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 😡'

Of course I do. But at the moment, they think that presenting as the other sex is helping them. I only hope that it does and that the massive doses of cross-sex artificial hormones don't do permanent or fatal damage.

Oh, and I want to keep my family together.

I think we all get to draw our own line in the sand.

But personally, I think it would be helpful if everyone in positions of influence were really careful about the words they choose because we are a long way from being out of the woods yet.

And by that I mean phrases such as “female coded energy” because what does that even mean? It seems to suggest that someone can have female energy when they are a man - which in turn implies that being female is about energy, behaviour, and actions rather than a state of biological being.

Of course I understand that’s not what JKR meant but it’s uncharacteristically imprecise and provides TRAs with the chance to deliberately misinterpret it.

Educating the general public that there isn’t such a thing as “being born in the wrong body” has been a slog. But the court of public opinion really matters as the tide of opinion has helped to drive change, and that’s imperative for the safety of girls and women.

I don’t expect all GC women to have a hive mind; we represent quite a range of views. And I really do think that’s ok.

I just don’t think it’s contradictory to acknowledge that range of opinions while still expressing concerns over how ambiguous words will be misused by those with an agenda.

Makes me like her all the more actually. My position has always been to live and let live, I have no beef with trans people personally, but I believe women’s spaces need to be preserved. End of. Doesn’t mean I hate trans people or want to see harm come to them. In fact on a personal level I’ll always try to make allowances for other people out of a sense of shared humanity.

This whole trans activist vs radical feminist conflict has saddened me greatly as I feel 90% of the issue comes from male violence. Which as ever gets lost in most discussions. Women are most at risk from male violence and trans people are most at risk again from male violence.

When push comes to shove I’ll stand with sex based female provision in terms of domestic violence shelters, bathrooms/changing rooms, which prison estate houses people and sports. However that doesn’t mean I wish to invalidate trans people’s lived experience, (or women’s for that matter). I am also by no means a subject matter expert but I strive for nuance where I can.

I appreciate that may put me at odds with hardliners from either camp but hey ho it is what it is. JK Rowling I admire tremendously.

And by that I mean phrases such as “female coded energy” because what does that even mean?

It means they LARP really well.

I can respect that. It’s like the conscientious objector position during a war. So long as you recognise that others equally sincerely do not see it as lying. I think the GC movement is stronger (and bigger) when it can include both perspectives.

I agree with you. How we choose to treat and perceive individuals in our private lives is our private business. Public policy, on the other hand, is for everyone. JKR understands that just because she perceives this individual as "woman-coded" doesn't mean the trans individual should have the right to access female spaces.

What JKR was describing there is what happens when theory meets reality which is: However much GC theory is justified in terms of behaviours being genderless that's not what people actually believe when the rubber meets the road in 'real life'. Our intuitions that are moulded by typical associations very much direct our behaviours hence 'very female-coded energy' / typical behaviours being associated with the concept of women.

While you may find JKR's admission a betrayal & counterproductive to 'the cause' you are in fact doing just that by pretending this reality doesn't exist. GC's need to grapple with the fact there's indeed an inconsistency between typical behaviours existing & how they think the world should be if they want to seriously make in roads against stereotyping.

I also disagree. Context matters. I'll happily refer to someone with their preferred pronouns if pronouns are necessary (they rarely are). I wouldn't say they are the sex that they aren't, though, and wouldn't agree that sex based services should be used because of a perceived identity.

I love it. We are all now not sane because this didn't go your way like you expected, did it OP?

Someone else has said it already I think, but if you can't convince terfnet on this, then you are not onto a winning argument. You are feeding into some of the narrative about us wanting transpeople not to exist anymore. This simply isn't true.

I’m gender critical, I don’t believe it’s possible to change sex and that sex based rights and spaces should be biological sex only. However I don’t hate trans people, I know some I quite like as people myself, being gender critical doesn’t mean dehumanising a whole cohort of people.

I’m sorry but why are you shocked that JKR isn’t judging a whole group on the actions of a minority? Isn’t that kind of the plot of Harry Potter? 😬😂

I rather disagree with you OP. I'm GC, I wouldn't call a man "she", but above all I'm a firm believer in letting people do whatever they want provided it doesn't infringe on other people.

It follows that if JKR feels that her want to be kind to a particular person is more important than the pressure she self-imposes by referring to that person as she, well, that's fully her choice. Just like it's my choice to tell a friend that her newborn baby is wonderfully pretty when the baby is perfectly ugly and I'm knowingly lying. I would draw the line at JKR's bringing her TIM friend into a female changing room OR demanding that others call him "her" because it would infringe on other women's rights, but there's no question of her doing that.

As she says in a reply, you do you and I'll do me.

I understand the arguments the op is making but I’m not going to police how people talk about their friends.

I think we actually need to hear more from these people. The people who understand that they haven't changed sex, understand that there's a major conflict of rights here and saying "nothing to see here" isn't going to address it, and just want to go about their lives in peace. Not to say that the person JK is referring to has all three of these things but I think the first dramatically raises the probability of the other two.

Oh OP, I pity you.

I don’t agree with you OP, which is fine. I’m in the camp where I’ll call people what they want, but don’t believe TW are women and don’t believe they should be in women’s spaces. I think that refusing to call someone what they want to be called gives ammunition.

When I saw the thread title, I thought the post was going to be about JKR saying something excessively harsh about trans people or a trans person -- the social media war on this issue is so intense and exhausting, especially for very high-profile people, that we can sometimes be driven towards a cruel caricature of our own position.

I was relieved and pleased to see that she had, in some people's view, erred in the opposite direction. It was a warm post and I hope that it can be part of a general warming as society starts to resile from the strange orthodoxy that trans women are women.

I'm sure that it used to be the case that calling a trans woman in your circle 'she' wasn't at all constructed as a belief that they were actually women, and wasn't policed as such. It was just a kind of in-group convention, part of the mores of a group.

Partly, it was one of the ways that a group positioned its shared attitudes, like wearing black clothes if you were a goth.

And partly, depending on the individuals concerned, it was done to avoid causing gratuitous upset to an individual. In that context (unlike the current context), 'being kind' was natural and harmless.

Obviously, activism began to exploit that kindness, spinning it into an obligation to believe falsehoods and to translate the mores of specific social circles into a universal policy obligation, binding on all individuals and organisations in every context.

And obviously, in that abusive situation we needed to withdraw from the polite pretences that were used to trap us.

But, in private circles and for individuals who are not compelling us, I would hope that, as the trans mania dies down, it will be, again, increasingly uncontroversial for some women to use 'she' for some men in some social contexts if they choose to do so.

Thinking of the 'pronouns are rohypnol' mantra, if you are in a bar where men abuse women by spiking their drinks, then you do everything you can to avoid accepting a possibly spiked drink. But that doesn't mean that, always and everywhere, you adopt the same level of mistrust. There is still the possibility of accepting a drink from a man that you know well, in a gathering of your friends.

I’m surprised at the ‘female-coded energy’. That’s not in line with what I thought JK’s views were. And I think it’s a harmful concept. So, yes, I’m disappointed.

What people negotiate and agree with their friends and family or most intimate contacts is a private matter, but what happens at a collective, public level is another matter.

What you often find is people who " know a trans person" or who have a family member who has 'transitioned' often have a tendency to extrapolate their own personal feelings to the level of public policy or state sanctioned action. They think " but my trans friend is lovely, the most gentle person you could ever meet" etc

JK Rowling, and everyone else, can hold two separate things together in her mind at the same time. It is possible to maintain and uphold the boundaries between individual desire or feeling, and the truth of common consensus and public policy.

No matter how lovely her friend is she understands that not all people with trans identities are sweet and harmless, and that males remain male, and that female only spaces exist for the dignity and privacy of female people when in public situations in which they may be vulnerable on account of their sex.

But it is true, isn't it, that some behaviours or vibes are socially coded as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. I'm sure we all have or have had a best gay male friend who we can relate to almost like one of our best female friends - because many gay men tend to have some of that feminine coded energy and sympathy. They 're still male, though....and in other ways we are more than aware of that fact.

This. I also could personally not use opposite sex pronouns for people generally because I subscribe to the Pronouns Are Rohypnol school of thought and it feels to me like going along with a damaging lie which makes me extremely uncomfortable.

But I refuse to fall out with other GC women or men who either think differently on that point or are acting differently in certain circumstances despite privately agreeing with me.

Partly because I myself started out not seeing the harm I now see in playing along with the nice people in order to be kind, and partly because you never know what kind of personal pressure people are under.

If one of my children insisted on me referring to them with opposite sex pronouns on pain of estrangement I would have to think very carefully about it, and my reasoning in that particular situation would be entirely about what was most in their best interest (me remaining in their lives and contributing to the lie or me quietly but lovingly holding the line of reality, possibly from afar).

We can continue to have discussions about the wisdom or otherwise of using 'preferred pronouns' and phrases like 'female-coded' this between us - that's all good and right - but we have to have a bit of patience with deviation from what any of us thinks is the ideal line to take.

I agree with this.

I won't use opposite sex pronouns. That's my personal line. However that does not mean I 'hate' people who believe they are trans. That's just a bad faith argument. Disappointing to see that particular TRA talking point on this thread.

I hear what you’re saying, OP, but I think we have to look at how we move forward in a way that doesn’t compromise protecting the rights of women and girls while also accepting that we can’t change the minds and beliefs of others, and don’t have rights to dictate how others live their lives.

My own views are pretty hardline - along the lines of there is no such thing as ‘being born in the wrong body’, and people who want to present as the other sex have got other issues going on - whether with their sexuality, sexual fetishes, poor mental health or ‘just’ deeply internalised struggles with societal concepts of femininity & masculinity.

However, I also acknowledge that I don’t rule the world. If Jimmy wants to wear a dress and call himself Jenny, he can go for it and I’ll happily keep my views to myself (as I do with all the other choices people make in life that I might disagree with, disapprove of or privately roll my eyes at).

What I object to is Jimmy saying that he is a woman and is entitled to the same rights as women and girls. That is what I am concerned about - not whether Jimmy is living his life in a way I find questionable, but whether he thinks his rights trump mine or compromise the safety and dignity of my daughter.

If I worked with Jimmy, I’d take him as I find him, be polite and respectful towards him and who knows, perhaps we could be friends? But if he started insisting he should be able to use the women’s loos or wanted to join the Menopause Network or whatever, he can get to fuck and I’ll gladly die on that hill. Similarly to JFK, I expect.

She's gone up in my estimation. Some of her tweets are unnecessarily confrontational and two wrongs don't make a right.

I'm not disappointed in JKR. So it turns out that she treats a trans personal friend in the same way that I treat my trans and NB friends. Good. She's still GC, and so am I.

I find it heartening that so many on this thread feel the same way.