What has JK Rowling said or done that’s transphobic

And that’s mental ill health. Just like thinking you’re in the wrong body. Like anorexia.

But are those people then told by everyone around them that their leg is no longer their leg?

The act of recognising or being aware of one’s sex does not take place within ones sexual anatomy - it's a neurobiological, cognitive psychological process that is carried out by the brain.

Anatomy is one source of information about the body; the brain is what perceives, integrates and interprets that information as part of a person’s recognition/ awareness of self.

So it does not follow that someone who recognises themselves as female despite having male anatomy is simply mistaken about what anatomy they have. They may understand their anatomy perfectly well, and yet they still perceive themselves as the opposite sex.

Actually, people can experience phantom limbs despite having been born without the limb in question, so once again your assumptions - and the sweeping conclusions you are drawing from them are simply wrong. buddy.

So rather than the analogy “falling at the first hurdle”, your objection actually demonstrates the very assumption I was challenging — that the brain can only represent a body state it has physically experienced before. Neurologically, that simply isn’t true.

Also fyi the type of neurological phenomenon I am describing really can't be cured by 'therapy'.

Ahh, that would seem intuitive, but there are well-known neurological phenomena in which people experience a limb as not belonging to them despite knowing perfectly well that it is physically attached, and phantom-limb phenomena show the reverse.

So “it’s attached, therefore the brain must experience it straightforwardly as part of the self” is not neurologically sound.

The point is that the brain’s representation of the body does not always map perfectly onto anatomy. And these kinds of neurological phenomena are experienced directly by the individual — they do not depend on some external benchmark, or on assumptions about what other people are experiencing.

You are still treating gender identity as though it were a false factual proposition, and that is the mistake.

A delusion is a false belief about reality — “I am Napoleon Bonaparte”, “the government has implanted a chip in my head”, and so on. A trans woman is not usually claiming that she was born with ovaries, XX chromosomes or female reproductive anatomy. She can understand those facts perfectly well.

What differs is her internal recognition of herself as female. That is not the same kind of claim as “I am Napoleon”. It is not a mistaken belief about an external fact; it is a feature of how she experiences and understands herself.

The existence of that internal recognition is itself a fact. It is you who are denying an observed reality when you insist that this experience cannot genuinely exist.

You can insist that anatomy should determine the words “male” and “female” in every possible context, but that is a philosophical and linguistic position. It does not turn a person’s gender identity into a delusion or a mental illness.

But people with who claim the limb does not belong to them don’t get it cut off. (Well not by reputable doctors). They get therapy. People with phantom limb actually had that limb once. No male has ever been female so your analogy falls at the first hurdle. Sorry buddy.

Ahh, that would seem intuitive, but there are well-known neurological phenomena in which people experience a limb as not belonging to them despite knowing perfectly well that it is physically attached, and phantom-limb phenomena show the reverse.

So “it’s attached, therefore the brain must experience it straightforwardly as part of the self” is not neurologically sound.

The point is that the brain’s representation of the body does not always map perfectly onto anatomy. And these kinds of neurological phenomena are experienced directly by the individual — they do not depend on some external benchmark, or on assumptions about what other people are experiencing.

I don't have a premium account where I can filter posts, but the point that there must be some external benchmark on which a trans person is assessing themselves as female has been brought up and answered many times, that poster is just not engaging with the responses.

For example -

because you are still assuming that recognising oneself as female must either be reducible to anatomy, or else it must depend on access to some universal “female feeling”. But those are not the only possibilities, and both models fail to account for what trans people actually report experiencing.

The existence of no single, universal way to “feel female” does not mean that a person cannot have a stable internal recognition of themselves as female. Nor does that recognition have to be based on either sexist stereotypes or physical anatomy.

You are treating the absence of a simple external frame of reference as proof that the experience cannot be real. But that conclusion does not follow at all. That's not how mental/ cognitive processes work. You can have a stable sense of something without possessing an external measuring stick for it. For example, you can recognise that a particular body part feels like “yours”, that a movement feels natural or alien, or that you are anxious, without comparing yourself against some universal template of how everyone else experiences those things.

Ahh, that would seem intuitive, but there are well-known neurological phenomena in which people experience a limb as not belonging to them despite knowing perfectly well that it is physically attached, and phantom-limb phenomena show the reverse.

So “it’s attached, therefore the brain must experience it straightforwardly as part of the self” is not neurologically sound.

The point is that the brain’s representation of the body does not always map perfectly onto anatomy. And these kinds of neurological phenomena are experienced directly by the individual — they do not depend on some external benchmark, or on assumptions about what other people are experiencing.

But the law dictates that female spaces cannot be accessed by trans women, therefore surely that is the benchmark of what being female is?

Also the body part thing is daft, you know it's part of your body because it's literally attached to your body.

I don't have a premium account where I can filter posts, but the point that there must be some external benchmark on which a trans person is assessing themselves as female has been brought up and answered many times, that poster is just not engaging with the responses.

For example -

because you are still assuming that recognising oneself as female must either be reducible to anatomy, or else it must depend on access to some universal “female feeling”. But those are not the only possibilities, and both models fail to account for what trans people actually report experiencing.

The existence of no single, universal way to “feel female” does not mean that a person cannot have a stable internal recognition of themselves as female. Nor does that recognition have to be based on either sexist stereotypes or physical anatomy.

You are treating the absence of a simple external frame of reference as proof that the experience cannot be real. But that conclusion does not follow at all. That's not how mental/ cognitive processes work. You can have a stable sense of something without possessing an external measuring stick for it. For example, you can recognise that a particular body part feels like “yours”, that a movement feels natural or alien, or that you are anxious, without comparing yourself against some universal template of how everyone else experiences those things.

I don't have a premium account where I can filter posts, but the point that there must be some external benchmark on which a trans person is assessing themselves as female has been brought up and answered many times, that poster is just not engaging with the responses.

For example -

because you are still assuming that recognising oneself as female must either be reducible to anatomy, or else it must depend on access to some universal “female feeling”. But those are not the only possibilities, and both models fail to account for what trans people actually report experiencing.

The existence of no single, universal way to “feel female” does not mean that a person cannot have a stable internal recognition of themselves as female. Nor does that recognition have to be based on either sexist stereotypes or physical anatomy.

You are treating the absence of a simple external frame of reference as proof that the experience cannot be real. But that conclusion does not follow at all. That's not how mental/ cognitive processes work. You can have a stable sense of something without possessing an external measuring stick for it. For example, you can recognise that a particular body part feels like “yours”, that a movement feels natural or alien, or that you are anxious, without comparing yourself against some universal template of how everyone else experiences those things.

I might have missed the answer to that specific question. Can you direct me to where it has been answered please? (Or provide a quick précis here)

It's irrelevant because their is no good reason for thinking that the two things have anything to do with each other for reasons above

Ok but equally someone could come along and ask you what gives you the right to deny their experience and tell them they can't change race. You might argue against them (much in the way that people on here are arguing against you) but what gives you the right to say being transgender is fine and everyone should accept it and accommodate them in ways that mean that their own personal safety is compromised but being trans racial is not fine "because it's not the same thing"?

The act of recognising or being aware of one’s sex does not take place within ones sexual anatomy - it's a neurobiological, cognitive psychological process that is carried out by the brain.

Anatomy is one source of information about the body; the brain is what perceives, integrates and interprets that information as part of a person’s recognition/ awareness of self.

So it does not follow that someone who recognises themselves as female despite having male anatomy is simply mistaken about what anatomy they have. They may understand their anatomy perfectly well, and yet they still perceive themselves as the opposite sex.

There are more than eight billion people in the world. The fact that you can find a handful of individuals who say they identify as another race does not establish the existence of a comparable medical, developmental or population-level phenomenon.

There is no recognised body of evidence showing that “transracial identity” operates like transgender identity, and there is no reason to assume that race and sex should produce analogous forms of identity in the first place.

As stated - race and sex are very different kinds of categories. Sex is rooted in reproductive biology and involves anatomy, hormones, chromosomes and development. Racial categories are much more heavily shaped by ancestry, history, culture and changing social classification.

No, because the analogy does not map across.

There is no recognised medical or developmental phenomenon equivalent to gender dysphoria in which people consistently experience themselves as belonging to a different race from the one associated with their ancestry and social classification.

And race is not biologically organised in the same way as sex. Sex is a biological system tied to reproductive development, anatomy, hormones and chromosomes. Race is a much looser social classification built around ancestry, appearance and history, with boundaries that vary across societies.

So to say that a person can have a stable internal sex/gender identity that is incongruent with their anatomy, does not logically imply that you must also believe that someone can simply "identify into" another race. The comparison only works if you first assume that race and sex identity are the same kind of phenomenon, and there is no good reason to assume that.

you are just asking the same questions over and over again without reading or thinking about the responses.

Correct. Your sexed body is material reality, and your brain is part of that material reality too.

And if your brain perceived your body as being something it cannot be (like a woman with testicles or a man with a clitoris and ovaries) then there is something wrong with your mind's function.

If I believed I had an extra toe or only one lung or that my left leg didn't belong to me, I would require psychiatric help to accept the truth about myself. A woman claiming her ovaries make her no less of a man would require the same thing.

It doesn't matter how honestly, devoutly and earnestly that perception is experienced; it's not something that can be true because sex is binary and immutable in mammals.