John Lithgow on JK Rowling

[QAOPspaceman]

basically admits he hasn’t bothered thinking about her position on gender identity. The Harry Potter books are about tolerance so her stance is ‘inexplicable’, yet he’s never met her and only ‘read about her views’.
Read her for yourself pal! Do your own fucking thinking!

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/02/john-lithgow-says-he-finds-jk-rowlings-stance-on-trans-rights-ironic-and-inexplicable?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Exactly. The reason the push for self ID failed in this country is because of the impact it would have had on other people's rights. Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

Churning out a postmodernist word salad about there being no objective facts because everything is subjective doesn't alter this reality. It's so tedious. When men can self identify as women it causes harm to women. The end.

It's a 'concept' that only transwomen per with their willies or have their willies chopped off.

Fascinating bullshit.

I agree.

This endless philosophising to get around strong safeguarding policies is not going to change a thing. Because the philosophising itself is purely conceptual and it is to create an unfalsifiable position which then makes any policy or law meaningless. That is its intention.

However, material reality will abide. The sex categories for humans will remain measurable and distinct no matter how many people throw their individualised conceptualisations at those categories.

Yes because men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual assault and women are overwhelmingly the victims. But I'm sure Greta will be along to tell us that this is all socially constructed too.

So starting point on basic english words

Woman

Is this you trying to claim the word woman means some men and some women?

Or

Is this just that you have decided that woman should mean some men and some women?

I believe the current tactic is to say that everyone deserves safeguarding and the only way to achieve this while not ignoring others people's rights is to have mixed sex provisions for every thing. Toilets, changing rooms, sports.

Because that is the idyll. We need to also then ignore the needs of female people and ignore the inherent safety issues that come with those mixed sex provisions.

This argument falls apart by virtue of the fact that the validity of a category doesn't automatically entitle it to the same treatment. Minors having the same right to exist as adults doesn't mean they are entitled to be treated the same because utility is the barometer.

This is the exact argument that us Gender Criticals make. The validity of the trans category does not automatically entitle transwomen to the same rights as women.

Another example would be women's sports excluding trans women because of a sporting advantage that sporting organisations by & large have adjusted to.

Sporting organisations have almost on mass banned transwomen from womens sports because the male post-pubertal advantage is insurmountable.

Zealots aren't people that are known to act in good faith & for the public good.

As you prove in spades.

And it turned out biological sex was very important in deciding which vaccine to give to which sex class.

Oh lordie, they tried that here? I got sent screenshots of what may have been the original reachy thread & some of the replies, think it was on Blooski, all completely hilarious yet somehow pitiable in its aching stupidity

Yes, bafflingly stupid. The woman who paid £47.5M in tax in 2025 (and I assume similar amounts in the years before) had to wait until Epstein's death before she could buy herself a boat. I assume the implication is that she somehow inherited some of his wealth and spent it on her yacht but who would really know what is going on in the heads of people who are making these claims.

What a whitterer. Perhaps he should do his own research and actually read the books. Or even some of her shorter writings, if he can’t cope with full novels.

I never took the Harry Potter books to be about tolerance and acceptance. The overarching theme I see is personal integrity.

JKR is quite clear that her characters remain themselves regardless of transformation. Whether by polyjuice or as animagus, metamorph or werewolf, they retain their personalities and motivations however they present. The exception is Lupin, who is benign and fully human in his human form. The tolerance is that his friends transformed to animals to accompany him in his animal form. Or maybe not - maybe they just did it for kicks. They were James and Sirius, after all, arrogant and obnoxious teenagers. However, they also recognised that he was a danger when he transformed, and accompanied him to protect others from him.

Gretel

If a male has a fixed belief that he is female is this factual or a delusion?

Neither. It's a subjective opinion which is the point JKR & you are missing because of the false belief that the gendered concepts of 'man' & 'woman' are only based on reproductive characteristics. Human concepts are simply human interpretations of phenomena that vary from individual to individual.

Top of the range poppycock. Men are men and women are women, it's irrefutable fact, biomedical fact. There's nothing at all subjective about the nature of sex. A man may vary from other men, by being born a penis, but he's still a man.

Its quite simply untrue to claim that this is subjective. It's observable and verifiable.
.

Born a penis = born WITHOUT a penis....

Plenty of men are born a penis 😂

I LOVE JK Rowling . Love , love, love -edy LOVE her .

She has absolutely epitomised the values she set down in Harry Potter .

She is a shining beacon of brave , kind , funny sanity standing firm in a sea of unintelligent , spineless , misogynistic celebrities sploshing about her with their patronising , silly opinions.
Pretty hard to choose the dopiest amongst the particularly smug batch of old fools who’ve popped up to scold her but John Lithgow seems to be having a good try to wrest the numpty crown from Stephen Fry who took it from Billy Bragg .

It has been so very disappointing to see how many other people were only paying lip service to women’s rights and safety until they got an opportunity to go rogue …

The breathtaking misogyny and homophobia embedded into TRA never fails to stun me .

I’m acting in good faith because I care about the rights of women and girls to have full participation in public life . There is no definition of ‘gender ‘ that isn’t sexist nonsense and there won’t be a woman on this board who hasn’t been sexually harassed by men , however they identify .
We are reclaiming the rights and spaces are foremothers fought so hard for .

💥

@SinnerBoy what @Ereshkigalangcleg said 🤣🤣

TBF, plenty of people are either born or become dicks. It isn't restricted to your sex.

To be fair, I take back the 'not acting in good faith' accusation because a flawed belief isn't necessarily a dishonest one particularly when one tell the difference between fact & opinion or typical & stereotypical behaviour.

That males & females have typical behaviours is a fact to be distinguished from stereotypical behaviours/social expectations aka "sexist nonsense".

"Its quite simply untrue to claim that this is subjective. It's observable and verifiable."

So are typical behaviours which distinguish gender. What's subjective is what metric out of the two (reproductive or behavioural characteristics) an individual decides distinguish women from men.

Could you provide a list of these “typical behaviours which distinguish gender” please?

What a good post. It would make a splendid editorial in the Guardian.

@Gretel346 can you name ANY other characteristic opening up legal and workplace rights that is "subjective" ?

(Spoiler: you cannot. Legal definitions cannot be subjective or they instantly become dysfunctional. If I commit a crime, I can't claim that I feel under 18 and my subjective year of birth is 2009 to receive a lighter sentence when I'm really 37)