A response to JK Rowling

[Hjft]

J.K. Rowling, like so many others, has recently been accused of transphobia and targeted for expressing some of her opinions on sex and gender. This is a very nuanced issue which many people struggle with, including members of the trans community. Assuming bigotry and shutting down debate is not the way to address these issues. Instead we should engage in reasoned debate in order to better understand the subtitles and find a way to live together with mutual respect.

On 10 June 2020 JK Rowling wrote about her reasons for speaking out on sex and gender Issues ( www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/ ) . It is a welcome calm voice in what she calls a toxic environment and I commend her bravery for standing up to the bullies. The essay explains eloquently what she believes and why she holds the opinions she does. She opens up about some very personal issues, and I hope all her detractors will read it before shouting her down.

An essay, however well written, carries a bias, and a reasonable author will recognise that bias and be willing to consider that they could be wrong. And so should the reader of an essay. By writing this essay, JK Rowling has exposed some very valid points which the other side of the debate wish to brush aside. However, she has also indicated a bias which I hope to address.

She conflates sex and gender, and she conflates the law and medicine. Firstly she worries that trans activism is ‘pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender’. This legal definition is for the protection of the civil rights of trans people and has no bearing on biology. Trans people still receive healthcare appropriate to their individual biological truths. Every trans person is acutely aware of their biological sex because it is incongruous with their gender. Remember when Harry Potter uses Polyjuice potion to take on the form of Goyle in ‘Chamber of secrets”. He does not stop being Harry. Now imagine if Harry had got stuck, and had to live his life with everyone believing he was Goyle. It would be intolerable for him and would likely lead to mental illness or worse. This is what it’s like for trans people, and why the law is in place to protect their right to be their authentic selves. Being Harry is ‘not a costume’.

This conflation is further illustrated when she expresses alarm that ‘A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law’. Again, this demonstrates a conflation of law and medicine. If a trans person can find relief from their gender dysphoria by permanently expressing themselves in an authentic manner then why should we expect them to accept medical intervention in order to get legal protection. Imagine you have a migraine. If sitting in a dark room with a glass of water provides you with sufficient relief, then you shouldn’t be expected to take strong pain killers or accept brain surgery. The ‘man’ she describes is not masquerading as a woman - she is living her authentic identity as a woman. The law protects her rights to do so. She is not a predator, and it should not be assumed that she is. Without these rights, her transgender status would be revealed every time she tries to hire a car, or open a bank account, and it is her safety that is in danger. A man masquerading as a woman is not able to legally get a Gender Recognition Certificate - because they are a man.

[redacted*] I hope JK Rowling’s essay will mark a turning point in the tone of these discussions, and people can start to properly address them.

• [edited by MNHQ to remove inflammatory content - we're allowing the challenges to this section of the OP to remain]

Chocolate runs Chocolate's own business, without a man!!!

I bow therefore to Chocolate's clear superiority when it comes to all things. Jesus.

DFOD. I run a business too, set it up all by myself, with my own girlie hands, and I even do the "manly" work. Ffs.

But please don't misunderstand me when I say yes I have lived and understand what you are talking about. I just don't prescribe to it. And I think that should be ok actually.

No, dissociating from your life experiences is rarely healthy.

It is even less healthy to attempt to entrench your dissociation by tell other people they should also pretend these things don't happen or don't matter if they do.

It becomes damaging to others when you start campaigning for safeguards against the abuse you yourself suffered to be removed for everyone because you wish they weren't needed.

It becomes damaging to others when you try to spread false information, like women are as much of a threat to other women as men are.

On MN there are lots of lovely knowledgeable women. No matter what you experienced there will be women amongst the millions on MN who have experienced the same and will help you navigate your feelings and responses. They will do it with kindness, humour and some tough love. Do a name change and start a thread, I would recommend in Relationships.

actually I don't really believe that stats are always reliable.
Okay, how about anecdote, then.

My personal experiences of sexual assault (thankfully, nothing major, just the usual):
Adult MAN exposed himself to me and a friend in the park (we were about 13)
Teenaged BOY goosed me and told me I wanted it really (I was about 14)
Middle aged MAN 'lost his balance' and forcibly kissed me (I was about 15)
Middle aged MAN got me to 'give him a kiss' before he'd let me go (I was about 16)
Several MEN started to line out across the pavement and tried to intimidate me into stopping one night (I was about 23)
A MAN goosed me when drunk (I was about 37)

Do you notice a common thread? Every single one of those people had a penis. Every one.

Who has shouted at my teenaged DDs from van and down streets about their tits and arses? MEN.
Who grouped tightly around one DD and touched her up all over? Bunch of teenaged BOYS.
Who leered and letched and stroked himself through his trousers in front of a teenaged DD? A MAN.
Spot the common thread there too?

Do stop with the shit about unreliable statistics. It's very boring and just makes you look stupid.

I'm not usually so blunt and rude but I'm sick of this.

I just do not allow experience of either sex or gender to undermine the whole, or to blur my view or experience as a whole.

Do you notice how you are reproaching female humans for not rising to your high standard of not allowing bitter experiences, fear, trauma, distress etc to guide your thinking?

While not holding the same standards for those born male?

Because the reason you're reproaching the females is for not putting aside their experiences and reasons and issues in order to enable those born male to have everything they want.

How can you not miss the sexism inherent here? You have incredibly differing standards of what those born male are entitled to and what you expect those born female to deal with, get over and get on with providing to their superiors.

@Chocolate50

I find some of these views really odd. I almost feel like I'm not allowed to say as a woman that actually my experience of men and women are very different than portrayed by the views on here.

Of course you are allowed to say it.

What you are not “allowed” to do is use your own experience to negate the actual lived experience of other women.

Can you not even imagine that rape and sexual assault survivors, or any other women, might have different experiences to you?

Can you not see that in your rush to validate the actual lived experience of transgender people (who, assuming they are non-violent, absolutely should be able to wear whatever they like, present however they like, and not be subject to discrimination and violence) you are disregarding the needs of other women?

Is anyone else knackered? Just me?

I'm exhausted BigGee.

@BarbieandKenBruce

Well said and excellent analogy.

@BigGee

I am fucking exhausted.

It's not even 11am yet.

This is my first day off in ages (I work for myself like the highly esteemed @chocolate50), I'm ill and I feel guilty if I switch off stuff like this as I feel I have to try and contribute to explain why so many women feel the way we do at the moment.

I need a break but then I feel I am not doing all I can to try and educate. I feel like I have feminist's fatigue.

@Chocolate50

Well that was a bit ubrupt!

I don't think that running your own business (good for you) makes you lacking in privilege or not really. It is irrelevant.

I wouldn't class myself as an old school feminist either - I mean, what does that even mean?! I am in my early thirties, have a husband, who I love, and work in a male dominated (at the top) profession. I don't wave placards in my spare time. I am very well paid, likely to be able to pay for my own legal advice and to support myself and my children. I am hugely privileged to be relatively wealthy - I know that aspects of my life would have been easier if I was male but I don't worry for me, I worry for those who have fewer options.

Throughout history women have inadvertently screwed themselves over by being reasonable and expecting men to reciprocate.

Does every generation make the same mistake in their youth and only wake up when they have enough 'lived experience' to see reality?

It's tiring and it's tiresome but it's also too important not to keep repeating ourselves.

Women are not obliged to protect vulnerable men from violent men. It's not our job. If some would like to (Ginny/Hermione) then the vulnerable men should say thank you, politely. Because even Ginny and Hermione are not obliged to protect vulnerable men from violent men. The police are tasked with that and if they are failing, compliant to your MP!

Nothing to do with women!

But if a transman or any other woman needs my protection, ever, I'm there. No question. I am happy to protect the transcommunity but the section of the transcommunity I feel responsible to support are transmen not transwomen. The transwomen need to ask men in their community to support them. Like Daniel and Eddie. There are plenty of men supporting transwomen just as there are plenty of women supporting transmen.

Btw, I would be ok with waving placards but sadly I would probably be disciplined or marginalised at work. So I try to find subtler ways of supporting brave women like JK - those who are braver than me - and hoping I can convert a few people in a quiet way!

**complain not compliant

When I was 9 my friends Dad used to get us to dress up as the spice girls and dance for him.
He locked us out of the house and when my friend told him I needed a wee he said 'tell her to put her hand on her fanny and squeeze it'
At 11 my dad's friend offered to drop me off at a sleep over on his way home. The sleep over was 2 minutes away by car.
He drove round with me in the car for 20 minutes in the dark whilst refusing to talk to me or answer where we were going whilst staring at me in the rear view.
Some unknown male rang my home phone when I was 12 and used my name, asking if my dad was home. He got me to talk on the phone and started making weird noises. When I went quiet he asked me if I knew what he was doing. I said no. He told me he was wanking his cock.
At 13 I was followed with a friend by a man exposing his penis. He was pretending to urinate. We went into a chippy to get away. We ordered chips. He did the same. We cancelled and left thinking he would stay. He did the same and continued to follow us.
At 13 a man tried to trick me into coming into his home as his 'dog was lost'. I ran away.
At 14 my friends dad exposed himself to me in a passageway telling me he was desperate for a wee and it's just what blokes do.
At 15, on a school trip, I agreed to go with a boy to his room to get his wallet. Apparently this was consent to him pinning me down, getting between my legs and trying to kiss me.

These are just the events that happened to me as a CHILD. Noot even the things that happened to me as a woman.

All these events were perpetrated by MEN. Driven by their sexual urges and PENISES.

This is why I will fight for single sex spaces and sex recognition.

If men are allowed in single sex spaces WOMEN ARE NOT SAFE.

Not once have I had an unpleasant sexual experience with a WOMAN.

@Pogz92

Well said and I'm sorry to hear what you have been through. I wish I could say it's unusual but anyone who has grown up female knows it is not.

I've also never known an aggressive transman. It's men and transwomen who have been threatening sexual violence toward JK Rowling, not transmen or women. This is a male problem and men need to solve it.

*Actually that's not true. I did once know a transman get a bit shirty, but it turned out his hormone levels were a bit off at the time and he apologised when he realised he was being unreasonable and aggressive.

How many of our experiences will it take, do you think, to drown out one "but I feeeeeel like a woman!" from a man? 20? 200? 2000? 200000?
How many female deaths balance out a male death?
How many female rapes equal a male rape?

@Chocolate50, in the article you linked to the author states,
But mostly, I’m worried about what will happen when she continues to fund woman-centred and feminist causes.
The author sees JKR’s support of charities centred around women, often those who have suffered abuse at the hands of a man and children to be anti trans because they don’t cover the scope of trans women. 🤨

@Neednewwellies
That's because the author is a misogynist.

@MMN123, yes and yet @Chocolate50 suggested it as an Interesting article which to me is best take yet.

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten the creep guy who phoned up when I was about 17, asking to speak to someone who wasn't there and got me into a conversation about girls in tight jeans.
MAN, again.

It's all so bloody normalised that you forget half of those events. And when you remember them you understand the source of the sneaking unease about dark alleys, mobs of drunk blokes and lack of escape routes.

I'm fairly tough, but if I went down the steps and along a corridor to those loos you get in places like the Imperial War Museum, and opened the door into the ladies and saw a bloke there (other than a cleaner) and no women, I'm not at all sure I'd go in. Because of all those experiences gifted to me so charmingly by people with cocks.

I doubt the OP is going to come back. But I hope OP you can begin to understand just why women are angry.

Because it is only now that I have a daughter that I have processed all the stuff that happened to me. But you are right, to say it is men that are the problem could be the issue. It is MALES as there is little published evidence that transwomen do not share the same predatory nature. In fact, under the new umbrella from stonewall, even more worrying.

Now, wouldn't it be conducive to actually listen to women about their needs and have some of that empathy that your community is demanding and yet, seems to significantly lack. Why isn't this evidence being collated and published as a 'gotcha'?

@Neednewwellies
Indeed - women screw themselves over by endlessly trying to do cartwheels to understand the perspective of others, to the level where they re-write the intentions of people who are clearly saying one thing so that it fits with the narrative in their own heads - making themselves believe the world is a happy fluffy place where there is no misogyny.

But I was always told not to collude with delusions.

@MMN123

*Actually that's not true. I did once know a transman get a bit shirty, but it turned out his hormone levels were a bit off at the time and he apologised when he realised he was being unreasonable and aggressive.

That's not overly surprising, when you think they are taking androgens.

"Anabolic steroids
The main anabolic steroid hormone produced by your body is testosterone. Testosterone has two main effects on your body: Anabolic effects promote muscle building. Androgenic effects are responsible for male traits, such as facial hair and a deeper voice."

People who take anabolic steriods, e.g. testosterone, can suffer from a syndrome known as " 'roid rage" where the excess testosterone causes them to react more aggressively than they would normally. www.cbsnews.com/news/facts-and-myths-about-roid-rage/

Good job your transman friend could reduce his testosterone dose to reduce that aggression.

I've got one. Babysitting at 17 years old for a couple with two daughters. They come home at 11pm and husband insists on walking me home (10 mins, in a village) so I'll "get home safe". Husband proceeds to sexually assault me on way home.