The JK Rowling Controversy

[Left Coast]

JK Rowling, author of the famous Harry Potter series, has recently gotten herself in hot water over some comments she made on Twitter (where else?).

Replying to an online opinion piece titled, "Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate," Rowling wrote, "‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling

The online backlash against her has been harsh and swift. A summary of the situation can be read here:

'Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling's tweets blasted for being anti-transgender

She has not backed down from her comments, and has now written fairly lengthy reply on her blog:

J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues - J.K. Rowling

I have several thoughts about this whole thing:

1) Twitter is a toxic dumpster fire and society should abandon it as quickly as possible.

2) Reading through her entire piece, I find some areas where I agree with her and some where I don't. For one, anyone threatening her with violence or death obviously must be condemned. I also sympathize with the fact that she is a domestic violence survivor and that surely shapes part of her thinking here.

3) She's also right that women continue facing misogynistic backlash against the strides they have made in Western society, and are often shouted down with epithets whenever they dare speak up on behalf of their sex.

4) It's also true that sex (not gender) is biological. That doesn't mean it's 100% binary (intersex people exist), but to deny that the vast majority of folks are biologically either male or female, it seems to me is just putting one's head in the sand.

5) However, the fact that trans women don't have ovaries or XX chromosomes doesn't make them any less subject to the sexism or misogyny that any other woman faces.

6) Rowling is also just wrong about the alleged threat faced by women when societies allow trans people to use the public bathroom of their choice. There is simply no evidence I've seen that these policies result in more women being harassed, assaulted, etc. Such behaviors were illegal before, and they remain illegal when we give trans people the dignity to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. The truth is, trans people, particularly women, are disproportionately victims of violence, not perpetrators.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Nakosis]

Twitter is evil. Or maybe it's just the people that use it.

What does she care about her opinions being socially acceptable? She has her success/money. Perhaps success breeds contempt.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Someone as rich as Trump, supposedly rich, contempt for everyone.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

4) It's also true that sex (not gender) is biological. That doesn't mean it's 100% binary (intersex people exist), but to deny that the vast majority of folks are biologically either male or female, it seems to me is just putting one's head in the sand.

This point I feel is very important. If there were no biological basis for sex, I doubt gender dysphoria--that fundamental disconnect between the body sex and brain sex--could exist. If it wasnt biological, there wouldn't be a "male shape" or face to torment MtFs with. Breasts I dont think wpuld be as burdensome to FtMs. Personally, I think the older terms when I first started communicating with the trans community, terms like GG or genetic girl, where better to use, and kept it in the focus that it is the biological adpects that makes being trans so painful (amd thats before we add in how society mistreats us).
Personally, I think it's sexist thinking on the PC crowds part. Of course we have thise differences. Its a part of the spice and variety of life. Not even the blind can deny these differences. Saying there is no difference, its about like and about as bad as "color/race blindness" that refuses to acknowledge thise cultural and genetic variations as well.
In general I cant say I agree with anythi g else. Such as the restroom issue. People arent abusing it. Its not happening. Time to move on.

 

[Vouthon]

Twitter is a dumpster-fire of inhumane backbiting and generalised lack of decency for others. Yes.

But Rowling has also been 'subtly' and 'not-so-subtly' playing with the fire of transphobia on her social media channels for years now.

With this latest tweet, prior to her more emollient and heartfelt essay (which I still disagree with in substance but morally support her 100% so far as the misogyny, threats to her person and sexual abuse side of things are concerned, which is appalling and indefensible), the mask fell and she revealed herself to be utterly insensitive to the very grave discrimination that transgender people have to live with on a daily basis.

Her 'feminism' is sadly of the 'trans-exclusionary' British model - so-called "white feminism" as African-American women often rightly castigate it - which has failed to embrace the intersectionality and pluralism of American or continental European feminism. I fundamentally disagree with both the mindset and ideology.

One of the worst sentences in her article was this one: "I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge."

I found the above quite disturbing in its implications, really, if I have to be honest. A transperson doesn't "try" to transition like its a choice of whether or not to put a hat on. Its an essential gender identity that a person 'knows' to be true for them, even if it doesn't match up with their birth body. Its not about 'escaping' womanhood or manhood but rather expressing and asserting the womanhood and manhood that one already knows to be their true self.

Other than her insensitive remarks, her mistatement of the facts of the "Maya Forstater" case is another red herring for me.

The legal case made Forstater a cause celebre after JK Rowling tweeted her solidarity. JK Rowling wrongly informed her Twitter following that Ms Forstater was dismissed / lost her case for stating “sex is real”.

That was a gross misrepresentation of the rationale underpinning the judgment (based upon taking a single sentence out of context). Forstater in fact lost her case because the judge determined that it was a core element of her gender-critical belief system that she had the right to repeatedly misgender a transperson (i.e. harass them) on the basis of her beliefs. The judge ruled that this conviction that her beliefs entitled her to effectively harass were not legitimate grounds for deeming her dismissal unfair, as she had claimed under a "protected philosophical belief" ground.

In the UK, this simple legal principle led to a Twitter storm in which literally hundreds of thousands of gender-critical feminists tweeted #IStandwithMaya and alleged that UK law was "against free-speech" and "biology" (she also received tens of thousands of pounds in donations to launch an appeal of the judgment). It was a transphobic Twitter storm fanned by JK Rowling.

Next, Rowling described Magdalen Burns in kind terms. Here's how Magdalen Burns described trans people:

https://twitter.com/Carter_AndrewJ/status/1270787960686985221/photo/2

She swore at them, saying that they were "f-ing blackface actors, you aren't women, you're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women" and other gross insinuations.

This level of hate-speech reminds one of the homophobic slurs against gay men current during the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, when certain xenophobes implied that gay men were sexual 'perverts' or a threat to children. The same kind of horrendous, exclusionary language is now being directed by these "gender-critical feminists" at transwomen.

Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson were absolutely justified in calling JK Rowling out for this, in my opinion.

Of course, sex is biological unlike gender. But even sex is not as simple a concept to define as many think. You have chromosomal sex and phenotypic sex (internal and/or external physiognomic, behavioural and secondary sex characteristics) for a start. Then, we could have - or very well may not depending on the science - differently sexed brains with some evidence suggesting that males and females have dimorphic volumes of brain cortical gray and white matter.

For a majority of humans, that all lines up fairly nicely into a kind of neat "sexual dimorphism" or duality when all is said and done. I, for instance, am a genotypic, phenotypic and (presumably) neurotypic male whose gender identity is also masculine.

But for a large minority of human beings this is not and has never been the case. Every culture has people who don't confirm to the sex or gender binary.

There are people who are chromosomally male (XY) but due to complete androgen sensitivity are phenotypically and neurotypically female, as well as having a feminine gender identity post-puberty, who were born with vaginas, developed breasts and have all the secondary external characteristics of women.

Then you have "men" with Klinefelter syndrome who are phenotypically male but are actually XXY chromosomally, which means that genetically they aren't quite male or female because they have both the female genotype (XX) and contain the make one as well (XY). Some of these "men" develop a few of the secondary sex characteristics of women, despite having penises and testes.

Some studies suggest that transgender people - while genotypically and phenotypically male or female - have brains ("neurotypes") that are more closely sexed to their perceived gender identity.

Here's an example of the kind of peer-reviewed papers I'm talking about, this one from 2018:


Transgender brains are more like their desired gender from an early age

Brain activity and structure in transgender adolescents more closely resembles the typical activation patterns of their desired gender, according to new research. The findings suggest that differences in brain function may occur early in development and that brain imaging may be a useful tool for earlier identification of transgenderism in young people.

Dr Bakker says, "Although more research is needed, we now have evidence that sexual differentiation of the brain differs in young people with GD, as they show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender."​

And this one from earlier in the year (April 2019):

Sex differences in functional connectivity during fetal brain development - ScienceDirect

Sex-related differences in brain and behavior are apparent across the life course, but the exact set of processes that guide their emergence in utero remains a topic of vigorous scientific inquiry. Here, we evaluate sex and gestational age (GA)-related change in functional connectivity (FC) within and between brain wide networks....

We discovered both within and between network FC-GA associations that varied with sex. Specifically, associations between GA and posterior cingulate-temporal pole and fronto-cerebellar FC were observed in females only, whereas the association between GA and increased intracerebellar FC was stronger in males. These observations confirm that sexual dimorphism in functional brain systems emerges during human gestation.​

If studies like the above are right, the implication would be that whilst one's genotype sex is determined chromosomallly at conception, sexual dimorphism in the brain is a secondary process that occurs in utero (in the womb).

This means that gender dysphoria - the feeling that one's gender does not match up with one's physical sex - may be caused by the exposure of foetuses in utero to hormones or indeed foetal insensitivity to certain hormones while in the womb, and that the brains of transpeople neurochemically align with the structure and activation pattern of their 'acquired' gender, and not their natal sex.

I would invite JK Rowling to be more open-minded about such evidence but I truly think that she is an idealogue and likely much too deep into her brand of 'trans-exclusionary feminism' now to be reached on that level. She has picked her 'side' in the "TERF Wars" as she crassly calls them. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Left Coast]

Twitter is evil. Or maybe it's just the people that use it.

What does she care about her opinions being socially acceptable? She has her success/money. Perhaps success breeds contempt.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Someone as rich as Trump, supposedly rich, contempt for everyone.

Nakosis, quoting the Bible charitably?

What has RF done to you?

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I just do not understand the lack of self-awareness of so-called 'biological feminists' (read TERFs) going 'well actually being a woman is about your vagina, and we need to check everyone's dangly bits before deciding where they should be allowed to go.'

 

[Vouthon]

Twitter is evil. Or maybe it's just the people that use it.

What does she care about her opinions being socially acceptable? She has her success/money. Perhaps success breeds contempt.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Someone as rich as Trump, supposedly rich, contempt for everyone.

It's nice to see the preacher in you man

I direct you to @ADigitalArtist's signature ("Every billionaire is a moral failure") [BEST SIGNATURE EVER] and my past thread here:

‘It Is Utterly Impossible to Be Rich without Committing Injustice'

What you say is true!

 

[sun rise]

This point I feel is very important. If there were no biological basis for sex, I doubt gender dysphoria--that fundamental disconnect between the body sex and brain sex--could exist. If it wasnt biological, there wouldn't be a "male shape" or face to torment MtFs with. Breasts I dont think wpuld be as burdensome to FtMs. Personally, I think the older terms when I first started communicating with the trans community, terms like GG or genetic girl, where better to use, and kept it in the focus that it is the biological adpects that makes being trans so painful (amd thats before we add in how society mistreats us).
Personally, I think it's sexist thinking on the PC crowds part. Of course we have thise differences. Its a part of the spice and variety of life. Not even the blind can deny these differences. Saying there is no difference, its about like and about as bad as "color/race blindness" that refuses to acknowledge thise cultural and genetic variations as well.
In general I cant say I agree with anythi g else. Such as the restroom issue. People arent abusing it. Its not happening. Time to move on.

For obvious reasons your comment counts more with me not that I necessarily agree with 100% of what you wrote.

I just finished her post and believe I understand her perspective. She's being attacked by fanatics as bad as any other group of fanatics. Specifically this is one of the parts of the post that spoke to me.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the *****’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

If I were a woman who had been raped and found a human with a male body in the restroom with me, how could I feel anything else than threatened or even terrified. And knowing that she had been in an abusive marriage makes her reaction to verbal abuse even more worthy of compassion.

If I were a woman who had been put down because of my sex, If I were reduced to a body by calling me ‘menstruators’ or ‘people with vulvas’, I'd feel degraded that my humanity, mind and feelings, had been dissed by those who reduced me to a body.

 

[Revoltingest]

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Given the choice, I'd prefer being filthy rich over poverty.
I'll take my chances with punishment by the Christian god.
(Wealth would be the least of my sins.)

 

[shunyadragon]

Definition of a Twit - A person with an attention span of 40 characters. They now allow 80, but it is beyond their attention span. Tweet tweet.

I will probably be the last person earth to never use Twitter.

 

[Vouthon]

If I were a woman who had been raped and found a human with a male body in the restroom with me, how could I feel anything else than threatened or even terrified. And knowing that she had been in an abusive marriage makes her reaction to verbal abuse even more worthy of compassion.

If I were a woman who had been put down because of my sex, If I were reduced to a body by calling me ‘menstruators’ or ‘people with vulvas’, I'd feel degraded that my humanity, mind and feelings, had been dissed by those who reduced me to a body.

There were moving, heartfelt and powerful sections of her article.

It still does not justify, however, words and actions on her part that many people deem to be xenophobic towards transpeople. Two wrongs do not make a right.

What she went through is horrendous, but so is the vile abuse and discrimination that transpeople suffer across the world today.

"Through her own legitimate experiences of violence, she's evoked the threat of gender-based violence against women in order to connect it to fear of trans people," Nim Ralph, a 34-year-old trans activist, told CNN.

 

[Nakosis]

Given the choice, I'd prefer being filthy rich over poverty.
I'll take my chances with punishment by the Christian god.
(Wealth would be the least of my sins.)

Heathen!

I suspect it'd be hard for me to, if I was successful, place much regard in the opinion of naysayers.

If I was really rich, I'd spend my days tweeting the dumbest crap simply so I could annoy people.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

For obvious reasons your comment counts more with me not that I necessarily agree with 100% of what you wrote.

I just finished her post and believe I understand her perspective. She's being attacked by fanatics as bad as any other group of fanatics. Specifically this is one of the parts of the post that spoke to me.



If I were a woman who had been raped and found a human with a male body in the restroom with me, how could I feel anything else than threatened or even terrified. And knowing that she had been in an abusive marriage makes her reaction to verbal abuse even more worthy of compassion.

If I were a woman who had been put down because of my sex, If I were reduced to a body by calling me ‘menstruators’ or ‘people with vulvas’, I'd feel degraded that my humanity, mind and feelings, had been dissed by those who reduced me to a body.

*raises hand* Survivor here. Totally fine with non-segregated bathrooms. And I don't see the point of keeping transwomen out of female bathrooms any more than keeping transmen in women's bathrooms. Or keeping lesbians out of womens restrooms or gay men out of men's restrooms for the same reason.

And menstrators is a dumb term but it was coined by a healthcare association trying to navigate through inclusive language around the fact that not every woman menstrates, and I'm not just talking about transwomen, plenty of cis women don't either (me included.) So TERFs certainly aren't helping by reducing women to vulva and menstrators either.

 

[SomeRandom]

Rowling has been “cancelled” for like years due to her transphobic tweets.
Incidentally the reaction from the HP fandom (the first time this happened) was rather interesting to watch. A bunch of kids meeting their hero for the first time and leaving with mixed feelings at best. It also tested the whole “death of the author” philosophy. I mean it’s one thing to be like, “oh yeah I love reading Dickens. But what a jag off he was, amirite?”
But to have to try to do that with someone still living, without the benefit of living in a “less enlightened time” to excuse their opinions was certainly a deeply heated debate for days among the fans lol

 

[Vouthon]

Rowling has been “cancelled” for like years due to her transphobic tweets.
Incidentally the reaction from the HP fandom (the first time this happened) was rather interesting to watch. A bunch of kids meeting their hero for the first time and leaving with mixed feelings at best. It also tested the whole “death of the author” philosophy. I mean it’s one thing to be like, “oh yeah I love reading Dickens. But what a jag off he was, amirite?”
But to have to try to that with someone still living, without the benefit of living in a “less enlightened time” to excuse their opinions was certainly a deeply heated debate for days among the fans lol

Touché.

I definetely feel, on a personal level, like I've lost a part of my childhood over the last couple of years.

Transphobia, I have to say, is not the only negative stance she has taken in the face of widespread criticism. She has also misappropriated and caricatured Native American culture.

Britain, though, is not a very hospitable place for transpeople in general. We have a deep-seated cultural problem with this prejudice.

Indeed, in 2017 a transwomen was granted asylum in New Zealand and was not returned to the UK out of concern for her safety and well-being:

British transgender woman given residency in 'safer' New Zealand

Tribunal says it would be ‘unduly harsh’ to force her to return to the UK after living discrimination-free in her adopted country

​

Also, on this "single-sex spaces" issue: repeated studies, in other countries where GRA reform has already been implemented years ago, demonstrate that this is also greatly alarmist:

Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Laws in Public Accommodations: a Review of Evidence Regarding Safety and Privacy in Public Restrooms, Locker Rooms, and Changing Rooms

Indeed, research undertaken by The Guardian found that: “there was no evidence of the legislation leading to individuals – in particular teenagers – being pressured to undertake medical transition, or men falsely declaring themselves female in order to invade women-only spaces, as some feminist activists have feared.”

“Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland have become trans-inclusive without any problems occurring, demonstrating that improving trans equality is fully compatible with improving women’s equality, and avoided misunderstandings about legal reform,” James Morton, manager of the Scottish Trans Alliance told the newspaper.

So, the arguments that JK Rowling is advancing are spurious so far as the actual empirical evidence is concerned.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Rowling has been “cancelled” for like years due to her transphobic tweets.
Incidentally the reaction from the HP fandom (the first time this happened) was rather interesting to watch. A bunch of kids meeting their hero for the first time and leaving with mixed feelings at best. It also tested the whole “death of the author” philosophy. I mean it’s one thing to be like, “oh yeah I love reading Dickens. But what a jag off he was, amirite?”
But to have to try to do that with someone still living, without the benefit of living in a “less enlightened time” to excuse their opinions was certainly a deeply heated debate for days among the fans lol

Orson Scott Card / Ender's Game all over again.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

1) Twitter is a toxic dumpster fire and society should abandon it as quickly as possible.

Twitter is evil. Or maybe it's just the people that use it.

What does she care about her opinions being socially acceptable? She has her success/money. Perhaps success breeds contempt.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Someone as rich as Trump, supposedly rich, contempt for everyone.

We humans are not evolved to deal with the sorts of input we're getting now. We know instinctively how to read communications from people standing in front of us. We are utterly impotent against plausible, or even outrageous, statements from people whose faces we cannot see, whose voices we cannot hear.

Social media may well be our worst invention ever...much worse than that little thingy that whomped Hiroshima.

 

[Ponder This]

JK Rowling, author of the famous Harry Potter series, has recently gotten herself in hot water over some comments she made on Twitter (where else?).

Replying to an online opinion piece titled, "Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate," Rowling wrote, "‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling

The online backlash against her has been harsh and swift. A summary of the situation can be read here:

'Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling's tweets blasted for being anti-transgender

She has not backed down from her comments, and has now written fairly lengthy reply on her blog:

J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues - J.K. Rowling

I have several thoughts about this whole thing:

1) Twitter is a toxic dumpster fire and society should abandon it as quickly as possible.

2) Reading through her entire piece, I find some areas where I agree with her and some where I don't. For one, anyone threatening her with violence or death obviously must be condemned. I also sympathize with the fact that she is a domestic violence survivor and that surely shapes part of her thinking here.

3) She's also right that women continue facing misogynistic backlash against the strides they have made in Western society, and are often shouted down with epithets whenever they dare speak up on behalf of their sex.

4) It's also true that sex (not gender) is biological. That doesn't mean it's 100% binary (intersex people exist), but to deny that the vast majority of folks are biologically either male or female, it seems to me is just putting one's head in the sand.

5) However, the fact that trans women don't have ovaries or XX chromosomes doesn't make them any less subject to the sexism or misogyny that any other woman faces.

6) Rowling is also just wrong about the alleged threat faced by women when societies allow trans people to use the public bathroom of their choice. There is simply no evidence I've seen that these policies result in more women being harassed, assaulted, etc. Such behaviors were illegal before, and they remain illegal when we give trans people the dignity to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. The truth is, trans people, particularly women, are disproportionately victims of violence, not perpetrators.

What are your thoughts?

I think that, in this case, gender-based restrooms is a social convention, possibly not suitable to regulation by law.
But it is acceptable for people to show their social disapproval of a breach of social norms - and that includes disapproving of trans-people using a restroom opposite to their true genetic disposition.
So, if a man uses a woman's restroom or a woman uses a man's restroom... I think it's not necessarily appropriate to have a law preventing that.

On the other hand, it is appropriate to have laws governing the harassment of women (or men). And, in that regard, it doesn't matter what gender you think you are.
So if women do experience gender-based harassment in the restroom (or anywhere else), then it may be appropriate to punish that behavior.
However, I think you have to be very clear on what constitutes harassment. You can't have a vague definition and you can't have something that amounts to, "I just don't like men" or "I just don't like trans-people". That's not good enough.

Consider the case of a room where women undress, like say a locker room, it is in appropriate to have men also undressing. Society understands that for biological reasons it is inappropriate. So a man who sneaks into the women's locker room to spy on bathing women - this is a classic story btw, there's a whole literature practically dedicated to this very topic. It's a clear example of behavior that deserves some sort of punishment. And so you say, well, a trans-person is genetically a man, but he's undergone some sort of surgery and what not and now he has been assigned a female gender. Is that good enough? Because, generally-speaking, a man who disguises himself as a woman for the purpose of gaining access to women's locker room... that's not acceptable behavior and it deserves punishment. And, biologically, the trans-person's genetics haven't changed.

So I think that society will continue to go around in circles on this topic. I think women will continue to feel uncomfortable with trans-people seeing them undress and ask why they can't have a space restricted to (genetically) women. I think men also are going to continue to want to have socially accommodated man-space. And I think that the biological impulses that drive these divisions between men and women will continue to drive the social desire for man-free and woman-free zones.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I think that, in this case, gender-based restrooms is a social convention, possibly not suitable to regulation by law.
But it is acceptable for people to show their social disapproval of a breach of social norms - and that includes disapproving of trans-people using a restroom opposite to their true genetic disposition.
So, if a man uses a woman's restroom or a woman uses a man's restroom... I think it's not necessarily appropriate to have a law preventing that.

On the other hand, it is appropriate to have laws governing the harassment of women (or men). And, in that regard, it doesn't matter what gender you think you are.
So if women do experience gender-based harassment in the restroom (or anywhere else), then it may be appropriate to punish that behavior.
However, I think you have to be very clear on what constitutes harassment. You can't have a vague definition and you can't have something that amounts to, "I just don't like men" or "I just don't like trans-people". That's not good enough.

Consider the case of a room where women undress, like say a locker room, it is in appropriate to have men also undressing. Society understands that for biological reasons it is inappropriate. So a man who sneaks into the women's locker room to spy on bathing women - this is a classic story btw, there's a whole literature practically dedicated to this very topic. It's a clear example of behavior that deserves some sort of punishment. And so you say, well, a trans-person is genetically a man, but he's undergone some sort of surgery and what not and now he has been assigned a female gender. Is that good enough? Because, generally-speaking, a man who disguises himself as a woman for the purpose of gaining access to women's locker room... that's not acceptable behavior and it deserves punishment. And, biologically, the trans-person's genetics haven't changed.

So I think that society will continue to go around in circles on this topic. I think women will continue to feel uncomfortable with trans-people seeing them undress and ask why they can't have a space restricted to (genetically) women. I think men also are going to continue to want to have socially accommodated man-space. And I think that the biological impulses that drive these divisions between men and women will continue to drive the social desire for man-free and woman-free zones.

Just to be clear, keeping segregated bathrooms by genetics is not only entirely unenforceable, but it's not practical either. I know self described butch lesbians who had no problems, nobody batted an eye, before this controversy, and now they're being side-eyed because people assume they're transwomen and thus suddenly more inherantly dangerous which is not only insultingly presumptive but entirely inaccurate.
Not to mention that most people wouldn't recognize transmen as women so forcing people who look like this:

Into women's bathrooms based on their birth sex is counterproductive to the pearl-clutching they're trying to maintain.

But more importantly, treating every man as a potential assailant is not a healthy attitude to have, and continuing the weird social hangups about nudity only reinforces creepy behavior as forbidden fruit. Plenty of nations arent nearly so prudish as the US about things like lockers and bathrooms and, surprise surprise, are not hotbeds of assault.

 

[Brickjectivity]

1) Twitter is a toxic dumpster fire and society should abandon it as quickly as possible.

2) Reading through her entire piece, I find some areas where I agree with her and some where I don't. For one, anyone threatening her with violence or death obviously must be condemned. I also sympathize with the fact that she is a domestic violence survivor and that surely shapes part of her thinking here.

3) She's also right that women continue facing misogynistic backlash against the strides they have made in Western society, and are often shouted down with epithets whenever they dare speak up on behalf of their sex.

4) It's also true that sex (not gender) is biological. That doesn't mean it's 100% binary (intersex people exist), but to deny that the vast majority of folks are biologically either male or female, it seems to me is just putting one's head in the sand.

5) However, the fact that trans women don't have ovaries or XX chromosomes doesn't make them any less subject to the sexism or misogyny that any other woman faces.

6) Rowling is also just wrong about the alleged threat faced by women when societies allow trans people to use the public bathroom of their choice. There is simply no evidence I've seen that these policies result in more women being harassed, assaulted, etc. Such behaviors were illegal before, and they remain illegal when we give trans people the dignity to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. The truth is, trans people, particularly women, are disproportionately victims of violence, not perpetrators.

1. I think its about collecting data to sell and to parse and so forth, so the goal is merely to keep people signed up for Twitter thus keeping the Twitter tracking cookies installed on your browser. I think they probably just go for maximum data collection. Its mostly software with relatively little human oversight, so yes its a dumpster fire. It does provide a login service and can keep you informed about certain things, depending upon whom one follows.

2. She said in her reply "...I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people,..." This seems very rational. By not overreacting she embarrasses her critics, too.

3. Its hard to protest misogyny while roasting a children's fiction author for an unintended slight.

4. no comment

5. no comment

6. At least Rowling has gone to the effort of forming an opinion not based on panicky scared mom feelings. Rowling says "Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair...," but really what they need to grow is a heart. Its not fear but a lack of concern. It doesn't affect them personally, so they don't care either way. Therefore they just want to be left alone. JK Rowling has gone far beyond that and has made an effort to understand. Transgender people aren't more dangerous and straight people as far as I know, but its hard to care. What is the minimum that I need to do so that I'm never bothered with these kinds of questions ever again? That's what these people in positions of power are asking.