This thread is specifically for people who think JK Rowling is awful so..

[CurlewKate]

If you don't think she is please don’t post. Please can you tell me specifically what she has said or done that is so bad. I promise that I will listen and not argue. If you could include links that would be great. If your inclination is to assume that I’m posting in bad faith and any reasonably well informed person must be stupid or bigoted not to know, then please just let the thread die.

Oh, mate.

You are a TERF in denial and you do not actually believe trans women are women.

Oh, and re the sport.

At youth and amateur level there is no more that we can do than trust people to join the correct category. There isn't the money for more than that. Luckily I haven't been faced with the situation, but if they pushed the issue, there really is nothing we could do without MASSIVE investment in amateur sports - and that isn't going to happen. The rules are clear - you race under your gender at birth, or you race in the open category.

Oh name calling. Excellent.

I'm not using "TERF" as a slur.

Basically the only difference between us is that you think it's mean not to pretend to believe that trans women are women.

But you don't believe they are any more than we do.

Agree!

I wonder if some people think JKR ought to preface her opinions the way women are always supposed to: "I don't know if anyone else here will agree with me, and if you think I'm wrong, that's totally okay - please correct me if I misunderstood something, I'm always trying to learn! - but it does seem to me as if Nicola Sturgeon might have got a few things wrong. I'm sure she's a very nice person and I have nothing against her personally...."

We all know how that goes. If we don't sugar coat our criticism, we'll get attacked and downvoted, because we're women and women are supposed to be nice. JKR is having none of it, and why should she?

I've never claimed to be anything, or not be anything. I have simply related a story and then answered questions.

To add to it, I support the use of language in medical situations such as "women and those with a cervix" as I think it is important to ensure that trans men still receive adequate healthcare.

I'll never forget JKR effectively neutralising the Scottish government's draconian hate crime laws. The TRAs were gearing up to destroy ordinary women and she took the wind right out of their sails. What a shero.

For the longest time, this was how Tommy Robinson's supporters defended him. For all I know, they still do. "Go on then, show me something our Tommy has said that's racist. Come on - show me! I'm waiting. You can't, can you? Because he ISN'T RACIST."

I'm not saying JK is or isn't transphobic. Just that this line of defence - she's never committed it to paper - doesn't prove anything either way, and reminds me v much of the extremely lame defences of known racists.

Yes, OK.

But look at what you posted.

You admitted that there is no way to distinguish between a trans woman and a predatory male. (Correct. Why? Because both are male people whose inner thoughts and feelings we aren't privy to.)

You said that trans women have an unfair advantage over women in sport. (Correct. Because they are male people and their thoughts and feelings don't affect their sporting performance.)

And you said that trans women's experience isn't the same as women's experience. (Again, correct.)

You say "trans women are trans women". You can't even bring yourself to say "trans women are women", because you know it's stupid.

But "trans women are trans women" doesn't mean anything, any more than "spoons are spoons" means something.

Trans women are men, it just still feels taboo to say it.

You're just a year or so behind JK Rowling in your gender critical awakening.

The difference being that it is astonishingly easy to find something racist that Stephen Yaxley Lennon said.

Yes, people will argue the stuff he's said is not racist, but the stuff can actually be produced and debated as to whether it is racist or not. I don't think anyone's produced any evidence for us to debate about JK's transphobia at all. That's the difference.

It's hardly a lame defence to ask for the evidence of something of which a person is accused.

Do you think trans men don't know that their sex is female?

'Woman' should be a completely gender neutral word. You no more have to identify with being a woman than you have to identify with having an elbow or a blood type.

Why is it helpful to assert that 'woman' has to be attached to a specific identity, moreover one that is linked to women's oppression?

That isn’t what you did though is it? You made an accusation about JKR, which you couldn’t substantiate, and when asked for proof of it you became abusive, angry and defensive, and made some extraordinary comments to me in particular, does the word disgusting ring any bells? How else do you explain some of your posts being deleted by @MNHQ ?

I used to think everyone knew their sex, but when even a male doctor states he's a biological woman under oath, you have to wonder...

So are you saying that JKR is transphobic but has never actually committed anything transphobic to paper/twitter/SMS?

Right, but the most difficulty we have in responding to such a stupid comment is deciding which of the thousands of very racist things Yaxley-Lennon is on record as having said to quote first.

JK Rowling's detractors literally cannot find one transphobic thing she has said to quote.

Do you really think a £1m reward for finding a racist quote by Yaxley-Lennon would ever have been offered, much less sit unclaimed for years?

It’s the thought police.

Yes I think it probably is these days. He's stopped being so careful. But I can distinctly remember seeing the same 'SHOW ME HE'S RACIST' demands online and googling thinking, how hard can it be, and not finding anything.

He also indignantly claimed that he wasn't racist or anti-Muslim at his libel trial.

To be crystal clear, I'm not lumping JK Rowling in anything like the same pot as Tommy Robinson. But I don't think that the repetitive, triumphant demands for proof she's a transphobe are the 'gotcha' that people think they are. She might be a transphobe. She might not be. But she's definitely not stupid.

No. I have no idea if she's transphobic, so I'm not making any claims to that effect.

Just that lack of written evidence in no way proves that she isn't transphobic.

And no, I'm not thought policing her either. I really don't care if she's transphobic or not.

I genuinely do think it would have been unclaimed in the period I remember his supporters using that line.

As I said, for the longest time, it was a defence used by his fans. Because it was. It would hold no water now.

Surely she is on record as having said enough about trans issues for you to have an opinion on whether she is transphobic or not?

It's not as if she sits quietly thinking thoughts about trans issues, which may or may not be transphobic.

Her detractors are objecting to the comments she has made in writing, in a public space, over a period of almost 6 years. And yet they cannot quote a single one of those comments and give a coherent explanation as to why it is transphobic.

But equally, it means no one has any reason to say she is either, no? You can't just magically intuit that someone is racist or transphobic or hates dogs just because when they've literally never said anything that would suggest they are.

Yes but none of his supporters are in a position to offer £1 million reward money, so that would be a completely empty offer.

Whereas for JKR it's pocket change.

Sorry, when? His back ground is in football hooliganism and fraud. I'm not sure when he decided he could monetise racism, but he has never hidden it, and it's pretty easy to find evidence that he is a criminal thug.

Does it perhaps occur to you that his fans are not particularly bright?