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.

I'm 31 so I'm not sure which generation I belong to! But I am highly gender critical and pretty much the only one of my social group to be so.

From what I gather having had a couple of arguments with people I know, I think one problem is that they consider themselves as woke liberals, and a pro-trans ideology is just part of that orthodoxy for them - I'm not actually sure many of them are giving this issue the independent thought it deserves, as they think it just goes hand in hand with anti racism, anti homophobia, etc. The logical holes and science-denying nature of the TWAW argument (a good friend of mine recently, with a straight face, tried to tell me that there is less of a difference between a woman and a trans woman than between a woman who has had children and one who hasn't!) , the threat to safe spaces, and the fact that this issue is for me basically a continuation of men telling women what to think - all these issues were apparent to me from the start, and it infuriates me that my associates aren't willing to give the matter proper thought. I think it's vital to ensure people are not scared to discuss this and raise GC views, because the logic of TWAW is so ridiculous I don't think it will survive proper discussion. That's why I have been so pleased to see someone of JKR's standing come out with such strong support.

I do think there's something in the argument that young people and teens move in social circles that have more people in them with a range of gender identities.

With the caveat that we are mostly talking about affluent teens and young people who attend particular schools and go on to universities. There's no trans/NB kids to my knowledge in my DS's (just out of special measures) school that has a high rate of FSM.

The young women will most likely get a rude awakening as they grow older especially if they commit to long term relationships with penis havers who have alternative identities.

They'll discover they share the same issues around child bearing, child rearing, wifework etc...as their peers who are in relationships with men who know they're men.

One of the big differences they'll have is that they will have a much harder time being able to articulate the sexism and structural misogyny and be less able to seek out support.

At which point a lot might just t*rf the hell out!

I'm not actually sure many of them are giving this issue the independent thought it deserves, as they think it just goes hand in hand with anti racism, anti homophobia, etc.

I agree & had a debate with someone recently who I consider very intelligent. She said she didn't get self id, I explained. the retort was trans women are women, I asked what trans means to her, same answer. I then said if I self id as a man tmw will my chances of cervical cancer reduce? Got told i'm not trans so couldn't say I was 🤦🏼‍♀️

YRGAM

"a good friend of mine recently, with a straight face, tried to tell me that there is less of a difference between a woman and a trans woman than between a woman who has had children and one who hasn't"
😱

I'm a few years older than you (mid-30s) but in a very similar position with my social group - I do have a few gender critical friends, luckily, but some like you describe.

Does The Guardian ever allow readers’ comments on trans issues?

It does on Facebook, but they don't post everything on Facebook. Here's an article about the JKR blog post www.facebook.com/theguardian/posts/10159210038116323
and although I haven't read every comment there's quite a range of opinions.

A lot of people have been sold on the born in wrong body trope that was pushed hard early on.

You don't see it as much now because the narrative shifted to make allowances for people who identify as non binary or people like Philip/Pippa Bunce who swap their gender presentation as they see fit. Plus a zillion other genders that everyone is supposed to agree are 'valid'

For people who don't play close attention though the idea of 'people who are trapped inside of a body which isn't theirs' has really stuck. They probably liken it to having a go at people with disabilities.

It can be really difficult to get people to 'see' it. However once they do see it they will find it impossible to go back.

An awful lot of young people are simply afraid to speak out for fear of being ostracised or shouted down.

The trouble with not speaking out is that it stops others from speaking out. It's like when you were at school and nobody wanted to give their presentation first. But when a critical mass have done it you think 'ah, fuck it' and afterwards you realise it went much better than you imagined.

Maybe we need an international 'speaking out in public day. If we all do it in one go it will be like GC Whackamole - they won't be able intimidate us all. And then the next day it'll be "you don't think twaw! Witch!" And we'll be able to say "so what? Neither does she, or him, or him, or her. Watchagonna do abaaht it?"

Realised this weekend all the anti gendercritical stuff I see comes from late 30s, early 40s white, middle class people on Twitter?

I'm a millennial btw, very gc and not white.

Boilerplate stories about conflict between the generations has been selling newspapers every quarter since Johann Carolus (1575-1634) published the Relation.

Another older-end millennial here. As someone upthread commented, I've recently had children and I think it has focused my mind (although I did work I one of those more female-dominated industries named by @Xiaoxiong before that) So, I'm pretty new to this but have been reading loads the last few weeks and am finding some of the mental gymnastics required to even process the TRA arguments quite exhausting. It is weird because I'm otherwise quite progressive in my views, but I just can't get on board with any threat to women's rights. My Facebook had remained strangely silent on the subject until today when a colleague from my last job posted the rebuttal to JK from Mermaids, and I'm soooo tempted to argue the case with her but I'm not sure my knowledge is strong enough yet. So I'll keep reading.

There are three easily refuted lies in the first few paragraphs of the Mermaids rebuttal that are worth knowing.
Lie#1 The modern gay rights movement was, after all, sparked by a protest led by trans women of colour.
Say her name! Storme Delarverie.

Lie#2 It is not simple and it is most certainly not the truth to state that under the current Gender Recognition Act 2004 (which still requires a complicated, medicalised and lengthy process) “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” can be legally recognised in that gender.
All it take for a gender recognition certification is a note from the doctor that you ID as trans. A bill with your fake name on it, and the claim that you have "lived as a woman" for two years. Getting a friend or coworker to use your preferred pronouns is considered proof.

Lie#3 ‘The observations in this paper do not support the belief that most women are against transgender females using female bathrooms’
They use a survey that asks females if they are willing to share with females as proof that females are willing to share the loo with males.

That was as much dishonesty as I was willing to tolerate but if you read the rest I am sure it contains many more deceptions and lies than just those first few.

I’m nearly 23 (technically younger than a millennial) and I’m gender critical. Ive always been gc because I was desperate to be a boy up until the age of 13 ish (even stuffing my underwear with loo roll!), but I just grew out of it. It was a strange and unattainable obsession that made me quite miserable as a child- luckily my mum brushed it under the carpet and described me as a tomboy. She wasn’t looking for signs of any gender issues like some parents do today.

I’m greatly alarmed at how young children are encouraged to whole-heartedly live out this fantasy. I don’t feel like I can openly discuss this with people of my own age for fear of being labelled a discriminatory bigot.

The people who agree with the trans activists tend to make a lot of noise, whereas those who disagree tend to go silent or change the subject. It’s not a topic that is open for discussion amongst my peers. My uni had a 24 hr library and all the toilets were made unisex and I felt uncomfortable using them late at night but there was nothing I could do about it!

The way it works in reality is mixed sex toilets are for men only or women in groups watching out for one another.

I think there is something of a difference related to age, and I'm sure experience is one reason. I think the other is a change in how kids are educated. It's not just gender that is an issue at universities with the students now, it's questioning any of their orthodoxies. They are also a group that seems to lack resilience generally, and they are very lacking in knowledge about history, politics, and substantial literature. Most, even if they know many scientific facts, don't really know how to think about science itself as a way of knowing.

Really the perfect generation to try and indoctrinate.

Interesting that both @minniebinnie and @newrubylane note that working in female-dominated industries insulated them from recognising sexism in the workplace until later (generally until children). I was very similar. I also read once on here that for many women, having children means you run into the invisible walls of the patriarchy like a bird flying into a glass patio door.

There was a brilliant article on motherhood making feminism suddenly relevant to millennials floating around on FWR a few years ago from an Australian newspaper. I wish I had bookmarked it, does anyone remember the article I'm talking about?

@Xiaoxiong yes, I only realised how sexist the working world was when I had the joy of juggling work & home life, the expense of it, the expectations, the judgement, the guilt, etc. I was not prepared for that. I'm lucky I have a DH who is very hands on & have the choice whether I want to work. But I recognise not everyone has the same. I also work in a environment where awareness around & training around safeguarding, fgm, peer on peer abuse etc is mandatory.

I've noticed many of my younger family members who I clash with are not mothers. I don't mean to say you need to be a mother to understand or experience sexism but if your in a middle class bubble in a nice area of London in a job that pays well & promotes equal opportunities you are insulated somewhat.

My former workplace has generally been very supportive of women with children but in my case they were, frankly, crap. I think I thought I got it before, but once you're in the position you realise all the limits that are in place. For instance, I think if you workplace does allow you to work flexibly, p-t etc. that's great, but your chances of ever being able to leave that role are limited, because convincing a new employer to allow you those same adjustments when they don't know you or your work is very difficult. Your employer knows this and it gives them leverage over you. I. My case I was unable to return from maternity leave because they decided my role couldn't be done p-t (it could; they just didn't want it to be). There are basically no roles in the industry advertised as p-t so how do I ever find work again?

you are insulated somewhat

You definitely are, unless one of your close friends has experienced it. Watching the struggle faced by my friends in the last couple of years has put me off having children entirely. Watching their "feminist" partners decide that childcare isn't really their department after all, seeing how exhausted and downtrodden they are, how impossible it is to juggle a career and children, how little respect there is for childbirth and the long term impact it can have on women's bodies. They've all gone through the exact same thing so why would I be any different?

Yes and to extend it to becoming gender critical: when you're on the train on your way home, desperately hoping you aren't late yet again for the nanny handover because your male boss scheduled a meeting 30 mins before you had to leave, took credit for your ideas, announced a team building session of the London to Brighton cycle run when you have no childcare or time to train, and then raised an eyebrow when you left the meeting "on time" as it runs over, and you know you have just put another nail in the coffin of your career.

You get on the train and open up the evening standard and see Caitlin Jenner declared Woman of the Year on the front cover of a magazine in the International Year of the Woman and says that the hardest thing about "being a woman" is choosing what dress to put on that day. And you wonder - what the fuck does Caitlin Jenner know about being a woman?

You turn to the business pages to see that Pips Bunce is on the FT list of top 50 women in finance when you yourself work in finance and see how underrepresented and underpaid women are and know he has faced NONE of the same challenges as any of the women have in your industry having reached his level as a white male with a facilitating wife. Again, you wonder what the fuck Pips Bunce knows about being a woman in finance.

You decide you'd rather scroll through social media and you see women standing up for other women being threatened with baseball bats, burning in grease fires, rape with lady dicks, or actually losing their jobs for stating biological facts.

You're triple-peaked before you even get home.

Im 29 and GC.

I agree that motherhood and career forging in male dominated industry hugely opened my eyes to male privilege and woman erasure.

I don't think it's necessary to find work after kids a problem for having kids to be enlightening. Everything about it is so very tied to your biology, and it's so changing. For the first six months many women are tied to breastfeeding for example or will have to make a choice to pump or feed formula, both of which are clearly artificialities, and have downsides f their own.

You can have leave all that time or an employer that is great about pumping and workmates that are great, or you can be self-employed, your partner can be great, but it's still difficult to avoid the insight that the female nature of your body is impacting your experience and choices profoundly. Even your emotions are being clearly affected by your hormones.

It kind of brings you face to face with the fact that being modern and having all kinds of technological solutions doesn't mean our bodies are something we can escape from. Many women at that point have to go through a whole adjustment to become reconciled to their own bodies - I suspect many people in our society have something of a mind-body divide in their thinking and it really comes up hard against a wall at that point, where you see, my body IS me, and it is different than a man's body.

"Many women at that point have to go through a whole adjustment to become reconciled to their own bodies - I suspect many people in our society have something of a mind-body divide in their thinking and it really comes up hard against a wall at that point, where you see, my body IS me, and it is different than a man's body."

ABSOLUTELY. Pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding were a rude awakening for me!

Yes, labour was a huge awakening. I didn't have time for pain relief (because apparently no one thought I would go into active labour so quickly 🙄) & it was quite a shock that it felt so primal & medieval in some way & that my body was somehow acting independently (can't think of the right words).

@Xiaoxiong having children means you run into the invisible walls of the patriarchy like a bird flying into a glass patio door.

That’s a great analogy and it definitely mirrors my experience I always considered myself a feminist but it definitely wasn’t until I had children that I realised why I needed to be a feminist.

I was looking at Maya Forstater’s tweets relating to the stories that she has been collecting from those who have concerns about gender identity being written into law and there definitely seems to be a skew towards those over 35. However, I do agree with another poster further up that for some maybe it’s a case of being liberal meaning that they automatically support trans people as minorities need to be supported without thinking about the wider issues.

My natural instinct was the same I want to support trans women and men, but I just can’t pretend that giving men access to spaces where women are vulnerable is ok or that a biological man can compete in women’s sport because he says he’s a women.