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Original poster

The Sunday Times - StrawMaid's Tale

114 replies

Melroses · 08/11/2020 15:24

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/culture/margaret-atwood-the-handmaids-tale-author-on-her-new-poems-qqpc9xmf5?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1604837071

twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1325411735226945541
"There’s a difference between belief and fact...You can believe all you like that trans people aren’t people, but it happens not to be a fact. It's not true that there are only two boxes."
@MargaretAtwood speaks to @ST_Culture

Has anyone a spare share token? I have run out of my week's free articles already.

OP posts:
BernardBlackMissesLangCleg · 08/11/2020 16:28

Atwood has made a calculation that having the social currency of being on the 'right' side is more important than the privacy, dignity and safety of women. the cognitive dissonance of doing that while believing oneself to be morally superior must be agonising

i think it's why all the visiting wokescolders here are so tetchy.

Aesopfable · 08/11/2020 16:10

There’s a difference between belief and fact...You can believe all you like that trans people change sex, but it happens not to be a fact.

PrawnofthePatriarchy · 08/11/2020 16:09

I'm looking forward to my copy of the Ickabog. It will console me for my bitter disappointment with Margaret Atwood. How she can utter this piffle is beyond me.

Burnout101 · 08/11/2020 15:49

I'd have hoped if anyone could see the significance of recognising sex being immutable and diamorphic it would be the author of The Handmaid's Tale, disappointing. Were Offred et al just really dim then, was the real message that they should have identified as men and been given a lovely time?

Escapeplanning · 08/11/2020 15:48

Yet again someone explaining the error of opinions that no-one has. That's all they've got. Imaginary positions to shoot down.

tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz · 08/11/2020 15:42

@Melroses

Aparently trans people are people, but I don't think anyone ever said they weren't Confused

Who says people aren't people? It is really avoiding the issue.

This with bloody bells on. I'm so tired of this accusation that, by questioning harmful trans ideology we're denying people exist.

What the F does that even mean?!! Confused

On a positive note the Ickabog is released in the next few days so I'll be receiving my pre order soon.

Something to look forward to!

ErrolTheDragon · 08/11/2020 15:37

@Melroses

She is also heavily conflating sex with gender in the next paragraph, even though JKR writes about sex specifically.
Not 'precise' at all, it seems.
ErrolTheDragon · 08/11/2020 15:37

Oh FFS. There shouldn't be any 'gender boxes'. Trans people can be whoever they want to be, with regard to 'gender'. Present as Pip one day and Philip the next if that's you.

But humans are a sexually dimorphic species which can't change sex. These two things are not in any way mutually contradictory.

And sex matters. Feminism is necessary because of sex.

Original poster
Melroses · 08/11/2020 15:36

She is also heavily conflating sex with gender in the next paragraph, even though JKR writes about sex specifically.

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Original poster
Melroses · 08/11/2020 15:35

On the subject of trans rights she is very precise indeed. After our conversation she emails me a video attacking JK Rowling’s view of the issue. Rowling defends the ultimate biological reality of sexual differences as a feminist cause: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.” Atwood also emails a Scientific American article stating the opposite case: “Why the new science of sex and gender matters for everyone.”

It doesn't say what the video and article that influenced her are. I can guess the Scientific American article but not the video attacking JKR.

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wellbehavedwomen · 08/11/2020 15:31

I've seen this claim before: that if you don't think sex can magically change, you don't regard a trans person as human. And it's just so stupid.

It's irrelevant whether you're a man or a woman. You're still human. We all are. The bizarrely overwrought attempt at moral coercion, in pretending that anyone pointing out sex as an immutable reality is thereby denying anyone else's humanity... it's bonkers, and it's dishonest.

Of course trans people are human. They're just not the opposite sex to their own, and never can or will be, though of course they should be able to express their gender in whatever way feels right to them. What part of that is hard to understand?

OhHolyJesus · 08/11/2020 15:27

Here you go

Margaret Atwood, the Handmaid’s Tale author, on her new poems.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/margaret-atwood-the-handmaids-tale-author-on-her-new-poems-qqpc9xmf55_

Original poster
Melroses · 08/11/2020 15:26

Aparently trans people are people, but I don't think anyone ever said they weren't Confused

Who says people aren't people? It is really avoiding the issue.

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