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 would like to point out that two of my gender critical friends are childfree by choice. So it's most certainly not a hard and fast rule!

@Anotheremma I don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule at all but it’s definitely a gateway that many women go through. But of course everyone has their own path and different routes can lead to the same destination.

I think motherhood does play a part for some women and it definitely did for me.

Me and my closest friend are both in our 30s and while I'm GC they very much believe TWAW.

We have had tentative talks around this issue in the past in which they said they felt like a woman inside so understood what transwomen mean when they say it.

Unfortunately I feel that I can't raise issues around gender now as my friend has recently come out as non binary and I don't feel I can argue my view without causing a massive rift in our friendship.

We have both had similar lives (live in the same town, worked the same job etc) the only big difference is that I am a parent and they are not. I do feel that will change their view especially if they have a daughter as I have. It is sort of strange in that although I'm only a few years older than my friend, I do feel as if I'm part of different generation to them.

Now that I think about it, of my 4 closest friends from school, two of us have kids and 2 don't. The two of us with kids are both GC, the other two are firmly TWAW.

I have being thinking about this because of more debate in RL & reading twitter.

I'm really conscious of safeguarding because of my dc, I'm not sure how aware I was before. What confuses me is don't we all know predators deliberately masquerade
as something they are not & infiltrate organisations in order to get close to children & women. Is the whole Jimmy Saville thing that long ago?

And in terms of the sexism & misogyny I guess #metoo & #timesup are over?

@minniebinnie yes most people do know that and have since the dawn of time, stories like red riding hood exist for a reason.

The statement from Emma Watson included some reference to people being who they say they are and it just rang out massive alarm bells.

Sadly metoo didn't get anywhere past a lot of social media posts really, did it?

The men at my work went from. Oh no that's terrible why didn't we know all this (?we've been going on about it for years), to hmm this is too much I think a lot of exaggerated or made up it can't be that bad or we'd know about it (?), to 'I can't even look at a woman any more! Men are the real victims here' in approx a week.

I doubt they were alone in that.

One came up to me at the coffee machine at the start and said 'My wife says that women in showbiz know the score and they sleep with men like Harvey Weinstein and now they're crying rape' and I was wtf why are you even starting a conversation about this at work at the coffee machine.

Research suggests Gen Z are more accepting of transgenderism than Millennials, more likely to identify under the LGBT+ umbrella, and more likely to be supportive of trans rights. www.thedailybeast.com/over-a-third-of-generation-z-knows-a-non-binary-person

Support for the LGBT+ community is significantly higher in millennials and gen z than in any other generation.

With an economic crash on the horizon a lot of this attention seeking should drop off people's radar as they battle with real life instead.

Rubidium Or will the next generation of females realise that they would have had rights, that the preceding generation are completely responsible for taking a role in the erasing of these that it took over a century to build. Well done.

With an economic crash on the horizon a lot of this attention seeking should drop off people's radar as they battle with real life instead.

Even if they lose everything some will be still posing for selfies & trying to start trends #homelesschic 🙄

Yes as the only GC (as far as I'm aware, but most have shared TWAW posts on social media) in my group of 28-32 year old friends I note that the key differences between us is I work in a male dominated industry, and I have recently had a child.

The first made me realise the structural issues still existing in the workplace, when I had to make a complaint about equal pay with other women, even before any of us had children. Because we had been too busy #beingkind and #beingnice to demand a payrise like the 25 year old men in our team.
Seeing every woman ( and I mean EVERY) leave the company shortly after having kids, because no matter how high performing they were no allowances could be made for flexible working and leaving at 5 for nursery pick up was considered being part time.

However my feminism was still grounded in the idea that "men and women are equal" and that "a woman can do anything a man could do" and less focused on the fundamental differences of our physical and lived reality. Pregnancy and post natal recovery was a rude awakening. I have never felt so vulnerable and aware of the differences of how parenthood affected me versus my husband.

I think a lot of my generation was told a woman was as smart/strong/independent/violent as any man and that any inequality in life was due to sexist gender assumptions we should challenge and not physical differences. So one rejects a label of woman based on biology as they don't believe it's their biology (and society's failure to value it) that has held them back.

Pregnancy and post natal recovery was a rude awakening. I have never felt so vulnerable and aware of the differences of how parenthood affected me versus my husband.

I know this is off topic but I've seen all of my friends go through the same thing and it's completely put me off having children. Just the idea of being at home, knackered, with a baby attached to my boob while my partner is putting on a suit every day and furthering his career. It would drive me insane and would ruin our relationship. Am I missing something here? Why did you guys do it?

I don't feel like I can have this conversation with any of my friends because I only ever hear the stock response: "my baby is the best thing that's ever happened to me". Even though all signs are to the contrary...

@twoHopes

Pregnancy and post natal recovery was a rude awakening. I have never felt so vulnerable and aware of the differences of how parenthood affected me versus my husband.

I know this is off topic but I've seen all of my friends go through the same thing and it's completely put me off having children. Just the idea of being at home, knackered, with a baby attached to my boob while my partner is putting on a suit every day and furthering his career. It would drive me insane and would ruin our relationship. Am I missing something here? Why did you guys do it?

I don't feel like I can have this conversation with any of my friends because I only ever hear the stock response: "my baby is the best thing that's ever happened to me". Even though all signs are to the contrary...

It's a really difficult question to answer because we live in a world where 'my baby is the best thing that's happened to me' and 'having a baby will ruin your life/career' are both things that can be true at the same time.

Tangent:
I actually had a very easy pregnancy, no health issues and quite enjoyed it. But it made me conscious that my femaleness was really being highlighted and I got questions from acquaintances and strangers that occasionally made me uncomfortable.
None of my friends had had kids so I suppose I had no warning for what I would go through, and the easy pregnancy lulled me into a false sense of security. When I was being discharged from the hospital the nurse told me no cardio for 6 months and it was a complete shock, I had been exercising at full term with no issue.

What also affected me was the dismissal from healthcare. I had minor but really quality of life impacting issues (severe joint pain, continence) and no one cared, apart from the private physio I sought out (he was male but I had no choice: there were no female specialists in a 3 mile area and I couldn't leave my ebf baby for more than an hour at the time). I told my husband I honestly wasn't sure I could do it again. In terms of career he would have happily taken a majority of SPL so I could go back but I actually needed the time to heal.

I was lucky and I did heal, and I feel an awe at my body for doing it, and I am stronger for it. As clichéd as it was I had to give it time. My daughter brings me so much joy especially in these weird times. I'm even contemplating doing it again (not quite there yet...).

I'm not sure there is a comparator, maybe a marathon or mountain climb? It feels gruelling at the time but you can get through it stronger and with the achievement.

Also I was a bit bored in my work, and the pause gave me time to reassess what I actually want from my career when I wasn't bogged down with it. But no question I was glad to go back.
/Tangent

Why did you guys do it?

A number of reasons. I always knew I wanted kids, DH wanted them more and earlier than I did but we were financially secure and I had a great work mentor who told me either to get kids out of the way and then build my career, or build my career and then have kids. I thought the former was better than the latter so we had kids very, very early for our social group. Our kids are now nearly 7 and 9 when most of our friends are still getting married and having babies. They're definitely not THE best thing that ever happened to me, especially when they were born, but so far they get better every year.

The other advantage of having babies when we were both so junior is that we were both pretty equal in terms of earning power and importance ie. both of us were very low down the totem pole and the structural sexist differences hadn't really kicked in yet for our careers. DH took three months off when I went back to work when DS1 was 6 months old, I remember he did all the first solids and stuff when I was a 90 min commute away. He also potty trained DS1 when I was on the road a lot with work. I had a hard time when they were little, I was sick a LOT during and after pregnancies which massively took their toll on my body, had to quit my job and start my own business but that worked out well and I got a great new job last year, the kids are at school full-time, and my career is back on track. Yes our lives are facilitated (or were before lockdown) first by a nanny when they were little, now by an au pair and a housekeeper. But I'd rather keep earning and pay for these things, because I know it will pay off in the long run that I didn't stop working.

They're only little for a short time so we paid out more than I earned for a while in childcare etc when we needed to. It helped that DH and I both felt that the cost of childcare was a family responsibility. We pool all our money equally too so he feels that he needs to further my career as I do his. I know we are in a lucky and privileged position but I saw what happened to women who took an unwilling career break, or whose husbands had a my money/your money attitude, or who calculated the cost of childcare by saying "oh your salary doesn't cover it, you have to quit".

Just rereading my very long post and I realise I referred my issues as minor when they restricted me going out or lifting my baby for months. Just they are not as bad as what some women go through. Also HCP acted like they were minor and offered no referral or support. Just "that's part of having a baby" followed by "would you like some contraception" . And from there my angry inner feminist began to surface.

@twoHopes

Pregnancy and post natal recovery was a rude awakening. I have never felt so vulnerable and aware of the differences of how parenthood affected me versus my husband.

I know this is off topic but I've seen all of my friends go through the same thing and it's completely put me off having children. Just the idea of being at home, knackered, with a baby attached to my boob while my partner is putting on a suit every day and furthering his career. It would drive me insane and would ruin our relationship. Am I missing something here? Why did you guys do it?

I don't feel like I can have this conversation with any of my friends because I only ever hear the stock response: "my baby is the best thing that's ever happened to me". Even though all signs are to the contrary...

I suppose my first thought would be, what makes a career something that defines our value? A heck of a lot of work sectors are about things that even on the face of it have very little human value. And then, many people have jobs rather than careers.

I could compare myself to my sister who has a career she likes and sees as value in healthcare, and I can't really see it as being more valuable than what I do.

I'd also say that the baby period is short and has rewarding and relaxing moments as well, and most jobs have shitty bits.

But overall, I think one of the most transforming elements of motherhood was actually the disruption in my sense of self, my sense of value, how I saw society, and my relationship to my body. It was hard and for a while disturbing to identify so closely with my body. It required time and effort to reintegrate my sense off self. But it was also something that in the end created a deep-rooted sense of stability and independence and resilience.

@twoHopes
I always wanted children, I never really considered not wanting them, which seems crazy now! But I suppose I always liked babies and kids (as an older child) and after becoming an adult I felt that having children would enrich my life.
Actually having a child was a huge shock to the system in terms of the demands of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation and the relentless of the early years. However, those early years don't last forever. And so far I've found that the older DS gets, the more rewarding it is. (Well, not at this precise moment during lockdown which has been bloody hard work, but no one signed up for this!)
It's only since becoming a parent and realising all the demands and challenges that I fully understand why people choose not to have children. I always respected the choice but now I get it and I'm impressed that people have the wisdom and foresight to realise before it's too late No regrets here though, I'm having another Looking forward to being done though!

Thanks everyone for the honest responses, this is really interesting. I guess one factor is that I do really love my job and it's a big part of who I am. I don't make loads of money but what I do is of human value (which is why I chose it). I completely agree that raising a child is also of huge value though.

I guess I'm just incredibly wary as I've watched all of my friends have kids with their "feminist" partners and they end up working full time and doing the vast majority of the unpaid labour. Just like my mum did 30 years ago. It feels like nothing has changed. I'd love to think me and my partner would find a lovely, happy, equitable balance but I don't know a single woman who has managed to pull that off.

Another thing I think is that having kids makes you a lot more.. I want to say selfish, but what I mean is selfish in that your own kids comes before anything else (including yourself). So you don't just care about being kind for the sake of it. You be kind for your kids.

Saying all this, I really do think there is some over-cynicism here.

I can't get over my head when it first became acceptable to be gay and all the men who would be scared that gay men might rape them in male toilets. Just because it can happen and in some cases hasn't, it doesn't mean you can stop a whole movement on a 'what if'.
I can understand a woman who has gone through that being terrified. I really feel for those of you who have btw. But then isn't that like being attacked by someone of a particular race and then being scared of that race? Although it makes sense why you'd feel that way, it is still prejudice.
If the majority of trans women really believe they are women and literally just want to go to the toilet and they are seen as a very vulnerable group btw, I dont see how an outsider (male or female) can really object.

If the main issue it those specifically who do not want any form of hormone treatment, then I think the argument should be narrowed to be specific about them.

Well FWIW DH and I both work part time, he does 4 days and I do 3, but still he looks after DS 1 day a week while I work, which is great.

I also have friends who both work full time, they share parenting duties equally (share school/childcare drop offs and pick ups, take it in turns to take time off when the kids are unwell, etc) and they both absolutely love their jobs.

It's all too rare, sadly, but it's possible!

Otherwise it does just seem like anti trans rhetoric and for the majority will be ignored.