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

[Deltoids1]

She posts this.

I am not asking or assuming anyone would live by my belief, just that they have the right to live as they choose, you asked for my opinion, that is simply mine.

And as I have repeatedly said, I personally completely support your, and your child's right to hold these beliefs.

Where I part company is that the imposition of the consequences of those beliefs on other people is a political stance with real world consequences. This is what JK Rowling was trying to draw attention to - and she was absolutely right to do so.

Can you honestly not get your head round the difference between "I support your right to live as you want, and I will absolutely stand beside you if anyone tries to discriminate against you in terms of jobs or housing on the basis of those choices" and "but women as a class need the right to organise for sex based provision for themselves where necessary - e.g. women's prisons, women's sports, rape crisis centres, single sex medical wards."

just that they have the right to live as they choose

Exactly. Live and let live.

Can we agree that female people are allowed to have the right to live as they choose too please? And that includes the right to live their belief that sex is a fixed fact and to have female only provision available for those who need it?

@Deltoids1 em I am a woman and I do not feel that I am being told that I can't live how I want, what's it got to do with anyone else how I choose to live and express my own gender? nothing at all, it doesn't threaten me that someone born with another gender would want to be a woman or do whatever the fuck they like, its up to them isn't it? I am already secure in my own body and views, beliefs and gender. There is no conflict unless you decide that there is, doesn't matter what anyone else says.

Choc, my dd suffered (suffers) from gender dysphoria, but we managed to have real conversations about it prior to taking any irreversible steps. Unfortunately there isn’t anyone in the medical community who is prepared to lay out the unknowns with regard to puberty blocking and taking cross-sex hormones, as anything other than affirmation can lead to dismissal. It makes it very hard for medical professionals to be honest, hence the resignations from the Tavy.
We do have two girls that our dcs know that have been taking medication for a couple of years now. One has completely dropped out of view (suggesting that transition has not been a magic bullet for the mental health issues she was experiencing). The other is still very much out and about and has started wearing more feminine clothes again. No idea whether still identifies as male or possibly non-binary these days. Time will tell.
In any case, she found liberty very hard, along with most girls. She was distraught when her periods started. She also has a disability which means she is always perceived as ‘different’. In all honestly, she would have been medicated by now for her mental health if we hadn’t been able to have absolutely honest conversations with her. Fortunately she also competes in a sport, and while vociferously defending the rights of trans-girls to trounce females in sports, we were able to ask her if she was prepared to compete against her male peers. With a dose of reality, she was able to reconsider that actual biology should be the default for sport after all.
I’m not indoctrinating her. I’m just asking her questions so that she works through real life scenarios herself. Life-time medication. Hysterectomy (ultimately.) Giving up the chance of competitive sport. Sexual partners. Who do you want to be able to have a relationship with and who is going to want to have a relationship with you. Most ‘transboys’ end up in relationships with other girls, so usually same sex attracted. It’s unusual for straight girls or gay men to end up in a relationship with a transman. Phalloplasty has so many issues and is a fairly elementary exercise in terms of function. Lots of issues with tissue, and the obvious implications of where you get the tissue from and scarring.
It’s very interesting to me that middle aged transwomen usually elect to keep their tackle, whereas teen transboys can’t wait to have their breasts removed (and yet so many of them decide that motherhood in all but name is essential to their ‘male’ experience.)
The drugs thing is very predictable though. We’d all feel top of the world with a regular testosterone uplift. Feel powerful, in control. It’s very interesting to me how many girls interpret that as meaning that they have done the right thing - instead of logically realizing that any female who took it would feel the same, not just those who are experiencing body dysmorphia.
It’s really sad - we are already seeing more de-transitioners step forward whose mental health was not taken into account prior to medicalisation. The grown men pushing this and the pharmaceuticals and clinics and charities involved have blood on their hands.
Transition should be a treatment of last resort for those whose body dysmorphia is so severe that all other treatment options have been exhausted. People should be given every possible support to accept their sex, and to understand that gender is a healing pile of bollocks. Gender should be outlawed. These children have been sold a pup.

Heaping pile of bollocks, obv. Healing is the very last thing that gender is.

sex (to me only) is something that is physical but sexual activity can be chosen, I do know of people who believe and feel for themselves that this is also transient.
What on earth??

I think sex is whatever you want it to be, my belief is just as valid as yours or anyone elses for that matter, why do you think that your opinion is 'the' one, just because you say it is?

Can you codify belief into law? Will you mandate that people can transition from one sex to the other and must be treated accordingly? That children who fail to conform to sex role stereotypes are to be taught they were born in the wrong body & will be treated with drugs and surgery? How will you punish the non believers? The heretics.

it doesn't threaten me that someone born with another gender

Do you mean sex?

When someone says "I'm fine with males in female provision, I don't care if that causes upset to other women." it's a big clue that someone is a stranger to feminism and women's rights.

There is no conflict unless you decide that there is, doesn't matter what anyone else says.

You're not here in good faith, are you?

People (myself included) have repeatedly explained to you that it's the wider political consequences that matter to us. Things like male-bodied sex-offenders and rapists self-ID-ing their way into women's prisons. Women finding themselves in the front row of the scrum confronted with a 6'4" male-bodied prop facing them. Women on a closed psychiatric ward with a male bodied person in the bed next to them.

This is where the private decision to live in the gender of your choice spills over into the public realm. And women have the right to discuss this, to have political opinions about it, and to campaign against what they see as adverse consequences.

Anyway, last page of this thread...

Thanks again J K Rowling for your bravery, for standing up for women and girls

chocolate you are missing the distinction between personal choice and public policy.
Do what you like in your private life.
But we all have to live together and public policy has to reflect actual reality.

Yes - thanks JKR from me. You're a legend.

I am a woman and I do not feel that I am being told that I can't live how I want

Good. That's really good. For you. You're talking though with women who are telling you they feel something different.

Lesbian women who are being told they must get over their homosexuality and that lesbians do not have the right to name a same sex attraction because it is too distressing to some male people to say that sex is a fact and an important fact in homosexuality.

Women who need same sex health care professionals.

Women who need access to female only services, groups, refuges, hospital wards, changing rooms, and cannot access those services unless female only provision is available.

These women can't live how they want.

I did get educated. I honestly believed a couple of years ago that we should all be nice and what harm did it do to accept people into our spaces and call them women if they said they were.

And then I read that Germaine Greer had been no-platformed and was puzzled as to why, so I read up on it. And kept reading about it. I read about male rapists being housed in female prisons, about young people being prescribed untested drugs that could leave them infertile and permanently adversely affect their development, about lesbians being pressured to accept penises, about women and girls losing out in sport to male-bodied people. And now I understand the harm that can be done, and no fucking way will I roll over and let that happen without a fight.

So yeah, it’s really important to educate yourself. Very good advice.

It’s heartening that this thread will get to 1000 posts just because a woman spoke out about something. The haters on Twitter (now transferred to here) just can’t stand it.

Thank you JKR - ovaries of steel & a real role model

Thanks JKR, we need more to stand up like you xxx

Chocolate50 you are new to MN and don't realise we believe people should live how they want and express themselves as they want but there is a push to change the laws which protect sex based rights. Do you think it is OK for people with a penis who simply say they are women to enter women's prisons, refuges and changing rooms even when they have a history of sexual violence? This has actually happened.

Thanks JKR.

Lemon Drizzle for the win!!

Thank you JKR!

3rd rule of misogyny: Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and "selfish".

@Gibbonsgibbonsgibbons

Thank you JKR - ovaries of steel & a real role model

Yes indeed.