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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

JK Rowling - Thread 2

464 replies

MoleSmokes · 21/12/2019 02:03

Thread 1 started by @MsMcWibble here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3772685-JK-Rowling
----
twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
---
To start off thread 2 - everyone saying the time was right for this to hit the news stands right after the Election was right!

Maya Forstater's Employment Tribunal case is, by virtue of JK Rowling's support, more popular in The Spectator than Boris Johnson by Boris Johnson, The Tories and The Labour Party!

MOST POPULAR in The Spectator

1. In just a few words, JK Rowling has changed the transgender debate (James Kirkup)

  1. Boris Johnson: Perhaps my campaign was ‘clunking’. But sometimes, clunking is what you need (Boris Johnson)
  2. We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously (Matt Ridley)
  3. Keir Starmer looks and sounds middle class precisely because he’s working class (Isabel Hardman)
  4. Let’s make David Lammy Labour’s next leader (Rod Liddle)
  5. A new leader won’t stop the far left’s domination of Labour (Nick Cohen)

www.spectator.co.uk/

JK Rowling - Thread 2
OP posts:
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17
Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 21:24

This was posted so we can educate ourselves but it is missing the bit were it explains what the other forms of male and female are

JK Rowling - Thread 2
Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 21:31

My partner has been talking at me about this. He is just regurgitating things he had read online. Almost all of the sex genotype/phenotype stuff was included in my first year of undergrad but he's an expert now. I am disappointed and we had an arguement. But wtaf is it with these people? None of the intersex stuff is relevant. Intersex people cannot will themselves not to be. None of the non-human stuff is relevant either. Clownfish and mushroom reproduction are not relevant to human society ffs.

ThePurported · 23/12/2019 21:51

Stonewall is itching to add the 'I'. It's happening everywhere, the civil service trans network has done it already. I'm not saying it doesn't have any members with DSDs, and obviously people are free to organise however they want, but this organisation is very influential. It advises the EHRC among others.

ScotiaNova · 23/12/2019 21:52

The intersex argument is used to control.
Deflection.
Most (if not nearly all) trans people are not intersex so the argument doesn’t even apply to them.

Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 21:58

I find it really distasteful. People with DSDs are told by society at large they aren't proper men or women, now they have trans people saying they aren't, except sometimes when it means trans people aren't really trans. It's bizarre.

ScotiaNova · 23/12/2019 22:10

Yes it’s disgraceful and invasive. Because all this discussion that goes on about people who are intersex’s chromosomes, genitalia and reproductive ability isn’t out of interest and concern for them.

ArranUpsideDown · 23/12/2019 22:17

Because all this discussion that goes on about people who are intersex’s chromosomes, genitalia and reproductive ability isn’t out of interest and concern for them.

Claire Graham's What Is Dignity:

the judge [in Maya Forstater's case] goes out of his way to talk about the need for dignity for trans people. It’s important, we’re told, that we all pretend that the categories of male and female are nebulous and unimportant. That the feeling in someone’s head should override reality for the rest of us....The vehicle used to achieve this is, as ever, DSDs.

Where’s the dignity for people with DSDs in all of this, as our complex and often emotionally difficult medical conditions are trotted out and prodded by the ignorant, discussed with morbid fascination by people who have no idea about the reality of them? Who gives a shit about what is being done to us?

We mustn’t discuss or acknowledge the sex of trans people, because to do so would “out” them. We must let them retroactively alter historical documents because to not let them do so would also “out” them...Meanwhile, he thought nothing, as do so many people in this debate, of declaring that people with DSDs shouldn’t be considered male or female at all. Where does this end? To class us as “other” is to out us.

The only way we can counter this harmful narrative, is to out ourselves anyway. I have to write a blog, sit in front of strangers and describe my genitals, fertility status and medical history, just to be able to say “what trans activists say about us isn’t true. It’s unkind, unscientific and harmful”. Where’s the dignity in that? Where’s the newspaper column inches and TV shows for us? Where’s the outrage that a group of actually vulnerable people, just getting on with their lives, wanting to blend in and not be paraded for someone else’s party, are being mis-sexed?

There is no dignity, no compassion. We’re politicised and used as a footnote in someone else’s story. We’re prevented from being our own spokespeople. No one hears us. No one cares.

mrkhvoice.com/index.php/2019/12/18/what-is-dignity/

ScotiaNova · 23/12/2019 22:28

I hadn’t read that piece by Claire Graham, thank you for sharing. It’s quite heartbreaking.

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 23/12/2019 22:30

I agree with you that there's very little market, Lamahaha, but it wouldn't surprise me to see some publisher that's full of woke young employees give it a try anyway, at least until the sales numbers start coming in. In terms of what you might call the woke genderist youth I think many of them genuinely don't understand how little public agreement with their position there is - those of their peers who disagree seem to try to avoid either the subject or the people talking about it, so they assume any opposition is coming from older conservative people who're also racist, homophobic, etc.

ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen · 23/12/2019 22:38

Erm, please please ignore everything Eugene Gu says - he's a creep

www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18147216/eugene-gu-twitter-social-justice-activism-abuse-sexual-assault

Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 22:42

I have PCOS, which apparently makes me intersex (his words). I told him when we get married next year I'll be changing my birth certificate to reflect the fact I'm not really female and he went quiet. Hmm

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 23/12/2019 22:45

There was at least one intersex org that very actively asked that TRAs stop using people with DSDs as a gotcha. Why do their feelings and their requests to be left alone not matter to our supposedly very concerned with kindness TRA friends?

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 23/12/2019 22:47

PCOS is a condition that a person can only have if they are female ffs.

Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 22:59

They don't matter because they aren't men!

I think DP realised what he had just regurgitated at me when I said that! Too straight to be in a gay marriage, how exclusionary.

AutumnRose1 · 23/12/2019 23:01

I hope it’s all right to put this here

But I’ve seen some very alarming stories linked to schools because of this now. Woodside High, Tottenham saying “anti TERF” things. WTAF is going on?

ArranUpsideDown · 23/12/2019 23:03

please ignore everything Eugene Gu says

There was a discussion about him in thread 1.

Unfortunately however, he has >300K followers on Twitter and is skilled at social media. Similarly Prof Alice Roberts has a large following and has similarly odd ideas.

It's notable that the self-identified GC scientists and medics are in short supply on Twitter and other social media platforms. (I'm not entirely surprised by this but it means that there is a very unbalanced public discourse around this topic.)

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 23/12/2019 23:04

As in the school itself/school authorities saying weird stuff or some of the students, Autumn?

NewMumBGentle · 23/12/2019 23:06

I actually think this is quite surprising from her. Normally she's so DESPERATE to be inclusive that she retcons characters, giving them traits or characteristics retrospectively that she didn't include in the books (gay Dumbledore, black Hermione ect).
She's very annoying either way

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 23/12/2019 23:06

I'd love to have sat in on the conversation with your woke partner, Tocopherol.

"PCOS is an intersex condition!"

"So I'm not a woman, then? And we're shagging?"

(Observes as bloke backtracks at the speed of light)

Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 23:15

It was not a conversation I thought we'd be having! He's very much the "I have no problem with gays at all but I'm 100% straight, me" type, and he is from a country that isn't gay friendly. It confirmed he is just repeating things at me without engaging in any critical thought at all.

AutumnRose1 · 23/12/2019 23:17

Prodigal

Elle has screenshots here

twitter.com/elleandback/status/1209202179829051393

SapphireSeptember · 23/12/2019 23:20

Adding my 2p. I'm part of a LARP community, the events are a magical school loosely based on Hogwarts, so I assume people who spend a fortune to go to a pretend wizard school are huge Potterheads.
A lot of people including the organisers are very woke, and things have panned out exactly as I suspected they would on Facebook with people decrying JKR. I currently feel like the only sane person there (and I wasn't very sane to begin with, hence going to a pretend wizard school.) I'm totally with Jo on this, and with Maya, and I especially hope Maya will be okay.

Tocopherol · 23/12/2019 23:22

Also re; Jake retcons - she clearly did that because of years of being told the books weren't diverse enough. Then nobody was happy with the additions and years of moaning about that followed.

She should have said nothing and just taken a few suggestions on board for future books instead of giving in. There was no way retconning would have worked.
But the "wizards crap on floors and that's canon" thing made me laugh even if it was quite childish and troll-y!

ArranUpsideDown · 23/12/2019 23:22

alarming stories linked to schools because of this now. Woodside High, Tottenham saying “anti TERF” things.

For those who haven't seen the origin of the story:

www.gaystarnews.com/article/one-gay-headteacher-school-preventing-lgbti-bullying/

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 23/12/2019 23:23

That's ridiculous. It's a bloody high school! Teach the kids their GCSE and A Level subjects and stop trying to indoctrinate them.