What has JK Rowling said or done that’s transphobic

Yes — and my original point was that I regard JKR as transphobic because she has repeatedly characterised trans identity itself as false, performative or illegitimate: “men performing their idea of femaleness”, “foundational falsehood”, and so on.

That then led into the claim that what she says is simply “true”, which in turn led to the argument that trans people are really just mistaken, deluded or mentally ill because their internal recognition of sex does not align with their anatomy.

That is what we have spent most of this thread discussing.

I have never said that recognising trans identity settles every real-world question about prisons, changing rooms, sport, refuges, language or law. Nor is it accurate to say I am trying to “drown out” discussion of consequences. I am objecting to the move of defining trans identity itself as false or delusional and then treating that definition as though it automatically answers every subsequent policy question.

Of course you are calling for unquestioning affirmation. Failure to affirm, such as refusing to recognise some men as women is branded transphobia.

I have not said “phantom limbs exist, therefore trans people are a different sex” lol.

I used phantom-limb and body-representation phenomena to demonstrate one very specific point: that the brain’s representation of the body is not simply a passive readout from anatomy. People kept saying things like “I know I’m female because I have female body parts”, as though anatomy settles the matter in some simple, direct way. But that is not how body representation works neurologically.

I also used the analogy to point out that there can be discrepancies between the anatomy a person has and the way the brain represents the body or self, without that person being deluded, mentally ill, lying or pretending.

That is the extent of the argument. And it comes from engaging with a body of clinical and neuroscientific literature — not from a screenshot of a tweet. It was never intended to prove every claim about trans identity or settle every policy question.

Um, many societies are organised around spirits, ghosts, visions, and other ephemeral phenomena.

In fact, most societies are.

Actually the whole conversation was about JKR's supposed "Transphobia".

Your attempts to trammel the conversation into specifically and only "it is nasty to say trans women are men when at least some of them probably genuinely perceive do themselves as male bodied women through a similar mechanism to that which produces the phantom limb phenomenon" and drown out space for any recognition or consideration of the consequences of being forced to pretend TWAW in the real world, which is what JKR cares about even if you don't, have indeed dominated a lot of the thread, but also provided many valuable opportunities to highlight how poor the arguments for TWAW truly are.

Thank you.

Rowling holds gender-critical beliefs under which sex is immutable and trans women remain male, campaigns to ensure that law and institutions treat sex rather than gender identity as decisive in all contexts, and repeatedly has used language that portrays trans female identity as false, performative or male intrusion. People who define transphobia as including systematic invalidation or denigration of transgender identities therefore have substantial direct evidence for calling her transphobic.

So why did you reduce us to that then? I’ve quoted you. Someone is either female or they are not. And if they are male, irrespective of how they feel about their “sexual anatomy” and “sense of self” - they are male. Their psychology is irrelevant; the fact that they have a male body means they are not, and never will be, a woman - ie an adult human female. Being kind has led us to the Isla Bryson point, and frankly, women are tired of this male entitlement.

The whole conversation has been about whether trans people are deluded or mentally ill because they have a persistent recognition of sex that differs from their sexual anatomy. If you are having a different argument, I don't know what it is, it's not the discussion I've been having.

I also don't know how many ways to say - I do not accept that you have established how India Willoughby “recognises” her body by producing a screenshot of one out of context tweet. And I don’t accept that this anecdote has any bearing on the broader question of what it is to be trans.

I also haven’t argued for the unquestioning affirmation of anything anyone says about themselves. What I have said is simply: that gender incongruence is a real phenomenon, that it cannot simply be classified as delusion or dishonesty, and that questions about language, law, medicine and sex-segregated spaces are different questions that need to be considered on their own evidence.

Please stop reducing being female to being about “sexual anatomy”. It’s insulting.

I couldn't agree with you more!

Reported experiences of, variously,

Encounters with the Virgin Mary
Seeing/feeling a loved ones ghost
Having a purpose from God
Having an animal aspect to ones personality

Are also remarkably consistent across decades and countries.

Should we be reorganising society to accomodate visions, ghosts and spirit guides as well?

The whole conversation has been about whether trans people are deluded or mentally ill because they have a persistent recognition of sex that differs from their sexual anatomy. If you are having a different argument, I don't know what it is, it's not the discussion I've been having.

I also don't know how many ways to say - I do not accept that you have established how India Willoughby “recognises” her body by producing a screenshot of one out of context tweet. And I don’t accept that this anecdote has any bearing on the broader question of what it is to be trans.

I also haven’t argued for the unquestioning affirmation of anything anyone says about themselves. What I have said is simply: that gender incongruence is a real phenomenon, that it cannot simply be classified as delusion or dishonesty, and that questions about language, law, medicine and sex-segregated spaces are different questions that need to be considered on their own evidence.

I’m sorry, but being a woman is about more than “sexual anatomy “ and the sense of “self” about it. My female body is my material reality. I don’t have a “sense of self” about my sex, I just AM female. Please stop reducing being female to being about “sexual anatomy”. It’s insulting.

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.

I have not said “phantom limbs exist, therefore trans people are a different sex” lol.

I used phantom-limb and body-representation phenomena to demonstrate one very specific point: that the brain’s representation of the body is not simply a passive readout from anatomy. People kept saying things like “I know I’m female because I have female body parts”, as though anatomy settles the matter in some simple, direct way. But that is not how body representation works neurologically.

I also used the analogy to point out that there can be discrepancies between the anatomy a person has and the way the brain represents the body or self, without that person being deluded, mentally ill, lying or pretending.

That is the extent of the argument. And it comes from engaging with a body of clinical and neuroscientific literature — not from a screenshot of a tweet. It was never intended to prove every claim about trans identity or settle every policy question.

I'm not sure why you keep mentioning delusion to me. I haven't suggested India is deluded. (And to repeat, it isn't just one tweet). Who are you to suggest that India's 'recognition' of their body is incorrect? If your position is broadly "the person is who and what they say they are", then that either applies universally or not at all. You seem to want to keep a "no, not that or them" in your back pocket to cover the people who 'recognise' themselves as something you find inconvenient.

Obviously I cannot account for every statement a trans person has ever made, or will ever make.

However, as mentioned previously in the thread, the way transgender people describe the experience of gender incongruence is remarkably reliable and consistent across a wide political spectrum and ideological positions — including people who are themselves sex realist or gender critical.

It is not a condition characterised by delusion about the physical characteristics of the body. It is a persistent recognition of self that does not correspond to the sexual anatomy a person has. That is how gender incongruence described in the medical and clinical literature, and it fits with the persistent and consistent accounts given by trans people across clinical populations.

One unverified tweet, lacking context, is simply not sufficient to destabilise that account of transness or raise any meaningful question about what transgender identity actually is.

I have not said “phantom limbs exist, therefore trans people are a different sex” lol.

I used phantom-limb and body-representation phenomena to demonstrate one very specific point: that the brain’s representation of the body is not simply a passive readout from anatomy. People kept saying things like “I know I’m female because I have female body parts”, as though anatomy settles the matter in some simple, direct way. But that is not how body representation works neurologically.

I also used the analogy to point out that there can be discrepancies between the anatomy a person has and the way the brain represents the body or self, without that person being deluded, mentally ill, lying or pretending.

That is the extent of the argument. And it comes from engaging with a body of clinical and neuroscientific literature — not from a screenshot of a tweet. It was never intended to prove every claim about trans identity or settle every policy question.

That's my point. You don't even has as much evidence as that.

Just a whole chain of supposition. The phenomenon of a phantom hand exists therefore we must conclude trans people perceive themselves as a different sex to their sex body sex in handwavy ways therefore we must as far as possible behave as if we also believe that is their sex regardless of the external consequences that creates for other peope especially women.

Reported experiences of, variously,

Encounters with the Virgin Mary
Seeing/feeling a loved ones ghost
Having a purpose from God
Having an animal aspect to ones personality

Are also remarkably consistent across decades and countries.

Should we be reorganising society to accomodate visions, ghosts and spirit guides as well?

Obviously I cannot account for every statement a trans person has ever made, or will ever make.

However, as mentioned previously in the thread, the way transgender people describe the experience of gender incongruence is remarkably reliable and consistent across a wide political spectrum and ideological positions — including people who are themselves sex realist or gender critical.

It is not a condition characterised by delusion about the physical characteristics of the body. It is a persistent recognition of self that does not correspond to the sexual anatomy a person has. That is how gender incongruence described in the medical and clinical literature, and it fits with the persistent and consistent accounts given by trans people across clinical populations.

One unverified tweet, lacking context, is simply not sufficient to destabilise that account of transness or raise any meaningful question about what transgender identity actually is.

Obviously I cannot account for every statement a trans person has ever made, or will ever make.

However, as mentioned previously in the thread, the way transgender people describe the experience of gender incongruence is remarkably reliable and consistent across a wide political spectrum and ideological positions — including people who are themselves sex realist or gender critical.

It is not a condition characterised by delusion about the physical characteristics of the body. It is a persistent recognition of self that does not correspond to the sexual anatomy a person has. That is how gender incongruence described in the medical and clinical literature, and it fits with the persistent and consistent accounts given by trans people across clinical populations.

One unverified tweet, lacking context, is simply not sufficient to destabilise that account of transness or raise any meaningful question about what transgender identity actually is.

Obviously I cannot account for every statement a trans person has ever made, or will ever make.

However, as mentioned previously in the thread, the way transgender people describe the experience of gender incongruence is remarkably reliable and consistent across a wide political spectrum and ideological positions — including people who are themselves sex realist or gender critical.

It is not a condition characterised by delusion about the physical characteristics of the body. It is a persistent recognition of self that does not correspond to the sexual anatomy a person has. That is how gender incongruence described in the medical and clinical literature, and it fits with the persistent and consistent accounts given by trans people across clinical populations.

One unverified tweet, lacking context, is simply not sufficient to destabilise that account of transness or raise any meaningful question about what transgender identity actually is.

Seems odd to answer a question directed at someone else while ignoring the ones directed at you. Anyway, we don't need to initially assess each of the 85,000 prisoners in the UK to decide whether they are housed in the male or female estate. We can start from the premise that a transman will be housed in the female estate as they are female. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.

Back to India. I didn't suggest Willoughby was deluded. I suggested your use of ‘not necessarily claiming’ in relation to having female anatomy was a device to protect yourself against the examples of transwomen who claim just that. (And there was more than one tweet). IW claims to have a cervix and claims to be 'cis'. That is how they 'recognise' themselves. Your position is, therefore that is the truth that all others must affirm. That is a fair representation of your position isn't it?