“Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid on J. K. Rowling - “the bar is pretty high in how evil you have to be,” “ I’m extremely the opposite of everything she believes”

[YankSplaining]

Well, this is disappointing.

”[Reid] has a keen desire not to disappoint her fans, especially when they’re sending her photos of freshly inked tattoos of her words on their skin. ‘I know of another author that a lot of people got tattoos of but then wanted them gone. Like, J. K. Rowling,’ she says. ‘The bar is pretty high for how evil you have to be, but I don’t want to let a single person down.’ I ask if she’s a TERF. ‘No, I’m extremely the opposite of everything she believes,’ she replies.”

Well, too late, she let me down. “Extremely the opposite of everything she believes,” huh? I guess Rachel Reid thinks teenage girls should be forced to undress after PE in front of naked male classmates who gawp as their dicks get hard. Or that female inmates should be locked in cells with male inmates serving time for serial rape.

I don’t expect Reid to agree with Rowling on trans issues. It’s the monstering of Rowling that I take issue with - the “evil,” and the framing of Rowling as so extreme that Reid feels the need to be extremely the opposite of everything she believes.

Edit: title should read “on how evil you have to be”

Yes. We understand that you never thought about female people’s needs, just your own.

I never gave any thought to my own needs either. These are rooms.

And I find it offensive when I’m told to reframe my rape trauma simply for wishing a biological woman as my counsellor. Something I make no apologies for.

The High Court recently confirmed that provision that includes both men and women is not single sex and that for the purposes of the law men who identify as women are men.

I sure as hell wouldn't apologize for speaking with the woman I saw after my rape.

You most certainly focused on your own needs. Otherwise you would have used the male provisions.

They are not just ‘rooms’. Female people use female toilets for a wider range of needs than male people do. And often in the public space around the basin and hand dryer.

I've never belonged with men. I know why toilets exist, I've used one or two in my lifetime.

Regardless of where you think you belong, in the UK, if you are a man you have no right to use women's single sex facilities.

That is one interpretation. There is another interpretation that requires such a limitation to be based on a "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim" in the context of gender exclusion.

Nothing in my life has changed.

Nope.
Wrong.

And that you claim to have never have belonged in a male single sex provision is just proving that your choices of using provisions is based on your philosophical belief about the sex category of your body.

I doubt you have used them for the range of purposes that female people have. So no, I doubt you understand the needs of female people and single sex toilets.

I guess we'll see.

There is no philosophy. You have no ability to understand my experience. You are very anti-my experience as it is.

Similarly on some days I really feel like retiring and claiming my state pension and on other days a young person's rail card would be really useful, but I am not entitled to either. Age and sex are just objective facts.

And that aim is for female people’s safety and privacy and dignity. The exclusion is proportionate.

Who is she? I’ve never heard of her.

Indeed.

I have no idea what your experience is. I just know it doesn't change your sex.

It's not new. Toilets for women were political (in the sense that women had to fight to be allowed to have them at all) right from the outset. If you Google "history of women's toilets UK", there's an article on Historic UK that gives that early history.

So you understand that you have no right to use women's single sex services in the UK?

Luckily for trans people, your beliefs of safety, privacy, dignity and proportionate are not the sole influence upon law.

No one is preventing women from using women's single sex services in the UK.

Me neither. But I think she's a Canadian author making a bit of a fool of herself?

There's a lot of it about.

The idea that one wouldn't need a private place for a wee is about the most male thing I can think of.