JK addresses “language policing”

[Mayyouleave]

Haven't seen a thread on this, if there is one I'll ask for this to be removed.
JK posted about language policing today.

It has started a lot of intense discussion (as do most JK posts) however this time it is mainly from women and men who are gender critical, sex realists, trans windows etc who are upset and annoyed about her post.
I agree with her about language policing, I wonder what the thoughts are on this board?

x.com/jk]]

I'll copy the text in for those not on twitter/X

*I say the following again because, while I understand people's strong views on the matter, some of the language policing is getting a bit wearing.

As I've said multiple times, I do not believe that a person can be born in the wrong body and I don't believe in gendered brains or souls. I believe the ideology that preaches such ideas is dangerous.

However, there are people in this world who want to present as the opposite sex for many diverse reasons - some of which I'm truly sympathetic to, others far less so - all of whom call themselves 'trans.' I use the word 'trans' in the full awareness that this umbrella term covers multiple groups who have nothing else in common with each other, such as straight men who enjoy cross-dressing for erotic purposes and young lesbians who, tragically, feel they'll be happier without their breasts.

When I talk about sex-based rights, I use the word 'trans' to denote 'people who wish to be seen or treated as the opposite sex', no more or less. Telling me ad nauseam that 'there is no such thing as a trans person' isn't overly helpful, because you're trying to pull me into a different argument, on which I've already made my position clear.*

I really and truly don't believe that repealing the GRA means we don't respect GI as a belief. In fact, what the real issue is, is that no one who falls under this category wants that. They absolutely don't want that. They want to enforce what they want on us. They want to erase sex and boundaries. They won't use third spaces. We know this.

All the solutions we come up with, don't work because the GRA permits falsified documents. And we know from however long we've all been in this, that if you give an inch, they'll take a mile.

I think there's an argument we've become complacent in the UK. Just wait until we go further down the Canada path. Pretty sure then people will be calling for Repeal.

Mmm. When you agree that something “exists” it’s a pretty bold claim. “Trans” essentially means “across”, so “trans sex”, means “across sex”, but back in objective, observable reality, sex is unequivocally binary, since there is no third gamete. So it doesn’t make sense to say a person is “across sex”.

Biologically, truthfully, no person is “across sex”, therefore “trans” people don’t literally exist, but people who identify themselves as being trans do exist, obviously.

So to be factually correct, you can only say “people who call themselves trans” or “people who believe themselves to be trans” or “people who wish for others to perceive them as trans”.

Its important, philosophically, scientifically, to be very clear about what actually exists and what is merely an intellectual shorthand, otherwise you can get down many rabbit holes of wrongness upon wrongness - take phlogiston for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory

There has been a lot of harm caused by taking a linguistic shorthand for a collection of wishes and behaviours and treating it as though this intellectual construct is on a par with concrete reality. In other words, taking a wish or idea such as ‘trans sex’ in humans, and putting it on a par with the inescapable, concrete nature of sex has caused social damage.

Women’s rights are hard won rights, based in women’s inescapable bodily reality. ‘Trans rights’ are concepts and ideas which are hard pin down, because they are based in thoughts, perceptions and behaviours only.

yes. I think that this cannot be said enough.

People are rejecting the ideology that underpins gender identities. No one is saying that people don't exist who wish to be treated as the opposite sex. But the material reality is that there ARE people who wish to be treated as the opposite sex.

And JK Rowling is correct in that there are many different motivations for this state of mind.

However, there is no material reality in those people 'being' the opposite sex. So there lies some of the discordance in how to discuss this.

There has been a lot of harm caused by taking a linguistic shorthand for a collection of wishes and behaviours and treating it as though this intellectual construct is on a par with concrete reality. In other words, taking a wish or idea such as ‘trans sex’ in humans, and putting it on a par with the inescapable, concrete nature of sex has caused social damage.

Women’s rights are hard won rights, based in women’s inescapable bodily reality. ‘Trans rights’ are concepts and ideas which are hard pin down, because they are based in thoughts, perceptions and behaviours only.

Yes, perfectly put.

Patience.

If you highlight behaviour and install robust safeguarding by other means, what happens to the need/demand for a GRC? And also, what happens to public support for it?

Right now the public support for it is there. That means you are just looking like you want to remove rights. Enshrine the necessary rights by other means. Then tackle the abuses of power element. And if you want to ultimately go for removal of the GRA you do it when the public see how it's creation came out of homophobia and has lead to abuses of power - basically when the public understands issues and that the GRA isn't achieving what it set out to achieve and isn't improving society and making it better for vulnerable groups.

Make sure those who frankly aren't going to give up religious beliefs are protected but not at the expense of others. That's the position we need to get to.

Maybe if we had subsections. But if you had that, you'd have to acknowledge the characteristics of those subsections. Trans Fetishist, Trans Confused Teen, Trans Lesbian Subjected to Homophobia, etc.

Far too real! And given the mangling of language anyway, you still wouldn't know what sex they were.

I can understand JKR getting frustrated - when she wants to talk about trans, but she never gets beyond the first sentence, though. Because language policing.

A lot of women have encountered this.

KJK stopped calling herself feminist, because it stymied conversation. Nic Williams from Fair Play for Women decided to talk purely about 'different bodies', instead of male and female, in order to get her point across. I'm sure Kathleen Stock has said something else of a similar nature.

I do agree that if you can talk about it, you will get a lot further, though.

(Obvs!)

Women’s rights are hard won rights, based in women’s inescapable bodily reality. ‘Trans rights’ are concepts and ideas which are hard pin down, because they are based in thoughts, perceptions and behaviours only.

Which is why you focus on unacceptable behaviours rather than the concept of identity itself.

There is public consensus with regards to what is unacceptable behaviour.

There is mixed messages in terms of support for identity, depending on how you phrase things and people's understanding of identity

But people support for identity usually comes back to the idea of improving society and wanting to improve behaviours within society.

Which then goes back to the point about the need to identify unacceptable behaviours...

One of the things that is indisputable is that JK Rowling will have experience of a massive number of people and their opinions, due to her position.

So I'm definitely listening.

Absolutely.

But if you have the same word for unacceptable behaviours of a completely different nature, how is that helpful?

Absolutely. Like Datun I have a huge amount of respect for her opinions, even when I don't 100% agree with her.

Patience? We’ve been too patient if anything.

A belief in GI would not be affected by Repeal. You can believe what you like but no one else has to.

We have to work on Repeal for the next GE. Anything else is frittering time away. Time we have already lost is now at 20years. Women and children have suffered enough.

No more state-enabled falsification of records. No more special DBS routes. None of that. It needs to end.

But the middle aged male transitioner needs the teenage girl transitioner in order to be legitimised and to be given status on TV.

Cass was a particular kick in the face when it said those teens were

"A heterogeneous group with multiple complex needs"

It blew a hole into the concept of trans being a singular spontaneously occuring thing 'just like being gay'.

Exactly. So why have the same word for both cohorts?

A bit off-topic (sorry) but just wanted to say what a great thread this is.
I work for an organisation that has adopted the “trans” ideology and find it difficult to put up with the consequences of that. On one hand we’re told “bring your whole self to work”, on the other hand, we are subjected to mandatory so-called DIE “training” that isn’t even factually correct & no doubt bolstered by this, some colleagues openly state that people who are GC “need educating”.

This thread shows me that there are so many other women (& men) who are capable of putting forward sensible, logical and factual arguments against this ideology.
THANK YOU - I am not alone!

PS Personally, I try not to use the term “trans” as it's such an umbrella term and means different things to different people. Saying “a man who dresses as a woman” is more accurate and says it like it is. As JKR says, there can be many reasons for a man to do this, and they don't all demand to be seen as the opposite sex.

Yes, there are people who are subjectively 'trans', meaning that is how they describe themselves, but nobody is objectively 'trans', because that would mean they were literally born in the wrong body or had literally changed sex.

I’m so confused by this 🤔

’Trans’ = man who wants to be a woman?
’Trans’ = man who thinks he is a woman’
’Trans’ = man who is now a woman?

Someone please explain how to make sense of this?

Sorry to be pedantic, but she wasn't saying that exactly. Non-trans people don't necessarily "like" to be seen as their sex, they just are. I'd say "females who accept that they're female" and "males who accept that they're male", although that could probably be improved!

For anything political to be stable it must be built on the back of slow consensus building.

If you don't you end up with too much militancy and militant support.

I was bombed by the IRA as a child. I understand you can't just go into the situation and try and kill off everyone who supports the IRA.

Ultimately the last few bombings by the IRA which targeted civilians and killed children, particularly on English soil killed off support and sympathy. It made it much more difficult for US support too.

You have to isolate the militancy from less militant sympathy. Do that and you restore sanity and you completely change the landscape of conversations. Other options become a possibility.

The NI of now, is vastly different to how in was in the 70s and 80s. It's not perfect, but you can go on holiday there without passing tanks and caught up in the civil war (cos that's what it was even though Westminster doesn't want to frame it like this)

Otherwise you just end up in decades of conflict without resolution.

There ARE no quick fixes to complex issues like this. Repelling the GRA tomorrow, wouldn't solve the problem for that reason. It would only lead to greater militancy.

A failure to understand that isn't helpful and spectacularly misses the issues over sympathy and politics.

Don't try and sell it as a quick fix. It's not.

JKR says

"When I talk about sex-based rights, I use the word 'trans' to denote 'people who wish to be seen or treated as the opposite sex', no more or less."

On second reading, it looks a lot less like any kind of belief, or strategy and just a handy, collective word for the people she's discussing, purely in terms of rights. And presumably based mostly on men wanting women's.

Maybe it's got nothing to do with tactical measures, and everything to do with just being able to get on and talk about it.

Poor woman. Must be so tricky with everyone picking apart every single syllable that you utter.

Because one is using the other for their own gain at the expense of the other.

And we either choose to ignore and enable this. Or we point out the problems and seek to separate the vulnerable, to whom most public sympathy and public support is attached, from the other group who carry a bunch of red flags which are quite unpopular with the general public.

Otherwise we go crashing in head first which isn't ultimately in the best interests of the vulnerable cohort as it allows them to be further used as a defensive shield to behaviours which are problem.

See my point above about conflict resolution and the issues of public sympathy from less militant quarters. It's important.

You don't win arguments like this by trying to take on 'the enemy' head first. You try and win the support of the mainstream and sane.

It's more time consuming but it's more stable and longer lasting in the end.

What you don't want either is a situation like support for birth control around the world being tied up with abortion rights in the US - and every time there's a swing from red to blue and vice versa it's either pulled or reinstated.

It HAS to be tangibly support by a broad spectrum of political quarters.

I agree with some of the comments above, I won't describe a person as trans objectively.

Trans activists saying "trans people exist" is them saying that some people really are the opposite sex in some meaningful way - their "gender" doesn't match their physical body.

When I say "trans people exist" I mean that "people who say they are trans exist" which is obviously true. But most people would understand me to be agreeing with the trans activists definition.

Therefore, I won't talk about trans people but I would use words such as "people who say they are trans" or "men who say they are women".

I think it's really important to not unintentionally reinforce ideas I disagree with.

I agree with this.

We’ve had twenty years of this already.

Each year that passes you can see more claimed and more lost by women

It comes down to the law and I agree with you.

Change the law, put some buffers in to give some support, but the legislation is the enabler, deal with that.

I agree tooting. I try to be very specific (even if it means it reads rather contorted) about who I refer to rather than use the generic 'transgender people' term, more and more often.

That way I too am not reinforcing the concept that I don't believe can be materially real.

Realistically I think that’s how most GC people use the word trans, as a catch all for people who want to be seen as the opposite sex (a shortening of trans-identified rather than transgender). We are mostly still capable of making distinctions between the people under that umbrella.