To think JK Rowling is a fabulous human being

[TheAdventuresoftheWishingChair]

I just came across her book, 'Very Good Lives' which is all about overcoming adversity. I think it's so important that successful women talk about the times they've failed and how success is about pushing past that. I'm reading it just at a time I need to hear that message. I can definitely recommend buying a copy if you are in need of a boost or have some pennies to spend on something nourishing.

I was also looking into her charity, Lumos, and I had no idea just how much she was trying to help disadvantaged children. I love that she's putting her money and position to good use.

The term 'national treasure' generally makes me want to poke my own eyeballs out with a rusty kitchen utensil but AIBU to say she is an utter treasure and we are lucky to have her. She makes the world a better place.

That's all!

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are.

If my husband says he's a woman, can we stop using contraception because two women can't have a baby? Or is that as ridiculous an argument as saying a menopausal woman is no longer a woman?

My sex was known before birth. Who 'assigned' that sex - the person who performed the amnio on me or the person who analysed it?

@ScreamingBeans

When they didn't want us to vote, they fucking knew what a woman was. When they banned us from universities they fucking knew what a woman was

And when they abort female fetuses BECAUSE THEY ARE FEMALE not because they will identify as female, they fucking know what FEMALE means.

And when someone speaks out and says something sensible about trans issues, they know who to subject to an onslaught of irrational, violent threats and abuse. They know who the women are.

Exactly!

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are.

That's such a nonsensical statement.

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are.

The thing is, this poster actually seems to think she's being coherent! She thinks she is being meaningful.

Utterly bewildering.

I've only ever seen two non-biologically based accounts of what a woman is.

One is "A woman is someone who asserts they are a woman" which seems, a bit, y'know, circular.

The other is "A woman is someone who adheres to society's view of what constitutes appropriate feminine appearance, dress, behaviour and mannerisms." Which is both insulting and fucking useless, because by this reckoning (as an adult human who likes playing football) I'd be a woman in the USA and a man over here.

Seriously - you have a definition which works fine 99.9% of the time, and for the other 0.1% there are ways of looking into the person's underlying biology more carefully, in order to establish what sort of DSD (difference of sexual development) applies in their case. It has explanatory power - it tells us how human reproduction occurs, how it intersects with evolutionary change in our species, what's similar between us and other mammals, and different between us and true hermaphrodites (eg. earthworms) or serial hermaphrodites (e.g clown fish).

It's also politically useful - it enables us to say "these features of our sex make us vulnerable to male violence - lesser physical strength, vulnerability to rape and enforced pregnancy, having children dependent on us for long periods of time." It enables us to say "but biology isn't destiny - these biological differences may explain how come we are easy to exploit, but it doesn't say we have to be exploited. We can campaign for a better world." It enables us to say "having a uterus doesn't mean less of a person, of less moral worth, of less political worth, of less intellectual worth and so on."

Contrast this with "women are whoever says they're a woman" or "women are people who like pink glittery shit." Crap as a means of distinguishing the underlying biology, crap as a definition for scientific purposes, and deliberately crap in political terms, because if you can't name your oppression, you can't fight against it.

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are.

Don't answer the phone will you.

There's a lot of scammers out there who prey on people who believe anything they're told.

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are

Can you really not see the severe implications for women’s rights if there is no definition of the word woman, and it’s an open circle people can join at will?

One very obvious example would be sex discrimination in the workplace, others would be women only spaces.

Human beings are a bipedal species. Not every member of the species has two legs/two feet. But we still call ourselves a bipedal species.

Human beings are sexually dimorphic, like all the other mammals. We come in two varieties, female and male.

Every human being is on a path to developing as either male or female from the point of conception, when the sperm arrives at the egg with either an X chromosome or a Y chromosome. In a tiny number of cases something goes wrong and at birth there is a genuine diff,iculty in determining which sex an individual is, but otherwise even where an individual has a difference of sexual development (much better term than intersex), it's usually obvious whether they're male or female.

There isn't a single human on the planet born from a male. Only female humans, i.e. women, have eggs and can gestate and feed their young with milk. Not all women can or will do any or all of those, for various reasons, but they belong to the class which has that capability, and men belong to the class that produces sperm. That's all it means to belong to one sex or the other.

The tired old argument about how it's insulting to define a woman by reference to her anatomy, it excludes menopausal women or infertile women etc etc etc ad nauseam, is an insult to the intelligence.

We all know what a woman is because we all came from one.

All of this tantrum stuff from anyone who thinks the laws of nature no longer apply is very dull.

And as an avid football fanatic, I have no idea what your Man City analogy is all about.

IMO transwomen are women. They have the same rights to call themselves women, they have to same rights to behave as a woman, they have the rights to be in womens spaces.

BUT

What I have issues with, and what really really fucks me off, is those that are trying to remove the identity of ALL women. Women have fought long and hard for the freedoms and rights we have. To now try and deny us the use of the word woman is just bloody ridiculous.

And I might (might) have less of an issue if the same were happening to men. But it isn't. No one is trying to remove, or change, a mans identity. No one is saying we should refer to them by a biological process rather than calling them men. No, as usual, it is women.

This starts erasing women as individual beings. It stops the personalisation of women. Women just become a random biological function. Drip drip drip.. and BAM. Handmaidens tale.

ScreamingBeans, thanks for the link. I've seen excerpts of that article referenced on this site but not the source. It's unequivocally fantastic.

It's not my job to define another person's identity.

But male and female are not 'identities' they are states of being. In the same way that being human is a state of being.

but when pressed on why trans women can't call themselves women, they either say a) they didn't have formative female experiences (which aren't universal)

So what is the universal experience that all females, including transwomen, experience then?

b) this means men will self-identify as trans to harm women which unlikely/very very rare.

Given that men choose entire careers in order to gain access to vulnerable people, and will go to ridiculous lengths in order to carry out crimes, I really don't think that a gaping loophole in government policy which would allow any man to access everything that women have fought to have their own would simply be overlooked by predatory men.

All this handwringing about how difficult it is to define woman, to work out who are the men and who are the woman. It hasn't been that hard to work out for the last few millenia has it? Funnily enough, men have always been able to work out who the women are.

@yelyah22

What's your 'version of womanhood', how do you define womanhood?

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are. It's not my job to define another person's identity. This is where I think I butt heads with the gender crit crowd, because most I've seen say they're not against people being trans, but when pressed on why trans women can't call themselves women, they either say a) they didn't have formative female experiences (which aren't universal) OR b) this means men will self-identify as trans to harm women which unlikely/very very rare. I can't imagine refusing people who struggle with their identity and suffer enormous hatred by lots of people the right to self define because their experiences don't match yours or the slim chance one of them might be a bad person. Lots of football fans smash things up when they go to Europe for away games, but they're not banned from calling themselves City fans in case it makes one of them do something bad.

Lol, how do you go through thinking crap like this? Amazing.😂

It's not my job to define another person's identity

It is however, my job to critically think about whether I believe someone's identity.

If Rachel Dolezal tells me she's black, it's not my job to definer her identity (she identifies as black), but it bloody well is my job to use my fucking brain and not kowtow to her delusion.

I am saddened that so many women can see how offensive Rachel Dolezal's claim to be black is, while cravenly accepting men who do exactly the same thing because they are so incapable of saying NO to men.

I think the football analogy is:

nice football fans can't throw out the bad ones just as women can't throw out the not-women ones. So if a man says he is a woman we have to invite him on our coach and let him piss on our seats.

I hesitate to pick you up on this because I think you're on the same side as me, but they have the rights to be in womens spaces?

All women's spaces?

What about a convicted rapist who wants to be housed in a women's prison?

What about a male-bodied individual who's 6'3", 15 stone, with greater muscular strength, VOmax and all the other things that come with male puberty, who wants to be on a women's rugby team?

And how does this pan out for the rights of the women incarcerated in prison? Or the women on the opposing rugby team (especially the ones in the front row of the scrum)?

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are

So anyone can chose to be male or female and the consequences of sex and sexism no longer exist - great!

Perhaps you could share this idea with BLM - think of all the trouble they could save! Racism ended today! Anyone can be whatever race they want! It'll be so much easier for them too because they won't have to tell men that they have to do the whole pregnancy thing.

If nothing else this whole trans business has refined our skills in logic.

same rights to behave as a woman

Please may I ask what you mean by the right to 'behave as a woman' as I'm not sure I understand.

IMO transwomen are women. They have the same rights to call themselves women, they have to same rights to behave as a woman, they have the rights to be in womens spaces

Why?

@DickKerrLadies

Women are, in my opinion, whoever says they are.

If my husband says he's a woman, can we stop using contraception because two women can't have a baby? Or is that as ridiculous an argument as saying a menopausal woman is no longer a woman?

My sex was known before birth. Who 'assigned' that sex - the person who performed the amnio on me or the person who analysed it?

I'm still waiting to find out what the criteria is for assigning babies as female...

IMO transwomen are women. They have the same rights to call themselves women, they have to same rights to behave as a woman, they have the rights to be in womens spaces.

Upon what basis? Also, what do you mean by 'behave as a woman'?

@yelyah22

I found the definition of 'woman' as: a female human being.

I found the definition of 'female', to clarify, as: "of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.".

So by this definition, women born without ovaries, that cannot bear offspring, or cannot produce eggs, aren't female. What are they, then? Surely you can see that using very strict descriptions is harmful for the people who fall outside of them?

So to repeat an example mentioned before: a child born without limbs is not a human?

Just because there is a medical reason (and that includes contraception) why a women cannot bear offspring, it does not negate that she is a women. This is not the gotcha that you think it is. Really. It is not.

Of course this thread was hijacked by the woke club.
JK is a lovely human being.