Ms Rowling: insightful critic of gender policy or myopic [insult]

[Pinball1970]

One part that bothers me is that the general public will not bother looking into the details.
After the Brexit referendum some people thought that black, non white people had to leave the UK so there was a lot of racist attacks.
That is how stupid people can be.

Now the stupid people will be saying there are no trans people, they said it in court.

Especially since Trump also recently declared two sexes/genders only. The trans community will have taken a nose dive in confidence, thinking they are really are outcasts, outsiders both side of the pond and leaders either side support suppressing them. One in 200, global threat will alarming suicide risk.

Womens rights won out, great, they fought hard for that against us (horrible men) so now they need to engage with this group.
Find a way forward.

 

[TheVat]

EXCERPTS: Trans women say that they are women because they feel female—that, as some put it, they have women’s brains in men’s bodies. Radical feminists reject the notion of a “female brain.” They believe that if women think and act differently from men it’s because society forces them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lierre Keith, a speaker at Radfems Respond, femininity is “ritualized submission.”

In this view, gender is less an identity than a caste position. Anyone born a man retains male privilege in society; even if he chooses to live as a woman—and accept a correspondingly subordinate social position—the fact that he has a choice means that he can never understand what being a woman is really like.

Thanks, your whole post provided some clarification. While I may question some of the certainties Keith et al expressed above, I can at least see how they might view biological sex in terms of visible markers to those who would seek to force certain social roles and rituals. Until there is some Marx-ish omega point (like the peaceful small collectives at the end of the rainbow of prole dictatorship) where physical reproductive markers don't matter to any power structure, then yes, being sexually female will imply a shared experience contra patriarchs. At this point, however, I can't make the leap to concluding that a trans woman could never understand what being a woman is like. That IS a radical assertion about the limits of understanding and what understanding requires.

 

[parmalee]

Thanks, your whole post provided some clarification. While I may question some of the certainties Keith et al expressed above, I can at least see how they might view biological sex in terms of visible markers to those who would seek to force certain social roles and rituals. Until there is some Marx-ish omega point (like the peaceful small collectives at the end of the rainbow of prole dictatorship) where physical reproductive markers don't matter to any power structure, then yes, being sexually female will imply a shared experience contra patriarchs. At this point, however, I can't make the leap to concluding that a trans woman could never understand what being a woman is like. That IS a radical assertion about the limits of understanding and what understanding requires.

Tangentially, Keith's philosophy is rooted more in anarchic thought and she has long been associated with various figures surrounding AK Press (and here). Further OT, but some context at least, she is the author of perhaps one of the weirdest critiques of vegetarianism I have ever encountered--The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. Deeply flawed arguments imho, but also contingent upon embracing a form of anarcho-primitivism that essentially rejects plant agriculture for animal agriculture. Having been a vegan basically since I was a kid, the text wasn't likely to trigger a seismic shift anyway, but goddamn, some of the arguments are borderline incoherent.

(AK Press also published one of the greatest books on animals resisting their human oppressors and ripping people's faces off--Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance. Sort of a companion volume to Zinn's classic work. Awesome stuff!)

 

[Tiassa]

They're Never Happy

There's always something wrong:

Trans women will seemingly be required to use men's rooms, though this will expose them to a much greater risk of harassment and violence; they will be shut out of domestic violence shelters for women; they will be kicked off sports teams; and they will likely lose many other legal protections as well. "My concern is that if the equalities minister does push for transgender people to be shut out from these spaces, as they say, there's going to be nowhere else for them to go," Cleo Madeleine of pro-trans charity Gendered Intelligence told the Associated Press. "The message we're getting, frankly, from the highest equalities office in the country is that they want to get rid of us, and they don't really care where we go."

And that, to the TERFs, is the point. The current doyenne of UK TERFdom, author JK Rowling, celebrated the ruling with a cigar. After all, she had bankrolled the group that took the case to the UK Supreme Court to the tune of 70,000 pounds (or $92,000), according to the Times.

But not all of UK's TERFs are feeling quite so chuffed. In the midst of the celebrations, a number of prominent UK TERFs have come forward to complain that despite the victory ... a lot of people don't like them very much.

(Futrelle↱)​

Yeah, Hadley Freeman, Victoria Smith, Julie Bindel. Like I said↑, we try not to pay attention to those people.

And then, of course, Glinner. As Futrelle observes, "Alas, Glinner has gotten so unhinged that not even JK Rowling wants to be his friend."

These complaints aren't new for Linehan. He rants about this constantly. He seems to spend about 95% of his extremely busy time on X ruining his life and career with his transphobic obsession–and the remaining 5% of the time complaining that mean trans people have ruined his life and career. This adds up to an awful lot of tweets ....

.... Linehan calls trans women and their supporters "groomers" and "nonces." While he doesn't use the slur "t**nny," he's fond of the new-school slur "troon," a derogatory term for trans women which first gained popularity on such bastions of humanity as 4chan and Kiwi Farms and is commonly used in harassment campaigns.

Huh. Maybe there's a reason he's lost friends, his wife, and his comedy career.​

And he also points to Erin Reed↱, who considered Hadley Freeman's lamentation:

But Freeman, instead of celebrating her legal victory in full, devoted space to lamenting the friendships she's lost over her views—and appears to believe, strangely, that this ruling might somehow win them back.

"I've been writing about the effects of gender ideology for more than a decade, and in that time I've had to leave a job I thought I'd have forever, I've been publicly denounced by people I thought were friends, and I've been blacklisted from more events than I can count," complains Freeman—who also takes time to denounce the so-called "abuse" she claims to have received from critics, including Doctor Who actor David Tennant, whose supposed offense is being the supportive parent of a non-binary child ....

.... Despite her cause's legal win, Freeman is likely to be disappointed if she believes it will earn her back the friends she's lost. Ask the anti-marriage-equality activists of the early 2000s. Back then, more than 30 U.S. states passed bans on same-sex marriage, and many of the loudest opponents surely believed their victories in the courts would translate into cultural dominance. They were wrong. Public opinion shifted dramatically, gay couples gained visibility and support, and just a decade later, the right to marry was enshrined nationwide. Today, those who championed those bans are remembered not as protectors of tradition, but as relics of a bigoted era—and the same fate almost certainly awaits the loudest voices in today's anti-trans movement ....

.... Ultimately, Freeman's column isn't pitiful because it rubs salt in the wound—it's pitiful because it lays bare the true aim of the anti-trans movement. This was never about policy or bathrooms or youth sports. It's about a cohort of people who feel culture shifting beneath their feet, who were raised in a world where casual cruelty toward transgender people was normalized, and who now find themselves resentful that society has moved on. Rather than reflect or grow, they double down, demanding that their revulsion be seen as virtue—that their discomfort be not only accepted but celebrated. Freeman's yearning for social validation, cloaked in the language of righteous indignation, reveals the movement's hollow core. The title of her piece says it all: this isn't about the law, it's about the isolation that comes from being wrong. And no court decision—no matter how cruel—will win back the friendships lost to hate, or rescue those who chose the wrong side of history from the consequences of that choice.​

The thing is, this is another of those infamous pretenses that isn't really about what it is ostensibly about. It's not about the restrooms, or protecting cisgender women in sports. It's about power. Control. Wrecking a lesbian marriage just to call her a man in a dress doesn't actually help anything. The only value it has is personal satisfaction of abusive instinct.

That is to say, same as it ever was.
____________________

Notes:

Futrelle, David. "Despite their court victory, UK TERFs lament that they have no friends". We Hunted The Mammoth. 22 April 2025. WeHintedTheMammoth.com. 23 April 2025. https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/...ry-uk-terfs-lament-that-they-have-no-friends/

Reed, Erin. "Anti-Trans Activist Hadley Freeman Thinks UK Court Win Means People Have To Be Her Friend". Erin in the Morning. 20 April 2025. ErinInTheMorning.com. 23 April 2025. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-activist-hadley-freeman

 

[James R]

Pinball1970:

I do not think gender is based on a decision.

For the most part, I agree with you. For the vast majority of people, their gender identify follows from their biological sex plus a bunch of social and cultural influences that are rooted in the natural recognition of the fact of sex.

A small minority of people experience "gender dysphoria", for various reasons (many of which interact with their biology). That tends to influence the person's sense of gender identity.

It seems likely, to me, that an even smaller number of people become confused about their own gender identity as a result of social pressures and expectations.

What I don't believe is that people can flip-flop back and forth between gender identities in the space of a period of hours, or days, or even months, just by making a "decision". Gender, even for trans people, tends to be far more stable than that, in any given individual.

Gender is more like sexuality, intimately related to sex but part of ones development, personality, feeling of self.

I agree.

That sounds like last week there was no issue about being a man, the thought had never arisen about being female, however today after some consideration a person could now identify as a female.
It does not and should not work that way.

Again, I agree.

However, the trans activist line seems to be that it is out of bounds to ever question anybody's self-declared gender. They are what they say they identify as. End of story. If I understand him correctly, this is essentially billvon's position on these matters, too.

Like JK Rowling, I see some potential problems with simply taking a person's self-declared gender-of-the-moment as the be all and end all for determining whether they are a woman, irrespective of their biological and/or phenotypical sex.

I think it is important not to sweep sex under the rug, as the more extreme trans activists want us all to do. Actually, I think that sex can't be swept under the rug. It is a biological reality, whereas gender is a social construct. The rubber has to meet the road at some point.

I think that the insistence that "Trans women are women" is ultimately an unhelpful and largely misleading slogan. It seeks to deliberately obscure biological facts in the service of pretending that social constructs are the only thing that exists. This, more generally, is a problem with the entire "postmodernist" agenda - that it thinks that there are actually no facts - that, instead, every "truth" is nothing more than a social construct. A person who believes that is seriously - possibly dangerously - disconnected from reality. If you really believe that gravity, say, is just a social construct, you're as likely as not to jump off a high building believing you can fly.

It might be possible to coin some new term for the collective that consists of biological female human beings and biological males who self-identify with a female gender, but I am resistant to the notion that the word "woman" should be appropriated to refer to that collective (which the activists would certainly want to expand to include people of other sexes who "decide" they are women).

Now for the necessary disclaimer, because I am sure the culture vultures are honing their sharp beaks and are about to descend on me in numbers:

I am entirely in favour of all transgender people being able to live their lives without fear of persecution from "transphobic" people. I have no issues with using any transgender person's preferred pronouns when referring to them. I wish all the same happiness and contentment in life for transgender people that I wish for cis-gender people.

None of this means that I am obliged to pretend that a transgender person who identifies as female is identical to a cisgender woman. Nor does it mean that it can never be appropriate for me to note the differences between these two groups and possibly treat them differently in recognition of those differences. (This is the point at which the radical trans activists will all go completely ballistic, since they will assert that once a person decides they are a woman, all differences are erased. Watch.)

I do not think anyone would support a guy suddenly identifying as a woman then demanding to walk into a woman's changing room.

In the UK, as I understand it, that would be precisely the effect of the proposed law that said that, legally, in effect, any guy identifying as a woman cannot be discriminated against when it comes to walking into womens' changerooms.

Such a law would specifically support what you say that you don't think anyone would support.

The extremist trans activists are pushing for such laws, so it looks like some people support this.

To point this out, however, results in an immediate shitstorm from those activists, and from those who don't understand the issues but who want to feel like they are supporting trans people. Those people often don't even realise they are the unknowing puppets of would-be authoritarian extremists. We've seen several examples of such people in this thread already.

Women should not have suddenly absorb that into their world BUT I don't think that is going happen like that.

What is likely to happen is that trans women who have made the painful psychological and physical transition, alienation from their family but finally get recognition as a woman cannot use a woman's facility.
Would women want to deny this already marginalized minority this right?

I think that the majority of women would not want to deny those people this right. But nor would they want to open the floodgates to people of ill intent piggy-backing on their goodwill, I think. Not if they took the time to examine the nuance.

 

[James R]

This is interesting, from the character-assassination piece of rubbish that Tiassa felt like he had to cut and paste to here:

Ultimately, Freeman's column isn't pitiful because it rubs salt in the wound—it's pitiful because it lays bare the true aim of the anti-trans movement.

No doubt an "anti-trans movement" does exist out there. But women like JK Rowling are not part of it. JKR is not "anti-trans". She has explicitly, on numerous occasions, expressed her support for trans people, in similar terms to the support I expressed in my post above.

A lot of trans people have difficult lives - not because of those whom the radical trans activists slap with the label "TERF" - but because of people who are actually transphobic.

It is telling that the hard radical self-styled trans activist leftists spend all of their time and energy fighting against the "soft" left rather than against the real transphobes on the far right. They spend this time and energy because they hope, ultimately, to convince all of those on the left that all of reality is nothing but a social construct that can and should be remade in the image of the radical activists. I suppose it seems less daunting to fight first against the people who are already on-side when it comes to the less delusional aspects of the ideology.

This was never about policy or bathrooms or youth sports.

Not for the radical trans activists. (Very few of whom, it must be noted, are actual trans people.)

After all, if the activists can convince everybody that biological sex isn't real, then they'll be well on their way to convincing everybody that nothing is real except for the NewThink that the radical activists approve of. Everything else is moral error that deserves persecution and suppression.

Fundamentally, these people are would-be totalitarians. They are willing to resort to suppression of speech in order to drown out dissenting voices, using violence if they deem it necessary.

It's about a cohort of people who feel culture shifting beneath their feet, who were raised in a world where casual cruelty toward transgender people was normalized, and who now find themselves resentful that society has moved on.

This just doesn't work, if you think about it. Regular feminists don't tend to be casually cruel towards transgender people. After all, they recognise similar struggles that were hard fought for women and they tend to be sympathetic to the oppressed as a result.

The aim of this piece - if it has an aim other than to vent and rant - is to demonise normal, reasonable feminists. Why? Because those people aren't willing to toe the radical activist line. Some of them even resist it. How dare they!

Rather than reflect or grow, they double down, demanding that their revulsion be seen as virtue—that their discomfort be not only accepted but celebrated.

The problem with this is that none of the targets of this ire ever seem to express this supposed "revulsion" towards trans people. It has to be read in. Motives must be assumed when they are not actually in evidence. The narrative is what matters. The Party line.

Freeman's yearning for social validation, cloaked in the language of righteous indignation, reveals the movement's hollow core.

I don't think that lamenting the loss of friends whom one regards as sadly misguided usually amounts to "righteous indignation".

Probably, the experience of losing friends because of one's own "righteous indignation" is a familiar experience for the radical self-appointed trans activist. So, there is some projection going on here, methinks.

The title of her piece says it all: this isn't about the law, it's about the isolation that comes from being wrong.

Everything is all nicely black or white when you join a totalitarian movement. It's part of the attraction. It gets rid of all those pesky shades of grey.

And no court decision—no matter how cruel—will win back the friendships lost to hate, or rescue those who chose the wrong side of history from the consequences of that choice.

Notice the grandiose claims about historical inevitability and such. Where have we heard those before? From whom?

 

[James R]

TheVat:

At this point, however, I can't make the leap to concluding that a trans woman could never understand what being a woman is like.

It doesn't seem like a particularly difficult leap, to me.

I'm a man. I have never menstruated. I am physically incapable of it.

It follows that, at best, I can have only a limited understanding of what it is like to be a woman who menstruates. And, of course, I have can have no understanding what it is to be a woman who menstruates.

If I were, hypothetically, to undergo hormone therapy, have sex reassignment surgery and such, I still wouldn't menstruate.

No matter how much some people might like it to be the case, at the present time one's biological sex can't be wished for or wished away. A trans woman can undoubtedly have many experiences of what it is like to be a woman, but she can never have the same experiences that cis women have and therefore cannot ever fully understand what it is to be a cis woman.

It is make-believe to pretend that gender reassignment surgery can turn a man into a woman. That might be possible in the future, but it is beyond our technological capacity at present. Reality just annoyingly puts barriers in the way of our aspirations, whether we accept they are there or pretend they aren't.

 

[C C]

[...] Womens rights won out, great, they fought hard for that against us (horrible men) so now they need to engage with this group. Find a way forward.

I have to confess that there was a time when I considered "militant lesbian feminists" to be something of a scaremongering myth or urban legend. That was manufactured (or exaggerated) by opponents of feminism back in the 1970s.

But they are real and completely up-front about their radicalism. Though limited in numbers (i.e., hardly a reflection of the entire, ideologically diverse landscape of feminism).

And they do influence eclectic feminists like Rowling, with regard to areas like trans issues. So reference to quantity is not intended here to mitigate or demean their prowess, by any means.

Fond farewell to Keith and Moon
https://womensliberationfront.org/news/wolfs-fond-farewell-to-lierre-keith-and-kacie-moon

EXCERPTS: We’ve appeared on national television and said the words “radical feminism” to millions of women. We’ve put on gatherings to grow our sisterhood and organized public events to defy the men who aim to silence us. We’ve done an amazing job trying to wrench some liberation from the grip of male supremacy.

“With every wave of fatigue, one needs another platoon of strong, tough women coming up over the horizon to take more land, to make it safe for women,” wrote Andrea Dworkin...

[...] Men can not become women and “transgender” ideology is misogynist nonsense. Pornography isn’t “empowering” and prostitution is paid rape. And “abortion on demand and without apology” are six words from which you will never budge.

Born female, we were all born on a battlefield--only it’s more like a slaughter, a slaughter so relentless we can’t even collect our wounded. Those are the facts, and you, like me, have faced them without defeat, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

[...] The current board is one reason I know that the Goddess is alive and wants us to win...
_

 

[Tiassa]

Rewind Your Mind, Rethread Your Head

Let's rewind, here, to 2015:

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson suggested creating separate public bathrooms for transgender people in an interview with Fusion's Jorge Ramos Thursday.

When Ramos asked Carson if transgender men and women should be able to use any public bathroom they choose, Carson responded, "How about we have a transgender bathroom?"

"It is not fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable," Carson added. "It's one of the things that I don't particularly like about the movement."

(Mellen↱)​

An important point goes here: Check Carson's rhetoric, how it's not fair for transgender people to "make everbody else uncomfortable". If you must erase the fact of people who disagree with you, as Carson did, then you're doing it wrong.

Also 2015:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) belittled efforts to make public facilities more accessible to transgender individuals in a speech earlier this year, saying that he wished he could have "found his feminine side" in high school so that he could have showered with girls.

"We are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your seven-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended, and you can’t be offended, if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man,” Huckabee said in February at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville ....

.... “Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee said. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’"

(Levine↱)​

And in this thread, I ahve already reminded↑, twice↑, it is easy enough to joke about the idea of Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson putting on dresses in order to masturbate in the women's restroom↱:

This is very simple, Dr. Carson: Prove your point.

Put on a dress and show us how easy it is.

Put on a dress, use a women’s restroom, and prove your point. Because here’s the thing: All you or, say, Mr. Huckabee accomplish broadcasting these deviant erotic fantasies is telling us all about the eye of the beholder.

That is to say, Dr. Carson, sure, so now we know what you would do in a women’s restroom. We know what Mr. Huckabee would do in a women’s restroom.

And it really is grotesque that you should assign your own exploitative sexual deviance to other people just in order to complain about them. Still, though, it is possible to demonstrate your point; the only question is whether you’re actually willing to.​

So, let's think it through: Ten years later, there's a reason why I asked if these people will hear it from the eighty-six year-old woman↑, and the reason they won't↑ hasn't changed over the last decade. Remember↑:

If they ask me to burn a witch, I will refuse. If they ask again, next year, I will refuse. If they insist, the year after that, I will refuse. And there will always be someone to resents how refusal denigrates people who remain deeply uncomfortable about not burning witches and tries to frogmarch them into unquestioning acceptance.​

It's ten years later, and for whatever reason, people insist on bringing it up again and again and again, as if it's somehow new: Ten years later, what the left should "receive graciously"↑ is yet another blind reiteration of the pervert's pride?

As Parmalee observed all of two weeks ago↑, "When someone fabulates some scenario wherein cisgender men dress as women and go into bathroom and assault people, and then somehow asserts that transgender people are responsible for this problem …". Or, more directly↑: "Sure, the scenario has undoubtedly happened? So? What exactly does it have to do with transgender people? It's cisgender people committing the offense, yes?"

We should take a moment, then, to look back ten years, when a Kentucky advocate reminded Huckabee, "allowing folks to use restrooms that match their gender identities doesn't change the laws that govern appropriate bathroom behavior". In this way, "If someone is seeking to sexually exploit others--as Huckabee suggests he might have tried in high school--they will be dealt with by the proper authorities."

This point still confuses people. Ten years later.

To the other, if I really need to pick nits about the difference between taking a dick in the ass↑ and dressing up to rub one out to the scent of piss and shit and menstrual blood, maybe the problem isn't really the technicalities of someone's answer, but the fact that anyone would ask the question in the first place.

There is also this: There is a lot of related tension having to do with ideas of men and masculinity, and if I don't feel like looking up the old hand grenade gaffe¹, the point is to pay attention to who needs the caricature of the predatory, cishet male. That is, observe which "feminists" need creepy, rapey masculinity as a bogeyman.
____________________

Notes:

¹ Fine, because you won't believe me, otherwise, it was 2008↗ when someone tried explaining, "again, rape is bad. but if you pull the pin out of a grenade, is it your fault or the grenade's when it blows up?" And one of the things that makes that occasion memorable is the stone desert silence from masculinists. Nonetheless↑, comparing men to dangerous devices with no will of their own doesn't help. Similarly, relying on the spectre of a dangerous wanker only denigrates cishet men, but since that denigration happens in the context of trying to reinforce traditional prejudices, it kind of slips in under the radar.​

Levine, Sam. "Mike Huckabee Belittled Transgender People In February Speech". The Huffington Post. 2 June 2015. HuffPost.com. 24 April 2025. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-huckabee-lgbt-bathrooms_n_7494514

Mellen, Ruby. "Ben Carson: Transgender People 'Make Everybody Else Uncomfortable' In Restrooms". The Huffington Post. 5 November 2015. HuffPost.com. 24 April 2025. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ben-carson-transgender-bathrooms_n_563baba5e4b0b24aee4958cb

 

[James R]

the point is to pay attention to who needs the caricature of the predatory, cishet male. That is, observe which "feminists" need creepy, rapey masculinity as a bogeyman.

A few real-world statistics from my country. (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, from a report published in 2022)

• 97% of sexual assault offenders proceeded against by police were male.
• 27% of sexual assault offenders were proceeded against by police more than once in a 12-month period (for any offence)
• 94% of police proceedings against sexual assault offenders led to a court action
• 53% of sexual assault defendants were finalised in a Higher Criminal Court
• 76% of sexual assault defendants with a guilty outcome in Higher Criminal Courts were sentenced to custody in a correctional institution
• For men, the sexual assault imprisonment rate steadily increased from 35.7 prisoners per 100,000 adult men in 2013, to 51.7 in 2019

The statistic that is most relevant here is that 97% of the sexual assault offenders prosecuted were male.

I don't know about you, but this suggests that creepy, rapey masculinity is hardly an ephemeral bogeyman or a caricature. It is a simple, straightforward fact about the people who tend to commit the rapes. Of course, you might want to try to argue that the United States is vastly different than Australia when it comes to who the rapey people are. If you think you can make a case for that, please do so by all means.

I think it's fair to assume that, of those 97% of creepy, rapey men, a negligibly small proportion would be found to be transgender men (i.e. biological females who transitioned to males). Which makes most of that 97% of rapey people cis men.

As for their sexual preferences, I think that if you were to break down the stats, the majority of offenders would be found to be heterosexual men, although one would expect that a smaller number of offenders would self-identify as gay.

It seems to me that women - even the "feminists" - have justifiable concerns about the possibility of a man raping them.

Also, I understand that putting scare quotes around the term "feminist" seeks to delegitimise the women who express such concerns, by refusing to acknowledge that they are "real" feminists. In seeking to delegitimise the voices of women, one is, in fact, helping to perpetuate the opportunities for men (including "cishet" men) to rape women.

 

[Pinball1970]

I think it is important not to sweep sex under the rug, as the more extreme trans activists want us all to do.

That sounds like a discussion I had regarding men and women's sports with a youtube host. "There are no differences between men and women, if women had the same opportunity they would win just as much."

Another claim was that in stamina studies women performed better and there is "very little" sexual dimorphism in humans.

First part is partially correct, however this is no ordinary stamina, you have to get the ultra marathon level before the gap closes so irrelevant to the sports in question. Mens marathon is 9 mins better than women so nothing in the Olympics.
Second part is obviously wrong.

Sex is real, if was not trans people would not want to change it.
Sex Biology and the differences in the sexes is real too.

These types of arguments hinder the real issues trans people have like, acceptance, mental illness and suicide.

...And not being able use the ladies f transitioned.

I have been looking at the business/organization side and unisex facilities seems the best option if the building can accommodate it.

These places rarely have dead space though.

 

[TheVat]

Tangentially, Keith's philosophy is rooted more in anarchic thought and she has long been associated with various figures surrounding AK Press (and here). Further OT, but some context at least, she is the author of perhaps one of the weirdest critiques of vegetarianism I have ever encountered--The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. Deeply flawed arguments imho, but also contingent upon embracing a form of anarcho-primitivism that essentially rejects plant agriculture for animal agriculture. Having been a vegan basically since I was a kid, the text wasn't likely to trigger a seismic shift anyway, but goddamn, some of the arguments are borderline incoherent.

(AK Press also published one of the greatest books on animals resisting their human oppressors and ripping people's faces off--Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance. Sort of a companion volume to Zinn's classic work. Awesome stuff!)

As someone with a bit of training in nutritional chemistry, I have never been able to find much coherence in carnivory polemics. (And ecosystem support for eight billion carnivores, as a practical matter, ain't happening) Will look for the furred resistance tome. (Zinn classic - you mean People's History of US, I'm guessing)

 

[TheVat]

It follows that, at best, I can have only a limited understanding of what it is like to be a woman who menstruates. And, of course, I have can have no understanding what it is to be a woman who menstruates.

Well I don't disagree that "plumbing" knowledge is beyond us fellas, but I was trying a bigger picture aspect where I can't say that there are fundamental psychological qualities of being a woman that a trans woman could never access. Guess I'm saying ignorance cuts both ways - it's possible we don't understand all that trans women (especially those who have felt female since early childhood and have had hormonal therapy early on) feel and understand of some essential feminine.

 

[TheVat]

However, the trans activist line seems to be that it is out of bounds to ever question anybody's self-declared gender. They are what they say they identify as. End of story. If I understand him correctly, this is essentially billvon's position on these matters, too.

Like JK Rowling, I see some potential problems with simply taking a person's self-declared gender-of-the-moment as the be all and end all for determining whether they are a woman, irrespective of their biological and/or phenotypical sex.

I am curious if you know of anyone who would self-identify casually, i.e. change gender on some whim or in a speculative way. In most matters of deep identity, we tend to see people taking a fairly long road, sometimes quite painful and fraught, to be something that's not the mainstream. If there really are "gender of the moment" people, do you have any evidence that's a common occurrence.

 

[TheVat]

I am entirely in favour of all transgender people being able to live their lives without fear of persecution from "transphobic" people. I have no issues with using any transgender person's preferred pronouns when referring to them. I wish all the same happiness and contentment in life for transgender people that I wish for cis-gender people.

None of this means that I am obliged to pretend that a transgender person who identifies as female is identical to a cisgender woman. Nor does it mean that it can never be appropriate for me to note the differences between these two groups and possibly treat them differently in recognition of those differences

To your basic point, all well and good, and no one can factually dispute the medical and scientific reality that trans people are not identical to cis people - indeed, they do need different treatment in the context of healthcare (just as research is showing that different ethnicities may have differing incidences of certain medical conditions, or that women react differently to certain pharmaceuticals, etc). What I'm left wondering, however, is if it's a bit of a strawman to say that there are social forces aligned against your noting the difference between trans and cis people. Unless your observation was somehow a personal attack or a subtle attempt at social exclusion, I'm not sure how anyone could seriously object. It really depends on what you meant by "treat them differently in recognition of those differences." If you meant help them find local available access to clinics serving their needs, then bravo. If you meant bolster statutes and law enforcement to protect them against transphobic bullies and other abusers, also bravo. If you meant kick them out of sports participation during their formative years, then you might reasonably expect some challenges and headwinds, no? At least, in that latter case of differential treatment, you would need to pony up with some evidence of substantial harm.

(sorry so many replies clustered here - there was a lot to catch up with)

 

[billvon]

At this point, however, I can't make the leap to concluding that a trans woman could never understand what being a woman is like. That IS a radical assertion about the limits of understanding and what understanding requires.

Agreed. I have a good friend who is trans - and she has definitely learned a lot about what it means to be a woman. The assumptions about her intelligence and goals, how she's treated in a crowd. She has a perspective that the vast majority of Americans never get; a real life perspective of what happens on both sides.

 

[billvon]

No matter how much some people might like it to be the case, at the present time one's biological sex can't be wished for or wished away. A trans woman can undoubtedly have many experiences of what it is like to be a woman, but she can never have the same experiences that cis women have and therefore cannot ever fully understand what it is to be a cis woman.

Agree with you up to the last part.

I have had experiences that you (fortunately) never will. I had a friend of mine die from a skydiving accident, and he died after I did CPR on him for 20 minutes. It really f*cked me up for months afterwards. That's an experience you will never have since you're not a skydiver and the number of skydiving deaths is so low as to render it a statistical impossibility - even if you DID start skydiving right now.

Does that mean you will never fully understand what death means? I would say no. You will have different experiences than I had - but we will still both understand death in our own ways.

Likewise, there are some cis women who can never have children, which is a defining part of being a woman. Does that mean they can never, ever fully understand what it is to be a cis woman? I would say no. Their experiences will likely be different than most women's - but that does not make them invalid, or render them unable to understand what it is to be a woman.

 

[parmalee]

I am curious if you know of anyone who would self-identify casually, i.e. change gender on some whim or in a speculative way. In most matters of deep identity, we tend to see people taking a fairly long road, sometimes quite painful and fraught, to be something that's not the mainstream. If there really are "gender of the moment" people, do you have any evidence that's a common occurrence.

I'm sure that someone has done this, at some point or another, just as someone has done all manner of crazy shit at one point or another--but unless they are harming another, who cares? For the record, in the past I have been made up as a woman on a number of occasions, and it was a colossal pain in the ass. The idea of someone doing it on a whim, for no particular reason?

Re: the whole bathroom thing. First off, no one is checking ids and all that shit in public restrooms. You just go in the right one. And the fact is, 99.9999 percent of people (probably even higher) do so in good faith. Public restrooms are a monumental success story as far as good faith acting goes--at least, in this respect. I mean, people could be a little tidier. As for the ones who don't? They shouldn't, but again, so long as they are not harming another. And as for the ones who do harm, well, they're committing crimes. We got ways for dealing with that.

Civilization involves balancing liberty and security. If society decides to pay bathroom enforcers--and they're gonna have to pay em a lot better than those who do a similar task in developing countries, because they're either gonna have to be armed or to have the capacity to beat the crap out of you (or subdue you)--then that's what society will do. Funny though how this only became an issue around the same time that trans people became a public "issue". (Between that and the whole thing with mocking and bullying trans athletes, non trans athletes, high school kids, et al, makes me question Rowling's, et al, "love" for trans people. Maybe Rowling is like those people who "love" "the gays", but hate their "lifestyle"?)

 

[parmalee]

As someone with a bit of training in nutritional chemistry, I have never been able to find much coherence in carnivory polemics. (And ecosystem support for eight billion carnivores, as a practical matter, ain't happening) Will look for the furred resistance tome. (Zinn classic - you mean People's History of US, I'm guessing)

You should check out Keith's book--it's available for free via AK Press (cuz, you know, they're anarchists). It's certainly interesting, but like I said, the arguments are just so bad.

 

[parmalee]

I have to confess that there was a time when I considered "militant lesbian feminists" to be something of a scaremongering myth or urban legend. That was manufactured (or exaggerated) by opponents of feminism back in the 1970s.

But they are real and completely up-front about their radicalism. Though limited in numbers (i.e., hardly a reflection of the entire, ideologically diverse landscape of feminism).

And they do influence eclectic feminists like Rowling, with regard to areas like trans issues. So reference to quantity is not intended here to mitigate or demean their prowess, by any means.

Sort of an evolution of the Valerie Solanas model, I guess. Kinda.

It's always been fascinating to me how rather fringe and marginal ideas like these manage to disseminate into mainstream culture. In a strange sorta way, it kinda makes me proud to be an American. In the UK, Europe, and elsewhere for instance, even the most underground of underground musicians, say, have some sort of thing, i.e., unions, representation, whatever. This is simply not the case in America. When you're doing your own thing, you're pretty much jammin' econo all the way (unless you've got a trust fund or some sort of benefactors).