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

I’ve watched the first 20 minutes (well, listened while doing other stuff) and it’s giving me secondhand embarrassment.

Heterosexual male who identifies as a lesbian appropriating the history of gay rights in the US and using it to leverage talking about [pronoun] own sexual interests?

Wynn has slipped well behind the zeitgeist!

It’s like watching your dad singing Sam Smith at a 3/4 empty karaoke bar.

Super cringe.

Can’t figure out if Wynn is pretending not to know that Maya Forstater’s ‘Gender Critical Beliefs’ are now actually defined in law, or if Wynn genuinely doesn’t know?

As Wynn appears to be claiming that Maya Forstater’s beliefs have not been clearly defined by Maya, or by anyone else, here they are, as written on the government’s website, for Wynn and for anyone else who seems to be a bit confused

“sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity”

So no, Maya is not hiding the ‘men cannot turn into women’ bit behind ‘sex is real’ as a Motte and Bailey debate tactic.

Humans cannot change sex. Men cannot become women - that’s not a ‘Bailey’, no one is hiding the ‘humans can’t change sex’ bit behind something less controversial.

It shouldn’t actually be controversial to say an adult human male cannot become an adult human female.

also, Natalie, mate, when terves use screen names like ‘Large Gamete Haver’ they are taking the piss out of transactivism’s torturous language, sorry that our pisstaking either wooshes over your head, or that you have to pretend not to understand it’s a piss take in order to construct your own gender-unspecified strawperson (they/them) argument.

And no ‘transgender’ and ‘cisgender’ are not useful terms when talking about talking about biological sex.

Allegedly terfs are aligned with religious people and yet the righteous social justice anti JKR people are doing exactly what the religious groups did to her!
Oh definitely. There's a strong correlation of trans activist behaviour with the religious right: the belief and enforcement of gender stereotyping, the painting of dissenting views as 'evil' who must not be listened to, the book burning, witch hunting etc.
I was at the Woman's Place meeting in Bristol last year. The subject was pregnancy and childbirth (don't recall the exact title) and it came on the same day that it was announced Roe v Wade was being struck down.
In the US, that meeting might have been protested by Pro Lifers. Here it was trans activists who decided we had to be shouted at and demonised for going to a reproductive rights meeting.
I don't really see much of a difference between them at this point tbh. The belief system may be structured differently, but it's still the same patriarchal structure with male people at the top and female at the bottom, focused on policing women's bodies and rights, and enforced with the same kind of evangelical zeal.

There was no way I could manage anymore of Counterpoint’s nasal pseudo intellectual droning after the podcast, and the Throne thing in the video did not help, so I have only read these tweets.

But…

Is Counterpoint really saying that the Brown and Black chevrons are for people of colour? (Is that the right term? I read poc so assumed it meant people of colour as otherwise the sentences would not make sense).

But…

Why would … any person who is not LGB need to be «on the flag»? I know T and A and Q have been slapped on there, but surely having more or less melanine in your skin has nothing to do with any of that?

What is CP on about?

I think it represents a particular interpretation of history in that most rights movements, for example women's suffrage, LGB rights, workers rights, are now declared to have been exclusive of non-white people, and were in fact colonialist endeavours, and so it's now necessary to actively include people of colour into the struggle for LGBTTIQQ2SA+ rights.

From one flag reboot to another, the coloured stripes are imbued with different meanings. For Quasar, the light blue, pink and white stripes represent trans and non-binary individuals and the brown and black ones represent marginalised People of Colour (POC) communities. The black stripe has a double meaning as it is also intended for "those living with AIDS and the stigma and prejudice surrounding them, and those who have been lost to the disease".

Here's an alternative interpretation of the redesigned flag:

https://twitter.com/LouiseWluddite/status/1400866710983426049

I managed about 44 minutes last night.

Might try and go back in for another shift later.

I reckon I can do it in three goes as long as I have my FWR buddies around for moral support.

Shame @McSweeney hasn’t supplied some highlights timestamps.

(Wynn seemed pretty riled up about Sam Harris talking to Megan PR. I wonder if Sam is still subscribed to Wynn’s Patreon? 😂)

Brilliant!

I see Shelter's tweet didn't get quite the response that they hoped for - what a ratio!

That whole flag is one unholy mess by now.
Such a shame.

That’s not a review? Unless ‘hey you used my tweet but I actually disagree with you and your opinions are shit’ is a review 💁‍♀️

Also, I do just have to point out that the whole ‘worthy of respect in a civilised society’ phrase that is now firmly attached to Maya Forstater’s rigid world view is an absolute misreading of the legal issues at stake in that case. Forstater’s beliefs were deemed not to be SO BAD that they were ‘unworthy of respect in a civilised society’ I.e., they could not be banned, they were not literally fascist. That is NOT the same thing as saying that they were acceptable or mainstream or ‘worthy of respect’ in the ordinary non-legal sense. They were deemed exactly as ‘worthy of respectI’ as Christian beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. Which is why Contrapoints’ parallel between JKR and Anita Bryant actually works.

Yes but how in the actual fucking fuck did we get to a place where we even have to debate whether the "belief" that sex is binary and immutable (which is actually a fact, not a belief) and that sometimes that matters is "worthy of respect in a democratic society"?

The belief in magic pink and blue genders and things being assigned at birth is actually the belief that, as batshit as it is, shouldn't actually be banned. It belongs in the same category as the earth being flat or the moon landings being fake.

Maya's beliefs are just common sense, and shared by the vast majority of all people who have ever lived.

Absolutely, Rosa.

Getting a bit philosophical here, but isn’t everything a belief? Facts are founded on evidence presented to us but new evidence can be presented that alters these ‘facts’. We therefore perceive sex to be immutable or not. Nothing is a fact. The earth was flat, etc, etc

The earth was never flat. Men have never become women and EHRC actually made a submission to Maya's case explaining that her perfectly ordinary statements were entirely aligned with the law in the equality act.

Is it that time of night?

R U OK HUN?
^^
“Gender-critical beliefs include the belief
that sex is biological and immutable,
people cannot change their sex and sex is
distinct from gender-identity.”

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/employment-tribunal-rulings-on-gender-critical-beliefs-in-the-workplace/#:~:text=Gender%2Dcritical%20beliefs%20include%20the,is%20distinct%20from%20gender%2Didentity.

This is completely ordinary, everyday stuff - the only people who don’t agree with it are The Faithful Followers of the Church of Pink and Blue Gendered Souls.

So Nope, Wynn’s comparison doesn’t work because it’s Wynn and the transactivists who are most like Bryant, not JKR.

Transactivists are gnashing their teeth and wailing about the poor beatified, martyr children of the transgender community who are being endangered by sensible safeguarding policies (aimed at preventing them from amputating body parts before adulthood).

@McSweeney Christians' right to believe homosexuality is a sin should be respected, because it's about respecting their authority over their own mind. Anyone has the right to believe and think whatever they want, whether it's Maya Forstater, Contrapoints, a Spanish cardinal or Shaquil O'Neil. Acting on a belief and physically hurting someone because your beliefs justify it is a seperate thing. Obviously there's also the question of psychological harm, and how best to mitigate the psychological pain of all parties when there are conflicting beliefs.
There must be unfathomable pain in genuinely feeling the sex of your body misrepresents you and being compelled to function in a way that's not congruent. But whatever the solution for that is, it's got nothing to do with people who don't have that problem revising their beliefs. If a person feels their happiness depends on what someone else thinks then they're screwed because they have absolutely no power over that whatsoever.
In terms of people who are trans, there must be a way of helping them live in the world as comfortably and happily as anyone should have the right to expect, according to their own specific experience, without anyone being forced to compromise on how they talk about, experience and express who they are.

Holly Lawford Smith’s article on the podcast and CP’s participation is pretty good. Interesting that CP has spoken about CP’s disappointment at the limitations of transition. Might explain how bitter they come across.

https://quillette.com/2023/04/26/the-witch-trials-of-jk-rowling-continue/

CP podcast clip.

https://m.youtube.com/clip/UgkxMsC-dCOariHOeau45LvtVkLr5Qexj4nN?ref=quillette.com

The opposite of strawmanning is “steelmanning”: creating a version of your opponent’s argument that is as strong as possible, and arguing against that version. In my academic field, philosophy, where we care very much about good arguments, strawmanning is considered a central vice, and steelmanning is considered a central virtue.

From that article, and something I hadn’t heard of before - great advice.

I think this is really important thing to do. It’s so frustrating to argue with someone who constantly argues against a fake point if view. I’d hate to think that I do that too.

I usually steel-man to the extent I'm practically arguing with myself.

Struggle to do it with gender though, the more you try to put it in non obscuring language, the more absurd it sounds. I do my best attempt at a steel-man and get accused of taking the piss.

I mean come on, help me out here.

Okay, they believe that everyone has an internal sense of 'gender', which is a kind of feeling that tells you how you relate to - either sex, or roles and fashions stereotypically associated with sex.

But I've already failed the test there because we're not allowed to mention that it's associated to either sex or stereotypes. But to steel-man more like it's presented by believers, I have to say it's a feeling of how you relate to gender, and I can't see circular logic as steel-anything.

https://twitter.com/RevRichardColes/status/1658075713856061440

Some of the responses to his tweet are going to come as a shock to him...

And they’re straight in there with giving him a link to Contrapoints….🙄

Surely, there’s got to be a more intellectually coherent contrasting opinion to Witch Trials than one of Contrapoints dressing-up box videos 😩

Indeed, although someone did quickly point out to Rev Coles that ContraPoints is also featured in the Witch Trials podcast and that is enough of the windbag to be going on with (I paraphrase slightly, but not very much).