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]

Thanks for the offer Big no need though as I have plenty of wine for brain clearing which is probably why I clicked through in the first place

Wine is one of the best medicines on earth. Enjoy!

I don't think I've ever been drunk enough to willingly watch an unfortunate looking man pontificate about his anime based wanking habits.

@Chocolate50 could you send me a link to the criteria? I notice you say ‘or’ so transitioning presumably could just take the form of ‘living as a woman’ so if a man decides to live as a woman like me, he wouldn’t even need a shopping trip to equip himself for his new life as a woman. He could keep his hair short, like me - wear no makeup, like me - wear unisex clothes, like me. Quite rightly he could look no different, because being a woman isn’t about putting on a costume. So living as a woman doesn’t actually mean anything unless every self declared transwoman is volunteering for a massive immediate pay cut. And on that basis it sounds like he has a choice between being able to do nothing at all except wake up and think “Today’s the day!” or going to a gender clinic. But it’s an “or” you mentioned. So he/she need not do that.

So if a transperson can do that, why couldn’t the next Samuel Little do that?

Fortunately I’m no longer young but when I was I know that escaping to the ladies to evade unwanted attention and seek help from other women is how I stayed safe in nightclubs and bars and sometimes in public spaces. Taking that away is not trivial.

Can't stay in this Jeremy Kyle Cesspit any longer

Wow.

I had a respectful exchange with you in which I was not abusive or rude, you chose not to respond to my second post despite it having clear, calm and genuine questions to you and to instead reply to posters you said were aggressive and rude.

Law of attraction - you could have had less 'Jeremy Kyle' style exchanges if you engaged with empathy and willingness to listen and learn.

I really hope that newspaper front page is real, thanks to whoever shared it.

It was more of a lecture about what a woman is. Whatever a woman is, it is sexual, he is an expert in defining it and transwomen are better at it. Presumably has limited experience of actual women.

Twitter seems to confirm that front page is real. Now whether it can get through parliament is another thing but it certainly will mean that whole transphobic label needs to be stuck only on actual transphobia. Not on women being pro-women. This is a game changer even if it takes a while for the bill to pass!!!

NOW is the time to write to your MPs - to the BBC - to newspapers - to everybody - to express our support for this.

Go women! We have work to do

(They put out these headlines to guage public support - we have to make sure they know they have it on this. Tell your family, tell your friends).

www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-rowling-right-that-hormones-or-surgery-not-required-for-legal-gender-change

This is the fact check on Rowling's claims. Note that this is exactly what I have said in earlier posts.
I oppose the oppression of trans people under guise of fearing own safety. It's like attending a wild snowflakey pity party.
Reassuring that respected actors & actresses who have influence have spoken up about Rowling's inflated claims.

Ha ha “respected” actors and “actresses”. The Harry Potter kids aren’t really respected for their thespian skills or intellectual abilities. And female actors really really hate being called actresses. They get very indignant if you do.

Chocolate: You said

"I was simply putting forward a view as someone asked me to respond personally to a question that they had asked."

Now you say

"I oppose the oppression of trans people under guise of fearing own safety. It's like attending a wild snowflakey pity party."

JK Rowling was dragged out of her house and slapped "very hard in the street" (the sanitised version her ex is prepared to admit), and had to return with the police to get her baby.

Women want single sex spaces because they are concerned about MEN

I obviously don't know, but it seems that your views are informed by your experience of child abuse. An adult (male or female) who abuses a child is taking advantage of the power that adults hold over children. That is why people who provide services for children have to comply with so many safe guarding protections. They can't prevent all abuse, and there is no implication that all adults are a risk to children, but the procedures are there to protect children.

Most men do not pose any kind of risk to anyone. However, most men can physically overpower most women because of their greater height, weight and upper body strength.
We are lucky to live in a country where the law (now) makes all physical abuse illegal. The laws that protect women are frighteningly recent, and many women alive today will be able to remember a time when domestic abuse was a private matter.

It shouldn't be difficult to understand why some women want some services and spaces to be single sex, but Marks and Spencer already believe that they must allow all men into the bra fitting rooms, because to do otherwise would conflict with their inclusivity policy.

I think I preferred the grey rock approach...

We need to have a massive push in Scotland. SNP approval ratings are high because Boris has been so incompetent over everything. And the current SNP leadership will quite happily position themselves as the liberal neighbour.

This is the fact check on Rowling's claims.

Obviously she is right, but I think the most striking thing about this fact check is that effing Pink News blatantly lied about the the mechanism for obtaining a GRC. (I refuse to believe that they didn't know the details).

They are deliberately gas lighting a victim of domestic abuse.

Choc, I'm not oppressing trans people. Like JKR, I know and love a number of trans people. I want them to live their lives in peace and security, with the same rights to fair treatment as anyone else.

But I've also been a victim of sexual assault, as have my DDs - none of it major, but some of it deeply distressing. To dismiss valid concerns as a 'guise' and 'snowflakey' is, frankly, bloody insulting.

You wouldn't use the same language to parents concerned by a school allowing anyone to wander in and drift around the corridors. But then, you don't need to: safeguarding demands that every unsupervised adult in a school is screened. But teenaged girls in a public loo? Oh, sod them. Caring about them is 'snowflakey'.

Not often I'm called a snowflake. This is a first. Congratulations.

I oppose the oppression of trans people under guise of fearing own safety

Males not being allowed in the women's bogs isn't oppression, Chocolate50.

Under guise of fear, chocolate? And you had a hissy fit over the term darvo. Dfod.

@Chocolate50

www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-rowling-right-that-hormones-or-surgery-not-required-for-legal-gender-change

This is the fact check on Rowling's claims. Note that this is exactly what I have said in earlier posts.
I oppose the oppression of trans people under guise of fearing own safety. It's like attending a wild snowflakey pity party.
Reassuring that respected actors & actresses who have influence have spoken up about Rowling's inflated claims.

chocolate

Do you know what the changes were involving self I’d that was being proposed that the government have just dropped? I am sure anyone reading this thread will have picked up that it was explained just what we have been discussing. And pointed you to changes that the Scottish government has begun rolling out... I have seen that mentioned and even mentioned it myself.

And do you understand that many companies have begun making changes due to their wish to have a lobby groups ‘mark’ of approval. yet that lobby group have exploited the act by misinterpreting it deliberately and educating government depts and corporations.

Organisations have moved ‘ahead of’ a change of law they were assured by this lobby group was happening. This often happens and it can be a good thing but this lobby group has some pretty ambivalent ideas around safeguarding.

You oppose oppression of trans people under the guise of own safety? .....

From all you have posted, from all you have ignored that people have discussed, where people have pointed out errors in the opinion pieces that you post that you use as an equivalence of your own opinion, I feel that you willfully choose to ignore the reality that there is evidence of how the additional rights wanted to be claimed by some trans people DO harm women and children.

I feel because of your personal situation, you are willing to overlook all the evidence to the contrary because to do so may mean people close to you will feel you are against them.

Why? Because that is what the trans community have been taught by these same lobby groups. That to be pro woman is to be anti-trans. Everything has been framed that way. Have you not seen this?

Be assured that I have not come across any posters here that wish harm to come to the trans community. But, you it seems, don’t even acknowledge the harm it was already doing to women. And you now imply women and snowflakes for objecting.

Not even just snowflakes, but wild snowflakes. Well done you.

I don't know what Chocolate hopes to achieve at this point. She seems to think that by ignoring all refutations and factual corrections of her claims and instead trying to accuse us all of being big meanies, or even insulting abuse survivors for their responses, we will somehow...start to agree with her? That we won't realise what she's doing?

Revealing, aren't these threads?

And you now imply women and snowflakes for objecting.

Oops. That is supposed to be ‘are’.

@Chocolate50
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/karen-white-transgender-prisoner-jailed-life-sexual-assault-rape-a8579146.html?amp

Were the women raped by Karen White snowflakes?

@Chocolate50 it’s clear that you’re coming to this debate from the point of view that trans women are women and trans men are men, but the fact is that to get a GRC, to be legally recognised as the opposite sex to the body you have, a trans woman has to be a man who has gender dysphoria and a trans man has to be a woman with gender dysphoria. The law recognised the physical differences between men and women.

Now I know that Stonewall think a trans person is anyone who thinks they are trans, they don’t have to have dysphoria or any medical diagnosis, but that argument just isn’t clear enough or quantifiable enough to give women’s rights away on.

I thought the word "guise" wasn't allowed on here as it apparently had transphobic connotations?

The nest of vipers has become a flurry of wild snowflakes. OK.

What's next? Old leftie lesbians becoming alt-right bigots?

Sounds legit.

I mean if you can convince yourself men can become women then why the hell not.