The Witch Trials of JK Rowling

[CrossPurposes]

An in-depth intervietw with JK Rowling by Megan Phelps-Roper coming next week: twitter.com/meganphelps/status/1625465141046247425?s=20

Huh, looks like McSweeney has single handedly turned the thread into a exercise in strawmen arguments. Maybe I should create a bingo card.

Did you just assume that strawperson’s gender?

😀

These two posts are so good. I wanted to repeat them. That self righteous anger is a drug, and its so important to check in with ourselves and reflect. I am so impressed with the thoughtfulness of this series.

Why indeed? Someone helpfully linked to the 'it will never happen thread' a little further up if you want to discuss why you think all these things are already happening.

Back to this thread though, what were your key takeaways from the podcast

Late to the party, I just started listening to this a few days ago and I'm on episode 5 already. Absolutely fascinating.

No he isn't.

Men can pee pretty much where the fuck they want. Down alleys, by a hedge, in a urinal, in a stairwell.

KJR saying that women need protecting from male violence won't stop men peeing where and when they want.

You really think a trans woman, not wanting to be instantly outed, not wanting to be arrested for indecency, is going to pee like a man (what, take down her leggings? Hitch up her skirt? Or should she always wear jeans and boxers because heaven forbid she dress like a woman?) I have sympathy for some of the difficult arguments about prisons and sport, but what I cannot understand is the blanket hard line ‘anyone who still retains a penis is fair game for being treated as a man’ while you also try to say you are not transphobic 💁‍♀️

Third spaces for single occupants, like the kind of loos in a Costa coffee? Or just wear trousers, most women do nowadays 🤷‍♀️

And if recognising a penis-haver is a male human then sure, me and at least 99.5% of the world population are transphobic, including the doctors who prescribe cross sex hormones.

There’s a word for men who, err, enjoy this stuff that I can’t say on here because not allowed. So yes, certain males would risk it for the buzz. Not all trans women, obviously, I’m sure many of whom would argue that these individuals are not really “trans” (but they may still identify as such)

I’ve already asked Sweeney to watch ‘What is a Woman, Wrong Answers Only’
on Odysee (a free to view, documentary film assembled from ‘found footage’, including selfies and video selfies made by middle aged TW as they avail themselves of single sex spaces supposedly reserved for female people) but I guess Sweeney doesn’t really want to 👏listen 👏to 👏trans👏women👏 because lots of the TW in the video are extremely happy to show the internet the exact enjoyment you describe.

Perhaps Sweeney doesn’t need to watch a documentary because Sweeney already knows all about it via lived experience? 🤷‍♀️

I have sympathy for some of the difficult arguments about prisons and sport

TERF.

It’s quite spectacular isn’t it? Every bad faith AWA argument all in one place.

What is JKR broadcasting that is making middle aged trans woman's lives increasingly difficult?

Also, TW and TiM are biological males and belong in male bathrooms.

HTH.

So much to unpick here.

Trans women have the same basic ordinary rights as everyone else. More so, in fact, given that in most western countries they CAN access female spaces, i.e. spaces for the opposite sex. No other group has this right.

Those arguing that trans women should not be in female only spaces are actually arguing that trans people should have the same rights as everyone else, and that the same rules that apply to everyone else should also apply to trans people.

Allowing trans women into female spaces IS opening the door to rapists. Not because all trans women are rapists, but because any male person is a potential rapist, and any rapist can say the magic words "I identify as a woman". It represents the removal of one of society's most basic safeguards; the social consensus that men should not enter women's single sex spaces. Rowling touches on this in the podcast.

Her arguments are nuanced, and are easily distinguishable from those of "pure bigots". Only someone who has not actually listened to what she has to say but got the "I read JK Rowling's essay so you don't have to" version from some shrieking blue-haired they/them could think otherwise.

I suggest that the people contributing the most to this horrible toxic atmosphere of fear are the ones trying to get women fired for saying biological sex is real and binary, and those turning up at women's rights events wearing balaclavas and armed with weapons, ready to commit acts of violence against women who dare to say "no".

1. The association is between male people and rapists, since only male people can commit rape. I get that trans women don't like being described as male people, but they are in fact male people. Their hurt feelings shouldn't trump everyone else's right to discuss reality, using accurate language.
2. Trying to force or shame people into using trans people's preferred pronouns is trying to force or shame them into only expressing themselves through the language of a belief system they don't believe in. Many of us were OK with doing this in order to "be kind", but now we've seen where that gets us. The reason we are being coerced into pretending that trans women are women is to make it harder for us to logically object to them in women's spaces. If the other side want to use our kindness as a linguistic weapon against us, we'll have to stop this particular form of kindness.

I'll ask this question again, @McSweeney since you accidentally neglected to answer it the other day.

JK is giving thousands of women the courage to say no?

No to the sorts of middle aged male transitioners women used to tolerate because they hadn’t realised saying no was an option?

Actually, maybe that was Maya Forstater.

Both iconic women, obvs.

Absolutely concur with this. However, it doesn't answer the question in the way I hoped - I want to know specifically what JKR is saying that is so detrimental to TW. I mean, given how many are saying she says horrible things about TW and wishes them dead, they must be at least one definitive quote that spells out her hatred.

This is what I would love McSweeny to share with me.

Sorry, a bit of a tangent but did KJK say this?
people like KJK, who associate with the far right and have said men with guns are welcome in womens bathrooms to keep the trans women out (ffs!),

Naw. She once made a comment on a live stream, something along the lines of gender ID males would stay out of women’s toilets if men with guns self identified their way in but she wasn’t seriously calling for armed guards at the Ladies Lavatories.

I think she retracted her comments because obvs, as Brits, we don’t know shit about what it’s like to actually live in a place where people carry guns.

Yes, I meant to add that; it’s an odd comment for a Brit to make.

It is!
But I guess she was either talking about a US news story or replying to US comments on her live stream? It’s probably archived online somewhere.

It was quite a few years ago, IIRC, ages before the LWS USA events and it definitely wasn’t a serious call to action, because obvs she doesn’t actually want ANY males in female spaces.

As always, it’s a bad faith twisting of events with a kernel of truth in the middle.

Same tactics that have been used against JK, Maya, Helen Staniland, Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock and every other woman who has opinions that TRAs don’t like.

Yes, I did.

I'm guessing, and this is just a hunch, that the never ending threats of rape and violence that women, including JKR, receive from TRAs, is what determines their attitude to single sex facilities. No 'building of an association' required.

TRAs built that association, positively revel in it, reinforce daily and gleefully fling it at women at every opportunity.

Take it up with them.

Yep.

Any woman who has the temerity to say as much as ‘I’m not sure about this… perhaps we could just say transwomen are transwomen, rather than transwomen are women?’ is immediately hit with a barrage of ‘educate yourself’ ‘bigot’ ‘die in a grease fire’ ‘choke on my girldick terf’ - and rather than cowing us into silent obedience, we go away, ‘educate ourselves’, meet other women subjected to the same abuse, strengthen our resolve and come back to the conversation with ‘Actually, scratch that, I’m not going to refer to ANY male as ANY kind of woman ever again, not even a woman-with-a-prefix’.

JK gives women confidence to state our position and hold our line, but it’s not JK who led us to taking up this position - the blame lies with contemporary transactivism and the people who enforce it (lots of whom aren’t themselves trans).

Historical transactivism (eg Press For Change, The Beaumont Society) took place behind closed doors and most women were completely unaware of it until new laws were already in place.

Social media brought transactivism out into the sunlight where everyone can get a proper squiz at it, and when they see it, they say ‘hell no’.

Blaming JK for the enormous societal pushback against the encroachment of trans wants on womens’ needs is as misplaced as it is flattering.

JK is a shero, for sure, but she’s just one of many sheroes, and she’s a relative newcomer compared to the lesbians and radical feminists who have been sounding the alarms for decades.