What has JK Rowling said or done that’s transphobic

If I had said “people with phantom limb pain feel something to be true that isn’t”

But that's the point! It makes no sense at all, to tell someone that the pain they are feeling "isn't true", because pain is a cognitive experience generated in the brain. That's all it is. Their pain is real, because that's the reality of what they are experiencing! We know that the pain doesn't actually derive passively from the limb, because the limb isn't there (which the person is fully aware of themselves), but that doesn't mean the experience of pain is false or imaginary. Likewise the person doesn't need to be deluded or mentally ill to be experiencing/ to know they are experiencing that pain - it doesn't derive from a false belief that they have a limb.

That's precisely why it's a helpful analogy for making sense of gender incongruence.

Saying there is no single, universal “way it feels to be a woman” outside of biology, does not mean that an awareness of being female does not exist. That simply does not follow. One is not the logical consequence of the other.

There is no single subjective experience shared by every autistic person, and no one sensation that defines chronic pain or migraine. That does not mean those experiences are unreal.

I am aware that I am a woman, and you are aware that you are a woman. You say that this is simply because you have a female body, and that may accurately describe your own experience. But your conscious awareness of your body and of yourself is not generated passively by your anatomy; it is constructed/ produced by / in the brain.

A trans woman is not claiming: “I know exactly what every woman feels like, and my experience matches theirs.” The claim is: “Despite having male anatomy, I have a persistent, consistent and enduring recognition of myself as female.” That is not circular, it is not meaningless, it's a description of a real, neurocognitive/ psychological experience , that has been reliably observed in population studies across cultures.

Sigh. If I had said “people with phantom limb pain feel something to be true that isn’t”, you’d have scurried off down a rabbit hole of “but the brain is telling them it is true. It’s not a feeling”. So I use ‘believe’. Whatever word you accept, the brain, in the analogy you chose to introduce, is not representing the reality of the body. The limb is not there. The man is not a woman.

In the case of the transgender person we find another complication. All they know is that they feel discomfort with their sexed body. The leap is made when that becomes “this person feels discomfort therefore they must be the opposite sex”. And what of non-binary people? We now have people who feel discomfort, some of whom are the opposite sex, some ‘no sex’. What is the measure of whether an individual’s discomfort is derived from being the ‘wrong’ sex or just any sex at all. How do they know? How do we know?

Ultimately though, as @FlirtsWithRhinos has repeatedly noted, it doesn’t much matter. For most things the sex of a person is irrelevant (or should be). What job you do. How you dress. What you can do with your life. When it is relevant, it is the sex of the body that is relevant. Regardless of what the brain or feelings or ideology say. The things separated by sex are done so on the basis of the sexed body. Nothing else.

So I don’t think either stereotypes or circular reasoning are necessary here. The fact that we cannot yet give a complete mechanistic account of why gender incongruence occurs does not make the phenomenon itself circular, imaginary or meaningless.

Yes its not the lack of understanding the cause that makes it circular and meaningless, it already was circular and meaningless.

So if there is no subjective way to be a woman other than by female biology… how can a male “know he is a woman”?

See my post above where I responded to each question:

You’ve asked a number of different questions here.
1. “How does it feel to be a woman?”
We’ve already covered this, and agreed: there is no universal sensation or objective metric for “what it feels like to be a woman”. Women do not all have the same personality, interests, emotional life or relationship to their bodies.
The awareness of being a woman is a neurocognitive experience generated in the brain, not a collection of feminine or masculine stereotypes. For most of us this awareness corresponds so unremarkably with our anatomy/ birth sex that we don't even notice it as feeling like anything at all. But , nonetheless, this awareness doesn't derive passively from our genitals, it is produced actively in the brain.
2. “How do I know I’m a woman other than by having a female body?”
That is a different - much more difficult - question- the "how" this happens . We do not yet know the precise neurodevelopmental mechanism by which gender incongruence arises. But there is nothing scientifically unusual about that. We don’t require a complete mechanistic explanation before accepting that a phenomenon is real.
We still do not have complete causal accounts of all kinds of things - like autism, sexual orientation, migraine, chronic pain, synaesthesia or Tourette syndrome. In fact this is true of almost all neurocognitive/ psychological phenomena, because our mechanistic understanding of how the brain works is still so limited. In each case we can study the phenomenon, identify patterns and biological or neurological correlates, and develop increasingly sophisticated explanations without being able to point to one simple mechanism and say “there it is”.
Gender incongruence is likewise a repeatedly observed phenomenon across cultures and populations: some people with male anatomy consistently experience or recognise themselves as female, and some people with female anatomy recognise themselves as male. The explanation is likely to involve some combination of biological, developmental and neurocognitive factors, and the science is still developing.
3. “How could a man know what it feels like to be a woman?”
They couldn’t know what another person feels like, any more than I can directly know what you experience internally. But that isn’t actually what a trans person is claiming. They aren’t saying, “I have compared my internal experience with every woman’s and discovered it is identical.” They are describing their own persistent experience of themselves and their relationship to their sexed body.
No stereotypes or circular reasoning are necessary here. The fact that we cannot yet give a complete mechanistic account of why gender incongruence occurs does not make the phenomenon itself circular, imaginary or meaningless.

Well, I’ve never seen one either, despite being in a variety of emotional states at different times, while perusing these boards and engaging in other discussions.

I don’t believe a non-circular argument that doesn’t resort to stereotypes exists, so if you have one, pop it below, so we can see what it is ⬇️

Why do these ever so female brains retain the male urges to sexually offend?

Or commit crimes at a much higher rate than real women?

The numbers speak for themselves. (Can't be arsed to link, TRAs have been handed the data many times and it's time for breakfast)

Could it be because it's twaddle?

You’ve asked a number of different questions here.

1. “How does it feel to be a woman?”

We’ve already covered this, and agreed: there is no universal subjective sensation or objective metric for “what it feels like to be a woman”. Women do not all have the same personality, interests, emotional life or relationship to their bodies.

The awareness of being a woman is a neurocognitive experience generated in the brain, not a collection of feminine or masculine stereotypes. For most of us this awareness corresponds so unremarkably with our anatomy/ birth sex that we don't even notice it as feeling like anything at all. But , nonetheless, this awareness doesn't derive passively from our genitals, it is produced actively in the brain.

2. “How do I know I’m a woman other than by having a female body?”

That is a different - much more difficult - question- the "how" this happens . We do not yet know the precise neurodevelopmental mechanism by which gender incongruence arises. But there is nothing scientifically unusual about that. We don’t require a complete mechanistic explanation before accepting that a phenomenon is real.

We still do not have complete causal accounts of all kinds of things - like autism, sexual orientation, migraine, chronic pain, synaesthesia or Tourette syndrome. In fact this is true of almost all neurocognitive/ psychological phenomena, because our mechanistic understanding of how the brain works is still so limited. In each case we can study the phenomenon, identify patterns and biological or neurological correlates, and develop increasingly sophisticated explanations without being able to point to one simple mechanism and say “there it is”.

Gender incongruence is likewise a repeatedly observed phenomenon across cultures and populations: some people with male anatomy consistently experience or recognise themselves as female, and some people with female anatomy recognise themselves as male. The explanation is likely to involve some combination of biological, developmental and neurocognitive factors, and the science is still developing.

3. “How could a man know what it feels like to be a woman?”

They couldn’t know what another person feels like, any more than I can directly know what you experience internally. But that isn’t actually what a trans person is claiming. They aren’t saying, “I have compared my internal experience with every woman’s and discovered it is identical.” They are describing their own persistent experience of themselves and their relationship to their sexed body.

No stereotypes or circular reasoning are necessary here. The fact that we cannot yet give a complete mechanistic account of why gender incongruence occurs does not make the phenomenon itself circular, imaginary or meaningless.

Hey @Lacksie, don’t forget to answer this question.

They know they don't have a limb, but their pain is a real cognitive experience that persists nonetheless.

So, trans-identified men know they’re not women, they just want to invade women’s spaces.

I want to pay child’s fares on public transport. Anyone who refuses me is age-phobic. Society must bend to accommodate me.

Sounds ridiculous, right? That’s how your transgender stuff sounds too, outside of your little cult.

Right. I’ve removed my fingers from my ears. Now please explain how a man would know he “feels like a woman” without using sexist stereotypes or “feelings”. Or the word woman. Come on, you can do it…. I believe in you 😃😃😃

People with phantom limb pain don’t demand others affirm their belief that they actually have the missing limb though do they? And throw tantrums when told the limb is not really there. It doesn’t matter though what analogy you use. Males will never be women and must use the facilities and spaces relevant to their sex. Love the fact you’re comparing transpeople to people with neurological disorders though and you’re supposed to be an ally.

Perhaps you just have your fingers in your ears because you are too angry to listen.

Sigh, no.

Again. People with phantom limb pain do not "believe things about themselves that aren't true". They know they don't have a limb, but their pain is a real cognitive experience that persists nonetheless.

Having phantom limb pain is obviously not the same thing as having gender dysphoria - it was an analogy to demonstrate a number of helpful neurological realities about how the brain/ cognition works.

Each medical / neurological condition will have a unique methodology of treatment, because each condition is unique. There's nothing remarkable about that at all.

Don’t they always. In a decade I’ve also not heard one.

But she is female. “Trans women” are men, so it’s a silly analogy.

And Lacksie has very obligingly put a lot of effort this evening into proving your point.

They do not demonstrate that every divergence between that representation and anatomy is therefore a “false belief”, still less a delusion or mental illness.

Surely if someone believes something that is not true, not backed by any verifiable reality, that is a false belief. They might genuinely hold that belief but the premise itself is not linked to fact or evidence and is therefore false?

Treatment depends on the nature of the phenomenon and on what actually reduces distress and improves functioning. Different conditions are treated differently.

True. But unfortunately for your entire argument on this thread, recent evidence shows that affirming the delusion that a person is the opposite sex, giving cross sex hormones/surgery leads to worse mental health outcomes than no medical intervention. So even that aspect falls down.

The only part of your argument that leaves is that letting men with a variety of motives for calling themselves women into spaces where women are undressed or vulnerable makes them happy. No surprises there. But still no.

How does it feel to be a woman, how do I know if I am one other than by having a female body?

How could any man know how it feels to be a woman when we each only know how it feels to be ourselves?

I have never heard an explanation of how a male can be a woman that doesn’t rely on sexual stereotypes or a circular argument.

There's a lot of supposition being presented as facts in Lacksie's posts.

Because we know people can have phantom hand experiences, we must therefore "know" that trans women really are experiencing themselves as "women", and furthermore "know" that this experience makes them meaningfully interchangeable with people who happen to just have female bodies.

But it's all just assertion upon asserton upon assertion, with nothing solid underneath at all.

What Lacksie persistently fails to see (or fails to acknowledge) is that it doesn't matter whether it's the body or the mind that makes one really a "woman", because single sex spaces, rights and indeed the cultural and social recognition of and history of women didn't come from the word "woman", it came from the objective recognition, for good and bad, of people with female bodies.

That is why it's the body not the mind that's the fundamental measure here.

Not because people are somehow too limited or fixed minded to consider what trans women may or may not be feeling, but because as soon as what you are talking about isn't rooted in the physical female body, it's just not especially relevant to any of the cultural and practical things pertaining to womanhood.

Anyone who says you shouldn’t drive is an eyephobe.

I have actually had a stroke which left me visually impaired. I have no vision to the left of centre in both of my eyes. So basically I see half of everything (including my own face in the mirror). However, my brain will fill in the gaps and sometimes I am convinced that I can see what's in the left half of the picture. What's actually happening is that I've glanced to the left and then when I'm looking back to centre my brain then knows what's to my left so it's almost like I'm "seeing" the full picture.

I could go around saying I can see, I'm not partially sighted and no one should tell me I am. I should be allowed to drive because I can see everything. Except I can't do that because that would put others at risk, as much as my brain convinces me I can see properly I know that I can't, it's a trick. I can of course carry on my life living as a fully sighted person, I can walk around, work, do whatever I want. But I can't drive because it wouldn't be safe.