add amazing new details to the Harry Potter universe, like [shuffles through notes] the now-canon fact that wizards poop in their pants and then magic the feces away? How could you fail to find this both fascinating and delightful?
you are being far to generous, that is all there really is to the whole lot of the stories, I find it so personally repulsive that I could not watch even 10 minutes of any of the movies with interest even with the superb look forget about the books. that she has those opinions just fits in to the whole british middle class ideal and no surprise.
uncle frogy
OT but definitely related.
“Yesterday, the Trump administration finalized a rule allowing doctors, nurses, insurance providers, and employers to refuse service to LGBTQ people if it violates their religious beliefs. More technically speaking, they’re saying gender identity no longer counts under regulations dealing with sex discrimination.’
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/13/trump-administration-gets-rid-of-healthcare-protections-for-transgender-people/
I’ve never understood the appeal of aesthetic Stalinism. PZ, I am dismayed that you’ve chosen to go down this road. It’s the same motivation behind the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
@ 8 leovigild
Yes censoring books is exactly the same as one individual deciding not to read any more by that author. I mean, apart from being completely different.
Atheistic Stalinism is my new band name.
@ 8 leovigild, I read the first chapter of the first book, was completely bored, and never read them again. I never gave them to any children I know, or recommended them to anyone. Never saw the movies.
So, SAME MOTIVATION as Prohibited Books, it’s just atheistic Stalinsm on my part, right?
I am wondering why an incrediby rich, white, straight, cis woman who is rather universally adored around the world is worried by the intense danger to her and to society posed by the existence of trans people? Something is deeply wrong there. Especially because, in the last six months the world has fallen apart, not even to mention climate change, and there seem to be much more pressing things to worry about.
As for books, the best fantasy novels ever written, even for adults, are The Chronicles of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander), full stop. Dump those Potter books (be a Stalinisit!) and spread the word on Prydain to people who like that genre.
aesthetic
atheistic
w
hit post instead of preview
I had an actual comment but it really doesn’t matter so fuket
@7 still waiting for that apology from Maggie Haberman and the NY Times.
“Donald Trump’s More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in G.O.P.”
By Maggie Haberman April 22, 2016
Also, in the news today, HUD allowing homeless shelters to decide to force trans-people into the wrong housing:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hud-to-change-transgender-rules-for-single-sex-homeless-shelters/2020/06/12/d47a5744-ad03-11ea-9063-e69bd6520940_story.html
Reading the comments here reminds me of reading the comments on Jonathan Turley’s blog, Res Ipsa Loquitur. Little diversity of opinion there, either. So I’m going to give an opinion that’s a little more complex, a little less one-dimensional than some of these others: I liked the Harry Potter books, growing up, but now dislike J. K. Rowling.
Why, might you ask? (About the former opinion; the latter is self-evident.) Sheesh, I was just a dumb kid, who liked dumb fantasy. And they are basically written as giant exercises in Chekov’s Guns, so to certain types of people I suppose they must be satisfying.
@loosenoodlepoodledoodle your comment is ironically amusing given that anyone who has hung out here more than about a month has seen someone claim there’s “little diversity of opinion,” or some variation thereof, at least once a month
I liked and still like (though knowing they have numerous issues) the hp books. The fourth book in particular was full of moments of “ok, you’re being angry and stupid and we get that, but you have to treat people well even so ” which resonated as a nice response to a troubled teen.
Jk has ofcourse gone off the rails with the trans stuff. I think many of the hp fans will disagree with her but continue to love the books. I think they got a reputation for being more progressive when it was the readers who were, not the canon
@loosenoodlepoodledoodle
What’s the problem? We don’t have anyone calling for JKRs assassination either so you’ll have to be more specific about what you are looking for. It seems more likely you don’t like the opinion here and can’t bring yourself to engage with it.
As for what you left, since you didn’t engage with what was here and just complained about the number of kinds of things I’m going to totally ignore the rest of your point.
Let’s see…
I bought all the books for my kids
I encouraged them to read them
I appreciated that they seemed to be a good tool for motivating young readers
I don’t condemn my kids for liking them
But I was personally unenthused about them,
and am not going to consume further Harry Potter media.
Therefore…aesthetic stalinism!
Does anyone else get a whiff of coldhardrealist from loosenoodlepoodledoodle? Flatulent, pretentious, smarmy? Oversharing personal information to establish authenticity?
No problem with liking or loving the Potter books, as a kid or now. Just because they’re not the best fantasy novels ever written, and so bore some people, doesn’t mean they’re not worth anyone ever reading.
I mean, I liked some of the Star Wars movies, which are not exactly masterpieces of narrative or plot or character development. It’s just that, their author or makers (or whomever) hasn’t compounded being not-really-that-good with later offensiveness and bigotry on unrelated topics. That just makes the Potter books a little more distasteful and not the first things you think of when you are recommending books or want to read some yourself.
OTOH, if kids had read The Chronicles of Prydain, they’d still be reading them with pleasure today. And, their author seems to have considerately kept his opinions on almost everything to himself, and is now conveniently dead, so can’t spray any of his bigotries out to the whole world.
@4 microraptor Yeah. Kind of had that thought to. There are a number of series which cast, the way the magical world works is not how all the myths say, and one I am now reading actually has all of human history be something made up after the humans developed some sort of cultural amnesia, and forgot the planet is actually a space ship. But Rowlings barely even tries to do this, but copies and pasted stuff from what you can find in from common fantasy novels. I chalked it up to, though it would have helped it this explanation had been given, that his “family” was so against him learning about magic that they wouldn’t even let him watch cartoons with “magic” or myth in them, never mind read Tolkien, or something.
@14 Yeah, it’s almost like a major celebrity has endorsed transphobia or something.
loosenoodlepoodledoodle, #15
Ooh, careful! Really pushing the boundaries there!
And there is plenty of diversity of opinion here. You’ll find all kinds of opinions about ice cream flavors, favorite books, etc.
I have read the Harry Potter books when I was 20-something and I really liked them. I have read them multiple times since then. I have also watched the movies, and I liked them too (BTW, all three main protagonists have expressed vocal support for trans rights and a clear disagreement with J.K. Rowling). I did not read any of the follow-ups, fanfic or spinoffs, I am just not interested in that.
However liking the books did not prevent me from seeing that they contain deeply problematic concepts – the blatant and universal racism, rape drugs, complete disregard of consent, etc. I like the books, but I do not think the world they describe is something to wish for. Quite the opposite actually. It is still a good escapist fantasy, for me.
So I might still like them now, I have not decided yet. After Dawkins lost his marbles, I was unable to read any of his books again. But with H.P. books it is different since I never like J.K. Rowling as a person at all and her opinions did not concern me.
Still, it sucks that she is a TERF. Someone with her celebrity power and money could do much good in the world. And she chooses to spout hateful nonsense on twitter instead…
I missed the boat on Harry Potter. I was too old and too young to appreciate I think. This makes me loose interest completely. Sorry J.K. Same thing with Narnia. There’s better fantasy out there. There’s more deserving fantasy out there. There’s more inclusive fantasy out there.
I loved the books, and liked some of the movies. But yeah, the more critical I thought about certain issues, the more critical I got of many aspects.
What’s more, the more I learned about literature and world building, the more obvious the plot holes you could bury Hogwarts in became.
Still, that would just have made the whole thing “books I used to like, but now consider a bit boring”, and I can tell you there’s a lot of those.
But of course JKR’s transphobia is disappointing for people like me who really liked her stuff.
Which probably makes me some kind of war criminal, because apparently JKR is forever entitled to my admiration and money.
The Catholic Church was practising Aesthetic Stalinism back in the 16th century?
Sorry to double post, but I just thought of something. Back in “ye olde days”, intersex babies were considered somewhat magical. To this day, many modern Pagans practice Hermetic magic. Hermetic is from the god Hermes and also where we get the word Hermaphrodite. Does anyone know if there’s a fantasy series out there about magic hermaphrodites? Probably not. But it would be cool if there was.
@1: “I was put off by the whole *muggle” thing, classifying people into two distinct groups based oly on one single ability” Like having a uterus! (Isn’t that Rowling’s sine qua non for being a woman?)
@29: ” Hermetic is from the god Hermes and also where we get the word Hermaphrodite” …well, the first part of “hermaphrodite”; the second comes from the goddess Aphrodite.
Yeah, same old stupid troll.
What he said was pure trolling and made no sense.
Not liking a book series or an author has zero to do with atheism or Stalinism.
I find it irritating that every discussion of Rowling’s transphobia turns almost immediately into “her books were shit anyway!” What does it matter how good or bad her books are? They could be the best fucking thing ever written, and Rowling would still be a garbage human being using her influence and wealth to push evil bigoted bullshit.
But, if we’re going to do that… I didn’t read her books until I was an adult. The first one became popular in the US just about the time I became too self-conscious to read kids’ books (I think I was 12, but I’m too lazy to confirm it). I read things like Tanya Huff’s Circle of Darkness, Gate of Light, Keeper Chronicles, and The Fire’s Stone. They have actual openly gay and bisexual main characters in them, which was great for someone as confused about his own sexuality as I was.
As I said, I first encountered the Harry Potter series in my early teens, when I wouldn’t have been caught dead reading a kid’s book. It wasn’t until I caught the first movie in my late teens that I became interested in it. It was a time in my life when I desperately needed some escapist fantasy. I ended up reading the first 5 books while home on winter break from my first semester in college. It’s not an exaggeration to say they saved my life, as I was in the depths of a fathomless despair at the time, although that’s less a testament to the quality of the books than it is to my need for some kind of escape. As problematic as the world of the books is, it was still light-years better than where I was.
I liked them. A lot. The first five, anyway- I hated the sixth enough that I never read the seventh. I suspect I’ll always have a soft spot for them, but they’re tainted now, because the author has chosen to be cruel bigot. Rowling’s decision to hurt trans people is a lot more important than my disappointment, and I wish every discussion of it didn’t turn into a bunch of people masturbating over how they hated the books before it was cool. Yes, we get it, you were far too cultured and sophisticated to be taken in by pedestrian children’s lit. Can we focus on the fucking transphobia now, or do we need to wait for you to towel yourself off?
@32
Same boat here. Never even read any of the books or saw any of the movies. J.K. Rolling is just a shitty person in my eyes.
“I read things like Tanya Huff’s Circle of Darkness, Gate of Light, Keeper Chronicles, and The Fire’s Stone.”
I’m going to look those up because that is something that interest’s me. Unlike a certain series that features a “chosen one”.
I also put reading a book in a separate category from approving of the author as a person. Sometimes they do overlap, as when reading a memoir, autobiography, or piece of persuasive writing where the author’s own values are at issue. Most times in fiction, however, the overlap is small.
As for problematic aspects of the HP universe like anti-muggle “racism”, I was actually happy that was included, just as I was happy the books had people getting killed or harmed in ways that mattered. In the old days, children’s stories included lots of death. The 20th century largely sanitized that, or it seemed that way to me growing up in the 70s and 80s. HP is an unsanitized version where a lot of people are fucked. They’re acting incredibly badly. And some are never redeemed. Others are only partially redeemed (e.g. Draco Malfoy). Injustice happens (e.g. Lupin getting fired) that never gets remedied. It’s not all Storm Saxon & Laser Lass against the Nameless Orcs. That’s a good thing in my mind. I particularly liked the end of the first book where the house cup was won by Nevill standing up for what he thought was right by opposing HP, Hermione & Ron’s attempt to violate curfew. I thought it was a useful example of everyday bravery for kids to read.
As for liking the books generally, well, I liked the first. I liked the second a bit less. I didn’t like the third. and was nervous this was all going to boil down to a truly tedious formula. But book four broke the formula that I thought should never have been used in #2 & #3 and that gave me hope to read on. HP was a jerk to his friends during a couple parts of #4 and during most of #5, but as much as that annoyed me, it’s sure as hell true to the experience of being friends with a teenager. They ain’t perfect. #6 and #7 worked for me. #3 was the low-point for me, though there were also moments in #5 when I was very annoyed with Harry’s character’s teen angst.
On the whole, I appreciated them as escapist fantasy that had a sense of the absurd (which suits my sense of humor) yet allowed for characters that were actually “good guys” yet jerks, “bad guys” yet redeemable, important characters that get killed, marginalized characters that grow to be centered. The arcs for Nevill and Luna were particularly satisfying for me.
And, of course, none of appreciation for the HP fiction she wrote makes me like her as a person or appreciate the anti-trans fiction she writes now. It definitely makes me unwilling to spend any money on her, even to replace old HP books at some point in the future, if I had, for example, grand kids that wanted them. But I’ll probably re-read them at some point, because re-reading old, familiar tomes is one of the things I do when I’m feeling down and not up for something challenging. The familiar can be comforting for its very familiarity.
(I.P. Mumblebottom is a prominent Gryffindor, writing some time after Voldemort’s defeat)
I.P. Mumblebottom Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Magic and Mudblood Issues
This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.
For people who don’t know: last December I hooted my support for Modesty Finch-Fletchley, a gold specialist for the Ministry of Magic and respected Gryffindor who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘blood purist’ owls. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that magical ability is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tooksnordle ruled that it wasn’t.
…
I’d stepped back from owling for many months both before and after hooting support for Modesty, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the Zorby’s Fire-Breath Sneezes outbreak. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive witches and wizards swarmed back into my parchment, assuming a right to auror my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me miswitchistic slurs and, above all – as every witch involved in this debate will know – BLOOD PURIST.
…
On Saturday morning, I read that the Ministry of Magic is proceeding with its controversial mudblood recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a muggle needs to ‘become a wizard’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘wanded’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from mudblood activists on owl media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under Colloportus, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious magical assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a member of a family of mudbloods (although himself a pureblood) capitalised on an opportunity. I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with witches’ safety.
…
Well they aren’t very good books, and they are really formulaic. I read them as an adult because my friends recommended them. But I read a mountain of Enid Blyton as a kid, and as a young teen I loved David Eddings. These both have distinct similarities to HP, and if they (HP) were around when I was 10 I would probably have felt differently about them. Husband and I tried to watch the movies, but found we needed alcohol, snacks, and toilet breaks to get through them and gave up after the third. I couldn’t care less about quidditch.
The thing about books / authors is that the author’s worldview does influence their books and you risk absorbing their worldview as you read. And that’s why I still absolutely adore Terry Pratchett, whose world is complex and interesting, who holds a mirror up to human nature, and who by all accounts was an awesome human being. As you read you are introduced to the principles of secular humanity.
#IStandWithJKRowling.
Read what she wrote. The reason so many people are saying not to read it is because what she says makes sense. And while you’re at it, go on twitter or tumblr and read all the threats of violence, rape, and death that are being directed at her – which is apparently fine and dandy if the woman being threatened has an unpopular opinion. The only violence we’re seeing is directed at gender critical women, and women who want to have female only spaces. Saying biology is real or chromosomes are real isn’t violence.
Worth a quick annotation:
I was puzzled with the response to what she wrote. I think I understand why now. She has been under fire for some tweets she made, and I think a lot of the response has been due to a confusion between sex and gender, where she was tweeting about sex, while the people responding were talking about gender.
Regardless, I think a lot of people are responding to her essay as though it was an apology, and finding it lacking. There is a simple reason for that – it isn’t an apology. It is her defending the opinions she holds. If you don’t agree with her opinions, that is fine. No one is going to agree with all of your opinions, that doesn’t mean you are right, but neither does that mean they deserve death threats, censoring, character assassination, etc.
I think PZ and others stating that they will never buy her books is pretty stupid. She was a billionaire until she gave away millions to numerous charities, so you not buying her books will not have any effect on her lifestyle, and sounds more like jealousy to me. All that will do is deprive you, or people you might have given the books to, the opportunity to read them. Personally my kids and I enjoyed her books, and she turned a lot of kids onto reading. To not buy them because of one of her many opinions (remember her putting Trump in his place?), is like not buying another author’s children’s books because the author isn’t vegan or vegetarian.
No one is perfect, and everyone has flaws if you delve deep enough. You won’t have any role models, heroes or other people to look up to if you are expecting perfection. If you want either honor someone for the good work they did, you have to overlook their imperfections.
Everyone has their pet grievances that they are interested or passionate about, but not everyone shares yours. I might donate money to environmental causes, but because I don’t support orphans or starvation in Africa charities doesn’t make me a horrible person, it just means I have different priorities to those who do. Similarly I think making Rowling out to be a villain, is making a public enemy out of the wrong person. If you disagree, I suggest you read this article first, and then donate 16% of your net worth to your favorite charities before responding:
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/facts-about-j-k-rowlings-charity-work/
#PleaseGoStandSomwhereElse
No one here is condoning threats. It’s just that we’re a bit occupied with trans people who face much more than idle threats. People who are routinely discriminated against, assaulted and even murdered. So excuse me for choosing my battles.
Let’s be honest here, we’re talking about lightweight children’s fantasy. Like it or not, it ain’t Tolkien. Or Kant for that matter. So why the fuck should anyone take anything that person says seriously?
Michael:
Nah, you’re wrong. The actual reason can be summed-up thus: dogwhistles.
Heh. Sure, when I can remain filthy rich afterwards, and enjoy the good life between resting in my mansion, I’ll do that.
@ elvishpresley, #37
I read it. It was nonsense, a long, bigoted screed full of debunked myths, fearmongering, and hateful lies. I found it particularly vile when she tried to use her own history as an abuse survivor to justify the thousands of dishonest, cruel words leading up to that point.
First, point to where anyone here says that’s “fine and dandy.”
Second, what do you think is happening to trans people because Rowling voiced this “unpopular opinion?” What do you think trans people have to put up with every fucking day because this hateful “opinion” isn’t all that unpopular?
Third, Rowling presents this “unpopular opinion” as though it’s scientific fact. It’s not. It’s bullshit.
Now see, there you go too far. Even Rowling gave a hand-wavey acknowledgement* to the violence directed against trans people, but you’re so full of hate that you can’t even manage that. Really tipping your hand there.
*I know this because, again, I read her bullshit essay. Apparently you haven’t. You go do that and, yeah, you know what? Don’t bother coming back. We’ve heard it all before.
Why? I haven’t bought any of her books since well before the kids left home, I can’t imagine putting the movies on for entertainment, and the 5 minutes of “Fantastic Beasts” (or whatever it’s called) that I saw left me cold. Now that she’s come out as a screaming TERF, I should rethink every thing and give her work serious consideration? Nope.
We all weigh the good and the bad in everyone. To claim that the sum total of someone’s views should not change the balance of our opinion is absurd. I thought she was a hack writer before, and now I think she’s a hack writer with awful opinions. That stuff matters.
I also would never buy another book by Orson Scott Card, and I’m not going to pick up a copy of The Turner Diaries. I’m denying myself “the opportunity to read them”. Is that stupid too?
ElvishPresley has posted here only once before, to declare that “TERF is a slur”. I should have banned them then. That omission has been corrected.
Crypt Dyke @34: The issue isn’t that there’s bad stuff in the HP novels, it’s that there’s bad stuff that’s treated as perfectly fine. The racial enslavement of house elves, for example. The only character in the series who thinks that it’s a problem is Herminia and she’s treated as being completely silly and unreasonable for it. The read was obviously not supposed to agree with her and in the end she was shown “growing out” of it.
[A bit of levity]
microraptor, your typo amused me, given the conjunction of “Crypt Dyke” and “HP novels”, because I have to consciously remind myself that in this context, HP refers to Harry Potter, not Howard Phillips.
—
That’s anthropomorphising.
A better comparison would be to the Ameglian Major Cow, except in that case it was clearly sardonic.
@ 39 Michael
No. You’re trivialising. Transphobia causes harm. Just now, the Trump administration removed health care protections for trans people. Serious shit is going down. We are living in a time of intense transphobia, and Rowling – who has millions of followers on Twitter – spreading transphobic tropes is not a trivial problem. People aren’t getting upset for no reason.
And if you don’t see the transphobia in what she wrote, read the Ashley Miller piece in the OP again. Rowling is promoting the idea that trans people aren’t real (“I would have been transed!!!”) and also that “trans activists” are some kind of dangerous insidious force. That shit causes harm.
Trans people are like 0.6% of the population, they can’t protect their rights all by themselves, it takes a significant number of cis people to stand up for them to do that. And that means denouncing transphobia. Even if you’re kids like Harry fricken Potter.
It saddens me that she is going to join the ranks of folks like Orson Scott Card, but if the timetable is fast enough, the culture will be closer to caught up then.
And anyway the actors who play the lead characters from the movies have come out in support of trans rights, so your kids can go on liking Harry Potter if they want knowing Harry and Hermione did the right thing.
Actually, it pissed them off initially, but once it became clear in the later books that JK was setting Harry Potter up as a Christ figure, they backed off, and what with Harry actually rising from the dead in the last book, I think a lot of them are positively fans now.
(other things people get wrong include: depicting Harry+friends as the oppressed/underdog nerds trying to survive high school, when in fact they’re really the jocks, all remaining super-popular throughout the books, Harry is basically captain of the football team, Slytherin is actually the house that is hated,… and well, buh … so much MarySue shit…)
Michael,
Ongoing maliciousness and using your fame to push bigotry against a marginalized group over and over despite being corrected and despite there being available plenty of resources and opportunities to learn and educate yourself isn’t a “flaw” or “imperfection”.
J K Rowling: “Here’s my honest attempt to justify the concerns that I, as a woman, have about our society’s rapidly & drastically changing perspective on womanhood.”
Sanctimonious, Bearded White Dudes on the Internet: “I didn’t read your article, but you’re wrong, and your writing sucks!”
hookflash, shorter: I’m a transphobe!
I’m a cisgender woman. Trans women are not a threat. Accepting that trans women are women in no way diminishes me as a woman.
@ John Morales #38:
It’s kind of amusing – in a gallows-humour sort of way – to see the equivocation, intentional or otherwise, that follows from conflating sex and gender. Easy enough to do given that words like “man” and “woman” can be used to denote both a sex (gametes; 2) and a gender (personalities: billions & billions).
But all of that is not surprising given the number of conflicting and contradictory definitions for both floating about, and peddled by all and sundry – including by “philosophers” like Doc Stock, and “scientists” like Colin Wright and Emma Hilton, all of whom should know better.
And that, I think, is one of the worst failings of Rowling’s essay: not being clear on what she was referring to and talking about, and, apparently, not being aware of that difference. If we don’t define our terms at the outset then we’re hooped – as Voltaire put it, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”
However, many transactivists – though not all – and their fellow-travelers aren’t really helping their case by being equally clueless or dogmatic about biology. For instance, I seem to recollect that Zinnia Jones was quite adamant in insisting that “trans women are female”; one might reasonably wonder what definition ZJ has in mind for “female” – maybe “has concave mating surfaces” as with plumbing and electrical connectors? One might reasonably cut someone some slack in an ambiguous use of “woman” as either a sex or a gender, but with a sex itself?
And Ashley Miller’s “fisking” of Rowling exhibits the same failings. While Miller has some justification to throw stones at Forstater – whose case rests on her article of faith that sex is immutable (it ain’t as clownfish prove), Forstater also has a great deal of justification for “referring to trans women consistently as ‘males’.” While that may be “rude”, it’s also a fact that those with functional testicles are, by definition, males. And those transwomen who’ve had them removed might reasonably be seen as sexless.
Whole issue sure is a dog’s breakfast; a comedy of errors; of miscommunication based on conflicting definitions, on the vanity of women and the envy of transwomen, on pigheaded ignorance and dogma on virtually sides – except mine of course …. But all of that is kind of a shame as there some important issues and policies that hang in the balance while so many engage in pointless squabbling.
Rowan vet-tech, you’re missing my point. I agree that trans women are not a threat, and that they are women. But, unlike you guys, I don’t believe that I’m in possession of the Absolute Truth on All Matters (I left that shit behind when I stopped being a fundy; seems like some people just traded one form of fundamentalism for another), and I recognize that this is a complicated issue with lots of different voices, belonging to trans and cis women, that deserve to be heard.
@52: Cis woman here. I read her article and she’s full of it. But we get it: you think you’re edgy posting stuff like that. (Guess what? You’re not. You’re not even a troll. You’re just kinda laughable in a “Well, at least you tried, bless your heart” way.)
“Samuel Pepys”, you imagine you’re being subtle? Nuanced?
It’s particularly ironic to see you do the very same thing even as you decry it.
Bah.
Only if you persist in the equivocation you so transparently dishonestly decry.
There is no doubt that J.K. Rowling’s unmasking as a gender critical
feminisstfascist-adjacent dogwhistler will do abundant harm in the U.K., where it is already being predicted (on the front page of no less a (gratuitously transphobic and) mainstream paper than The Sunday Times) that the Conservative government will not only abandon reform of the Gender Recognition Act (in spite of a majority-favoured consultation that anti-trans groups nonetheless tried to brigade) but also take the opportunity to remove the few rights already guaranteed to trans people and enshrined in UK law under the Equalities Act.Rowling’s views align her not only with trans-exclusionary radfems but also with regressive fascism and religious fundamentalism that has been directing money into the United Kingdom from known US hate groups such as Hands Across the Aisle and the Heritage Foundation. We learned just today that an Irish right-wing Catholic media organisation that opposes abortion is one of the groups that JKR has given permission to reprint copies of her essay.
TERF Island, or as it used to be known, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, is beginning to look like a shining paragon of fascist values right now, only a few steps behind Hungary and Poland. When one minority’s rights start being trampled underfoot, other disenfranchisements inevitably follow in turn.
I’ve said repeatedly (for years it seems) that the radfem assault on trans people’s rights is an act of extreme political naïveté: instead of shoring up women’s “sex-based rights”, by throwing trans people under the bus they are actually delivering power to those who would take away the rights of any group they wish to target for repression. After trans people, then the rest of the the LGBTQ alliance, as demonstrated just a day ago in the US, by the Trump administration’s ruling to allow arbitrary sex-based refusal of medical care, overturning anti-discrimination policies of the Obama era. If the concept of bodily autonomy (and Gillick competency) can be denied from gender dysphoric adolescents, then also can the right to an abortion, or to contraception, or to birth control be revoked, if it is seen fit. It’s only the next step, and it’s what a disturbingly large number of J.K.’s new love-bombing bedfellows want.
Clean-up on aisle 54, stat. Pepys has been reliably dead since the 18th century, so the views of 21st centruy cowardly cutlet trolls without the gumption to put their own name to their views is less valuable than dogshit and regrettably just as common.
@ hookflash; #55:
Define “woman”, preferably in a dozen words or less. Absent a definition that all parties to the conversation can agree on, that “conversation” is a pointless and noisy exercise in barking up the wrong tree.
If there aren’t any consequences or policies that hang on differentiating between those who are women and those who aren’t then the corresponding claims are little more than “nice weather, eh?”
But the fact of the matter is that there are consequences, whether it’s access to loos, changing rooms or sports, we simply HAVE to define what we mean by the terms. You might check out a NYTimes article of several years ago that described how the “Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX”:
Though they too haven’t a clue about the difference between sex and gender as evidenced by the free use of both to refer to the same concept.
But the definitions also have to be coherent and consistent – if they lead to contradictions then they’re useless, worse than useless.
Xanthë, I concur. See #60 as well — just naked trolling now.
(Also, good to see you back here)
@ John Morales, #57
LoL.
How so? Show your work. I was rather clear that I think sex is a binary based on the presence of functional gonads, that those without any are therefore sexless, and that gender is hardly more than a synonym for personality. Both positions that are adequately and substantively supported by any number of credible sources and publications – not to mention by reason and logic.
See::
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sex
And the elaboration on “female”:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/female
Maybe you can explain how ova can be produced for fertilization without functional ovaries? Magic? 🤔🙄
And gender:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender
Don’t think many people get that definitions aren’t a free-for-all, that there’s often some rhyme & reason – and science – behind them. Y’all can no more pick your own than you can drive on any side of the road you want whenever you want.
@ John Morales, #61:
What a bunch of jam-tarts. “troll” seems to be latest variation on “playing the race card”:
“A tool of the intellectually weak and lazy when they cannot counter a logical argument or factual data”
Look, troll, it’s perfectly simple, and perfectly obvious.
You don’t give a rat’s ass what definitions might be applicable; for you, as for JK, trans men are women and trans women are men. Fini.
Point being, the definition is not of relevance, what is of relevance is that you imagine gender is immutably fixed once assigned at birth, and that’s that.
And I note you don’t dispute this thread’s thesis: JK is transphobic. Demonstrably so.
@ Ray Ceeya, #33
The Fire’s Stone is particularly good. It takes the most basic high fantasy plot- a thief, a warrior, and wizard go on a quest to retrieve a magic whatsit and save a kingdom, and there’s a royal wedding- but what Huff does with the gender roles and sexuality of the characters is what makes it great. It’s perhaps not so special now, but for a book published in 1990? It certainly blew my mind when I read it, as a sheltered kid.
I haven’t read anywhere near all of Huff’s books but, of the dozen or so I have read, she reliably has gay/lesbian/bi/pan/ace people as principle characters. She hasn’t done as much with gender that I can recall (though it’s been a while), but I do remember that two of the main characters in The Second Summoning (second book of the Keeper Chronicles) are agender beings who are inadvertently given genders, much to their consternation.
Troll cleanup, various aisles above.
(Oh, and hi John! I lurk often, but comment much less frequently.)
It’s a waste of energy to refute ideas that have already been dismissed, that are raised purely for the purpose of trolling and dissension. See, PRATTs, i.e., “point(s) refuted a thousand times”.
Amongst your other unforgivable sins, you’re also boring.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Point_refuted_a_thousand_times
@ John Morales, #64:
And you’re an ignorant dickhead.
For one thing, there’s the question – as I tried to put on the table – as to what is meant by “man” and by “woman”. IF “man” MEANS “adult human male” – as is the case – THEN it logically follows that transwomen still with functional testicles are, ipso facto, males:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/man
Consider an old Times article:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/martina-navratilova-blasts-cheating-transgender-women-in-sport-8fmjbnh99
So, is McKinnon male or female? You going to seriously argue that people with intact testicles and penises are actually females?
And, for another, don’t give up your day job to hang out a shingle as mind-reader because you suck at it. I most certainly did and do not:
I’ve said repeatedly that gender is – as stipulated in the Merriam-Webster definition – hardly more than a synonym for personality – which we all change from day to day and decade to decade.
You too are apparently conflating sex and gender, and apparently haven’t a clue as to the difference. By definition, to have a sex is to able to reproduce because of an ability to produce sperm or ova for reproduction: no gametes, no sex. While gender is simply a collection of personality traits that show a great deal of variability from day to day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
Although I think Wikipedia is wide of the mark with that “may include”, not least because it conflicts with the Merriam-Webster definition: they’re two quite different concepts, quite different kettles of fish.
But the bottom line – so to speak – is that, as Voltaire emphasized, we simply have to be clear on our definitions and terminology or we wind up chasing our tails, riding madly off in all directions. Hardly a recipe for much progress.
Yawn.
Then it’s trinary, male, female, and neuter. You can’t say that it’s binary and then present 3 conditions.
Also, this begs the question, what are “functional” gonads? If they exist and produce hormones, are they “functional”? If they exist, produce hormones, and produce gametes, but the gametes can never fertilize or be fertilized because the anatomical interface between the gonads and the rest of the reproductive system didn’t form nominally, then the gonads can’t release the gametes into the reproductive system. Is a gonad that can produce gametes but not release them into the reproductive system “functional”? I would say that it is not functioning, but many people would think that it’s functioning “enough”.
So what is your definition of “functioning”. And what about those with mixed-function gonads? These can produce egg follicles, though the ability to release those egg follicles into a functioning reproductive system is, so far as I know, quite rare. Likewise, they can frequently produce sperm, though there it is also rare to be able to release those sperm into a functioning reproductive system.
As I understand it, and I’m not an expert here, there isn’t a single known case of someone able to release egg cells into a functioning reproductive system capable of pregnancy and also in the same person able to release sperm cells into a functioning reproductive system capable of ejaculation and therefore fertilizing the egg cell in another body.
But it is possible to make sperm and eggs in the same body. Now the distinction about whether the gametes can be effectively communicated to functioning structures able to perform the necessary further tasks for those gametes to play a role in successful reproduction becomes important: we have now
Persons who produce sperm.
Persons who produce eggs.
Persons who produce neither.
Persons who produce both, but can only become pregnant, not fertilize another with their sperm.
Persons who produce both, but can only fertilize another, not become pregnant.
Persons who produce both, but can neither become pregnant nor fertilize another (this is more common than either of the two immediately preceding options).
This, then, is six sexes, not two. Where has your binary gone? Why hasn’t your 14-word definition explained this?
I say this not because I want you to produce an actual 14 word definition, but because it is incredibly annoying to have people mouth off about how other people aren’t thinking through their definitions, when the person mouthing off clearly hasn’t either.
More over, the persons whose bodies that produce these effects don’t all produce them in the same way. There is a wealth of different body patterns, clits large and small, penises as well, healthy ovaries with non-functional or truncated fallopian tubes, a single healthy testicle in a scrotum with an ova-teste beside it in the same sac of skin. We might try to reduce our categories to categories of gamete production, but there is still a whole range of bodies even within categories.
The elimination of so many possibilities from your writing is also not without its harm. Non-intersex people have been trying to erase intersex people for many years in english-speaking society, and to make human bodies conform to our artificial and false ideas of a binary, surgeons have cut the flesh of intersex people. They have cut intersex flesh, cut intersex genitals, over and over and over again so that people like you could feel comfortable saying that sex is a binary. It’s not, but they’ve done their best to create one by eliminating intersex people for your comfort.
How does it feel to know that you’re articulating the dogma of sex eliminationism? Do you care? What will you do to make amends for your denial of others’ existence? Do you recognize that when you assert that a group of people don’t exist, you make it impossible for society to notice whether or not they have distinct needs, much less address them?
I don’t think you can even begin to imagine what gender justice, sex justice, gender liberation, and sex liberation might be. Your ideology and your ignorance both preclude that. Remove the log from your own eye, in other words, before you attempt to remove the speck from another’s. And do it soon, lest you do even more damage to the cause of justice.
In less polite terms, you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about at a more than superficial level, so your arrogance ill serves you, you’re hurting people, and you should cut this shit the hell out.
Bullshit. Take a course on the sociology or anthropology of gender and you’ll find a shitload of information that is about more than personality.
In fact, personality is individual. Yet gender as we understand it could not be said to exist at all in a society of a single member. Gender is inherently social and involves the projections and judgements we make about others, the way we see ourselves, the stereotypes and roles that have evolved socially, the punishments society deems appropriate for violating those stereotypes and roles, how we choose to express ourselves in relationship to those roles and stereotypes, as well as official categorizations for legal and other purposes.
It is not remotely reducible to personality, and the top experts working in the field have known this for many, many, many years.
As we’ve seen, the position that sex is binary is not adequately supported. It is contradicted.
The position that gender is merely a synonym for personality is also not adequately supported. It is contradicted.
Your position is foolish and contrary to fact. You should educate yourself before passing on any more false statements as if they were true. You should educate yourself before you do more harm to the people around you.
@ Xanthë; #66:
LoL
Only in your rather narrow mind – if you fell on a pin you’d be blind in both eyes.
But “refuted” the way that religious fundamentalists have “refuted” the facts that the Earth is older than 6000 years and Noah’s Ark is so much moonshine?
If my argument has been “refuted” so many times then you should find it easy to quote chapter and verse showing that to be the case. All horn and no drive shaft.
<snicker>
I note that you still haven’t disputed that JK is transphobic, O specimen.
Sure; since you like Wikipedia, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender
Okay. If one adopts your definition that would be true, sure.
But these are two different things. A testicle can be “intact” but not “functional” (many intact testicles do not produce sperm or do not produce sperm with the capacity to fertilize an egg). It can also be “functional” but not “intact” (an injury can take away a portion of a testicle, while the rest, after healing, produces sperm the same as it ever did). And a penis is not in your original definition at all. So why does it show up when discussing McKinnon?
In short, your description of McKinnon leads me to answer “I don’t know” even according to your own definition because you say nothing about functionality and include extraneous information. Why are you dwelling on penises if your definition is about gonads? Your obsession with other people’s genitals is showing.
So what is your definition? It seems to me that you haven’t even articulated your own definition to yourself. Could it be that your own, personal definition has nothing to do with gamete production and instead has to do with penises? That would explain why you bring up McKinnon’s (purported) penis, but then it throws out your original definition and exposes you as dishonest. I would like to believe that you’re simply arrogantly ignorant and deeply confused than dishonest, but right now it’s hard to tell.
Again, I suggest you take some time to stop and think before you spread any more wrong about your environment.
If you want to criticize people for equivocations and elisions, you better make sure that you’re not doing the same thing in your writing. Otherwise, with all your insistence on precision people might mistakenly believe that you are saying exactly what you intend to say, and then they could only conclude that you’re acting with dishonesty, and strongly suspect that your writing is performed out of bad motivations.
Ho, ho! The laughable troll finally deigns to address me with their risible, pathetic little demands!
This is such pathetic sport to be had, so-called reincarnation of Mister Pepys; how will I sharpen my sniny teeth digesting on your fetid remains?
Even the Merriam-Webster denies your prescriptive adherence to mere dictionary definitions. The map is not the territory.
https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/724645568014868480
Love, Xanthë
@ Crip Dyke, #69:
Reproductive classes are a trinary, but sexes are binary. The “sexless” category is – mirabile dictu; surprise, surprise – the absence of a sex, i.e., the ability to reproduce. Analogously, Islam and Christianity are religions, but atheism is the absence, ideally, of belief in a deity. The trinary is, say, “belief in deitie(s)” with the “differentia” in that genus being “Allah”, “Jehovah”, & “none”.
Well that seems a good question, at least at first blush. But if you’d bother to read and think about the definitions posted then you might realize that sex is, by definition, all about “reproductive functions”: if a person has gonads, and “delivery systems”, that can produce a fertilized zygote then, ipso facto, they have functional gonads; if they can’t then they don’t. Easy peasy:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sex
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/female
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/male
You and too many others are conflating the traits associated with the ones that define the sex categories – i.e., having functional gonads – with that defining one itself. The functional gonads are the “necessary & sufficient conditions” for membership in the sex categories, but there are many other related ones. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
Analogously – as indicated in the above link – the “necessary & sufficient condition” [NSC] for being a bachelor is to be an adult human male who has never married. And the NSC for “teenager” is to be between 13 and 19 inclusive. But there are many other traits that many individual bachelors and teenagers exhibit that have absolutely diddly-squat to do with whether those people qualify for membership in those categories.
What unmitigated and narrow-minded horse crap. You think it a “false binary” that those able to reproduce can do so because they can produce EITHER sperm OR ova? Is that a binary or not? You have some evidence of spergs? A forthcoming paper that will, no doubt, garner accolades and Nobels? 🙄
And you don’t seem to have a clue as to how categories are defined and created, that the principles behind that process are encapsulated in the SCIENCE of taxonomy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)
And it is more or less a brute fact, based on standard and common demographics, that some 33% of us can produce sperm for reproduction, some 33% can produce ova for reproduction, and that some 34% of us can produce neither. And those groups are conventionally CALLED “males”, “females”, and, for the want of Latin equivalent, “infertz”.
The whole process of categorization is what undergirds the whole scientific enterprise – something which too many neo-Luddites would see crippled to pander to their dogmas and vanities, to promote their anti-scientific and anti-intellectual Lysenkoism.
What pretentious twaddle. No one is denying anyone’s “existence” 🙄. All that’s happening is a denial of some people’s claims to be members of categories they clearly can’t pay the membership dues required to join. You seriously think telling someone claiming to be Jesus or Napolean that they’re mad as hatters is “denying their existence”?
You lot don’t quite seem to get the concept of “by definition”. We SAY – based on the foundational principles of taxonomy – “unmarried male adults” are bachelors; as we SAY “prime number” is an integer divisible only by 1 and itself; as we SAY “teenager” is person between 13 and 19. So do we SAY that those able to produce sperm for reproduction are – by definition – males, and as we SAY that those able to produce ova for reproduction are – by definition – females:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/by%20definition
Now we could, of course, define those words differently if we wanted. But the fact of the matter is that they correspond to and reflect the brute facts noted about reproductive abilities, and their relative frequency of occurrence in the human population. Which seems to have more than passing utility:
“Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of the [Definition of Sex as all about REPRODUCTIVE FUNCTIONS]” – apologies to Theo Dobzhansky
Gonads? Gonads get conflated with external features, mammary glands…
Some of what society calls “sex” has to do with gonads. We hyperfocus on all kinds of pieces as a species.
Michael
No, Michael. We aren’t misunderstanding here or confusing sex and gender. A lot of the people here, me included, have some really deep backgrounds in those matters.
To quote myself from a recent blogpost of mine:
Michael
We can agree to disagree about pineapple on pizza. We can agree to disagree on the best way to reduce traffic in the cities. We cannot agree to disagree on reality (“trans people pose a threat to cis women”) or basic human rights for a group of people.
This doesn’t even make sense. Yeah, she’s got approx. 750 millions (which means she notices 250 millions less much less than I notice 250 bucks) so she’ll be fine.
I am actually pretty fine with that. I am also pretty fine with having flawed role models. But again, you’re making it sound like this was some stupid mistake. It’s probably easy for you to overlook her “imperfections”. Tell me, how much are you, personally (and not as “relative of …”) affected by trans rights and women’s rights?
banned troll
I’m posting this mainly to correct that complete lie. First of all, nobody is condoning threats and misogynist abuse. when that rag of Sun decided to glorify domestic violence against JKR I found out from trans people who roundly abhorred it.
Second, similar threats and abuse were hurled at the actors who chose to speak out in support of trans people. Wishing a cis woman to be raped by a trans woman is part of their standard repertoire.
Third, both above pale in comparison to what trans people get. And funny enough (no, not funny at all), the very people who claim they can ALWAYS tell what genitals somebody was born with occasionally mistake me for a trans woman and I do notice the severe difference in abuse. Like the time one of them told me to do some sex acts with my dad, I think?
hookflash
Ahhh, the good old tactic of ignoring all the (cis, in this case) women speaking up on the matter and then claiming that any actual disagreement is just misogynist hate on a successful woman by men. We see you.
Samuel Pepys
Oh, look, another person who thinks they’re simply clever and understand words while the rest of us don’t. Believe me, we’ve done a lot more thinking of what words mean and how they’re constructed than most of you ever will. And you can also believe me that I’ve never met a trans person who was in denial or confused about their biology. Given that they quite often struggle with their biology and seek medical intervention, they usually have some detailed knowledge about the working of their own body and its individual components.
I love nothing more than being defined in terms of being something that (cis) men can do something to that will then make me churn out babies. Transphobes really take the most reactionary definition of “woman” as baby making machine and run with it.
Yep. Simple and true. Self-ID works perfectly fine for me. It has been working perfectly fine for a lot of people in a lot of countries (hi Ireland) for quite some time. But good to see that you agree that we, as humans, actually define what those terms mean.
Can you please individually define those terms for me? Entertain me. I’m not a native speaker, so let’s pretend that I have never heard either “man” nor “adult” nor “human” nor “male”. If you prefer, you can do “adult human female” instead.
Heh.
So, menopause renders a woman sexless every bit as much as childhood renders a prepubescent girl sexless.
(JK is 54 years old; very probably has undergone menopause.
If so, by your definition, not a woman any more — I’m sure she would appreciate your categorisation ;) )
Samuel Pepys
If said man has not recently impregnated someone, how can you know for sure that he is male?
I’m just trying to point out how ridiculous your own definition is because it plays about no role in the way we handle those categories every single day. Many people go through their lives without ever finding out whether indeed they are able to impregnate somebody or bear offspring, so obviously the criteria we are using must be different ones.
@ John Morales, #77
Yep – male & female are just names for categories and quite revocable membership cards in them; they are NOT some sort of “immutable” identity.
Them’s the breaks; suck it up buttercups. Rather a bad idea to change science because someone might get their knickers in a twist. Darwin delayed publication of Origin because he thought it would “offend” his wife, a religious fundamentalist. And the Catholic Church was “nonplussed” with Galileo. Being offended is hardly proof of diddly-squat, and often an indication of getting closer to the truth of the matter.
You might check out Sam Harris’ recent prognostications on the topic:
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1271625790858330112
Well, if she’s not a woman anymore by your definition, she doesn’t belong in woman-only spaces, does she? In fact, she’s not a ‘she’, she’s an ‘it’, by your definition.
(Them’s the breaks)
<snicker>
I don’t need to check to know you confuse ‘opinion’ with ‘prognostication’; also, Sam Harris is pretty clueless about social issues. He impresses dolts like you, however.
@ Giliell, #78:
So what? If we haven’t cut down a tree and counted its rings, how can we know for sure how old it is? Bit of a “deepity”.
If we want to know if someone is fertile – able to produce a fertilized zygote – then we do a surgical test of sorts. Until then we ASSUME that if they have testicles or ovaries then they are PROBABLY functional, and that they are PROBABLY male or female.
But you might consider the concept of proxies:” a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)
By which token, genitalia are ONLY proxies for a sex. They are what is “observed at birth”, but they are NOT our sexes themselves – except as euphemisms. Kids generally don’t ACQUIRE a sex until puberty, and can lose membership in those categories when they can no longer produce gametes for reproduction.
Got it by now, specimen.
Men are only men if their gonads are functional, ditto women, every other person is sexless.
(This is getting funnier by the minute)
Still not disputing JK is transphobic, of course.
@ John Morales, #80
Gawd, but you’re quick 🙄:
Yes, that’s true. Why I argue that loos & change-rooms should be for vagina-havers and penis-havers. The sexes, being mere abstractions, just categories that we pass into and out of over the course of our lives, are pretty much useless as go/no-go gauges, and should be replaced with genitalia for loos, and karyotype for sports – for women’s, no X-Y need apply.
And I’ll refer to some transwomen as “she” as long as they don’t try laying claim to “female” – in case you hadn’t noticed, ignorant dickhead that you are, there IS a difference between sex and gender.
As for Harris, you always judge a book by its cover? He may well have his limitations – most of us do – but you seriously think that being offended is somehow proof of having the high ground? He’s hardly saying more than that – and which many others – including Stephen Fry & Christopher Hitchens – have been saying for quite some time:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706825-it-s-now-very-common-to-hear-people-say-i-m-rather
Why do you wank on about being offended?
I’m not even slightly offended, just pointing out JK is demonstrably transphobic.
You know, the thread topic.
What I am is amused and enjoying toying with you.
(Hey, what about women who use chemical contraceptives? By your definition, they aren’t women — rather, they’re sexless)
@ John Morales, #
And you’re getting “quicker” by the minute: 🙄
You ever take any science? Any high-school geometry? Definitions – particularly “by definition” types – are analogous to the axioms of Euclidean geometry. We assert, a priori, that specific words mean certain things – there’s no “proof” to them. And, by definition, “man” MEANS “adult human male (produces sperm)”:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/by%20definition
If a person can produce sperm then, ipso facto, they’re a male. And if they can’t they aren’t. Being able to produce sperm is the “necessary and sufficient condition” to qualify for membership in the categories “male” and “man”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
@ John Morales:
Did I say you were offended?
Your “I’m sure she would appreciate your categorisation (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)” was a suggestion that Rowling would be offended. And many people – mostly women and the intersex for some strange unfathomable reason … – are in fact quite offended at the prospect of being seen as sexless.
Part and parcel.
But getting close to time for me to call it a day, particularly as you don’t seem to be playing with a full deck …
Heh. First, a non sequitur in response to my restatement of your own definition, second, a rather imprecise reiteration of your own claim (non-viable spermatozoa do not meet your stringent criteria, do they? ;)).
Also, by now it’s evident that your silence signifies assent to the main thrust of this post, that is, that JK is transphobic. And she (be aware that I still think she’s a woman, contra your ad hoc idiosyncratic definition) did write a deplorable, self-serving screed which demonstrated that rather unequivocally.
Not explicitly, but twice you brought up as a response to my comments, so by abduction, it’s pretty evident you did think that.
I seriously doubt that, since that exists only in your vapid, inchoate imaginings.
(I grant some people are asexual, but they generally aren’t bothered by it, that being their identity)
Is it not damn obvious I’m using you as a chewtoy?
You tried JAQing off, it failed dismally, the thread got polluted, but PZ will probably fix it.
—
And, still, JK is transphobic and wrote a little screed that did her no favours.
@ Giliell, #76:
So you say; hardly proof that you’ve reached anything in the way of justified and credible conclusions.
LoL. You’ve never met Zinnia Jones? The TRA who insists that transwomen are female? Sure would like to know how you think ZJ qualifies for membership in that category. Care to specify, in a dozen words or less, a definition for “female” by which you think “they” 🙄 qualify? Maybe “has concave mating surfaces”? 🙄 Hard to imagine someone more confused about biology.
Is “woman” a sex – “adult human female (produces ova)” – or is it a gender (a collection of psychological & physiological traits that has NO necessary connection to reproductive abilities)? Great deal of value and utility in the former definition. Is that first one the primary denotation of the word or not?
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/woman
And I wonder what other word you might suggest for that group of individuals who are, in fact, capable of producing the larger gamete that are essential to the entire process of reproduction, and who are capable of gestating that resulting zygote.
I’m happy for you … 🙄 Clearly doesn’t work all that well for many others – you might get the opinion of highschool girls who’ve lost their chances at the big time sports leagues because of competition from “anatomically male” transwomen. Or the women who’ve had their faces busted in boxing contests with similarly “endowed” transwomen:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/02/13/aclu-continues-to-defend-the-right-of-medically-untreated-men-who-claim-that-theyre-women-to-compete-in-womens-sports/
“Greatest good for the greatest number” seems a useful principle …
In every trans tread on this blog and elsewhere you always get a bunch of haters who do not seem to post or even lurk regularly. It is just a form of terrorism on trans people. We are not allowed to have a space to feel comfortable. I have to admit it is starting to work on me and I never ever feel safe.
@ John Morales:
You need to get out of this echo chamber more often ….
LoL. Maybe it’s the other way around?
Over and out.
I’m searching my memory for any example of transphobia quite as stupid as “Samuel Pepys'” insistence that “male” and “female” are to be defined in terms of ability to reproduce, when absolutely no society or professional group (including biologists, medical fertility specialists, etc.) has ever defined them that way. If the latter had, then terms such as “(in)fertile male” or “(in)fertile woman” would be regarded as nonsense/tautology in those professions, which clearly they are not. And no-one who had not actually reproduced would ever have been regarded as female or male, or as a woman or man, at least until whenever it was in the 20th century that it became possible (in at least some cases) to establish fertility in other ways. Moreover, since medical technologies now make it possible for many people who would have been unable to reproduce to do so (and are likely to continue to advance in this way), whether someone is (fe)male, or a (wo)man turns out to depend on the state of medical technology. I’m coming up empty in my memory search – can anyone help me out?
In fact, since (fe)male and (wo)man are natural language terms, like most if not all such terms they lack a precise definition, whatever dictionaries may say. Rather, natural language works in a very different way: its terms are used without any such definition most of the time, and we add precision if and when it is needed – without ever, of course, achieving complete precision, since natural language terms can only be defined by the use of other natural language terms, which in turn lack precise definitions.
And those who have neither just have to hold it in or piss in the street, I suppose.
Anna, sorry. :|
This is definitely not a safe space, because it’s not curated in real time, but both the host and pretty much every regular commenter here is sympathetic and welcoming to people like you. We’re on your side.
At least, as you can see, those haters and trolls get rebuttals and pushback fairly promptly and fairly directly. And the bad ones get promptly banned.
But yeah, if you find it unhealthy, there are other places that are safer.
@John Morales
I do very much appreciate that almost everyone here is on my side. I have been coming to this blog (and many others on this site) for years. My point is that even here (which is about the most safe of places on the internet for trans people) the bigots are still trying to disrupt our sense of safety.
I was just trying to illustrate what I think one of the major goals of people like Samuel Pepys is.
I am aware that there is nothing dorkier than internet fanfic. And I am aware that you’ve probably been sent this link a million times, but I’m still going to mention Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (http://www.hpmor.com/). It is so much better-written than the originals. Alternate-history HP where Harry was raised by rational scientists, and he proceeds to pick apart lots of the problems with Potterverse from the inside, while telling a much more interesting story. And he is by no means an unflawed character – he also falls for some of the traps of “rationality”. It’s an amazingly good read; I read the originals once, more-or-less to keep up with my niece, but I’ve read HPTMOR like half-a-dozen times, and writing this is making me want to go pick it up again. Seriously, go read the bio of the author (http://yudkowsky.net/) and see if it doesn’t at least tempt you to give it a try…
Astonishing the fury with which some people demand the right to tell other people what their identity has to be.
@ 89 Samuel Pepys
She.
From Endocrine Treatment of Gender-Dysphoric/Gender-Incongruent Persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline, Table 1: Definitions of Terms Used in This Guideline
From Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Table 1: Relevant Terms and Definitions Related to Gender Care
Here we go again. It’s yet another clueless dimbulb who has a brilliant idea: “I know! Science is clear and absolute, and biology has an irrefutable answer by definition to the question of sex!” All we know from that is that they don’t understand science or biology.You know, earlier this year our local campus conservatives tried this game, putting up posters announcing that it’s a fact, biology decrees that there are just two sexes, and the entire biology department here rushed to point out that biology does not say that at all.
And the “functioning gonads” argument? Jesus. You’re an idiot. An idiot who is absolutely certain he has The Answer.
Also, despite having neglible interactions on this blog before now, you’re suddenly exceedingly voluble and arrogant, making references that tell me you know exactly what is going to annoy people here. Citing Sam Harris, via Colin Wright, one of Quillete’s pet racists? Jerry Coyne?
Fuck off, you trolling bigot. You are just too obvious and stupid.
We’re going to need a bigger batch of bathroom-types. There are the 3 types in #74, there are the 6 types in #69, but there could be so much more. There are those who do produce sperm but are infertile, those who are pre-reproductive age but who will produce sperm, those who are post-reproductive age but who had produced sperm, those who recently ejaculated and cannot do it at the moment, and so on, and they could all have their own bathroom-type to go in. /s
Or perhaps we should rethink bathrooms and make them one type for everyone. I’ve been to public places that only have gender-neutral bathrooms and they’ve been surprisingly refreshing. However for everyone to be comfortable, there may be more requirements. Make the stalls floor-to-ceiling with room to change pants, maybe each have a side urinal like port-a-potties do, have some rules about what condition to leave it, etc.
Samuel Pepys
Cool, so we agree that we don’t actually use your definition of “male” and “female”, but some proxy that at best highly correlates with the thing you actually want to measure. Now, we know that the distribution of “people who produce sperm” and “people who produce ovae” is at best bimodal and that a lot of people walk through their entire lives without ever finding out whether or not they actually meet the criteria.
And I might further add, in daily life we use even vaguer proxies because we usually don’t go naked.
Nah, I want loos segregated into people who sit down and people who need to learn how to pee properly.
My dude, you don’t even know what argument you’re even making. First you admit that the sexes are just abstractions, social constructions, as we might say, and then you go on and act as if they’re precise measurements of anything.
I’m very sure that Zinia is not at all confused about her biology. I know she has written extensively about her biology. She’s one of those trans women who are very open and comfortable with discussing the various medical aspects of her transition.
Female, adjective corresponds with “woman”. She (pronoun, singular, female) is a woman, therefore she is female.
Is Hermione Granger female? Are Anna and Elsa from frozen female?
You can’t just act as if “female” is a word that has some sacrosanct meaning strictly tied to some razor sharp biological criteria when we have just discussed that the concept of biological sex is vague at best and constructed by a group of speakers. Now, obviously you can, but it doesn’t make sense.
Also, female gets even more funny because there are languages in which even the couch can be female.
Depends of the group. It might actually be “women”. It may also be “people who can get pregnant”. that’s five words, but they are so much more precise. Now, when I’m together with my mum and my sister we’d still be three women, despite the fact that only one of us is potentially still able to become pregnant.
I don’t know, but maybe if there’s children competing against adults the problem isn’t trans folks.
As opposed to the women who had the opportunity to smash in the face of said trans woman…
Seriously, the “trans women are stealing cis women’s opportunities in sport” is such an old canard, because trans women have competed against cis women for a while now and there’s only a handful who ever even competed at international levels and none who ever became a star. My favourite example is bigots using the pic of a trans boy who was forced to compete against cis girls in highschool claiming that this shows the danger to cis girls in sports when that#s exactly what they’re asking for.
Oddly, I who am a cis gender woman, am naturally stronger than most of my cis male friends and am certainly stronger than my trans women friends. It’s almost like there’s a huge overlap and many cis women are stronger than cis men and any trans woman who has been on estrogen for a while is going to lose any advantage from previously high testosterone.
And that false concern also has a proven negative impact on (primarily poc oh look racism is rampant with transphobia) cis women who naturally have higher testosterone than the average. It’s almost as if the argument against trans women in sports is specious bullshit.
Does being a dickhead make “Samuel Pepys” male? But it’s not clear if he’s a functioning dickhead. But he did put a hugely depressing amount of effort into being a dickhead.
Crip Dyke @34
IMO that is not a good example of an injustice. Remus showed himself to be too irresponsible with the way he handled the medication that mitigated the effects of his very dangerous condition.
I expect there is a lot of overlap between people complaining about trans women in sports and people who claim women of color who are successful athletes are not “real women”.
Trans women in sports is, once again, a very complex issue. On the off chance that anyone here actually wants a good, non-culty overview: https://sportsscientists.com/2019/03/on-transgender-athletes-and-performance-advantages/
I have to say, I’m old enough that I’ve heard the same arguments now being employed against trans people many, many times.
First it was during the civil rights era in America, about the 1960’s. White people were different from all non-white races, it’s just biology, and whites needed whites-only spaces for protection of themselves and children.
I next recall about the 1980s, a time that Rowling regards as a Golden Era of feminism (leads me to wonder on what planet she spent most of that decade?) Then, it was lesbians: feminism couldn’t include them because they weren’t women and didn’t have experiences common to all (white, straight, middle-class) women, it’s just biology, they were mentally ill and dangerous to children, straight women needed safe spaces (bathrooms and changing rooms were explicitly mentioned) to protect themselves. Yes, we spent most of that decade refuting exactly the same arguments that transphobes use now.
Now, trans people, and I’m tired of the same bad arguments, over and over, that were definitively refuted back in the 1960s. The next time I hear these arguments employed against any group of people, no matter if I’ve never even heard of that group, I’ll know that it’s time to start working for those people’s rights. Because, having those arguments deployed against you is, as history shows, the very definition of bigotry, used against any group that society wants to eliminate or at least suppress. The actual identity of the group doesn’t matter, those same old arguments will be made and will still be as invalid as they ever were.
P.S. Any argument that contains the word “bathrooms” is the dead giveawy of bigotry.
I can’t think of anything that requires the words “man/woman” or “male/female”. No subject to talk about. No body function. I choose to refer to people as they wish and don’t care about the sensitivity of transphobes who want to force lables onto others.
Pepys @60:
FYI, I live in Washington state, where the law specifically bases these things on self-identification. This has been the situation for several years now, and the only problems have come from conservative cisgender men trying to enter women’s restrooms as a provocation. (They were gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to change this legal situation; the 2 years such an initiative was proposed the efforts to gather signatures in order to get them on the ballots had failed.) Self-identification works just fine, empirically.
@83:
Have you thought through how this is supposed to work, and what the consequences are going to be, for people, transgender and cisgender alike?
Under your scenario, a transgender man, perhaps a person sporting a beard or male-typical muscle anatomy, a person who looks like any typical cisgender man as long as he keeps his pants on, is supposed to enter a restroom designated for women, and just pick one of the available stalls. Do you expect that to just pass with no comment, suspicion, or fear from the women that are using the place? Or do you expect them to question the person? Or have them call authorities so they can question the person? In the first scenario, where the women just assume the man must have a good reason to be there, then what is the point of having a restroom designated for women in the first place? Women will just get used to there being the occasional man using the room with them. In the other 2 scenarios, how are transgender men ever going to be safe using public restrooms?
Also under your proposed scenario, transgender women – who look like typical cisgender women as long as they keep their pants on – are supposed to just enter men’s restrooms and pick a stall (or even a urinal). Do you think they will be able to do so safely, without comments or threats? How can transgender women use public restrooms safely ever? Do you even care?
You know, when I am using the toilet or changing in a locker room, I really don’t want to be thinking about the junk of the person next to me. And frankly, I hope that they show the same courtesy to me. When I meet someone for whom this seems to be the uppermost problem on their minds, I worry about them.
I’ve literally never met a transphobe that wasn’t self-contradictory. They always insist that their beliefs are absolutely correct; that everyone must follow those beliefs exactly, without exception; and that anyone who disagrees with them is “denying biology” and actively dangerous – like “allow men to freely assault women in bathrooms” dangerous.
But, in PRACTICE, transphobes ALWAYS end up contradict their own beliefs. Which completely dismantles their own position, because when you claim that “Anyone who disagrees with Claim X is wrong“; and you insist a lot on that point; and then you end up disagreeing with Claim X (even if by accident or because of laziness)… At that point, I can say “According to your own arguments, you’re wrong – so I don’t have to listen to your bullshit.”
Take for example people like Samuel Pepys. They claim that 1) sex is a strict binary system; 2) sex is determined by the presence of functioning gonads (functioning testicles = male, functioning ovaries = female) and 3) anyone who disagrees with Claim 1 and/or Claim 2 is wrong.
But then, when we look at the way Samuel Pepys describes sex, we discover that it’s a TRINARY system – which contradicts Claim 1. Which means that Pepys is, according to Pepys itself*, wrong.
Conclusion: we can safely reject Pepys’ bullshit.
Pretty much 100% of all transphobes do shit like this. So, I reject all their transphobic claims.
Malicious compliance For The Win.
Tizio @111
I’m amused/enraged at transphobe hypocrisy.
Transphobes: “No penises in the women’s locker room/toilets!”
Also Transphobes: -take young sons into women’s locker room/toilets-
Just make the locker rooms & toilets gender-neutral, already.
Stephen @35 bravo!
Michael @ 39 no. She is refusing to accept peoples actual personal reality. Sex is not pure binary, sexual behaviour is less so, sense of gender even less. Its only a cultural desire to treat things as simple black and white.
She is requiring we base our view of people on their sex as if it were binary and ignore all else and basically claiming all who don’t fit that mould are deviants and predators.
Where does transphobia come from?
I’m a cis-male and a father. At one point I felt tempted to say I was lucky but that is silly. Its the common experience by far to be bulk standard man or woman. However I have lots of people close to me who are not the standard type. Which is just who they are. Some are gay or have weird fetishes, a small few are trans.
I feel no discomfort around them (ok I was uncomfortable when Martin was hitting on me and then asking me to marry him but I have felt the same discomfort from that behaviour by people I am attracted to).
So what is transphobia? Why is it a thing with such frothing vehemence?
@114 Transphobia gives conservatives a rare opportunity to cloak bigotry in co-opted social justice language. As an aside, I don’t know why we’re not doing that to them. I would love to see BLM marchers waving US and Gadsen flags and wearing tricornes, but I digress.
Have you noticed how it’s usually people who never before or on any other issue about feminism leading the charge to defend cis-women from us awful transwomen? For the right, it’s a perfect opportunity to get us fighting amongst ourselves and tying ourselves in knots.
DanDare:
Interesting question, to which I haven’t given much thought.
I have no real anthropological chops, either — but what I do notice is that the objections always seem to be rather spurious rationalisations, almost like they’re scratching to provide some reason for an impression that it’s somehow “unnatural” — that men are men, women are women, and that’s that.
(Then reality smacks them in the face)
My guess is thoughtless conservatism and psychological reactance to acceptance of social change. Maybe with a dash of xenophobia.
[TMI, probably]
Me being cis, that was my first impulse too, way back when. Same as for homosexuality, being hetero. Also, young and foolish — but I grew up, realised people differ in many ways, and eventually realised it didn’t actually bother me if I let go the idea that I should be bothered.
Well, I guess I’ll set off the grenade. I think it is somewhat hard for a cis male to speak on the issue of how women get to define what a woman is. I’m naive, I guess, but if a woman who was born a woman and grew up as a woman says that a person who grew up as a man doesn’t have the right to define themselves as a woman and be included in women’s spaces I’m not sure I actually have anything to say about it.
I’m pretty sure if I ever even tried to explain what I think, literally every person in the world would disagree with me, because in brief I don’t think “men” and “women” however they are defined are even empirical categories, so in a sense my dog in this fight is already dead. I do find the idea that the people who everyone accepts as women and have real and valid issues with the patriarchy don’t have the right to exclude people who haven’t had those experiences, even though those people have had other, frequently worse, experiences to be wrong.
It just doesn’t seem like my place to decide what “women” as traditionally understood use to define themselves. As a cis male, I can say that trans-men are welcome as far as I’m concerned. I admit, though, I’m confused how to be a good ally to women, because I don’t think the TERF’s basic point is crazy. I might easily be wrong, but it doesn’t feel completely wrong and it doesn’t feel like my place to say.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how terrible are my thoughts on this?
psychomath, perhaps you miswrote, because you equate TERFs with all cis women.
For example, this: “I do find the idea that the people who everyone accepts as women and have real and valid issues with the patriarchy don’t have the right to exclude people who haven’t had those experiences, even though those people have had other, frequently worse, experiences to be wrong.”
I only need to change one word (without changing your reasoning) to invert this claim and expose its duplicity.
Pretty much a 10. Why are trans men welcome to you? Do you think they are actually men? Are you not ‘afraid’ that a trans man is going to assault someone in a bathroom? Do you not feel that your sense of what it is to be a man is threatened by the presence of a trans man?
Basically, take all your fucking assumptions about trans women and ask yourself honestly why you don’t think those also apply to trans men.
Trans women don’t ‘grow up as men’. They may have been forced to act as men but that doesn’t make them men. For example, I’m what most would consider a ‘tomboy’. Stereotypical female socialization didn’t stick to me at all. I never liked dolls. I hated just sitting around and chatting. I wanted to be out catching frogs and wrestling. I was brash and aggressive and blunt and physical. I can still be found climbing trees, catching snakes, and being brash and loud and assertive and not backing down. Yet I’m a cisgender woman despite a childhood full of acting no different from my cisgender male counterparts. And I, a cisgender woman, say FUCK YOUR STEREOTYPES AND ADHERENCE TO THEM.
psychomath @117: Please explain how one can possibly be born a woman. How does an entity about to be born a woman fit into a human uterus?
As was shown in the other thread IIRC, at least a plurality of women think the use of women-only spaces is best defined based on gender identity rather than anatomy.
The terms ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are currently in flux in western societies. Until recently many people did not realize there are multiple, intersecting, largely but not entirely overlapping ways to define them. The insistence that only a binary division based on the concepts a lot of people were used to is the correct one is not very different from the objection to the ‘redefinition’ of marriage.
@ DanDare, #114
It’s fear. Not the fear of being assaulted, or “tricked,” or any of ostensibly more acceptable fears that the transphobes will trot out. Rather, it’s the fear that rules they use to define their world aren’t as ironclad and inviolable as they want to believe.
They’ve built their identities around a set of specific classifications, and they’ve believed all their lives that those classifications described the only acceptable paths in life. Therefore, they put everyone they encounter into those boxes, boxes that include the sum of all possible human experience. All the world is as a walled garden, its paths orderly and familiar.
But what if those garden boxes aren’t all there is? What if the familiar paths aren’t the only paths one can travel? What if the categories they use to build those gardens aren’t ironclad rules of nature, but merely something unimaginative humans have made up to comfort themselves? Why, that would be chaos. Raw, screaming anarchy ready to tear down the walls of their cozy little gardens and unleash squamous eldritch horrors* on their perfectly manicured forsythia bushes! And worse still, they’d have to change.
Of course, the only changes would be in what they knew, for trans people have always existed, but many people would rather learn to breathe water than challenge their basic assumptions about identity.
That’s my theory anyway, but maybe I’ve just read too much cosmic horror.
*Just to be perfectly clear, by “squamous eldritch horrors” I mean new-to-them ideas, not trans people. It’s the ideas they fear, though unfortunately it’s the humans represented in those ideas who they end up taking it out on.
What I don’t get is the ludicrousness of the sex essentialism that (nominally) underpins the TERFs protests. Imagine this, due to some ineffable ‘Woman’ quality, a newborn AFAB baby is more invested in the struggle against patriarchy than an adult who has spent her whole life internally identifying as a woman and struggling with dysphoria.
And that’s not the only incoherent thing in what passes for their philosophy. The very fact of its incoherence is proof IMO that it’s just a post-hoc rationalisation for bigotry. And any TERFs that want to call me misogynist because I (cis man) dismiss them for being bigots can fuck right off; just because you’re a woman does not mean you’re always right, and on this subject you are wrong, wrong, WRONG.
I’ll do my best to reply to each of you individually. I understand that what I said is controversial and will be upsetting to many. It’s upsetting to me, actually. I don’t like my thinking on this subject, but the problem for me is that I don’t feel good on either path. It’s fine to be angry with me. I don’t like the place I’m at. I’d be delighted if I could have clarity here. I am very tired at the moment, so I can’t promise I’ll reply to everyone tonight, but I’ll reply eventually.
So.
@ #118 John Morales
I don’t equate TERF’s with all women, I was attempting to relate what I thought was the strongest argument of women who grew up as women had for excluding trans women from women only spaces. For, again, women who grew up as women and wanted to make that argument. What is my play there? What am I to think? Am I to second guess what women who grew up as women think is important? I don’t think this question is easy. If you do, please explain it to me.
“I only need to change one word (without changing your reasoning) to invert this claim and expose its duplicity.”
Okay, please go ahead. I freely admit I don’t understand your point.
@119 Rowan vet-tech
Trans men are completely welcome to me because as a man they are no threat to me. I have no reason to exclude them at all.
For Trans women, again, they are no threat to me, but I do not identify as a woman. Why should I be able to decide how women who grew up in our societies as women should feel about them? I would never hurt them and I would never restrict them from living as they wish insofar as it is my business, but how is it up to me to decide how other women want to manage their spaces?
I didn’t say that trans women grow up as men. I said they have a different experience that may well be worse. That still doesn’t give me the power to say they are included in another marginalized group, does it? Why would I have that power? I can wish things, but it isn’t up to me to decide who is to be included, is it?
psychomath:
You can’t see the alt-text?
Basically, you think TERFs speak for women, but you don’t likewise concede non-TERFs also speak for women. Note TERFs are not in the majority.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_topics
@120 Anat
My opinion is that women, and men, are a social construction that are assigned at birth and that growing up as a woman has a certain identity that has an affect on a person’s development as a social being. Women live life differently than men. I am a radical feminist and believe that there is a patriarchal structure to society that enforces the experience of people that are assigned as male, female, and trans. The patriarchy generally benefits those assigned as males, though it also restricts them, and that those assigned females are much more restricted. I also believe trans people exist and are the most restricted.
There is a lot more to my thinking on this, and in sum I think that what we think of these different roles are social constructions and that trans people are particularly in a difficult bind. I don’t want to go into it here because it isn’t really relevant to the issue that we are discussing now. I’d of course love to know how people think about these points, and if anyone actually wants to talk about them, that’s great, but I won’t try to explain myself on those issues otherwise.
My basic problem is that as a feminist ally I don’t feel comfortable deciding what being a woman is. I have read the idea that it is offensive to a woman who has grown up as a woman to have to include a person who did not grow up as a woman in her space, and I don’t find that idea obviously wrong. Is this really so obviously wrong? If so, can you explain what I am missing?
Tizio
It’s at this point a cult. they insist that THEY ARE ONLY FOLLOWING BIOLOGY, but whenever somebody points out that biology is murky and complex and does not have a simple answer to complex questions they will flat out reject it, claim that articles where fucking biologists and neuroscientists and what have you got state that sex is just as complex as gender are dangerous pseudo science and can be ignored.
+++
Dan Dare
The ultimate threat to heteronormative patriarchy. It stems from the same source you get homophobia** from. Because a lot of people, especially a lot of people who should know better still stick to that idea that men and women are very different*. Gay people threaten that hierarchy and philosophy because suddenly any roles are decoupled from biology. The trash still gets taken out in the household of two lesbians, the dishes still get done in the household of two gay men.
With the roles of men and women being questioned by the mere existence of people who live outside of the patriarchal heterosexual family, biology is the obvious life line. Not that biology hasn’t been tortured into a crown witness against gay people as well, claiming them to be unnatural because, dramatic pause, sexual reproduction doesn’t happen when they fuck.
Trans people now further threaten this construct and this hierarchy. If you claim that certain aspects of our lives are immutably tied to our biology, then somebody falling outside the norm must be punished and erased (see Foucault’s writing on the production of docile bodies).
*If you actually look at sexual dimorphism in the animal kingdom and in humans you’ll notice that we’re remarkably similar, the average cis man gets less than 10% in height on the average cis woman.
** I’m not trying to claim that transphobia is just a version of homophobia, I’m just trying to draw the parallels within the system of cis heteronormative patriarchy.
+++
psychomath
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t born a woman, but a baby. I grew up to be a woman, a cis woman to be precise. Yet the very people who claim that trans women are a threat and who claim that using inclusive language erases women are the very ones erasing me, just like you’re doing here. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you want to be respectful, and you want to listen to women, but then you have to listen to all of us and not just to those that oppose trans rights. I’m a cis woman, and I stand with trans women is solidarity against transphobia and transmisogyny. I also stand with trans men in their fight against erasure and discrimination based on their biology. And of course I stand with non-binary folks and intersex folks in their struggles for respect and bodily autonomy.*
I am not alone. There are many cis women here saying the same. Surveys in the UK showed a 70% support for self ID among women, yet somehow those 70% keep being ignored.
On the other hand I have met a lot of cis men who think they are entitled to telling me what a woman is and who are being cheered on by supposed feminists.
*In the very same way that men are not centred in feminism, but do benefit from the destruction of gendered hierarchies, trans feminism and trans activism don’t centre cis people, yet still I have found trans people to be the most reliable allies I could ask for in my fight for bodily autonomy.
@125 John Morales
But, I said “a woman”. Not all women. If any woman who grew up as a woman decides that a trans woman isn’t to be included, how do I, or you, second guess that woman? Of course there are women that include trans women in womenhood. That’s disappointing. I thought you would be more precise.
FFS. Last repetition here, psychomath.
I’m pointing out your focus. Your cherry-picking.
Yes, I do get you. You want to know how one can deny a TERF their view.
You can’t. All one can say is that it’s bigoted.
“But, I said “a woman”. Not all women. If any woman who grew up as a woman decides that a trans woman isn’t to be included, how do I, or you, second guess that woman? Of course there are women that include trans women in womenhood.”
↓
“But, I said “a woman”. Not all women. If any woman who grew up as a woman decides that a trans woman is to be included, how do I, or you, second guess that woman? Of course there are women that don’t include trans women in womenhood.”
You can side with the bigots, or you can side with the tolerant people. Your choice.
And why should that woman be the one who gets to decide? Sure, she can feel like that, but why should we listen to the one bully who decides that the black/gay/muslim/short/disabled/… kid isn’t to be included?
@127 Giliell
How am I erasing you? Is it that you think that I am not including trans women as women and therefore I am ignoring your opinion? John Morales seemed to think I was doing the same, but that isn’t what I said or meant. I assume each individual will decide for themselves, and I was saying that I don’t feel that as a cis man I have a vote in how any woman defines themselves. Or have I misunderstood? It is very late where I am so I could be missing things.
I don’t have any problem with trans women or trans men for my own sake. I’m uncomfortable with trying to be a good feminist ally when some women don’t think that those who haven’t gone through the social experience of being women should be included in women’s spaces. It is hard for me to ignore that because it doesn’t seem crazy to me. When I try to put myself into the mind of a woman who has been abused by the patriarchy, I imagine I would want to be among others who understood exactly what had happened. Trans women’s experiences are different, and as near as I can see often worse, but they are not the same.
How I feel about it isn’t very important, of course, I guess I just feel sympathy for both groups and ultimately don’t think I can have an meaningful opinion on it. It seems that I am a bad ally to both groups because I can’t make this decision.
@129 John Morales
Oh. I thought you must have been trying to say something more interesting. Well, thanks for your input.
psychomath
When feminists say “listen to women” nobody said “turn your brain off”. Women are not a monolith. There are white supremacist women, there are homo- and biphobic women (remember the lavender menace?), there are transphobic women. there are women opposed to abortion and there are women who think that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Do you also think that you should give these women equal consideration? If not, then why are the transphobic transphobic women the ones getting your support? Because, yeah, you’re picking a side here.
Why do you assume that the cis women here standing up for trans people’s rights have not been abused by the patriarchy? All of us here have our tales to tell.
So are cis women’s. My experience is different from the one of a poor woman, or a lesbian woman, or any woman in a relationship with another woman. My experience is different from that of an immigrant woman, a black woman, a woman of colour. And sure, there are spaces where those differences do matter. I don’t belong in black women’s spaces where they discuss the particular experiences of misogynoir. I also don’t belong in trans women’s spaces where they discuss the particular issues of transmisogyny.
But the train station toilet and the C&A changing room are not among those spaces. Because their function is not to facilitate specific discussions about diverse experiences of oppression, but to facilite peeing, pooing, and trying on jeans where the size seems to be only a vague indicator of the fit.
Sorry. I just seemed to say that a feel sympathy for TERF transphobes. I don’t. I admit in practice that all of the “gender critical” spaces I’ve read have been transphobic. Not every individual TERF has explicitly been in my experience, but I grant they sure are comfortable with their company. Thank you for the people who talked to me about it. I’m still a bit uncomfortable with it, but I know what side I’m on. I fully support trans people and am always on their side. Also still a rad-fem, and I’ll just argue with TERFs from now on.
@133 Giliell
Thank you. Your posts were very helpful to me, and this post had some excellent points.
I just want to say thanks to my allies. Giliell, John, Rowan, everyone who was defending trans humanity in this thread. You’re good people.
@ 120 anat
It’s interesting though that when you look at old 1950s newspaper stories about Christine Jorgensen they invariably call her a woman (or a girl) and use female pronouns. Here’s one example. And we think of the 50s as very conservative.
Hostility toward trans people’s identities is actually a relatively modern phenomenon. Starting in the 70s, I think, with the original transphobic screed The Transsexual Empire by TERF godmother Janice Raymond.
Alright psychomath. First, you didn’t address any of my questions which is telling to me. Let me repeat them for you. Try answering them exactly.
Your response to the second appears to be, in all of your other replies, to be ‘no’. You don’t think they’re actually men. And your one pidly response of they are no threat to you? WHY NOT? They’re men! Men are a threat to other men! If you actually secretly feel they’re still women, which is the most likely case here, women can be a threat to men too! Women do assault men. Clearly, since that can happen, then you should be afraid to have a trans man in your bathroom just as terfs are ‘afraid’ to have a trans woman in their bathroom. Because as everyone knows, especially for trans women, a person is totally going to upend their whole life, risk getting fired and ostracised and beaten and murdered just so they can walk into a particular bathroom to assault someone. /s Seriously, that is how fucking stupid that argument is.
Next you say that you never said that trans women grow up as men. While you did not directly use exactly those words, you have repeated that basic assertion several times. Let me provide you some proof.
From the post I replied to:
And a couple other posts as well…
Just say that you think trans women are men and that trans men are women and go.
@vucodlak, Ray Ceeya:
It helps that Huff is pretty openly gay herself, being married to Fiona Patton.
It also helps that she has a wonderful sense of humour and writes characters you can easily see as reacting the way they did under the circumstances. Not to mention the little bits of world-building. Like the scene in The Fire’s Stone where they walk into a bar and a ward goes off at the wizard entering.
@psychomath
“If any woman who grew up as a woman decides that a trans woman isn’t to be included,” she’s a fucking bigoted jerk.
Folks, maybe give psychomaths a break? I think he tried to understand what we were saying. Most of us had to do some learning at some point.
Yeah, I think #134 justifies giving psychomath some time away to think.
To those who think born-as-men transwomen have an advantage, in sporting events, over born-as-women ciswomen: The last time I checked, transwomen have been competing against ciswomen for the past several decades in college athletics. So if transwomen do, indeed, have an advantage over ciswomen in sporting events, then it should be possible to demonstrate</i. that advantage, by showing that a disproportionately large percentage of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards in women’s collegial athletics have gone to transwomen.
Curiously, I am unaware of any anti-transwoman bigot being able to do that simple thing—perform that data-driven analysis. How very curious indeed.
cubist, of course once one accepts that transgender women are simply just women, the entire question disappears.
On Saturday, I read that he-who-shall-not-be-named rescinded health protections for trans people. Yesterday, I read that the Supreme Court decided that discrimination against LGBT+ people violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
These are issues that affect me personally or people I know — by the time I qualify for SRS, I will be on Medicare, which, at least until Saturday, covered SRS. And while I live in a fairly LGBT-accepting part of the US, I know plenty of people who do not.
Moreover, we have a Vice President who is openly (if “politely”) hostile to LGBT people and trans people in particular, and Senators and governors and other law-makers who are gunning for us, not to mention all the well-funded and well-connected organizations devoted to demonizing us and lobbying for us to be outlawed (and in some countries, murdered.) None of them give a @#$% what some author in the UK (or some former FtB blogger) thinks. None of them bother with any logic or illogic, they just baldly state that we are a menace to society and/or felons against God’s law and do what they can to make life untenable for us.
These are the things that affect me and people like me.
Now this is PZ Myers’ blog, and he can post — or not post — whatever he wants. And commenters can post — or not post — whatever they want (provided PZ is OK with what they post, of course.) And I’m sure it’s fun and gets the blood moving to argue about this stuff. On the other hand, I don’t think that this has much to do with actually making the world safer for trans people, if anyone was under that illusion.