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 😡'

I think what you'd probably find if it went to court is a ruling that someone's personal beliefs about their sex are largely irrelevant to the question of their right not to be discriminated against for GR; they are after all entitled to their personal beliefs and you as an employer are not entitled to demand to be privy to them. The onus would be on you the employer to prove you weren't discriminating on the basis of GR, and I think you'd find that extremely difficult.

It's also not clear what you think would be the functional difference between employing a trans person who does think they've changed sex vs one who doesn't - you would not be allowed to treat them differently, they'd be unlikely to behave any differently, so it seems largely irrelevant, and would likely come across as highly intrusive to interrogate them on the nuances of their beliefs about their sex.

This is coming across eerily similar to the argument I've heard from some anti-gay Christians, that of course they wouldn't discriminate against someone for being gay, it's men having sex with men that they think is wrong, so as long as the gay man is celibate, they're fine with him. How successfully do you think an employer could argue in court that they weren't discriminating on the grounds of sexuality by refusing to hire a gay man unless he is celibate?

You are arguing for strict gender presentation on the basis of sex - that women must dress in a feminine style and men only in a masculine style, on the basis of "think of the (lost) children"?

Most people would instead argue that men can wear dresses if they want; but they're not women for doing so.

I think people like you are precisely the reason that gender reassignment needs to be a protected characteristic in law, to be quite honest.

And of course it's your right to think that. But if you do, then logically you should be campaigning for trans-race, trans-disabled, trans-age, trans-species etc people to be protected in the sae way. If you don't see them as deserving of the same protections, that is discriminatory.

Your black and white world must be so very bleak.

I think what you'd probably find if it went to court is a ruling that someone's personal beliefs about their sex are largely irrelevant to the question of their right not to be discriminated against for GR;

That's rather the point I'm making: that one's belief about ones sex is severable from the PC of GR (which is all about process, as mentioned.)

that they are after all entitled to their personal beliefs and you as an employer are not entitled to demand to be privy to them.

Protection on the basis of belief extends if the belief passes the Grainger tests. I'm not entitled to be privy to them, agreed: but maybe substitude "I'm a woman" for "I'm Napoleon Bonaparte" and see how far the Grainger tests get you.

In any case the manifestation of beliefs in a workplace is a subject rich in case law. For instance I can take disciplinary action against an employee who proseltyzes their colleagues in Christian dogma.

I can see an interesting clash between a male employee who vehemently and unreasonably demands to be treated as a woman on the basis of right, and an employer who has the job of preventing that employee from harassing a GC female colleague.

I'm not sure that sexuality is a good analogy; in the case I am imagining it's not the belief but the way the belief is manifested at work that would be an issue. The same kinds of behaviour that impinged on sexuality would probably cross the line of sexual harassment regardless of which way the person swings.

Yes I would, though only for men.

If a woman wears trousers, she is not going to be dangerous to women and children who mistake her for a man.

If a man wears a dress, he very well might be dangerous to women and children who mistake him for a woman.

Men and women are NOT an equal danger.

Men and women are NOT an equal danger.

That's true but I don't think many people would go so far as to ban men from wearing dresses for that reason. It does seem weirdly regressive to police people's outward appearance like that.

Doesn't it make more sense for everyone to recognize that some people in dresses are actually men, instead?

My understanding is that the pc of GR protects you from discrimination when compared to someone of the same sex. So for a TIM the comparator is a man.

I suspect a man that tried to compel other employees to believe a lie e.g. a flat earther would be subject to a disciplinary process - it's the behaviour that's wrong (harassment) and would be the same for any man or woman trying to impose a belief on others.

So you can't not hire a qualified TIM but he should be treated like other men, so no access to the women's toilets and expected to do his job and abide by normal professional behaviour in the workplace (e.g. don't come in wearing domanatrix gear). There is no entitlement to special treatment, though Stonewall have been saying for years there is, so some dimwits are a bit confused even though the SC did clarify it.

I'm a sex realist and am fully aware there are only 2 sexes.I think the issue is much trickier than what JKR does with a friend. If you work with a TiM or TiW ( trans identifying man or trans identifying woman) who has changed his/her name and pronouns, it's really difficult to know what to do. If you can't use their names/ pronouns you basically can't interact with them. And in pretty much all workplaces the policy will be to go along with them. In fact since there is a protected characteristic of gender reassignmen, then isn't there a real Q how far the protection extends and does it include" respecting" their self chosen identifiers? What are we supposed to do? It all impinges on you every day.

The analogy of an organisation refusing to employ a gay man unless he is celibate is a very good one - in both cases you’re saying you’d refuse to hire someone with a protected characteristic [gender reassignment or being gay] unless they conform to your beliefs about that characteristic [believing they haven’t changed sex or abstaining from sex], and that this isn’t discriminatory because you haven’t outright refused to employ anyone with that characteristic, you’ve just set certain conditions on it (conditions in both cases which are none of your business and which it would be intrusive - and possibly discriminatory in itself - to even try and establish).

And in both cases, frankly, you'd be highly unlikely to convince a court there wasn't a discriminatory element to your behaviour. And let's face it, if you are entirely honest with yourself, there is a discriminatory element to your behaviour - you think it's reasonable for an employer not to want to employ a trans person and are trying to find a loop hole that would make this sound less shitty than it actually is.

I can see an interesting clash between a male employee who vehemently and unreasonably demands to be treated as a woman on the basis of right, and an employer who has the job of preventing that employee from harassing a GC female colleague.

This scenario doesn't really have anything to do with anyone's beliefs, it's about behaviour.

in both cases you’re saying you’d refuse to hire someone with a protected characteristic [gender reassignment or being gay] unless they conform to your beliefs about that characteristic

I'm not refusing to employ someone with a protected characteristic. And my beliefs about the characteristic are unstated and in any case irrelevant because the PC of GR is defined in law, regarless of what I think. The question as to whether a particular individual has the PC of GR is a finding of fact and outside of my influence.

I think our disagreement is based in whether someone's "belief in their sex" is different to whether they are "proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex."

I can see that those two things are different.

Legislators are not idiots: it was easily open to them to say that the PC of GR is held by anyone who believes they are the opposite sex to the one they were born as. They didn't write that. They wrote something else instead.

Someone might argue that discriminating against a man because he thinks he's a woman comes under unlawful discrimination on the grounds of belief. That's plausible.

You’re getting a little mixed up. The Supreme Court judgement clarified that a trans woman is considered a man under the Equality Act. But for a gender reassignment claim, the comparator is someone who doesn’t have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. If a trans person is treated worse than a non-trans person in the same situation, it’s discrimination

I see they're different too, what I'm not seeing is how it makes any functional difference in a work setting, because:

1. There is no functional difference between employing a trans person who believes they have changed sex vs one who hasn't - your legal obligations towards them remain the same and there is no reason to assume they would behave any differently in the workplace (and if you're assuming they will behave differently because you hold negative stereotypes about some trans people, that in itself could be seen as discriminatory)

2. You as an employer would not be in a position to establish whether the trans person you've employed believes they've changed sex or not, it's not your business to ask and they certainly don't have to tell you (and excessive and intrusive questioning about their beliefs about their trans status may itself be seen as discriminatory)

3. You can argue in court until you're blue in the face you fired your trans employee because of an aspect of their belief about themselves and not because they were trans but that would be extremely difficult to prove and you'd probably lose (and in any case, firing them over a belief they have every right to hold may in itself also be seen as discriminatory)

Once again, this comes back to the anti-gay Christian analogy, "I didn't fire him because he was gay, I fired him for sleeping with a man". They may entirely sincerely mean that, and sincerely see a distinction, but it's not going to help them in court.

We need to be able to tell a child to look for a lady, if they are lost. We need to look for a female, quickly discernable by appearance, if we ourselves are in trouble. All cultures at all times have differences between the clothing, hairstyle, face-paint, and so on, to enhance the ability of everyone to instantly identify the females from the males, at a glance and at a distance, for good reasons.

We live in the 21st century. Men and women do not dress so that other people can tell they are men and women. Many men now wear more make up than many women do, have more hair than women, and so on.

I am not comfortable at all with this argument. It could be used to force women back into skirts.

I also don't have any difficulty distinguishing men in dresses from women and women in lounge suits and short hair from men, because secondary sexual characteristics are not hidden by clothes and hair.

We are better served by being honest about, and teaching children about, the biological and physical differences between men and women, in part so that children aren't tricked by clothes. This should be in science lessons anyway.

The ancestral skeleton "Lucy" was identified as female by her pelvis. This sort of science history should be mandatory learning for every child.

It's the truth. Prioritising your self-perception over someone else's right not to be forced to lie is an authoritarian act.

Oh not this argument again.

It is not possible to tell every man from every woman. There is huge overlap in physiology.

There are many women, mostly tall ones, who have what is called an android pelvis which is no different from that of many men.

Those who think they can always tell simply don't know the ones they've never spotted.

I see they're different too, what I'm not seeing is how it makes any functional difference in a work setting, because...

Maybe start by replacing "I believe I'm a woman" with "I'm Napoleon Bonaparte" and see what problems it might cause in a workplace. Can you refuse to emply someone because they think they're Napoleon?

It make no more sense to say it will force women, who have worn trousers since the 19th century, out of an element of female clothing that it would to suggest it will force men into top hats and tail coats. Trousers are female clothing, babydoll dresses are not male clothing.

It's a very US-Christian-conservative point of view that people must wear clothing that is coded to their sex. It doesn't usually get a lot of traction with GC people in the UK who on the whole tend I think to reject sex sterotypes in clothing appearance etc. I think the "lost children need it to be so" argument is very weak.

Christian-conservative types tend to say that if you're a woman you must dress like a woman. TRA types tend to say if you dress like a woman then you must be a woman. And people like me tend to think that you can dress how you like without it affecting your sex.

"Men in baby-doll dresses": that conflates two separate concepts, the first is highly sexualised clothes, and the second clothes cut for women. Men should avoid wearing baby-doll dresses in any situation where a woman should also avoid highly sexualized clothes, and for the same reasons. Not because they're "for women" but because he's wearing it because it's highly sexualized.

J K Rowling has a friend
who was subjected to 'trans away the gay' decades ago
so uses a female name and presumes that they act in a female way
while actually being clearly male.

For sanity sake JKR uses the persons female name and tends to refer to
that individual as 'her' and 'she'

I do the same with the person I know
It would be rude and immature to do otherwise.

The fact that the individual needs male health care
and should not use female single sex spaces because women "just know"
is a given
but face to face insults (eg refusing to use chosen name)
are not cool (or legal)

Humans can tell what sex you are extremely reliably sex based on face alone. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8474840/

Other clues include:

• shoulder-to-waist ratio
• waist-to-hip ratio
• arm and leg length as a ratio of height
• gait
• voice
• adam's apple
• size and shape of hands
• brow ridges
• hair line
• shape of rib cage
• how you move when you breathe, because women's ribs are hinged differently from mens'.

Take all that together and either someone is clearly one sex, or you realise that something jars about that person and you look again to figure out what it is. There's been a few people I've been like "there's something really odd about that lady... ah, that's actually a man whose had feminising surgery" about.

"You can't tell if someone's trans" is pure copium. Cover Buck Angel's face from nose down and you can see from her isolated eyes and forehead that she's female. Brow ridges do not lie.

What's deemed masculine or feminine clothing is culturally- and temporally-bound. It's hence impossible to pass laws to force the sexes to wear gendered clothing without trying to dictate that time stands still and that people don't migrate to places where the clothing styles are different. How do you ban men from wearing dresses without infringing on the ability to wear thobes and salwar kameez?

Henry VIII had some wicked babydoll dresses in his wardrobe. Here he is in a red one with gold embroidery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FamilyofHenryVIIIc1545detail.jpg

I’m guessing that study from 1993 also included transsexual people that had been on hormone replacement therapy or had facial surgery?