'He has a point, but he's too blunt.' JKR

[IwantToRetire]

In response to " Interesting interview with @Glinner on @GBNEWS a few minutes ago about the trans debate. It's interesting how the tide is turning in his favour. I've seen old friends who shunned him admit he has a point but that he was too blunt. Even that would was unthinkable a few years ago. "

From the start, a key tactic of the gender identitarians has been linguistic prescription, and it's proved shockingly successful. Trans activists' shibboleths and euphemisms have been allowed to penetrate the upper echelons of our culture with devastating consequences to freedom of speech and belief. Huge swathes of liberal media, the arts, academia and publishing have thrown themselves with gusto into the defence of a quasi-religious belief causing provable real world harm, and in their arrogance they've been outraged when people they assumed were part of their In Group have refused to march meekly along in lock step.

Time and again, I've seen and heard well-educated people who consider themselves critical thinkers and bold truth-tellers squirm when put on the spot. 'Well, yes, maybe there's something in what you're saying, but it's hateful/provocative/rude not to use the approved language/pretend people can literally change sex/keep drawing attention to medical malpractice or opportunistic sexual predators. Why can't you be nice? Why won't you pretend? We thought you were one of us! Don't you realise we have sophisticated new words and phrases these days that obviate the necessity of thinking any of this through?'

As the vibe shifts, and a lot of people in the elite professions start trying to reposition themselves, the obvious place to start is, 'it's not that I couldn't see your point, but did you have to say it that way?' We dissenters were supposed to find a way of questioning the chemical castration of children while calling it 'gender affirming care.' We were meant to defend the rights of vulnerable women while also using female pronouns for male rapists. We should have found a way to discuss fairness for women and girls in sport, while pretending that the ineradicable physical advantage men have over women doesn't exist.

Either a man can be a woman, or he can't. Either women deserve rights, or they don't. Either there's a provable medical benefit to transitioning children, or there isn't. Either you're on the side of a totalitarian ideology that seeks to impose falsehoods on society through the threat of ostracisation, shaming and violence, or you're not. The alternative to being 'blunt' - using accurate, factual language to describe what was going on - was to surrender freedom of speech and espouse ideological jargon that obfuscated the issues and the harms caused. We've always needed blunt people, but we need them most of all when being asked to bow down to a naked emperor.

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1995491771950797148

To be honest, I genuinely do not think that it is possible to be too "blunt" about gender ideology, or the behaviour of certain sub-categories of people (usually men) who fall under the almost-meaningless "trans umbrella".

Obviously one can be pointlessly rude to individual trans people, or one can lie and make up fake "stats", but so long as one is being honest and not targetting anyone, then one cannot be too blunt.

Beautifully put, as ever. Well done JKR.

Glinner must also be pleased that she is referencing him again 😆 After years of seeming to pretend he didn't exist.

Ha Glinner in from the cold from all sides - the trans agnostic and the sex realists too!

Glinner sometimes didn't do himself or the gender critical cause many favours when he let some nasty little TRA accounts goad him into losing his temper and being abusive on X, which led to a public distancing from him in some quarters. I understand why he did it and have huge sympathy for the pressure he was under and the horrific treatment he endured. Still, it made it easy for TRA's to take his posts out of context and to hold him up as the example of what was wrong with those mean old GCs, which was frustrating to watch.

That said, I think he is one of the bravest people I can think of in public life, and I will never stop being grateful for his stubborn refusal to let the bastards break him. I am so pleased to see JK has broken her silence on him and that public support has started to swing behind him. About bloody time.

goad him into losing his temper

Funny to blame him not the goader!

Yeah, fair point, please don't imagine that I don't reserve all of my contempt for those goady bastards, I really do. The thing is, they were pretty obvious about what they were doing; they were looking for a reaction they could use, and Glinner reliably gave them one. It was horrible to watch play out, and I wish he had been in a place where he was able to step back and not engage. Still, I guess that willingness to engage is also what makes him the warrior that I admire so much, so there you go.

and even now people are wringing their hands about calling TW as a class what they are ie men.

I don't believe anyone other than a tiny tiny % of delusional people as Naomi Cunningham put it believe men can be women. I don't believe even the fox botherer thinks his daughters are really men. It's all a gigantic fiction built to allow AGP men to indulge their fantasies and peddle false hope to young women trying desperately to escape the gender straitjacket imposed ever more tightly imposed on young women by society

the damage these people have done is truly appalling

You have to hand it to JKR, she really knows how to play her minions.

Like any seasoned gamblers who bluffs successfully they are masters—at least for the moment—of psychological manipulation, projecting a cool confidence when in fact only vulnerability lies beneath a thin veneer of apparent strength.

People pretending "we are winning" do so to project confidence to create a positive mindset aimed at motivating and influencing outcomes by projecting strength. It's a strategy to influence perception, a form of deception to boost morale when things are actually difficult.

Like Trump who unflinchingly uses the 'we are winning' con even in the face of obvious losing & growing disinterest, her public actions aren't about what she's thinking or feeling but designed to control the minds & hearts of the loyal she like Trump regards as hapless half wits whose emotional tail she can effortlessly wag.

If anything, this latest angle from JKR reveals only that she perceives a declining interest in the 'cause' as is the fate of many in the face of new shiny ones like immigration so a 'rallying of the troops' has been deemed a necessary 'jolt' into action.

.

Oh, hello mate. Trans Reddit quiet at the mo, is it?

She's so right. So much of this comes back to controlling language. There's no such thing as 'top surgery' or 'bottom surgery', there's mastectomy, castration, penectomy and orchiectomy. The prudishness and obfuscation show how regressive this ideology is. Control the language control the debate. Remember when it was brave to write transwoman instead of trans woman, and you'd still be accused of transphobia. Thank God we're at the stage we can just say 'man'.

Agreed. But imo it's just about controlling, full stop. #TWAW, #nodebate, #bekind, it's all about controlling women so the men can take over.

Poor Howse - sad times again.

JKR is a gift to women, and generous enough to keep on giving. Eloquent, precise, witty when she wants to be, and blazing with honesty. I'm so glad those stupid little drones insulted her (sorry JK) when she made a humorous comment about their mangling of the English language, five years ago. They not only kicked a rock, they're still trying to stop it rolling over them!

Also
@Raquelos: those goady bastards ... were looking for a reaction they could use, and Glinner reliably gave them one. ... Still, I guess that willingness to engage is also what makes him the warrior that I admire so much.
I agree 100%, and admire him more than ever.

@Theeyeballsinthesky: It's all a gigantic fiction built to allow AGP men to indulge their fantasies and peddle false hope to young women trying desperately to escape the gender straitjacket imposed ever more tightly on young women by society.
So true, on both counts. Noticeable how the adult men do it for fun, rarely damaging their bodies, while the young women do it in desperation and are self-harming from the beginning.

Commenting a dash and run and I'll read properly later because I'm interested in this.

I've been GC a long time and have a lot of respect for what Glinner has done for us. However... I have winced at a lot of what he has posted on his blog. At times it has appeared as if he was just going out of his way to find and be mean about trans identifying people. There is plenty of material to post about without resorting to insulting people based on their looks and dress sense, and I feel that in doing that he didn't win us any support and may have lost some.

Having said that, nothing I have read from anybody on the GC side has ever, EVER been as awful as the whole Kill a Terf campaign on Twitter complete with flag painted baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. Plus, y'know, all of the casual rape, other violence and death threats sent to various women.

Isn't she great? And of course, spot on about language.

I love that she can get the little men in their basements howling over everything she says, DARVO all over the place & fantasising about how wrong she is. 😁

There are none so misogynistic as those who portray women as mindlessly following a ‘leader’ as if women lack the ability to think clearly and to research and form their own opinions.

I equate it with those who declare it ‘it is not what you say, it is how you say it’ to categorise someone as being a bigot for using accurate language to describe something that the majority of people agree with.

There have been at least two UK court cases where it has become very clear under testimony that those people who tend to make accusations of hate for those using accurate language can never articulate how particular concepts can be stated verbally in an acceptable way. JK Rowling is pointing at the emperor and declaring he has no clothes on in many different ways. And people
try to shame her.

Noticeable how the adult men do it for fun, rarely damaging their bodies, while the young women do it in desperation and are self-harming from the beginning.

It's young women and children of both sexes who are being harmed.

Middle aged men can have 'lady penises', but children have to have their natural development halted, allegedly so that they will be better able to pass themselves of as something they are not once they are adults.

The middle aged men don't care about 'passing' (because of course they can't), so keep all their bits so they can still get their sexual kicks.

Why anyone is still taken in by this abusive nonsense is beyond me.

I think what people forget is not everyone is the same. Some maybe good with words on paper, and some saying them out loud.

Some may be composed and unphazed by public confrontation. Some may not.

So going on and on about how isn't is a shame he is a bit blunt is actually saying we only want certain "nice and polite" people on our side.

I am far more interested in someone who is committed even if it makes them emmotional, rather than say some wordsmith politician who can blather on for hours and never actually say anything.

This isn't about dinner party chat, and social convention.

And I am so glad JKR has articulated this.

Said as someone who almost the moment they open their mouth to speak knows that within a minute or two I will have made some social blunder. And quite likely not to be aware!

How(se) some people fall into the pit of rolling out the old tropes never fails to be tiresome.
"You follow the witch blindly, you're too thick to have your own thoughts"
"Look how you're like this right wing nut job"
And managing to include immigration too, well done.
Any more derogatory comparisons? Please get them all over and done with so the women can have a grown up conversation.

"Like Trump who unflinchingly uses the 'we are winning' con even in the face of obvious losing & growing disinterest,"

Except in our case we have proof that we are winning.

From pew research: Americans have grown more supportive of restrictions for trans people in recent years

"You follow the witch blindly, you're too thick to have your own thoughts"

What Howse doesn't seem to realise is that some of us were on here discussing this well before JKR got involved. I remember her retracting her first foray into this topic and blaming it on being clumsy with her phone and 'accidentally' liking a tweet.

That reminds me, I need to ask JKR where I should go on holiday this year. I am lost without her input.

ETA: Or next year, even 😆

See, I just can't cope without her guidance.

I know it's weird, but I knew that human beings couldn't change sex before Harry Potter was published. Hell, I knew it before JKR even wrote the book.

Don't be silly CassOle. You are a minion.

Put more effort into your trolling, please. This is very weak compared to some of your earlier efforts.