J.K Rowling's Position

I am not without sympathy for transwomen who genuinely feel uncomfortable going into male spaces

If men feel uncomfortable going into their own spaces because they dress completely inappropriately then maybe the issue is their clothes and behaviours. And maybe toning down the ridiculousness and just putting slacks and a normal top on might make them feel comfortable again. And we can all then just get on with our days. Most women aren't dressed like Kenny Everett doing Cupid Stunt so why they think that is 'living as a woman' whatever the fuck that is, I'll never understand.

I see what you are saying and note that you close conversation down by not engaging. If you had a point surely you'd make It?

It's almost like we've met @middler before.

The other thing is that people encounter the bits of the trans jigsaw in different orders. My own journey into gender criticism started with hearing about Kathleen Stock's ordeal and the realisation that gender activism was negatively impacting academic freedom and affecting trade unions. Sitting down and thinking about the concept of transness itself came later.

I forgot patronising, the last line with its deliberate spacing from the rest was definitely that.

A tad righteous perhaps?

And you may find my tone hostile, and that's fine, it's in the eye of the beholder after all, but I find yours evasive and disingenuous, so there we go.

Even if I'd asked nicely, you still wouldn't have answered the question, and I wasn't the only one to ask it.

🤣🤣 so no response then. Got it.

Fair enough. I just not buying this one as it won't engage with a basic question. Which is straight out of the playbook.

I do see your point, but do feel that's more in person where i think we are all a bit cagey to start rather than on this board.

Maybe, but I was also accused of being a secret TRA when I first came on here. People who haven’t been around other GC people tend to be extremely cautious about what they say on the matter.

I suspect the OP has hightailed it back to their safe space.

But if they are interested in debating the living as a woman thing, I'll give them a starter.

Today I lived as a woman by wearing no make up, outsourcing the cooking, bellowing obscenities at the football on the TV, and drinking beer. In jeans and a t shirt. Thing is, my xx chromosomes, and every cell in my body made those womanly activities.

Would your male friends who think they live as women consider that to be living as a woman? Or would they assume I'm actually a bloke.

My belief is most young people don't pay enough attention to the world outside of their personal bubble. Anything posted from an account that looks remotely official is repeated, verbatim, without individual thought or insight.

It isn't uncommon in this day & age sadly - actually, for all age groups, but especially the young. They parrot the beliefs of their peers from a place of privilege & safety, without comprehension of what is at stake. Those who have a reason not to trust men often don't feel able to speak up, much like other generations who know better.

JKR became a focus of hate because she stood up & said what most people already believed. Playing nice wasn't getting women anywhere, her famous face above the parapet made her public enemy no 1.

I have great admiration for every woman who has stood up to be counted on this issue, especially those who have become the target for hate & abuse.

"I do agree with her support of ensuring that law got passed."

You have referred a couple of times OP to a law being passed. The Supreme Court did not pass a law, they clarified what the law already was. Some of the upset has come from the fact that some trans people thought they had rights they did not, and acted accordingly. And many many organisations who should have known better didn't bother to check properly and went along with it, or knew better but decided to go with what they thought the law should be.

The "losses" - access to women's spaces, sports etc. were never actually theirs. For example, self ID never came into law, it never got past the discussion stage. Yet lots of organisations behaved as if it was the law and put policies in place to reflect that.

That is not JKR's fault - she has been clear this was unlawful. She did not lie to them about their rights. They should direct their bile at the organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids, who sold a reality that didn't exist. I imagine many individuals made choices based on what they erroneously thought the world would look like for them once those choices were made, and would have made different choice had they realised the truth.

Otherwise... lack of critical thinking skills, lack of life experience, blind unevidenced faith, instinct to distrust those with money, social devaluation of middle aged women, ability to indulge in luxury beliefs thanks to bubble of privilege.... there are many reasons.

I think I would make a distinction between honest transwomen and genuine transwomen.

"Honest" transwomen I am pretty sure exist. Men who sincerely feel that they are in some way a woman.They are not deliberately deceiving anyone, unlike, say, a man who suddenly discovers his inner woman when a spell in a women's prison looks like a safer option than the men's.

"Genuine" transwomen would imply men who actually are in some way a woman. That's a whole other kettle of fish, and requires a definition of what a woman is (if it's not a person born bodily female); and a description of how somebody born bodily male gets from "I have these feelings" to giving his feelings the label "woman" rather than any other; and an explanation of why his self-diagnosis should be considered objectively valid.

I am not so sure about the comments she made about kids not being trans as I think some kids as teens do seem to think they are in the wrong gender, maybe not in the large numbers that we are seeing today but clearly some people do feel they were born in the wrong gender and as a society I think we do have to support them without sacrificing the rights of an other group.

There are children who are distressed by their sex and we do have to support them but labeling them as 'trans' and affirming their belief that they are not the sex they were born does the opposite. Terrible harm has been done to children in the name of this ideology.

Without intervention, this distress about their sex almost always resolves by the time they've gone through puberty and the vast majority would simply grow up to be gay or lesbian and/or autistic. There is also a cohort whose distress stems from having been abused.

With intervention they can end up sterilised, with no sexual function, with a significant drop in IQ, with osteoporosis and a whole host of other lifelong medical conditions, with surgeries that never heal properly or stop hurting and that leave them incontinent, with permanent changes that can never be undone if they change their minds, and several years behind their peers in emotional and cognitive maturity.

'Trans kids' do affect the rights of those around them, most especially other children, but it's their own rights which are the major concern - the right to health, the right to not suffer harm at the hands of the medical profession, the right to grow up and go through puberty, the right to grow up gay.

Teenage presentation is a completely new thing, by the way. Until about 20 years ago the tiny number of children (almost always boys) distressed by their sex presented in very early childhood.

Yes this one is just a TRA in sheep's clothing. I will retract that if I actually get any answers to my quite reasonable question.

I have observed that there are people who demonstrate traits of being trans i.e. have a diagnosis of extreme gender dysphoria or are cross dressers ,or have AGP. These people go about their day and recognise reality and that their behaviour is on the outside of the range of normal.

Then there are trans people for whom being trans is their identity. They are obsessed with themselves, and they cannot function unless someone talks about their trans-ness. I heard someone say they were a "femme-presenting, non-binary female in a relationship with a masc-presenting non-binary male" - which is just a straight couple. This isn't Trans, but trying to fit in with a social movement I guess.

The first group recognises the issues for females and males being in the same space, and they recognise its their problem, but they shouldn't be sacked,denied service at a bar i.e. same human rights.

The second group are so obsessed with being trans or queer-what ever the fuck that means- that they cannot just have a conversation about the weather. They are then so vulnerable to predators who are using them to remove safeguards for females spaces.

Gender is a construct, therefore gender-identiy is also a construct i.e. not based in reality If you are male and have brain structures more commonly observed in females, it doesn't make you a female, it makes you a slightly different type of male, but you will still have the advantages of strength that come with sexual dimorphism in humans. Its like saying a man who has only had sex exclusively with females is gay because he likes musical theatre.

A lot of the posters on here are pretty jaded from all the hate that’s been thrown at them by TRAs.

Not at all, but to have the conversation you need to say what you think living as a woman is otherwise how can I possibly agree with you that some men do so?

You could try asking them “Do you think that male people, who identify as women, most of whom have intact male genitalia, should be allowed to freely access spaces were women and girls are undressing and showing, even if those women object?”

That's a different sheet. But thanks.