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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Just when you think you couldn’t love JK Rowling more...

999 replies

Deltoids1 · 06/06/2020 22:57

She posts this.

Just when you think you couldn’t love JK Rowling more...
OP posts:
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Dances · 08/06/2020 18:34

The fact that basic fucking principles of logic seem to elude these fuckers is the reason we are in this mess

Datun · 08/06/2020 18:35

truthfairy

I realise I can probably alone on mumsnet, but I think JK Rowling is awful, and misinformed. The vast majority of the trans movement does not deny sex exists, and her strawman arguments cause great damage and hurt.

If the vast majority of trans people don't deny sex exists, then how can her saying sex exists be hurtful to them.

There is absolutely zero logic with proponents of this ideology.

Clymene · 08/06/2020 18:36

Nah I started to read that thread and it got TRF in on the second post @truthfairy*. You and the thread writer are arguing that men can become women and it's mean and unkind of women to gatekeep and want their oppressors to stay out of our spaces.

Not happening.

If a fox identifies as a hen, you don't let him into the henhouse. He might fit in brilliantly with the other hens and they'll politely pretend they don't notice that he's a fox. But he might also pretend to be a hen so he can get into the henhouse. OR, even more confusingly, he might really want to be a hen but when he finds himself in the henhouse, his fox proclivities overtake him and he can't help himself.

So the safest thing for hens to do is to keep foxes out of the henhouse. That might really hurt some foxes feelings because they truly want to be hens but that isn't the hens' problem. The hens have to look after the hens' wellbeing.

Maybe the fox should build a kind of henhouse where he and the other foxes who want to be hens can live.

Dances · 08/06/2020 18:37

Black
We might have to start investigating the provenance of your username, m'lady

Fanthorpe · 08/06/2020 18:42

Being a woman is the axis of my oppression, it’s not a set of feelings about my body.

Localocal · 08/06/2020 18:48

I'm with her too. I absolutely stand by anyone's right to be and call themselves anything they want. But it's mad to pretend that the concept of a self-defined gender should take the place of a biologically defined sex in every case. Go JK!

BaronessFloralBunting · 08/06/2020 18:48

My brain matches my body simply because it is a human brain in a human body. My reproductive class is female, I am an adult, therefore I am a woman.

I do not have a strong sense of connection or happiness about my body, I find parts of it deeply troubling and have worked through an awful lot of mental discomfort related to that. I am not 'gender conforming', I am gender challenging - I will not be boxed into rules about 'what a woman should be'.

A woman can be and like anything, love who she wants to, have the name she wants, believe whatever she chooses. But she will always be a woman, because it's an immutable human characteristic. And it cannot be identified in or out of.

In this all this eagerness to either fashion a personal opt out, or redfine woman so that it includes men, where is the desire to actually challenge and change the sexism of the gender system that makes so many women unhappy?

Why are those misrepresenting Rowling and extolling the wonderment of gender and the irrelevance of sex not pouring that energy into making the world better for women? Why are you so eager to be kind to either the people who hurt and minimize women or the women whose response to the suffering of all women is to pretend there is a special escape, just for them?

Oh, and this is Mumsnet. The one with all the swearing. We don't all fucking gender conform to daintylady bullshit here.

BringbackLang · 08/06/2020 18:48

How could you label my beloved Lenon Drizzle as an abomination, Dances? Cuts me deep that does GrinAlthough making it with orange does sound nice!

BringbackLang · 08/06/2020 18:49

Lemon

Thinkingabout1t · 08/06/2020 18:49

my consultant on the way down for surgery ... said that it’s all just science. There is a set order of how a foetus should develop. A pattern of precise hormones that are released at set times, in set quantities. For some though, this order or pattern is interrupted or received differently. The results are intersex, transgender and non binary individuals.

This is such eye-watering nonsense that I don't believe a surgeon said it. If he did, he should not be practising as a doctor.

Helmetbymidnight · 08/06/2020 18:54

beautifully said, floralbunting.

BringbackLang · 08/06/2020 18:56

Where did they go? No-one's answered my question as to why JKR is an awful person. I really want to know.

Thisismytimetoshine · 08/06/2020 18:58

@Thinkingabout1t

my consultant on the way down for surgery ... said that it’s all just science. There is a set order of how a foetus should develop. A pattern of precise hormones that are released at set times, in set quantities. For some though, this order or pattern is interrupted or received differently. The results are intersex, transgender and non binary individuals.

This is such eye-watering nonsense that I don't believe a surgeon said it. If he did, he should not be practising as a doctor.

Do consultants actually wheel patients down to surgery in person? Must have been short staffed that day...
BeingATwatItsABingThing · 08/06/2020 18:58

I have only just found this thread as I was considering starting it myself. I have always adored her stories and I’m the biggest HP fan and now I love her even more.

BringbackLang · 08/06/2020 19:01

Welcome @BeingATwatItsABingThing Smile

BeingATwatItsABingThing · 08/06/2020 19:04

Hi @BringbackLang Grin

I’m now going to spend my evening reading through this thread.

Dances · 08/06/2020 19:04

Lemon stuff gives me the boak.

So, to get this right, if the 'science' is as it 'should be ......the result is ladies who are happy with lady brains doing lady things, for example?

Cos that sounds like a steaming like of horseshit to me

truthfairy · 08/06/2020 19:05

Because, @datun she is deliberately (or ignorantly) conflating sex and gender, which you will see if you read on in the thread. But hey, I don't expect to change anybody's mind, people's views on this seem fairly entrenched. I am however, despite being aware of mumsnet's reputation on transgender issues, really astonished at the level of hatred towards trans people on here.

Dances · 08/06/2020 19:06

Pile

CaraDune · 08/06/2020 19:06

"I remember talking to my consultant on the way down for surgery and he said that it’s all just science. There is a set order of how a foetus should develop. A pattern of precise hormones that are released at set times, in set quantities. For some though, this order or pattern is interrupted or received differently. The results are intersex, transgender and non binary individuals. It is something as out of control as the colour of our eyes."

Presumably this was for a double mastectomy.

I can actually believe a cosmetic surgeon might come out with this - because he wasn't an endocrinologist or neurosurgeon or researcher into foetal development. Doctors, in my experience, talk all sort of crap in the pursuit of what they perceive to be bedside manner, and they don't always know the science outside of their own specialist area.

I'm very sorry to hear you had such significant body dysmorphia, and I hope surgery has brought you peace and a happier existence.

Nonetheless, I do take issue with the whole notion of gendered brains. It's sexist claptrap. I spent my youth fighting tooth and nail against sexist dinosaurs who didn't think women like me should be doing physical sciences because it was for blokes. I'm damned if I'm going to spend my late middle age fighting against sexist gender unicorns who think that women like me who do physical sciences are doing womaning wrong because we're gender non-conforming.

You and I both encountered a mismatch between the physical bodies we were born with and the sexist boxes society tries to stuff us into. You conceptualised this as your body being wrong; I choose to conceptualise this as society being wrong.

BringbackLang · 08/06/2020 19:06

Wasn't the whole girl brain, boy brain thing debunked?

Datun · 08/06/2020 19:10

@truthfairy

Because, *@datun* she is deliberately (or ignorantly) conflating sex and gender, which you will see if you read on in the thread. But hey, I don't expect to change anybody's mind, people's views on this seem fairly entrenched. I am however, despite being aware of mumsnet's reputation on transgender issues, really astonished at the level of hatred towards trans people on here.
How is she conflating sex with gender when she says sex is real which results in same-sex attraction, and as a representative of the female sex, it has shaped her life? She said fuck all about gender.

And, um, astonish away.

LuxLuxLux84 · 08/06/2020 19:12

I love her and haven’t read a single book of hers. I love who she is and what she does for women and vulnerable children. I WILL read her books one day!

merrymouse · 08/06/2020 19:12

So, to get this right, if the 'science' is as it 'should be ......the result is ladies who are happy with lady brains doing lady things, for example?

Don't forget though that lack of a lady brain has never enabled the lady bodies to vote, inherit a title, go to university etc.

Whatever the non lady thing has been - wearing trousers, becoming a lawyer, running a marathon - the solution has always been to insist that women are just going to go ahead and do it anyway.

BaronessFloralBunting · 08/06/2020 19:12

Rowling did not conflate sex and gender. She simply said sex matters and is not something you can change. You might be so wedded to your ideas about the reality of an inner gender identity that you cannot separate it from the actual reality of sex, but she wasn't talking about gender at all, she was talking about sex.