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 😡'

These days they’d just use the “fairy” insta filter.

oh wait, they do.

LOL When women had no source of income other than a husband, being small boned wasn’t the biggest obstacle to living as a woman - they needed a man to support them.

It’s vanishingly unlikely that this was a regular occurrence but that nobody else ever noticed. Especially as literature and history has lots of instances of same sex couples who were more or less open about their relationship, yet there’s never any serious evidence for trans couples.

Sounds like useful information for any woman living in Afghanistan.

Could also be helpful for a woman needing an abortion in e.g. Texas. Presumably you just 'live as the opposite sex' and the pregnancy disappears.

Just need to work out what 'living as the opposite sex means'.

TRA have created an atmosphere where it's impolite or distressing to mention their sex, then use the fact that no one has mentioned their sex to prove that they pass.

Its like a 4 year old telling his mum that spiderman is here, leaving the room and returning dressed up, delighted that that she call him spiderman.

TRA use any feature where there is an overlap, like height, or where surgery/drugs can potentially make a difference to believe that they can look like the opposite sex, and ignore all of the other features.

So they are in the height range of a woman, but we're supposed to ignore their voice, or their silhouette? Lots of men say they cant use mens spaces because they have breasts, even though they look so male, no one would notice they have them.

No one see a man of 5foot5 and thinks they have womens height, they see a man who is shorter than average.

My husband struggles sometimes to identify trans women. He's a bit face blind and hasn't been genetically conditioned to tell the difference between males and females in the way that females are.

A hell of a lot of TW are certain they do pass as women. They don't. I'm not sure what they expect really, do they expect us to tell them that we can tell? Not mentioning it doesn't mean we don't konw.

I don't believe for one second that there are lots of men who are successfully passing as women unnoticed. Given that TW are meant to be a tiny minority I spot an awful lot of them.

Gosh are you all still chattering on trying to convince yourself that every single person's sex is identifiable? And that somehow trans people popped out of the woodwork in the last 10 or 20 years?

To save you bothering to do your own research, I'll leave this Google result here.

Start
While transgender individuals have existed throughout history, identifying the exact "first" is difficult due to changing definitions. Roman Emperor Elagabalus (ruled 218–222 CE) is often cited as a very early figure, asking to be called "Lady" and seeking gender-affirming surgery. Modern, medically transitioning pioneers include Dora Richter (first known genital surgery, 1931) and Michael Dillon (first trans man to undergo phalloplasty, 1940s).
National Geographic +4

Key Historical Figures:

• Ancient History (Gala/Galli): In 5000–3000 B.C., Sumerian texts mention gala, priests who held female identities or androgynous roles.
• Roman Emperor Elagabalus (204–222 CE): Often recognized as an early trans figure, Elagabalus preferred to be called queen to her lover, wore feminine clothing, and reportedly sought to undergo genital surgery, asking doctors to "make me a woman"
• Anastasia the Patrician (4th Century CE): Fled her life as a courtier to live in a monastery, presenting and living as a man named Anastasius.
• Dora Richter (1892–1966): A German trans woman who is recognized as the first known person to undergo modern full gender-affirming surgery, including vaginoplasty, in 1931 at the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute.
• Michael Dillon (1915–1962): A British physician who is known as the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty and take testosterone, transitioning in the 1940s.
• Roberta Cowell (1918–2011): A British racing driver who in 1951 became the first British trans woman to undergo modern genital surgery.
• HRC | Human Rights Campaign +4

While earlier individuals existed, these 20th-century pioneers are generally recognized as the first to undergo modern medical transition.

End.

I'm not sure all this debate about whether you can tell is all that relevant. Plenty of disguises are convincing, but that doesn't mean someone really is what they disguise themselves as. It can be very hard to tell if someone is disabled, what age they are and what ethnicity they have. But these things remain facts. Sometimes they can be hard to prove - far harder than sex - but we still understand that reality matters.

I don't actually agree with the claims that "you can always tell" - I have met people whose sex I wasn't sure of (not generally trans people, usually certain older butch women) although I think it's very unusual to be unsure once you have heard someone speak, seen them walk etc. There are some trans women and trans men who are quite convincing on screen/in photos though that is rare.

But the fact is that people know what sex they are, certainly in the west, as adults, everyone does. Just as with your age, disability etc, you know if you are pretending to be something you're not. There is no evidence whatsoever that humans have ever changed sex, no matter what they do to themselves.

Saying you can't always tell is irrelevant - so what? If you're male and in a woman's prison or sports team or hospital ward you have a strength advantage and statistically pose a danger that the women who have an exclusive right to be there do not, whatever you look like, and you shouldn't be there.

And the fact that through history some people wanted to be and tried to be the opposite sex is not surprising at all - there have always been stereotyped expectations on the sexes that some will have yearned to escape. That doesn't mean they were the opposite sex or that the opposite sex should have been required to accept them as such.

Of course they didn't pop out of the woodwork in the last 10-20 years!

I served a trans woman frequently in the hoisery department of Debenhams when I worked there doing a Saturday job 35 years ago. Could still tell he was a bloke.

The hands (amongst other things) were a dead give away.

If 20% of women had pelvises that looked male to onlookers, we'd have noticed. That's one in five.

What Sheep said.

Lying is wrong. Being good at it doesn't make it right.

The Q angle. It's there so that we can walk properly with wider hips.

I’m still waiting for someone to nominate a single famous trans person who “passes”.

I have all the time in the world.

Gosh are you all still chattering on trying to convince yourself that every single person's sex is identifiable? And that somehow trans people popped out of the woodwork in the last 10 or 20 years?

Two big straw man arguments in there.

Part of the practical reality of "living as a woman" is the wifework, motherwork, etc, or else being branded "old maid", "spinster", "mad cat lady" if you opt out of that.

The other, absolutely core and definitional part of the practical reality of living as a woman is the messy biology stuff and the power differential between us and men that comes from that.

• Men as a class have the power to force someone to become pregnant against her will through rape. That a small number of individual men are sterile or impotent doesn't negate the fact that women still fear those men. Women as a class lack that power.
• Women as a class run the risk of pregnancy basically by existing. That a small number of women are infertile doesn't negate the fact that women are "walking wombs" under patriarchy and seen as broken if we don't bear children. Men as a class know that they can never become pregnant, no matter what someone does to them.

To live "as a woman" is to grow up expecting and being expected to be capable of pregnancy, to be vulnerable to forced pregnancy through rape, to be deemed "broken" if we can't get pregnant, and to be incapable from birth (so not by surgical choice) of impregnating someone else. No one male can live like that.

To live "as a man" is to grow up knowing that you will never become pregnant and that this is a normal and expected outcome for you. No one female can live like that.

Anastasia the Patrician will have spent her whole time in that monastery fearing discovery, rape, and pregnancy. This is a female experience.

I am glad that women can now do any job they choose without having to resort to the deception of Margaret Ann Bulkley (aka "James Barry") and "Michael" Dillon. It boils my piss when TRAs retrospectively claim people like Bulkley and Joan of Arc as "trans" when they were women trying to succeed in a man's world.

It does not surprise me at all that a privileged Roman emperor would be AGP.

As for the Sumerian priests, many cultures have a magical, cultural, or spiritual "third gender" role for the gay men. It means that the rest of the men don't have to accept them as fellow men and can fuck them without having to own the label of "gay" or "bisexual". It's noticably rare for the lesbian women to get a similar "fourth gender" label exempting them from being mothers and wives, telling you that the people of these cultures know exactly who the women are. Even the vestals of Ancient Rome were not an extra gender, rather they were women, and seen as women, who traded the relative freedom of property ownership and not being subject to their fathers' will for enormous risk, having to travel with bodyguards and an entourage because a vestal who lost her virginity was sentenced to death and the Romans didn't care whether she'd consented to the loss.

Chapeau 🎩
This is exactly it

So you’re saying people can tell when people are trans? Otherwise how would anyone know these people were trans?

Ouch

The lack of unambiguous references to transwomen (as opposed to homosexuality or women living as men) in the historical record is actually quite interesting. There are a vast number of cases of men cross-dressing, but in those cases the individual lived most of their lives 'as a man'. The Sumerian text examples are extremely difficult to interpret and in any event can't possibly be considered descriptions of transwomen as they relate to ritual religiosity. The same is true for the fragmentary and biased information we have about Elagabalus who is presented as male in all physical deceptions that have survived to the present but who was alleged to have been sexually debauched - trying to reframe him as transgender is silly.

Given that, it does seem that, far from having 'always being with us' (which still wouldn't justify accepting men as women), the idea and mode of being a transwomen is remarkably modern, originating in the late 19th and early 20th century. One can posit why: 1) it was only relatively recently that the real sociological, religious and legal disadvantages of being perceived as actually a women could possible be outweighed the psychological motivation for presenting as one full time, whatever the roots of that psychological need; and 2) that it was only relatively recently with the advent of romanticism, psychology and medicine that a plausible vocabulary for being a 'women stuck in a man's body' developed.

Being coerced into accepting that males are ‘she’ for the purposes of work, intimate procedures, changing rooms, sport, refuges and female spaces? No. You’re wrong and gaslighting

Except I didn't mention any of those things, did I?

I said "A tiny number of people being referred to as 'she' as a term of endearment in social situations".

I'm not sure why you feel the need to make things up, but I'd as you not to, especially if you're good to use them as the basis to claim that I'm 'wrong and gaslighting'.

Nipping back to JKR and her tweets…

Does anyone know where she stands on Euthanasia? She retweeted a post yesterday about choices, with a comment about choosing between flavours of icecream. She got a lot of flak for it, but I couldn’t find any clarification or further comment about her intention. Because I read it totally differently to the people raging about it.

I think her sarcasm sailed over most people’s heads with that one.

I've been thinking some more about this and I think public figures using she/her publicly (as in Bindel's podcast interviewing Claudia) for a man is extremely harmful to transwidows and children of transitioners. Many of whom will be facing coercively controlling abuse by the men in their lives who've decided they're 'trans'.

Again public vs private matters.

If Claudia cared about women or saw them as fully human he'd understand the harms of lying (including to transwidows and children of transitioners plus women locked in with men like Alex Stewart) and be happy with he/him pronouns like Miranda Yardley - who did reach this position as one of the few trans-identified men who seems to see women as fully human and have some empathy for them.

Also 'Claudia' sounds like a bloke on the podcast. It's very jarring to hear JB 'she/her-ing'.

I am enormously grateful to JB and JKR for all they've done for women. I don't really have a problem with their private lives being private and doing whatever they want (as long as legal) within them.

However, they've thrown women and children under the bus a little bit here to promote their mate's book. As this choice has been made publicly, it's a choice that people should be free to criticise.

Oh good. I thought it was just me that assumed she was being sarcastic, and began to wonder. I mean, really?

I agree in most situations where the trans woman is being discussed or interviewed as the main topic of conversation.

I don’t agree about making passing references to people, without any intention of deceit or an impactful consequence like bringing Claudia to an event/suggesting Claudia as a babysitter.

And I’m not convinced Yardley sees women as fully human. I think he’s realised it’s a more rational position, and it works for him to be seen as a rational ally rather than a TRA. I think Yardley shares certain personality traits with other trans identifying men.

Though I have no personal knowledge of him, so perhaps shouldn’t judge.