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 really wouldn’t hold your breath.

This is a problem I seem to have. I’ve recently started working with a man who says he’s a woman, so I have to “lie” about the language I use around him at work. It’s stressful!

It is.

Because they don't understand the importance of having a female reproductive system and how it shapes the experience of being a woman

when I ask 'but what about having the kind of body that can get pregnant?' to trans advocates on here I tend to get a blank response. They're often mystified about why I even brought it up.

I think a man getting boobs and then considering himself to be interchangeable with women tells you an awful lot about that man.

I would be shocked if someone who opined at length about an essay hadn’t actually read it. SHOCKED I tell you.

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

Absolutely, @Pingponghavoc.

'Random guesses' - its amazing how the human race has managed to persist at all, really.

Because words mean different things in trans circles than they do anywhere else. What’s more, whereas on this side of the Reality Alps there is a general consensus on the meanings of words and the rules of grammar, on the trans-Alpine side words mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean and grammar is equally personal.

Who knows what woman, violence, transphobia mean in trans-Reality today, and what they will mean tomorrow.

Reality Alps

<wanders off singing Edelweiss>

Good example of people saying sex changes and how they’re trying to change what words mean because they’re losing the debate:

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderau/s/1UAXmyFzi8

I have been looking at the website of the very influential TENI Transgender Equality Network Ireland because I wanted to see if they were still using WPATH as their authority for healthcare etc [they were still citing WPATH standards of care a year after the revelations that exposed WPATH for what it is].

I came across their definition of transphobia:
The fear, dislike or hatred of people who are trans or are perceived to challenge
conventional gender categories or ‘norms’. Transphobia can result in individual and institutional discrimination, prejudice and violence against trans and gender variant people.
Helpful Terms and Definitions – TENI

So transphobia covers 'people who ...are perceived to challenge
conventional gender categories or ‘norms’.

Hey that's us!
Gender critical feminists 'challenge conventional gender categories or ‘norms’.' bigtime, that's what makes us 'gender critical'!

So under their definition, anyone expressing a fear, dislike or hatred of GC feminists is being transphobic...😏

The closer you look at transgenderism, the more you find that there's no 'there' there - a void at the centre, where there should be facts, reason and logic.

Love the use of Reality Alps. One side has a peak and the other is a slippery slope.

Blatantly dishonest quotations, which I suppose is emblematic of the overall topic of this thread.

JKR hasn't "denied that trans people were killed during the Holocaust" - that would be wrong, since a handful were. What she HAS denied (and a German court which had to deal with a similar dispute a couple of years ago confirms) is that trans people were targeted as such, rather than fell victim to the very real, large-scale Nazi persecution of homosexual men.

She has also never claimed Imane Khelif is trans, that would be an idiotic assertion. By the preponderance of evidence Khelif suffers from the same genetic condition as does, documentedly, Caster Semenya: 46XY 5ARD, a male DSD causing malformation of the external genitals but with normal male puberty due to functional internal testes. That the Algerian government has turned Khelif into a national symbol is neither here nor there, and incidentally rather typical of the abuse of sports in the cause of politics.

It's the same people going on about "Sex Mattress". Feminism indeed.

I think India Willoughby imagined hed get TV work as a trans commentator, being able to control the narrative not only about what is a woman, but also what is a transwoman.

He managed to lose all of his media work. Not because of transphobia but because of his personality.

He then had no choice but to pivot to be an influencer of sorts. I think he is resentful of the commentators who still work on TV, especially the women.

As a result hes switched from knowing why TW cant play in women's sports to believing he is female. I dont know if he believes anything he says, but hes not going to get anywhere by being 'moderate' and he needs to hurt women by claiming our biology can be made in a clinic and with a prescription.

Its not an usual path. I think men aren't even aware of women perspective, and assume that everyone will be as impressed with their transition as they are. Its a shock to the system when they arent seen as special. It used to happen here all of the time - a man will post claiming to be aware of a distinction, but get angry when women have their own boundaries.

The ONE thing that would prove that men like India Willoughby are women is having the ability to become pregnant and give birth. Obviously they can’t as they are MEN!

That poster is embarrassingly out of touch with what most people think. I haven’t seen the same fake news about Khelif recently anywhere other than Reddit.

TransAnnoyed has posted this opinion about Khelif previously on threads.

”Read what she said about Imane Khelif, a young Muslim woman in whose country it's illegal to be trans. Look at how she publicly treated her, based upon little more than rumours and Khelif's appearance.”

“Khelif is a massive inspiration and fantastic female role-model for young girls in Algeria. They love her for that.”

As others have pointed out, nowhere has JK Rowling said this male athlete was ‘transgender’.

However, that a parent cannot recognise the inherent misogyny in a male athlete being positioned as a ‘role model’ for girls it is concerning. It is fucking alarming when that male athlete is a boxer who was wrongly given any opportunity to punch female athletes.

That it was due to an error made by medical staff at his birth, that he was told about yet still felt justified in continuing to compete as a female athlete and punch female athletes is most certainly not to be celebrated. And yet, here we are. …

A male athlete being celebrated as a female role model for girls.

What harmful stereotypes? Can you illustrate this assertion with any actual quotes? Saying things like (I am not quoting but generalising) "men are statistically more likely to be violent than women so it is ok for women's shelters to exclude all men to keep women safe" isn't a harmful stereotype it is using known actual facts to identify ways to reduce risk - any particular male person being excluded from such a place because of being male, and is not being stereotyped or accused of being violent/dangerous.

I have certainly seen people (not JKR) make nasty stereotyped assertions about transwomen eg "All transwomen are mentally disturbed narcissists who get a perverted thrill from invading women's privacy" - which isn't true of all transwomen and is a stereotype just as much as "all girls like pink and enjoy ballet" is a stereotype of girls. What stereotypes have you seen from JKR?

Gender is real, for those who experience it. It's not true that everyone has one and the lie that everyone does is harmful. It is not the basis for any provision of services where it is necessary to divide people into male and female for reasons of dignity, privacy, decency or safety.

As for the scientific evidence for what gender is, there have been so many potential research projects that were cancelled and their proposed lead scientist punished for even formulating the question when genuine rigorous scientific enquiry into the topic was considered, and so many studies without rigorous elimination of bias, based on assumptions that beg the question, that generalise from tiny samples, that exclude inconvenient results and that totally fail to hold to basic principles of scientific endeavours, that the evidence base is pretty weak, and built on a shaky house-of-cards. Genuine scientists will be open to convincing evidence - that is what science is - but every study where I've actually been able to examine the real results (rather than just reading the credulous interpretation from a pop-science journalist who brushes over the data to get the headline) is guilty of such monumental shortcomings in failing to measure and correct for other potential comorbidities and influencing factors that they are only taken as "evidence" by people who are already "of the faith" and that is not real science. Academia has totally failed to eliminate ideology from these enquiries and it will be a long haul before that can be reset. I don't deny that there might well be very real causes of gender identification - but by far the greatest is sexist assumptions about what traits indicate femaleness and what traits indicate maleness. Questioning such faulty research is not transphobia.

Gender is as real as religion. Some people believe, some people do not. Nobody has the right to impose their beliefs upon others.

Gender is as real as personality. Personality is perceived differently by subject and observers. Personality can change with experience and with life stage.

Gender is as real as stereotypes. Nothing wrong with a stereotype - as long as it is not imposed upon others. Stereotypes change over time and vary between cultures.

None of these things can be measured empirically. Data can be gathered on who ticks what boxes, who enforces what upon whom. What are the units of measurements of an abstract noun? What are the linear dimensions of gender? What is the speed of a stereotype? How many Newtons of force does personality exert? What is the half-life of religion?

Gender is real
At current count there's about 127 'genders', humans have been around for 300, 000 years, even if we just start at the last 10 - 12,000 years ago, if any of these genders existed they would have come to the fore millennia ago.
The fact that they have only now come into being is proof that they are manufactured by the modern day, and just because we can invent them doesn't mean they exist in reality.
They only exist in imagination, therefore Gender is Not Real.

Ive always thought it odd that a movement that has the imagination to create and name lots of genders couldn't think of a new name for trans people, they just opted for man and woman, sometimes with trans in front.

Gender is infinite and not mountable, because it isnt a definite category.

Lots of words occur to me to describe this aspect: acquisitive, appropriative, invasive, coercive, paternalistic, misogynistic.

But then I have a vocabulary of real words. I don’t just appropriate commonly understood words and coerce people to use my interpretation of them.

She repeatedly called Khelif a man who enjoyed hitting women.

That put Khelif in grave danger because being trans is de factor criminalised in Algeria.

Khelif is a cis woman, and you don't know her medical details.

Do you support those comments then? They were widely viewed as racist for a reason.

Trans people were specifically targeted, and very early on: in May 1933, the Institute For Sexual Sciences run by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld was ransacked, his books on transgender subjects publicly burned - and the tiny trans community was then ruthlessly, systematically attacked. Because they were trans, not because of their sexual orientation.

History is right there, and pretending it isn't is denial.

That is exactly what Khelif is, a man whose sport involves hitting women. There were independent tests carried in two different labs in India, which clearly showed that Khelif has XY chromosomes.
None of us have said that Kehlif is trans, he has a male DSD.