To think that JK Rowling is being very unfairly treated.

She is not anti-trans. to add to that, many transpeople agree with her.

missdotty

The conflicts between women and children’s rights? Those are non-issues?

Have you actually followed the events
leading to the essay? Joanne Rowling is supporting women and children. She is not anti-trans.

Do you think that no one should be questioning the changes being pushed for? Or just people who you think should have an opinion?

Of all the people I have heard call her a transphobe in real life, not one of them has read her article on the subject. It is a model of kind, fair, rational, considered thought. Funnily enough whenever I suggest they read what she actually wrote not what they have decided she wrote, they show no interest.

Missdotty out of interest, what rights do you consider transpeople not to have under UK law?

YANBU ....however, I think it was ill advised of her to take such a vocal and polarising view in this debate, which seems to me like it was mostly a non-issue, which a few people from the trans community rightly believed in as they need the support. People can be horrible to the trans community. Now it seems to have blown up into a sense that this is all an almighty afront to women. I honestly think that there are much worse problems out there than how women are treated in the context of trans rights, and that focus should be on those and not on this topic..

All about increasing sales isn’t it. Amazing that activists even played along so well. How the heck did they pick up the vibes she was sending out that those kids needed just that to get them to buy the book.

Barbara of Kent stands with JKR.

Agree, thewithesarehere

I admire her tremendously- her books, her charitable work, her grace under fire.

And 95% of mumsnet voters agree. Hope she’s reading

I've always seen being trans as a decision solely for the benefit of the individual. A trans woman on the radio still sounds like a man and in person, 99% of the time will look like a man dressed as a woman. In other words, going through with the change won't fool the majority of people, so the only reason for doing it is for themselves and their own comfort/ peace of mind. This is fine; I have no problem with it & why would anybody?

I agree though that JK Rowling is right to speak up when it comes to granting trans rights that are unfair to people born as women, e.g. enabling trans women to compete in women-only sports events. The cells of that person will still contain an X and Y chromosome and they'll still have characteristics - such as muscle density - that give them advantages over people born as women. To object to that is not about being transphobic, it is about upholding the rights of biological women. Why should something that is a CHOICE disadvantage 50% of the population, who cannot help their physiology?

You can only disagree with what JKR said if you hate women. Funny how “misogynist” doesn’t have the same power to make people fall into line as “transphobe”. But most oppressed minority ever, obviously.

Re puberty blockers: the problem with the approach advocated for by a PP, whereupon a small number of children who have “lived their lives as the opposite sex” should be prescribed them, is twofold. 1) is that at the point such drugs are an option, it is impossible to distinguish the 15-20% who will persist in their gender presentation into adulthood from the 80-85% who will desist and reconcile with their birth sex. Yes, robust psychological counselling should weed out those who are autistic, those who are trying to identify out of trauma or abuse, those who are confused about their sexuality, those who are simply uncomfortable with the bodily changes brought about by puberty especially girls experiencing the male gaze for the first time, and I think I’m on the same page as that PP in recognising that the current affirmation-only model isn’t doing that job. But that still leaves a cohort of children who will include some with persistent gender dysphoria and some for whom it is a temporary condition, and no way of telling one from t’other. Do you really sentence the latter to the lifelong adverse affects of PBs just so that the former will “pass” better in a dress in later life??

The second problem is, what does living as the opposite sex actually mean, especially at that age, and how do you know it’s not a result of being brought up by homophobic or über-woke parents? How can it be based on anything more than stereotypes? If a child says “I don’t feel like a boy”, what are they basing that on? What do they think feeling like a boy should feel like, and what makes them feel differently? I’m in my 50s and I don’t know what it means to “feel like a woman” (I am one because of my biology but what’s in my head is my personality, not a gender identity) and discussions on this topic show I’m far from alone. So when there is no definitive measure of “feeling like a boy/girl” that doesn’t rely on stereotypes, how can it ever be ethical to medicate children and permanently affect their development based on something so amorphous and impossible to define?

If all she wants is money and self advancement, why does she give so much away to charity?

YANBU
JKR is being demonised for stating biology is real.....crazy world we live in.

So you are accusing her of releasing the book to some trans right activists so that they could complain

So that they could post obscene pictures of their bits under children's drawings on Twitter, more accurately.

In Career of Evil - the scene in the Satchi gallery Café is the one with Tempest and her hanger-on (I can't remember his name), where they ask whether he got his leg amputated because he wanted to be an amputee rather than because he was blown up by an IED/ land mine.

I’m really enjoying the theory that this was a calculated move to increase her sales by slipping into a tombstone sized book a couple of paragraphs with a reference to a serial killer sometimes wearing a woman’s coat and a wig, and legions of middle aged women decoding that this was permission for them to unleash their hitherto undiscovered transphobia and support her by buying her book, and that was an epic get rich quick scheme for a multi millionaire.

But she somehow was simultaneously completely oblivious to the teeming hordes of her slash writing, pronoun declaring, trans and non binary uber stans and fans who gave her fair warning that if she turned out to be remotely thinking about being gender critical they would definitely institute a mass boycott of every book, play, theme park or product line she’s ever written, produced or been associated with, while threatening her with rape and violence on every social media platform in existence.

I think what offends me most about this theory is that she’d be that stupid

Seriously though, she’s bonkers rich. She doesn’t have to write a word again ever to make her crust. She really doesn’t need to whip up controversy to sell her books.

What I actually came on to post is that Troubled Blood is a novel about people not being what they seem and misjudging people who hide behind stereotypes and use type casting to their advantage. Its hard to avoid spoilers though!

@Until I can't remember it, which book, I might revisit. I did enjoy them. Thanks for being gracious :)

JoodyBlue I thought so - I wondered why you were attacking me! No problem - thank you for acknowledging the mix up before I felt driven to try and work out how to skim though a book I only have on my e-reader 😁

The demands for quotes are a bit insane - who on earth learns quotes from detective novels by heart? The Strike novels are fantastic, engrossing, well developed detective fiction but they aren't high literature or poetry; no matter how much readers enjoyed them I doubt many can quote sections of them!

The chapter in the cafe of the Satchi gallery would be a source of relevant quotes though I think 😉

@UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme - please accept my apology. I misunderstood what you were posting. I got myself all wound up, over nothing. I am sorry