The Sunday Times - StrawMaid's Tale

[Melroses]

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/culture/margaret-atwood-the-handmaids-tale-author-on-her-new-poems-qqpc9xmf5?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1604837071

twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1325411735226945541
"There’s a difference between belief and fact...You can believe all you like that trans people aren’t people, but it happens not to be a fact. It's not true that there are only two boxes."
@MargaretAtwood speaks to @ST_Culture

Has anyone a spare share token? I have run out of my week's free articles already.

Aparently trans people are people, but I don't think anyone ever said they weren't

Who says people aren't people? It is really avoiding the issue.

Here you go

Margaret Atwood, the Handmaid’s Tale author, on her new poems.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/margaret-atwood-the-handmaids-tale-author-on-her-new-poems-qqpc9xmf55_

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/81d33588-2026-11eb-ab6d-7a66f3e6b095?shareToken=7ffa671978dbd638fee42f4d80575849

I've seen this claim before: that if you don't think sex can magically change, you don't regard a trans person as human. And it's just so stupid.

It's irrelevant whether you're a man or a woman. You're still human. We all are. The bizarrely overwrought attempt at moral coercion, in pretending that anyone pointing out sex as an immutable reality is thereby denying anyone else's humanity... it's bonkers, and it's dishonest.

Of course trans people are human. They're just not the opposite sex to their own, and never can or will be, though of course they should be able to express their gender in whatever way feels right to them. What part of that is hard to understand?

On the subject of trans rights she is very precise indeed. After our conversation she emails me a video attacking JK Rowling’s view of the issue. Rowling defends the ultimate biological reality of sexual differences as a feminist cause: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.” Atwood also emails a Scientific American article stating the opposite case: “Why the new science of sex and gender matters for everyone.”

It doesn't say what the video and article that influenced her are. I can guess the Scientific American article but not the video attacking JKR.

She is also heavily conflating sex with gender in the next paragraph, even though JKR writes about sex specifically.

Oh FFS. There shouldn't be any 'gender boxes'. Trans people can be whoever they want to be, with regard to 'gender'. Present as Pip one day and Philip the next if that's you.

But humans are a sexually dimorphic species which can't change sex. These two things are not in any way mutually contradictory.

And sex matters. Feminism is necessary because of sex.

@Melroses

She is also heavily conflating sex with gender in the next paragraph, even though JKR writes about sex specifically.

Not 'precise' at all, it seems.

@Melroses

Aparently trans people are people, but I don't think anyone ever said they weren't

Who says people aren't people? It is really avoiding the issue.

This with bloody bells on. I'm so tired of this accusation that, by questioning harmful trans ideology we're denying people exist.

What the F does that even mean?!!

On a positive note the Ickabog is released in the next few days so I'll be receiving my pre order soon.

Something to look forward to!

Yet again someone explaining the error of opinions that no-one has. That's all they've got. Imaginary positions to shoot down.

I'd have hoped if anyone could see the significance of recognising sex being immutable and diamorphic it would be the author of The Handmaid's Tale, disappointing. Were Offred et al just really dim then, was the real message that they should have identified as men and been given a lovely time?

I'm looking forward to my copy of the Ickabog. It will console me for my bitter disappointment with Margaret Atwood. How she can utter this piffle is beyond me.

There’s a difference between belief and fact...You can believe all you like that trans people change sex, but it happens not to be a fact.

Atwood has made a calculation that having the social currency of being on the 'right' side is more important than the privacy, dignity and safety of women. the cognitive dissonance of doing that while believing oneself to be morally superior must be agonising

i think it's why all the visiting wokescolders here are so tetchy.

You can believe all you like that trans people aren’t people, but it happens not to be a fact. It is not true that there are only two [gender] boxes. So the two questions to ask about anything are: is it true? And is it fair ? So if it’s not true that there are only two gender boxes and that gender is fixed and immutable, is it fair to treat trans people as if they’re not who they say they are?”

She is completely confusing sex and gender.

I've never liked Atwood. It's never been a concern of mine to read a novelist just because she is a feminist but if it were Atwood has never struck me as particularly liking or understanding of women in the way say Edna O'Brien is.

while believing oneself to be morally superior

Atwood has an almost palpable belief in her moral superiority- it blazes out of every interview.

I've never heard a single person say trans people aren't people What a fucking ridiculous statement.

Misinterpreting, probably deliberately, what's happening to fit their argument as per.

Maybe they should have got Jenny Murray to do the interview rather than Appleyard
Also in today's Times:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6c470e5a-1f55-11eb-985d-994f7bd0fdd6?shareToken=e034e62fb9dc38e5bfcd7626be83c4a9

The video ‘takedown’ of JKR’s views would have been the Jammidodger one as I remember her referencing it before - she said something like ‘two nice young people explaining it’ or words to that effect. It absolutely illustrates the level of thought and critical analysis she’s given the subject ie. very little. I think she got a bit of shit for not including any trans people in the Handmaids Tale and has been atoning ever since.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Avcp-e4bOs

What an absolutely ridiculous argument, what is this - a reflex defence of who she perceives to be the underdog? She obvious hasn't spent much time actually looking for facts.

[quote HaveaStock]The video ‘takedown’ of JKR’s views would have been the Jammidodger one as I remember her referencing it before - she said something like ‘two nice young people explaining it’ or words to that effect. It absolutely illustrates the level of thought and critical analysis she’s given the subject ie. very little. I think she got a bit of shit for not including any trans people in the Handmaids Tale and has been atoning ever since.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Avcp-e4bOs[/quote]
Thank you.

That explains things quite a bit. Capitulation is never enough.

Sorry - I got to "It is a bloody long video" and looked - nearly an hour!

It is going to be worse than listening through the Mermaids training audio No wonder they capitulate. Brains knotted.

The lies about Maya Forstater misgendering a colleague are repeated in that video.

If you have to lie about everything you have got nothing.

I can't listen to them, they are a couple of evangelists. I'm not interested in being lectured by lying young people claiming that they are being honest and factual. Very misleading and manipulative. I've skipped through and everything I have listened to is bullshit.

Transgenderism in its recently evolved form is based on a massive lie, that it's possible to change sex. It seems that once people have swallowed that their anti-lie immune system goes down and they'll suck up anything, true, false, whatever, so long as it comes from the same source.