Well, hello Emma Watson

[crumpet]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15130209/Harry-Potter-Emma-Watson-treasures-J-K-Rowling-trans-rights.html

@Catiette, once again, you are so clear. Thank you!

Here’s what I don’t get. Do people who think that men can be women genuinely not understand that the only - like, seriously, The Only - reason that we have men and women is because humans are a sexually reproducing species? All the rest - the size and speed and hair and behaviour stuff? Those are just ways that evolution came up with to ensure that the gametes in one body type got together with the gametes in the other body type. Humans exist to make more humans. The fact that we get to do other stuff too is kind of by-the-by.

I don’t get why people can’t see this.

Human beings cannot change sex - it is encoded in every cell of our bodies. Men have different skeletons (different angles at the hip joints, different shaped pelvis, for example), musculature, endocrine system etc etc from women. No amount of hormones or surgeries can change these, and no surgeon can create an actual, functional vagina from an inverted penis or from bowel, or a functioning penis out of arm skin and muscle.

Ergo, trans women are not, and NEVER can be women.

Oh fuck I can’t believe I clicked a daily mail link just to read that she’s actually not changed her mind at all.

Thanks for your response, and apologies for retrospective editing.

Putting my arguments into words helps me test them out. Seeing that such as Tandora typically don't put theirs into words in reply further confirms my thoughts.

It's all about the words, and the freedom to use them responsibly - Orwell knew it!

Some people get into Oxbridge because they've been extensively hothoused.

I've seen a fair few gushing articles about how Emma Watson managed to get straight As in her eleventy-billion GCSEs and A-levels whilst working full time on the set of Harry Potter.

But that actually sounds to me like a pretty ideal environment for a girl with reasonable academic ability to ace her exams. There will have been legal limits on the number of hours of work she was allowed to do on any given day whilst still a minor. So she had plenty of "free" time in which to study, and if I understand correctly she was taught by private tutors on set, possibly on a one to one basis. I'm pretty smart (but also have ADHD and struggle to focus) and I managed to get almost straight As at my local comprehensive and sixth form college, with lots of distractions. I'm sure I'd have got better exam results with three hours a day of intensive one-to-one private tuition. I also think that anyone who has the necessary grades can get into Oxbridge if they're properly coached for the interview, and being a celebrity probably makes it even easier.

There must be a book series in the pipeline and this is part of a pre-emptive "why can't we just all get along?" PR strategy.

Exactly. I'd love them to explain.

The explanations based on exceptions proving rules don't negate the need for the language to describe the rule.

And the arguments based on ethics? They're fundamentally arbitrary.

One thing that gets me is that somewhere, out there in the spiderverse, there's a world in which it's seen as utterly utterly offensive to women to even use the term "transwomen". Where this concept is viewed as the very worst of the worst - like blacking up, like cultural appropriation, like asking a 2nd gen. immigrant where they come from or a teen calling something they don't like "gay".

Because this is a valid argument.

It really, truly, could have gone this way.

That it didn't speaks to our values. Nothing more - just values.

And, specifically (with wrenching irony) how we value the two sexes - their contrasting positions in our social hierarchy.

I'd say that child has a parent problem. Leave them alone to develop how they want and stop gender stereotyping would be a good start. My sister liked Action Man, war films and dressing like a boy. She had tantrums if her hair wasn't short enough. She is a woman in her 50s now and has no desire to be anything else, in fact she grew out of it around 14-15 years old.

She’s just trying to make herself look like the bigger/nicer/more reasonable person.

Oh God I forgot about him. And for once, he didn't start posting totally irrelevant Wikipedia links with no explanation. Fuck, I owe my friend £5. Unless we give him until midnight?

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/8AWtw7MiIZ8

I haven’t seen much of Emma Watson to know if this is a good impression or not

Some people think the earth is flat, that is their opinion, science tells us they are wrong.

Some men think that they can be women, that is their opinion, science tells us they are wrong.

Opinions are opinions, facts are facts, you don’t seem to understand the difference.

“It’s been a discovery and a journey that’s been humbling because on a movie set, I’m able to do all of these like extremely complex things, stunt, sing, dance, like do this thing, do that, whatever. And I’m like, ‘Yep, don’t worry about it, guys’. And then I get home and I’m like, ‘OK Emma, you seem unable to remember your keys. You seem unable to keep yourself at 30mph in a 30mph speed limit. Like you don’t seem able to do some pretty basic life things’."

I know narcissism is an overused phrase, but I wonder if it applies here. She's managed to shoehorn a list of the "extremely complex" things she can do into an apology for speeding.

She can't sing or dance. And I really doubt she did her own stunts. She acts with her eyebrows. What's she rabbiting about?

As an atheist, this debate has always been so confusing to me because I thought that fellow atheists understood that we are all animals. Mammals, which are male or female. I was very young but vaguely remember the online atheist discussions and spaces in the early 00s when it was a less mainstream view, especially in the US... the flying spaghetti monster etc... a lot of people who were very very on board with that are now TWAW. I don't understand it.

I'd have thought that with media training she'd be able to avoid the "likes". It feels unusual to see to that extent in someone her age, with her education. I do wonder if it's performative - generational? "one of you"-ing?!

Sure she had tutors but she also got to attend The Dragon School.

https://www.dragonschool.org/eminent_dragons/emma-watson/

Other alumni
https://www.dragonschool.org/old-dragons/eminent-dragons/

Very insightful

I disagree. I think unless someone knows her personally, that is a lot of assumptions/ speculation about Emma Watson’s character in that post!

I'd be far more inclined to offer a golden bridge to Watson and the rest of those who decided to make snide, nippy comments at JKR for, well, stating that women have a legal right to single sex spaces as stated in the EQA2010, even if I do think those celebrities showed an embarrassing urge to follow the crowd and not actually engage their brains...

...if, as part of that, Watson hadn't actively promoted and urged her followers to donate to the damaging organisation, Mermaids -

www.gov.uk/government/news/poor-governance-at-mermaids-amounted-to-mismanagement-inquiry-reveals

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-inquiry-mermaids/charity-inquiry-mermaids

If Watson's now on a public image improvement spin after her driving ban and/or has had her nose put out of joint because a considerably more accomplished child actress is going to take on the role she made an absolute hash out of and wants to plead her way into some sort of role by making nice to the woman she demonised and sneered at for years, then that's up to her.

Doesn't make her seem sincere though. Just self serving.

She is a brat.
Biting the hand that fed her.
Thinks she is relevant.. hah!!
Completely forgetable...

I think a lot of celebrities are starting to wake up to the fact that gender bollocks is a career loser. I imagine many of them have come to the horrified realisation that they were in a bubble. They didn't actually care about trans stuff, but they were told the right thing to say, and everyone around them was going along with it, so they jumped in feet first. Got some gushing approval from chronically-online types . . . and then slowly, slowly realised there is a silent majority who don't like this stuff at all. People began to walk away and now celebrities who once believed they were untouchable are starting to feel the chill.

Worse - as people become more emboldened to speak up about all this, our virtue-signalling celebrity friends are starting to get the piss taken out of them.

David Tennant is looking more and more like a frightened ferret. Stephen Fry is sweating through his tweed. Neil Gaiman's toast. Jade Thirlwall's new album has failed to set the world alight, much like her last single. Pedro Pascal is turning audiences off so fast I'm genuinely impressed. I haven't seen the movie-going public get the ick with an actor this fast, since Tom Cruise decided jumping up and down on a sofa was a great way to express his feelings.

Personally I think the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, could be the next ones to fall. They've been hinting they might be about to ride into battle for trans ideology since they put trans flag colours on the opening credits of the season premiere. And last night they aired an episode featuring an ambiguously gendered ten year old. The point was apparently supposed to be that it was no big deal whether this child was male or female, and the other kids were rude for wanting to know. They should all be happy to embrace this new classmate as an unknown, non-binary entity, who will presumably go by they / them forever.

This is next-level pandering. Interestingly, this season is only being well-received among the most Trump-deranged of fans. The wider feeling is that the show did all this Trump parody stuff ten years ago, too many of the jokes have been recycled from seasons past, and Stone and Parker have lost their once-vaunted ability to satirise both sides of an argument. They've sold out and lost their touch. Now, I'm not saying their decision to pander to the "trans kids" lobby is to blame for all of this. It seems more like a storm of factors coming together. But I am saying . . . white-knighting for the trans cause is starting to feel like opening the tomb of Tutenkhamun. I think there really may be a curse.

South Park?!

This South Park?!

I think there really may be a curse.

100%

I'd be really disappointed to see South Park jump on the bandwagon just as it's losing its popularity. They used to be great at keeping their finger on this pulse.

Then again, Trey and Matt aren't young any more, and South Park has been running since the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth and Jimmy Kimmel was funny.