JK Rowling row hints at generational rift on transgender rights - The Guardian

[Rubidium]

An interesting and thought-provoking article on transgender issues in The Grauniad! I wish there had been a bit more depth, but its a start.

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/12/jk-rowling-row-hints-at-generational-rift-on-transgender-rights

What stood out for me:
From Lucy Hunter Blackburn: “This debate has become an excuse to parade some pretty ugly attitudes about the right of women over a certain age to have a public voice, and the value of older women’s political views.”

Today’s young adults are the middle-aged of tomorrow. It won’t be too long before generationZ/alpha regard millennials as middle aged has-beens who should just shut up, and that will be a fascinating thing to watch unfold. (I type as a member of Generation X.)

From Finn Mackay: “Also, we know that plenty of young people too have questions about sex and gender, and about including trans women in women-only spaces or not”

I always think of the 13-year-old who took Oxfordshire County Council to court for denying her sex-segregated changing facilities, the female detransitioners, the teenage girls dehydrating themselves because the only toilets in their schools are unisex and no doubt other examples of young women and girls getting a raw deal as a result of trans ideology and I hope they either become or continue to be angry about how harmful this ideology is, and fight back against the millennials who promulgate it.

"Women need to stick together now more than ever."
Absolutely.

@AnotherEmma - as someone who doesn't have or want children I completely understand that the experience of pregnancy/motherhood will have a profound impact on how you feel about your female sex. No one should ever take that away from you.

Thank you, that means a lot. Because it does feel as if people are trying to take it away from me - by erasing the word "woman" from the whole equation Pregnant women not people!!!

@AnotherEmma it feels like that because it's true. The level of respect for mothers and motherhood is at an all time low. I've seen multiple friends of mine go from libfem to radfem in the space of their maternity leave.

Some day, and I'm betting JKR pushed us a lot closer to it with a big mighty shove, some day people are going to be gobsmacked by a realization.

The only way to put all the value on a transwoman's need for acceptance and none on women's entire lives is if women don't count.

If they're not seen as human.

That's the only context in which "be kind" (at the cost of your own life) makes sense.

I wonder if after the realization sinks in they'll wander around pulling down all the statues of WERMs (women exclusionary radical misogynists), marveling that anyone could have been such a bigot.

I was just wondering if some white women's groups could unite, or have united, with black women's group on any of this. BLM brings up an image of a black man being attacked by police - there isn't much about women in this. Black women must suffer discrimination in more ways than white women.

WERM absolutely brilliant! Needed it earlier!
Bluemooon I'm not a black woman, but think it needs to be kept separate from BLM as dont think it would be long before a WERM might point out that it was "white privileged women (regardless of whether it was or not) derailing the BLM" though your post highlighted my observations this week on good morning britain when on two co nsecutive days piers morgan was having a debate with 5 black men one day and two the following on BLM. Hmmm

I agree with PP who says that my age group (30s) tends to be an experience gap than a generational gap.

A lot of my friends had stable childhoods which left them with lofty ideals they have taken into arts jobs and public sector work. They take a be kind approach because they believe in the best in people. Before the TRA started I've argued with them about restorative justice which they think should be the first way to approach crime.

I've come from a family where my grandma and mother survived DV, where our family have struggled to make ends meet to the extent of not being able to buy meals before payday. I believe that many people are good but know that there are a core who are not, who have no qualms about hurting others to get what they want, and take pleasure from the power they have.

I have been instinctively GC because I am a pragmatist who knows what will happen to women if we take away our safety nets because I've seen it before. My friends are lovely, they are socialist as a core part of their identity but they are naive and still hold on to a tribalism I cannot understand. For them TWAW is just another pillar of that and any harms done as a result are because of not true trans so the ideology holds, the cost to women is overlooked.

My teenage daughter is GC as are most of her friends. I think change is coming. She is the generation which has had to put up with sharing changing rooms and toilets. She is very lefty, progressive 'be kind', vegetarian, re-use recycle etc - and yet she just doesn't bloody want to get her clothes off in front of boys.

Just as an aside I also feel for the teenage boys forced to change in front of girls/trans boys. It works both ways - although generally less trans boys want to go in the boys changing areas - it is happening at my daughter's school however.

The various child sexual abuse scandals that have come to light over the past 20-30 years (priests, teachers, social workers, football coaches, boy scout leaders, DJs etc.) have resulted in today’s safeguarding measures, which means (I hope) that the younger generations have received more protection in childhood than previous generations did. But while this is obviously a good thing I think it has resulted in a naivety among younger generations where they don’t realise that there are some very dodgy people out there.

Does The Guardian ever allow readers’ comments on trans issues? None on this one, though by present Guardian standards the article is almost impartial. I used to read it avidly but now I can hardly bear to look.

On some other issues, the readers’ comments were the only part worth reading. But I noticed that TRA support swamped any GC voices on those stories that did allow comments.

We are witnessing a generation of young people who have been groomed and moulded by cults.

Young people with Asperger's have been targeted by cults using supernatural themes for some years now.

I understand that many young people who are neuro-atypical identify with for example "otherkin" (the resonances between otherkin and the Harry Potter universe are clear to anyone who looks) and also with Hermione Granger who is perceived by may to be "on the spectrum"

here is just one example of how neuro-atypical people have been targetted by cults, I have included this webpage as it, very helpfully, uses Hermione Granger as an example of an "aspie".

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130131013959/www.tantra-intimacy-aspergers.com/id12.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20130131013959/www.tantra-intimacy-aspergers.com/id12.html

also see this page about the teacher behind the webpage

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130131051557/www.tantra-intimacy-aspergers.com/id5.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20130131051557/www.tantra-intimacy-aspergers.com/id5.html

Note:
the string of references to culturally appropriated / perverted traditions

Qualification via the extremely controversial Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHS) in San Francisco

Qualified as a California Certified Sexological Bodyworker (sexological bodyworkers claim to perform psychotherapy via anal and genital massage upon clients) - thus the proviso on the page " However, please note: I have not included bodywork in my practice. "

The "resources" page links to some extremely sinsiter websites

The sexoligist who owns the website is this woman

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110608005209/www.dramymarshsexologist.com/AmyMarshbiography.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20110608005209/www.dramymarshsexologist.com/AmyMarshbiography.html

Her bio claims that she was involved with this organisation
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110615053834/www.genderspectrum.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20110615053834/www.genderspectrum.org/

I just find it fascinating that JKR, a woman who has overcome DV, poverty and adversity and created a magical supernatural, fictional universe, is being gaslighted by a newtowrk of activists who themselves inhabit a fictional, magical universe but who believe their universe is real and who want to oppress everyone else with its magical, unreal rules and laws.

Also if JKR is reading this, I would suggest reading up on both the otherkin and radical faerie movements.

I couldn't help notice this article in the guardian yesterday that acknowledged girls and women need their own designed cricket kit because, shock horror, female bodies are a different. Different skeleton, muscle build and hand size. Not pink and glittery crap.

So the guardian sports desk can see what's going on even if most of their oh so wise columnists can't.

Re the clinical sexologist / hypnotherapist in my earlier post, Amy Marsh, the one who is providing tantra therapy and group therapy to people with Asperger's

she is an associate of the Deer Tribe member / promoter Annie Sprinkle
archive.is/qnHlk

meglet I think the author of that article, Andy Bull, is Hadley Freeman's OH, which may help explain why the Graun's sports desk is a bit more clued up than the rest of the paper.

Perhaps we just have to wait until they have children themselves.

Joel Snape writes for the guardian. He's very much sticking up for JK and taking the piss out of Philip Pullman.
mobile.twitter.com/joelsnape?lang=en

Andy Bull, is Hadley Freeman's OH, which may help explain why the Graun's sports desk is a bit more clued up than the rest of the paper.

That’s interesting. Also, I’ve noticed (from my own experience only) that sports-lovers tend to be less interested in political wokeness. And perhaps importantly, if you take sports seriously, you don’t want them messed up by men on women’s teams.

Thinking I think most (sensible) sports-lovers want to watch a fair contest and trans wokery obviously flies in the face of that.

Having said The Guardian's sports desk may not be as bad as that paper's other sections I've just remembered they employ Jonathan Liew, author of this gem when he was at The Independent.

I think working motherhood is an intensely radicalising experience. I had absolutely encountered sexism at work, unequal pay, sexual harassment in the workplace, all that jazz - but when I had DD1 the absolute structural unfairness of it all just hit me in the face - that this wasn’t down to this old dinosaur or that letch, but a whole system which unabashedly set women up to fail...

Just want to agree with RoyalCorgi upthread that this Libby Brooks Guardian article was for most part pretty rubbish. The suggestion that the gender-critical are stuffy old-fashoned traditionalists frightened of transpeople because they've never met any was the bit that got to me most.
When in fact many if not most of us have long history of personal non-conformism and political support for progressive movements, feminist/gay rights, anti-racism etc. That's why we can see this one for the fake it is. And yes, in this respect being older helps.

Thanks for that link, Rubidium.

Wow. Jonathan Liew is a charmer, isn’t he? Muddling “trans, intersex and DSD” together in exactly the way that people with disorders in sexual development ask us not to. Sneering at female concerns that men are “coming for [women’s] medals and trophies and endorsement contracts.” Calling this concern “feverish hysteria“ and “transphobia: an irrational fear of the other, based on ingrained prejudice and occasionally pure ignorance”. And an overall tone of mockery, parodying women's words.
Just the sort of writer The Guardian needed to import from The Independent.

@Thinkingabout1t

Does The Guardian ever allow readers’ comments on trans issues? None on this one, though by present Guardian standards the article is almost impartial. I used to read it avidly but now I can hardly bear to look.

On some other issues, the readers’ comments were the only part worth reading. But I noticed that TRA support swamped any GC voices on those stories that did allow comments.

Never. They know the Guardian has a mostly liberal readership. Being confronted with gender critical opinions from within their own base would put them in an awkward position. Do they ignore the comments, and risk offending the paying subscribers who keep them afloat? Or do they censor them as "transphobic", appeasing the gender brigade but, again, invoking the ire of their regular readership?

Right now their approach is to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "la la la", hoping that if no-one can see the dissent among their readership, it doesn't exist. But it's a temporary measure. Their cowardice has already cost them my financial support, and I can't be the only one.

I think on some level it must be trickling through. In the last year or so there's been a steady increase in articles that might be called gender critical, if only in the loosest possible sense of the word. Still, it's a hopeful sign. It suggests either people are starting to argue about it in the newsroom, or the paper has become aware they're losing female readers (and our money). I wonder how many female subscribers Owen Jones has cost them alone?

Not read the whole thread.

The idea that girls and young women are lacking life experience and that's why, doesn't feel right to me.

The main arguments are around women's spaces. Most older girls and young women are well aware of how creepy men can be, the going generation isn't get much less shit than the older women did when they were young, if it's less at all.

I think it's more likely to be that younger women and girls are still tribal/ most are heterosexual and attracted to men/ probably other reasons, so less inclined to call out bad behaviour than men.

Older women dgaf any more. And that is why they are so dangerous to men and so hated.