Why do some people view JK Rowling as transphobic?

[Backwardsbinn]

Where do people get the idea that JK Rowling is transphobic from? Where? I’m having this argument with an acquaintance who tells me she’s the most transphobic person on earth but cannot point to one single thing that she’s done or said that’s transphobic. Is this the widest held totally bullshit view ever?

I'm not being funny, which bit of that is supposed to be the stereotype?

These are the direct quotes previously posted.

“The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge, “ she writes. “If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

“out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.”

“When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman—and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones—then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”

These are in the middle of a load of guff about why these quotes are transphobic. Just interpretations rather than what she actually said.

"In an attempt to demonstrate her understanding of where transgender people are coming from, Rowling even says she too might have considered transitioning had the option been available to her as a teenager. “The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge, “ she writes. “If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

Seriously, which bit? This is Rowling recounting personal experience. Is it the bit where she says 'community and sympathy online'? Is that the stereotype, that the trans community is sympathetic to fellow trans people?

The quotes don’t even demonstrate “harmful use of stereotypes” let alone inferring transphobia from that.

But I’m sure Northernlightsss can clear it all up for everyone.

I’m with you. Can’t see the stereotype here. I mean the 4 girls I know who ‘transitioned’ were all autistic and were 100% trying to escape female puberty. All but one are now your average young woman, not dressing in a female manner but have accepted that they don’t have to display female stereotypes of hair / nails to be female. Is my ‘lived experience’ a stereotype?

I must just need enlightening from someone cleverer. Which parts of these statements are stereotypes? Someone explain to me like I'm five years old.

Unless of course she’s talking 100% shite???

And of course, what isn’t there tells you much more than what is.

Immediately before

”The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition.”

And for some reason a line removed.

“The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online…”

Looks a bit different, doesn’t it?

If any of those quotes were actually transphobic, they wouldn’t need an explanation as to why they are transphobic. Anyone reading them without the rest of the guff, will be scratching their head as to what the issue is.

Of course there are sexist cultural expectations for each birth sex. A female child who happens to enjoy wearing her hair long and in braids and likes ballet and ponies gets no comments or raised eyebrows. If she likes wearing her hair short and playing with lego and trains people will comment. Of course this is fine, does not mean she is "trans". You are doing a great job as a mum protecting your DD from the sexist cultural expectations of her birth sex.

People with trans identities exist, are real people and worthy of dignity protection. I do not have to believe that they are "actually" a member of the opposite sex to uphold their human rights. I can disagree with them fundamentally on a range of topics yet still want anti-discrimination laws to protect them. Among the beliefs that I fundamentally disagree with is, like you, the idea that them liking the things that within conformity to cultural expectations of sex, they preferred the things of the opposite sex as a child was in some way "evidence" that they had a trans identity from that early age. This doesn't rationally make sense because quite obviously the same is true for a great many people who don't have a trans identity but that is irrelevant to this thread. Children should absolutely be protected from the ideological concept that diverging from the cultural expectations for their birth sex makes them "actually" a member of the opposite sex. Nevertheless, some tiny number of them will go on to eventually develop a trans identity. That's a separate issue from ensuring that the people who did develop a trans identity - whether or not that turns out to have an identifiable "cause" - get protected from discrimination.

A cynic might think @Northernlightsss had never read the essay.

I'm totally open to anyone explaining what in those statements is stereotyping.

I am happy to try and understand from the other point of view.

yup, there is real and extremely unpleasant transphobia to be found online, it’s just one of the many reasons I don’t do any other social media than mumsnet

having seen real transphobia I can confirm that none of the quotes or even the interpretations posted on this thread are transphobia

What? TRA’s cherry picking? Never!

I don't think there is such a thing 'transphobia', perhaps @Northernlightsss could explain why they think the quote they're using to show JKR is 'transphobic', is 'transphobia', so that I might be persuaded to change my mind about there being no such thing as 'transphobia'.

“The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge, “ she writes. “If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

Perhaps they could also explain why the article they're referencing took out this bit as well.

“The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online…”

Enquiring minds want to know. 🤔

A less credulous person than Northern might wonder why the writer didn’t even give any indication that words had been removed from the middle of a quote. That’s standard practice.

What passes for transphobia in trans circles, doesn't anywhere else.

To TRA, just suggesting trans is a choice or is a contagion is tranaphobic. Therefore women who say they could have been trans if they were young today are transphobic. Everyone else sees it as compassion or empathy.

Another issue this empathy highlights is that trans is a phase that will pass. Its telling children they will feel differently about their bodies as the grow up.

Adult men, who transition late in lives, are telling children they are lucky to know so young. That they didn't have the words for it themselves and had to live as men for a long time and now do not pass.

Women are telling children that these men are not like them. Men are telling children that they are and anything else is transphobic.

@Pingponghavoc

To TRA, just suggesting trans is a choice or is a contagion is tranaphobic. Therefore women who say they could have been trans if they were young today are transphobic. Everyone else sees it as compassion or empathy.

Yes, I think that was what the author was trying to suggest. The way they cherrypicked and edited what they quoted was clearly designed to claim that JFK essentially said “I felt a bit like a boy, so if I’d had the internet I’d have transitioned. Doesn’t that show what bollocks it is”. Which would still be an opinion. However she doesn’t say that. She recognises the struggles of young transmen. She references them and she relates them to her own. It’s a particularly compassionate part of the essay.

(and also I’m still not sure where the stereotype is).

'Transphobia' is manufactured outrage over anything they 'perceive' to be invalidating them. Just like the muppet at the ET a few weeks back who wanted to shut down SEEN, wanted them banned for discussing Invisible Women, a book he had clearly had not read, and objected to the children's book My Body because it encouraged children to accept themselves for what they were.

Therefore I maintain my stance that there is no such thing as 'transphobia'.

gender is also real that has very definite and measurable materially real causes and consequences as in biological (hormonal, genetic, evolutionary) & environmental influences.

I'm interested in the science backing this statement up. My degree in Anatomy from the University of Edinburgh (clang) is a bit long in the tooth now and I'm not and have never been a working scientist. There are things that are known now that weren't known back in the 90s, and things that were known then but that we/I didn't study.

So there's no reason for me to believe I'm fully informed of the current science underlying the statement above. However there is good enough reason for optimism that I could read and understand the journal papers, meta analyses or whatever form in which the information is availble.

I just look at the meaningless word salad gibberish from some of the loftiest academician institutions in the world that have recently found to stand up to zero scrutiny and challenge any sort of unscientific notion based on sociology now. The idea that ‘gender is real’ sits pretty high up that list. In what way is it ‘real’ and something that can be differentiated from crass, regressive stereotypes?

Im not accepting people’s statements that anything is ‘real’ without proof these days. Too many blind eyes have been turned to so much nonsense of late for me to do that.

I think the stereotype is in suggesting that children are not the same as men.

She speaks to children with empathy, and says she was once like them.

She can't say the same about the men because what woman can understand an adult male transitioner? No woman can ever be in that situation.

The stereotype is that the motivations of adult men and children are different. And what that difference is.

If TRA express this directly, it would highlight this to everyone, proving JKR point. Who are the adult men who could prove JKR wrong? Blair White, Eddie izzard, India Willoughby, Debbie Hayton? They are all men clearly motivated by issues children cannot be.

There's nothing in those quotes that comes even remotely close to backing up your points though, howse that for logic?

Before we can comment on whether gender is 'real' or not, we'd have to have a functional definition of it.

What is gender?

The question has been asked many times before and I have never seen an answer that is not subjective/conjectural.

Yep. We've seen it time and time again.

Trans identified men, including some who have posted on this site, are constantly talking about how their ingestion of cross sex hormones, their extreme body modifications and overall adoption of female social sex stereotypes, actually makes them the opposite sex. There was also that big- jawed lawyer on Channel 4, who complained about the Supreme Court decision saying that every 'cell in his body has become feminised', so because of that, he shouldn't be excluded from female spaces.

I remember reading a comment from a self proclaimed "transsexual woman" activist, on a substack article regarding the paused puberty trials, who asserted multiple times that sex is mutable because children who are given exogenous cross sex hormones early enough, will grow up to be the opposite sex. Here's part of their comment: "An MtF ends up a sterile female, from molecular biology up to phenotype. For example."

During the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal, the trans-identified male doctor Theodore "Beth" Upton, described himself as a "biological woman" who would impose himself on female patients in the event that they requested a female doctor for intimate care.

Here's an excellent article with multiple examples of trans-identified men, including prominent activists, describing themselves as "biological women" and "female", including the fragrant India Willoughby.
https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying

This quote is really apt:
"Is it really true that “no one's denying the reality of biological sex”? There seems to be a lot of people doing that thing that "no one" is doing"