foghorn
Valued Senior Member
You have a right to have a opinion, you have just expressed it. It's the right to speak, not whether Ms Rowlings is right or wrong.
Ms Rowling: insightful critic of gender policy or myopic [insult]
- Thread starter TheVat
- Start date
Not quite. This is a private site, owned by someone, with standards enforced by moderators. Consider it like someone's house. You can say whatever you like - and they can also eject you if they don't like what you are saying.
You are, however, free to buy your own website and say whatever you like on it.
I was looking over Peggy McIntosh's essay, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (which you had alluded to in a previous post), and included with that paper in the above link are some excerpts from "I Can Fix It!" which I had not seen before, including this passage:
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, outrage and disgust are the most appropriate response. Why not? Sure, you also explain precisely why that is fucked up and wrong and bigoted, but expressing outrage does in no way diminish the validity or soundness of the argument.
I agree. I guess my point could be that, given human creativity and predilection for narrative - why choose to use a range of emotions that can so easily be misappropriated, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and which normalise that affect for far less noble causes? Regardless, I am really glad that you took time out to read Peggy Mcintosh - it helped me a lot.
People will endlessly debate over whether or not we are living in an "everything is permissible" era. I would argue that we are, but it really began with Joseph Goebbels and has simply waxed and waned somewhat over the ensuing decades. A clever person acting in bad faith will be able to appropriate any sort of argument or content, and use it for nefarious means wholly contrary to it's original intent. At the same time, a not so clever person is apt to misinterpret or misconstrue even the most plainly worded, straightforward of arguments. It's frustrating. I've been meaning to reread Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for some time now, but I would say that now it seems more relevant than ever. Deluge them with copious lies, bullshit and even substantive content ever so slightly transformed, edited or even just emphasized differently and... well. It's impossible to say precisely where that will lead.
The McIntosh piece is really quite powerful. There are so many things on that list that simply would never occur to me in a million years, and it's versatility with respect to applicability to pretty much any form of otherness is impressive. It should be required reading, but I would not at all be surprised were it to be banned today from all publicly funded schools and libraries and web content.
Too late to edit, but the "I Can Fix It!" essay and excerpt in post #123 is by damali ayo, not McIntosh. Her rent-a-negro website is really quite excellent!
TheVat
Registered Senior Member
I had read neither the McIntosh nor Ayo piece. Thanks to you and Konchog both for bringing these into the thread. I have encountered other sources of these useful reminders and consciousness expanders, but much of it in a rather scattershot way. While I still haven't figured out the optimum emotional valence of public engagement on these topics of otherness, I do feel there are distillations of outrage, e.g. mockery and satire, which can sometimes help people laugh at something so that they are reducing their fear in approaching a topic. The Onion famously did this rather neatly with their headline, "Racism Over, White People Declare." It's not easy to skewer the "color blind" pretensions of the Right in only five words.
Things got crazy busy here the past week but will try to catch up here a bit more, as you and Konchog have started up some useful intuition pumps for the topic.
There is something brilliant about that Onion headline. The power to persuade via reductio ad absurdum is, in my eyes, a high art.
"Misogyny Extinct At Last, Rules White House".
In terms of the sheer breadth of 'otherness' - a great exercise is to remind oneself of the many knapsacks one carries. Looks, height, intelligence, being well-spoken, eloquence - damn - having nice hair; lacking poverty, thinness, lack of obvious disability, stable family background, health, a close-knit social group ... the list goes on, and on.
Take all away and we find ourselves in a far more hostile and uncaring world.
"Misogyny Extinct At Last, Rules White House".
In terms of the sheer breadth of 'otherness' - a great exercise is to remind oneself of the many knapsacks one carries. Looks, height, intelligence, being well-spoken, eloquence - damn - having nice hair; lacking poverty, thinness, lack of obvious disability, stable family background, health, a close-knit social group ... the list goes on, and on.
Take all away and we find ourselves in a far more hostile and uncaring world.
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¿Are You Afraid of the Question?
Again:
What do you think would constitute reasonable accommodation of this circumstance?
Again:
What do you think would constitute reasonable accommodation of this circumstance?
Which circumstance? Was I present? Did I have the ability to act? Is it a hypothetical?
Meanwhile, tell me of your anchor, please.
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foghorn
Valued Senior Member
Not quite. UK Law and anything advocating or pushing for harmful or violent acts are hopefully stopped.
But, someone could say Trump supporters are probably rapists, because they support Trump, and because of that they should kill their self.
Isn't free speech a wonderful thing.
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I do not know, and have not encountered, either JKR or those who have aggressed against her.
I guess the closest I have come is in a discussion with an old friend of mine - a former olympic athlete and member of the LGBT community. She, and many of her fellow athletes, have been vocally dismissive and dismayed by the (in her words) appropriation of the word 'woman' as a mark of identity amongst the trans community.
My response wasn't brilliant - it did not inspire, nor did it help to accommodate, or to remove prejudice. Instead I was almost immediately deemed to be an outsider whose views are to be dismissed without question. In fairness to myself though, the single option I was given was "agree with us or be outcast".
But what was my view? It was simple: Words are not stable, and are subject, along with everything else, to the vagaries of time and fashion. Nobody owns them, and therefore nobody can appropriate them. If we choose to identify ourselves in terms of a word (the word: the map, not the territory) then we will inevitably be putting our identity at risk, because we do not (and cannot) determine future usage.
It is meaning: the territory, not the map, that matters. None of this is even new.
For example, l recall my grandmother (albeit back in the 1970's) asking "Do you know Colonel Smith, darling? He's a little bit queer, but he is so very gay".
Was she wrong or ignorant? Were the gay community at fault for appropriating these terms? Such queries are mere category errors: Mistaking the map for the territory. So if someone were to say "They aren't women!" and someone else were to say "Oh yes they are!", do we really have to pick a side? Words aren't even singularly defined: Many, if not all, words - and their meanings, depend upon the specific context in which they are used. This sort of dissent between such parties merely demonstrates that both parties are faulty of equivocation, and, at worst, using such equivocation to justify their outrage, anger, and intransigence.
So much for the word.
What about toilets, sports, and the rest?
We have two options - we either accept or reject that gender (or even sex) is binary. It has never been binary, of course, but that's never appeared to be an issue until far more recently: Beforehand, for toilets (etc), it was the unwritten assumption of systemic misogyny: If you are not a man, then you are a woman.
Does that still work? Lots of people hope so, because it creates an architectural nightmare to address toilets for any self-assigned gender. Pretty much the same for sex, once we accept the non-binary status. The proposition that a trans woman is a man is not any more sensible solution than any other binary categorisation.
So - where does that leave me? Is a trans-woman a woman? Sure, if that's what she wants to be, why not? Should she have the right to use a women's toilet, go to women's prisons, etc? I don't know : These institutions belong to an earlier binary culture. We could ask - should black women and white women share the same toilets?
What we *should do* is always going to be different to what we do. Personally, if we were living in a truly egalitarian environment, why distinguish at all? So on that basis, I guess, we must learn to accept, accommodate, and adjust- while recognising both the past, and our part in the present.
Sports - this is something which will self-regulate, based upon the sport involved. I have not much more to say on that.
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TheVat
Registered Senior Member
Your reminder of words as maps not territories is helpful. Though science, both biology and cognitive science have moved on from the old binary, it remains entrenched in culture and its semantic maps. It's a human vice to want quick identifiers when meeting people, a handy drawer to place them in (part of what set Rowling off in the first place was "people who menstruate,"). Would culture be open to letting science referee these matters? Many question its objective stance on matters that are deemed too subjective, too much of qualia - "what it is like to be me." So maybe self-identification, at least from adults not suffering mental illness, becomes the final arbiter - and we accept statements of nuanced nonbinary personality while architecturally going to unisex bathrooms with locking stalls. The Right and assorted religious factions, meanwhile, after exercising science denial when it suits their ideology, ironically make appeals to genetics when they want to assert a chromosomal destiny at birth that must be the law of the land. Which is weirdly archaic science, since biology has uncovered all sorts of gray areas with epigenetics, developmental variables in utero, chromosomal breaks or duplications, etc.
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At our brewery we solved that particular problem by having "sit" and "stand" doors instead of "men" and "women."
But yes, architecture will have to change. California has effectively solved the problem by keeping "men" "women" restrooms then adding one additional "family" rest room; a private one for everyone else, including parents changing diapers, fathers with daughters who need help, nonbinary people who don't feel comfortable in one or the other etc.
As you mentioned, this has happened before when we went from "men" "women" and "colored" to just "men" and "women."
foghorn
Valued Senior Member
It wasn’t this lady by chance?
On a train in the UK, here’s a lady telling someone (a doctor) to go back to their country.
She even says to the person they don’t look like you were born here (UK).
She is taken off the train by police at a following station.
Instant karma for woman who told train passenger ‘go back to Tunisia or Morocco’
The racist remarks were uttered on an Avanti West Coast train from London to Manchester.
metro.co.uk
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Now you're just trolling.
Here in the US, the doctor would have been arrested and deported since he was DEI.
Tianna, I responded more fully in the following message. You, meanwhile, have yet to demonstrate that you are not trolling when you say
You are yet to demonstrate a valid, anchored, moral opposition that must be universally accepted. I am waiting.
You still have not acknowledged that you conflate unanchored moral relativism with disingenuity (alternative facts) - yet you are yet to demonstrate either a defence or an alternative.
I call you out.
Such attacks from the shadows, are trolling: The national bullying helpline states that bullies always remain in the shadows. Show yourself. Step into the light. Reveal your anchor.
The troll sees trolls. Step into the light so we can see that you aren't just using your rich verbiage to snipe and bully. Demonstrate your right to hold the higher ground. I am listening - and will give way to your persuasion, if you can find it within you to demonstrate your insight in a manner that is neither condescending nor spurious.
All that I want - indeed what I live for - is to work to make this world a little more palatable, a little less harsh; more inclusive, more humble, and more willing to accept that peace - any peace - can only be found from empathy, humility, understanding, and a deep sense of responsibility for one's actions. Fury brings fear. And as Yoda tells us, fear keeps us bound to immaturity.
No this is another case! I think that I said Bristol to Newport, but I think it was actually Chepstow to Newport - it was back in the '80's or 90's I think.It wasn’t this lady by chance?
On a train in the UK, here’s a lady telling someone (a doctor) to go back to their country.
She even says to the person they don’t look like you were born here (UK).
She is taken off the train by police at a following station.
Instant karma for woman who told train passenger ‘go back to Tunisia or Morocco’
The racist remarks were uttered on an Avanti West Coast train from London to Manchester.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Crazy. The lady was obviously ethnic also. I have seen interethnic racism but intraethnic?
He probably kicked her by accident and she decided to be a right dick about it.
I noticed she tried to play victim on him raising his voice after she had been racist.