Can't believe I'm writing this, but disappointed in JK today

[RobynMiller]

I know she is just one person but her tweets today are really undermining the whole GC argument.

Link: https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2046948644373274709

'Nothing's changed. I was being honest about how I feel about an individual trans woman I know, who was a gay man pre-transition, and who I met for the first time post-transition. Objectively speaking, she has physical characteristics that make it fairly obvious she wasn't born female, but she's a gentle, funny person I've never referred to as anything other than 'she' and 'her'. I find it perfectly easy to reconcile my fond feelings towards her, and my experience of her as someone with very female-coded energy, with a belief that she hasn't literally changed sex (and incidentally, she doesn't believe she's literally changed sex, either).'

Basically, someone asked her about the trans identified male she mentioned in her 2020 essay and this was her response.

Does she not realise there can be NO EXCEPTIONS? Give an inch they'll take a mile and all that. It doesn't matter that he is gentle and funny or that he has very female-coded energy whatever the hell that means.

This does make it seem like when she calls TIMs out she is now doing it maliciously as she is perfectly happy to play pretend if she likes them enough.

Just so frustrating as it basically says that 'we could all play along with TRAs just fine and are choosing not to because we're such meanies 😡'

KJK has posted this. Bit cryptic, but I'm guessing that it relates to JKR.

The is the truth and there are lies. Whilst the lies continue to be used against us, it would be incredibly damaging to lie.

https://x.com/ThePosieParker/status/2047258026231398572?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

@Kingdomofsleep "There are many circumstances in which I believe refusing to accurately describe the sex of a person is at best confusing and at worst dangerous. Indulging a quasi-religious ideology over clear language and objective facts has already had disastrous consequences in the contexts of safeguarding, sport, medicine and crime. But I have exclusive rights over my own choice of language. As Mark Twain said: 'I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.' Both trans activists and GC people who get angry that I'm deviating from their own hard and fast language rules are demanding that I respect things that are sacred to them, but not to me. Trying to dictate how other people express themselves provides a delicious opportunity to chide and correct and to demonstrate one's own purity and righteousness - as indeed you're currently demonstrating - but they achieve nothing except making the language police feel good about themselves. Back in the real world, women's rights remain under attack and it will continue to take time, money and concrete action to defend them. You may feel that the priority is establishing black and white pronoun rules. I happen to disagree."

I guess my position is that I agree with her but it’s not my place to police other women’s language.

Is it ‘respect’ though?

Or is that receptionist, like many of us, just mentally rolling her eyes and going along with it because she knows if she didn’t, she’d have a tonne of shit heaped on her. Tolerance and acceptance are lovely values laminated on a school wall but they tend not to extend to low paid support staff who disagree with the religious dogma.

Interesting input from a gay man:

And the effect of even one exception - within “gay man world” - is to continue the problem we have with our perceived “femininity”. Plenty of gay men already reject men they consider “feminine” (and I don’t mean camp here i mean the soft gentle men) and those men are the most vulnerable to incorrectly concluding they are “better off” as mimics of women. This is never the case. While I would never force people to undo surgeries and hormone treatments they are now healthy on, going forward we should I think be advocating for “no one is better off as a mimic of the opposite sex”, and “disguising attributes as opposite sex” should be off the table. And so I will never call another gay man “she” again. I won’t call a straight one she either but people who make an exception nearly always do that for soft, gentle gay men - and I know it’s not malicious, not homophobic and not because they see these men as “lesser”. It’s because they recognise kinship. I understand that. But my reply is because this is what keeps a certain pressure on gay men, especially the soft gently younger ones to start questioning “am I also “better off” as a “she””. It’s effectively wider “social transitioning” which isn’t neutral. It’s not a zero impact choice. There is some impact.

(Excerpt from longer post.)
https://x.com/DuncanHenry78/status/2047291489294639527

It's no different to a lot of black men calling each other brother, even though they aren't related. Don't hear people kicking off about incorrect language being used between people there.

I think you underestimate the ability of parents and other people to call people who they love "she" without believing that they have become a physical female.

You live in a world where women are constantly reassured that their bum doesn't look big in that when it does, when men are reassured that size doesn't matter when it does (height as well as body parts). This is no different, it's a kindness - to people who you love - that I completely agree with.

You are trying to police language. It's a battle you can't win. It's a battle that actually does damage to the rational discussion about trans issues and women's rights.

Excellent example. Auntie used the same way by white families to describe a good family friend. I had several Aunties and Uncles when I was a child, none of them related to me in any way.

I don't think that "female-coded energy" relates to stereptypes or behaviour. I think she's referring to whether a person "reads" as male or female (or perhaps neither) overall, which isn't reducible to individual mannerisms or behaviours. It's not something you can quantify or logically analyse, but I think it's absolutely a thing.

I don't love the phrase, but I think I get what she means. There's a "trans" actor called Hunter Schafer in the TV series "Euphoria". When I watch him on the show, I don't feel like I'm watching a man or see him that way, even though intellectually I know he is one. If I were to insist that I see him as a man, I'd just be making a politcal point, rather than reflecting how I actually feel. However, I also don't see him as a woman. He exists in a a sort of third space in my head. I don't know if it would be different if I met him in real life.

I feel the same way about Hilary Swank's performance as Brandon Teena in "Boys Don't Cry", which I watched at a (too) young age and it had a big impact on me. It was probably my first "trans" exposure. I could totally understand how the characters in that film could/would read this person as genuinely male. She projects what could be called "male-coded energy" in that film; it's distinct from the feel/energy of a butch lesbian. It's more than just appearance or behaviour, though it incorporates both. It's hard to put into words, so "energy" seems as good a word as any.

Now, all this is very inconsistent and may seem unfair to trans people, because you can't imitate or perform your way to an "energy". But it is what it is. You either have it or you don't (I'd say most "trans" people definitely don't).

Disagree, as I notice do most of the OPs on this thread.
JKR was simply indulging a friend. It's not a slippery slope. It's an act of kindness and courtesy which highlights the lie about 'toxicity on both sides of the debate'.
She is, and has always been, clear about sex, gender and women's rights and our right to single-sex spaces.

Pretending that 'gender' means that we can control our sex is unhealthy and practising a dysfunctional relationship with our bodies.

I think you need to get straight in your argument whether you are protecting women from men pretending to be women or trans people from their own body dysmorphia.

Because faux concern for people with body dysmorphia does not strengthen the argument for women's rights, it just comes across as a bit desperate.

If you were concerned about body dysmorphia you would be campaigning for trans people to have earlier and better access to mental health care. You're not, your using it as an argument why people shouldn’t call someone they love by the pronouns that they would like to be called

I, and others, deciding that we would call somebody we care about, who asks us to, by the pronoun they prefer does not in any way prevent us from believing that person can't change sex.

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic see post above I forgot to tag you on.

Policing other women’s language by telling them they are not allowed to disagree with someone you mean?

If a group started to argue that therefore all black men are literally brothers and - for example - are therefore all entitled to inheritance if one of them dies intestate, AND managed for any period of time to convince many of our major institutions that this was so, AND that anyone dissenting was a bigot and should probably be arrested, I would also feel that it was inadvisable to go about perpetuating the mass hysteria through continuing to refer to one another as, "brother".

I do see your point but they would still call each other brothers after their nonsense claims were debunked.

The nonsense sex change claims have been debunked, we don't now need to police other people's language. Even if that were possible, which it isn't.

I think the analogy with people referring to others as if they were brothers is missing the point that this term has been established for centuries to denote relationship status that is not only biological.

Same with aunt and uncle.

These have been well established relationship indicators that are not simply biological.

The correct analogy would be if those people demanded then to be fully treated as if they materially were brothers / aunt / uncle relative, not just as a special relationship category.

I think the point being missed is that calling a person you know is male "she", (and I've never seen anyone getting upset about calling a female "he"), is likely to become just as entrenched and accepted as "brother" and "auntie" for non blood relatives.

Language changes over time, "she" has always been used satirically about men behaving in a female stereotypical fashion. The chant at football matches for men that dived to try and win a free kick/penalty has always been "she fell over".

You cannot police language in respect of pronoun use.

If fudging around the pronouns of a person makes a situation less stressful do it.

If using wrong pronouns makes a situation more stressful do not do it

The reality is that adults fudge language all the time to avoid conflict
that is what JKR does with her TiM friend

while also being livid about the institutional capture
and deliberate causing of distress to children done by the gender lobby

Fudging pronouns to make life less stressful for men whilst not caring about the impact on women is what got us into this mess.

I did not say for the men.

I mean less stressful for ALL
and yes, there are times when an avoidance of conflict reduces stress all round.

It really isn't.

Satirical use or derogatory use of language is also not analogous to using wrong sex language and doesn’t support any such change.

there are only two sexes which leaves using wrong sex language for a person does render language meaningless.

If someone choose to use wrong sex language for gender identity purposes, the suggested comparators don’t support that choice. It is, of course, an individual choice but I don’t believe these examples support that choice.

"she" has always been used satirically about men behaving in a female stereotypical fashion. The chant at football matches for men that dived to try and win a free kick/penalty has always been "she fell over".

This use of "she" to denigrate men is not the winning argument for routine use of cross-sex pronouns that you seem to think it is.

No it doesn’t. It ignores the impact on women of destroying our language. It tells abusive men that it is ok to demand women’s language and destruction of boundaries because they will get what they want. Giving in to abusers always ends up the same.

Blimey. Sorry for the typos.