“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”

Another was

“a constellation of statistically linked attributes - including genotype - that together match a pattern we identify as sex.”

I mean though, the implied meaning that ‘a woman is someone who has never penetrated someone else’ is particularly in line with people like Serrano and Lavery.

The constellation thing is kind of telling given that womens lives are more rooted in cycles and blood, to me it's a lot more earthy and material rather than nebulous and made of imaginary things in the sky.

I also have knocking about in my head something about woman being the default for any man who doesn't fit received ideas of manliness, Ancient Greece I think? Not manly enough, must be a woman, women being just the dumping ground for non-manly men, and as ever it's the men who dump the other men on us without so much as a by your leave.

I was at university with too many philosophy undergraduates back in the day. They could talk shit about the meaning of words until you actually had to say, "Fine, Martin, you think water is a concept, and so is cleanliness and the idea of personhood, but it's still your turn to do the sodding washing up."

Can't imagine why I was reminded of that

It's not a belief that transw are men, it's an incontrovertible piece of knowledge. Its undisputed, medico-scientific fact. Claims to the contrary are entirely unevidenced and are philosophical, or political positions, based on fantasies and desires, but, most certainly not reality.

As for sex realists all being religious, right wing conservative women...

A) I'm an atheist
B) I'm liberal minded and on the left
C) - can you guess?

The irony is that the TRA movement isn't defining terms in context, they are trying to bludgeon women into accepting one definition across all contexts, transwomen are women, no debate etc, which is why I think they are doing post modernism all wrong.
Saying sometimes in life and law sex matters is much closer to doing it properly.

Sometimes definition of terms in different contexts does matter in order to be able to communictae about some sorts of stuff, and sometimes it's scrub your hands before you enter the operating theatre, that's where no debate applies.

Thank you!! I love MN. There are at least 3 words/ concepts in your post that I hadn't heard of 🤣

Does Harry Potter still dominate fan fiction?

I think that it's the madness of the reaction to Harry Potter - both the book burning and the fans - that was one of the things that led JKR to realise that she needed to be the adult in the room.

I don't know about Potter because it's not a fandom I'm interested in. But from infrequent glances at a few fic communities that I used to lurk in, I've noticed an increase in writing "Our Flag Means Death" fic because it has characters with "explicitly queer identities" - gender still being big in certain sections of fanfic 🤷‍♀️

Claims to the contrary are entirely unevidenced and are philosophical, or political positions, based on fantasies and desires, but, most certainly not reality.

It's based on boners.

Which is one of the reasons why often repeated remarks are - I can't believe we're even talking about this, it's gob smacking thatwe're even at this stage, this is absolute bollocks, how come it's got so far, the NHS, politicians, schools...🤯

And I know you're a man, sinner, so you may have a bit more insight, but I think for women in general, it's mind blowing.

We are social, beyond other mammals. Our culture does not depend on everyone knowing what gametes everyone else developed to support in intimate detail. We have gender for this, and most people understand that gender is not always aligned with sex. That is being human.

This is your belief.

You speak on behalf of sex realists. Sex realism is largely backed by US right wing christian conservative men. It is a globally-focused effort to reduce the rights of LGBT people and eventually return culture to align with its core biblical belief that women are subservient to men.

Your isolation and mocking of trans people does not support women. You are servants of men.

Social constructs exist whether we believe them to be false or not. We are all impacted by them, all the time.

Bad law cannot be enforced. There is no safe and beneficial (to anyone) way to enforce the SC judgement.

Men are social constructs too. Hth.

return culture to align with its core biblical belief that women are subservient to men.

Ooh you mean like women's rights being removed to have anywhere to take their clothes off where a man can't come and watch and use them? Or that women's access to work and services requires performing the words and perceptions a man has downloaded to them? Or that a woman should be arrested for failing to enable a man's ego and self image by using the wrong words or not submitting? And that no women's needs or feelings are ever equal or important to a man's and their rights should be decided by men? And they don't need groups or spaces? And they shouldn't be allowed any language of their own that infringes on the dignity of a man's self identity?

I don't think that's the right wing love, I think that's transactivism in a nutshell.

The normal men I see throughout my day sure aren't obsessing about my potential gametes as we interact.

Sex realism is largely backed by US right wing christian conservative men

Also farmers.

People who breed guinea pigs.

😂

are cats social constructs too?

I expect they’re just a constellation of pointy ears and an entitled attitude

And yet you somehow cannot resist constantly popping back here to try and elicit a bit more obsession. I could posit on reasons why, they're pretty obvious, but I'm not interested.

I first suggested the Sovereign Citizen movement when you (I think it was you) started referring to all of the legal fictions that were invented to make my life exist.

No law has changed how other people interact with me. (If you wish to redirect this to cultural changes affected by law, then I would agree yes I have benefitted from the greater support of women in the workplace and also tangibly day to day.. but you're not here to talk about that. You're here to talk about trans people must be subjected to sex realist beliefs).

Given that sex discrimination is generally illegal in the UK, there is no reason for anyone to think about your sex except in the specific situations defined in the Equality Act.

However, women spend years of their lives dealing with the consequences of having a female reproductive system - the side effects of contraception, periods, absence of periods, pregnancy, breast feeding, infertility treatment, sex specific medical conditions.

For men there seems to come a time when prostate problems become inevitable but until then there isn't much to think about apart from the act of sex. (To be fair, some men seem to think about that a lot).

No law has changed how other people interact with me.

I suspect this is true.