JK Rowling's has written another post

[MilleniumHallsWalledGarden]

calling once more for a more nuanced debate around gender identity and women's rights. It's here https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/statement-from-j-k-rowling-regarding-the-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-ripple-of-hope-award/.

JKR

She could have but she didn't @Lisz. Just like many TRA's could quietly do things but don't. She's highlighted the lunacy. Good on her. JKR you are a shero.

@Lisz

Could have sent the award back quietly of course. Is it 'brave' to do it in the full glare of the world's media with a lengthy self-serving spiel attached. Trumpian bravery IMO.

Given the sort of abuse she's been getting, of course it's brave.

I heard this on Radio 4 news. She is brilliant.

Love what she's saying.
Also love the way she's chipping away at it steadily over time. Everything measured, careful, but not walking away, coming back again and again and shining that light.

She's turned round some of my friends' thinking already.

@PublicServiceArse

I realise this is pretty important (to some people) but I’m a bit at the need for an earlier poster to go full on archive this, save that. It seems unhinged. Honestly no one cares enough to go back to 2019 and delete stuff to try and trick you.

New to this debate are you?

“Sex is not binary” pmsl. So a) what are the other sexes called? b) how do I know where I fall on the sex-spectrum? c) how female am I? How male is my husband?!

If sex is not binary, why do we only have two options for reassignment, mtf and ftm?

jo

The BBC article was oddly balanced and directly quoted JKR.
I wonder if some journalists there have noticed the ratios on Twitter or have just reached peak stupid science.

On the contrary: A commitment to human rights demands a commitment to combat discrimination in all its forms.”

Funny that, because it seems they're prioritising trans rights over womens' rights. Their statement sounds like 'All Lives Matter' to me.

@Lisz

JKR is trying to shine a light on a mental health crisis among young people, especially young women and girls. That necessitates a public debate.

The NHS child gender clinic GIDS has seen a more than 5000% increase in young girls being referred in the space of less than a decade. Rather than looking into why this has suddenly happened, these young people are being affirmed and medicalised. Once on hormone therapy (which is the case for virtually 100% of children put on puberty blockers as young as 11) these children will be on medication for life. Hormone treatments and gender affirming surgery is irreversible, and affects fertility and sexual function. The NHS guidance on puberty blockers, which until recently described them as “reversible”, has been updated to make it clear that their long term effects are unknown. This stuff NEEDS to be known about, and talked about.

The evidence base for the current approach is incredibly poor. There are no long term studies on the safety or effectiveness of the affirmative approach. It has become a politicised issue, but there are real, very vulnerable young people at stake here. And so effective has the #NoDebate approach been thus far, that the average person knows little to nothing about any of this.

THAT is why voices like JKR, with the reach she has, are so important. Sending the award back quietly would have been the coward’s way out, not the clear and measured statement she made, knowing the abuse she’d get in response.

I appreciate what she is doing. It must be very hard, even with her wealth and fame and position making it somewhat easier. But still. Having your reputation smeared by so many, often by people who clearly had not read what she has written must be extremely wearying.

@Lisz

Could have sent the award back quietly of course. Is it 'brave' to do it in the full glare of the world's media with a lengthy self-serving spiel attached. Trumpian bravery IMO.

Her statement says "In solidarity with those who have contacted me but who are struggling to make their voices heard, and because of the very serious conflict of views between myself and RFKHR, I feel I have no option but to return the Ripple of Hope Award bestowed upon me last year."

She didn't return it quietly, because she did it, in part, to publicly acknowledge the thousands of people that contacted her, who are being bullied into silence through fear. The opposite of self-serving. She's making a stand for the people who should be free to, but can't.

That was a sublime post by JKR. When I read the opening I actually thought she had just received the award for Hope doe to her stance on women's rights .

So much irony here - first, a Kennedy trampling on women's rights (keeping up the family tradition)

Then a person who runs this award conflating sex and gender.

And the person running a Human Rights award charity stating that trans rights do not erode women's rights.

Its as if this person lives in an upper middle class bubble where she will never be in:
A Women's Refuge
A rape crisis centre
A public hospital ward
A public toilet
A women's prison

The return of this award (due to all of the above issues) is hardly in the same league as the return of a Nobel Prize (although, there are some issues with those as well) but I applaud the post and stance.

@moptophairshop

A message on Mermaids Twitter page:

*We are reflecting on JK Rowling's latest comments.

For now, we'll say this: trans rights do not come at the expense of women's rights. We believe that all women and trans people have the right to be safe,
respected and equal. *

So absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever about the parts of JKR's letter which relate directly to organisations such as themselves. What about the growing concerns of the vast array of professionals who are seriously worried about the potential damage that the affirmative approach is doing? Nope, they've gone for the cop out 'no conflict of rights' line. Without any explanation of how they've reached that conclusion. Am genuinely interested in how they will respond in full.

Whatever is happening behind the scenes, it seems a grown-up has finally taken charge of their Twitter account.

Most people who send awards back or refuse to accept do not do it quietly. It is by its very nature a loud statement.

JKR

Finally got away from kids to read JKRs statement. Agree with the poster who said there's not a wasted word - fantastic writing.

I will email JKR this evening in support.

Also love the timing - right before the new Strike series starts on the BBC over the bank holiday. Will viewing figures be affected? Will they bollocks.

And it's Back to Hogwarts on Tuesday.

How can Mermaids say that trans rights do not come at the expense of women's rights? Stonewall have explicitly said that they are campaigning to remove the single sex exemptions from the Equality Act! It's there in fucking black and white!

Mermaids must be shitting themselves at the moment. Of all the people to be onto them and their ways, it had to be one of the most powerful and influential women in possibly the whole world, with 14 million Twitter followers - oh dear!

@moptophairshop

A message on Mermaids Twitter page:

*We are reflecting on JK Rowling's latest comments.

For now, we'll say this: trans rights do not come at the expense of women's rights. We believe that all women and trans people have the right to be safe,
respected and equal. *

So absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever about the parts of JKR's letter which relate directly to organisations such as themselves. What about the growing concerns of the vast array of professionals who are seriously worried about the potential damage that the affirmative approach is doing? Nope, they've gone for the cop out 'no conflict of rights' line. Without any explanation of how they've reached that conclusion. Am genuinely interested in how they will respond in full.

It's not even a conflict of trans rights v women's rights. Men who identify as a woman don't have a right to access female-only spaces.

JK Rowling how I love thee

Every time she speaks up on this, I admire her more and more.

Why should she do it quietly? This organisation publically trashed her- they could equally have chided her behind the scenes, but didn’t. Shots fired. She didn't just tell them to take their award and get fucked, but actually bothered to take the time to articulate her position with grace and subtly. It’s more than they deserved. She has not put a foot wrong as far as I’m concerned, and the fact that it’s her reasonableness, kindness and grace under fire that is utterly deranging her critics speaks equally to her character and to theirs.

@HumousWhereTheHeartIs

This has led to a colleague explaining to me at length that the words women and woman are offensive to trans people, and shouldn't be used. The same colleague has a trans friend who is campaigning for their child's birth certificate to be changed so they could become 'mother' and not 'father'. I pointed out that his friend is their child's biological father regardless. He now thinks I'm anti-trans which is why I am subjected to these lectures.

I wonder if he could explain that there is no conflict between trans' and women's rights, as asserted by Kerry Kennedy and others, since the very phrase 'women's rights' must be transphobic as it contains the offensive word.

trans rights do not come at the expense of women's rights. We believe that all women and trans people have the right to be safe,
respected and equal

(Except we also believe that female type women shouldn't have the right to be safe and respected in their right to have female only spaces to get undressed in, sleep in, shower in, escape violence in, be imprisoned in;

...shouldn't be respected in being allowed to name themselves according to their chosen identity, such as biologically female or adult human female;

….shouldn't be respected by having access to any services if their disability, faith, fear, history of trauma means they can't access mixed sex spaces;

….definitely shouldn't be respected in refusing to call themselves 'cis' on command, because they don't associate with that imposed identity or find the associated stuff highly offensive and putting them back in a gender stereotype box most of them have spent their life trying to escape....

….definitely shouldn't be respected in their sexual orientation choice and personal boundaries if they're female and excluding/gatekeeping their vaginas from those born male (they can exclude females all they like, we'll respect that just fine)….

….definitely shouldn't have equal say or a voice or really be allowed to get involved at all in matters regarding their spaces, their boundaries, their services, or mentioning their bodies and biology;

…..so we're talking a lot of bullshit really.)

right before the new Strike series starts on the BBC over the bank holiday.

Thanks for the heads up!! I am nearly finished 'Silkworm' on audio. I shall look forward to this immensely.

Just a question on the side here: what on earth does CIS mean? Also Wonder when it was introduced as the thing you had to say? I have not followed this debate for very long, wish I had!
Had the shock of my life when an autism-friendly group booted me out and called me a terf because I questioned this blind adherence to dogma and wanted to know what the trans fuss was all about if there is no such thing as sex. I worded it better, but there would be no need to be transexual if we were not made with sex chromosomes. That was a Bad Thing to ask, apparently

MichelleofzeResistance very well said. I have come across the argument that satisfying more trans activist demands will have no negative impact on women's rights far too many times to take this as some type of a change of attitude. Rather, it is a mantra similar to the other mantras we are expected to swallow and accept as truth without thinking about it at all.