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

billvon said:
Ah well. Sorry I triggered you.
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Stupid arguments are bad enough, but then lying about it while doubling down is, well, almost Trumpian. Was most unexpected from you, both times. You're better than that.
 
DaveC426913 said:
Share' button then 'copy URL' button.
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Yes, apparently my problem was that option appears on a Windows device but not on the ancient chrome tablet I was using. It's starting to look like one more obsolescing gizmo in my life. Ah well. Those Mesopotamians made a great tablet, but it may be time to replace.
 
Pinball1970 said:
In context as per @CC

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

She added: “The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – i.e. to male violence – ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences – is a nonsense.

“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

That does not sound like an enemy of the trans community.

Some of the terminology is still a bit strange to me, all the pronoun stuff and "people who menstruate" seems a bit of an unnecessary mouthful too.
Who do we hurt by saying women? It never used to be an issue, were we secretly insulting or suppressing people all this time?

Gender dysphoria is a thing I do not think anyone denies that, people physically change their sex from male to female and visa versa, fine.
From experience it gets complicated when children are involved, what to teach them, how to advise if they think they are trans and sports.

Tricky on some of that.
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People lie all the time. especially bigots about their bigotry. Don't look solely at words look at her actions. she supports some of the most vicious anti trans people and groups
 
C C said:
Traditional radical feminism -- before it splintered into various subgroups -- considered gender identity and gender self-identification (expressed in everyday life as gender roles) to be constructed conceptual distinctions introduced by the patriarchy to oppress women. (Note that back then words like "sex" and "gender" were not always as disentangled from each other in the ideological nomenclature, as they [supposedly] are now. Though the distinction can be irrelevant in some cases, when comparing old texts with new discourse.)

  • Shulamith Firestone: "The end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally."

The "gender-critical" branch that Rowlings arguably belongs to is presumably oriented toward (political) naturalism. In that it believes that "sex is biological, immutable, and binary". In contrast to the artificiality of gender identities.
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That said, it's hard to determine precisely what Rowling means when she says things like, "sex is real and has lived consequences." What does she mean by "real"? Race is regarded as a social construct without a biological basis. That is in no way the same as saying that race isn't "real" and it most certainly does not imply that there are therefore no "lived consequences" informed by matters of race, however it is conceptualized. And, of course, here she seems to be alluding to gender, but referring to sex--I mean, no one is disputing the biological basis of sex; the matter of concern here is gender.

Is Rowling being glib or overly simplistic when she says things like this, or does she simply not understand this? I honestly do not know, but I also haven't really delved into the matter with respect to Rowling.
 
C C said:
Needless to say, XF seems to be rubbing shoulders with transhumanism when it comes to surgically, genetically, and technologically altering the human body.
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Seems is an important word. It would be a most curious affair.

Transhumanism tends toward "asymmetric operation of power".

So does traditionalist exclusionary radicalism.
 
parmalee said:
That said, it's hard to determine precisely what Rowling means when she says things like, "sex is real and has lived consequences." What does she mean by "real"? Race is regarded as a social construct without a biological basis. That is in no way the same as saying that race isn't "real" and it most certainly does not imply that there are therefore no "lived consequences" informed by matters of race, however it is conceptualized. And, of course, here she seems to be alluding to gender, but referring to sex--I mean, no one is disputing the biological basis of sex; the matter of concern here is gender.

Is Rowling being glib or overly simplistic when she says things like this, or does she simply not understand this? I honestly do not know, but I also haven't really delved into the matter with respect to Rowling.
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She often seems to be responding to comments or statements made by others, so one might have to track down who was implying that "_X_ isn't real" in all contexts, including the possibility that she misunderstood them. And not to spin from billvon's age theory [wink], but there may be many Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers who don't reliably or consistently disentangle sex and gender, even when aware of scholarly trends.

Here Rowling provides (back in 2020) her "five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism" movement. I'm not going to try to sum them up in a bare manner with selected excerpts (especially with the lengthy fourth and fifth ones), because the removal of details can be a key fundamental or enabler for stereotyping (just in case the latter is running amok).

But the passage at bottom[2] is quoted because it may be a significant part of the background POV and set of personal experiences that are the provenance for such. When tacking on her earlier statement that: "When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth.", it sounds as if stemming from traditional radical feminism (whose choice for structural oppression is patriarchy, with postgenderism as a goal). Though Rowling -- like the average individual -- probably doesn't strictly identify with any broad or narrow distinction.

And again, all radical feminism isn't exclusionary or a restrictive membership club, as exhibited by newer offshoots like anti-naturalist XF.

Even transhumanism proper should probably regard [post-op] transgender people as an early vanguard of the massive amount of human modification and enhancement awaiting in the future (granting that technologically progressive civilization doesn't collapse before then). That includes even otherkin gradually taking themselves more seriously[1] and politically viable over time, to the point of physically realizing or engineering their animal slash non-human identities. (Science fiction authors like John Varley become prophets in retrospect.)

- - - footnotes - - -

[1] As hinted by species dysphoria, which is not a wholly facetious term, as it is creeping into academic papers and press releases: Why be human when you can be otherkin?

[2] J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

EXCERPT: 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 pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs [gender-critical feminism] 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.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or - just as threatening - unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much. It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.
_
 
parmalee said:
That said, it's hard to determine precisely what Rowling means when she says things like, "sex is real and has lived consequences." What does she mean by "real"?
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I think she's saying that living as a woman has very specific and unique characteristics - the fear of sexual violence, the assumptions society makes about the person etc. But as you mentioned, she is conflating sex and gender here.

A good friend of mine is trans and has been a woman most of her life. She has had many of those same experiences as a woman, even if she is XY. I think the mistake that Rowling makes is saying that biological women have common experiences, but women (women as perceived by society, that is) do not.

I am reminded of the case of Hanne Gaby Odiele. She was born a girl and grew up as a girl. When she was young a doctor removed her ovaries (technically testes) because they were never going to descend anyway and they are a cancer risk. She then became a model, and is now one of best known models in Belgium. From her statement, Rowling would have us believe that Odiele does not know what being a woman is like - even though she has never known any other gender.

I get the impression when reading what Rowling writes is that she started out without a 100% firm grasp of what being trans is, and perhaps said things she might now regret. But she got so much pushback that she feels like now she can't backtrack, and instead she's been reinforcing her position because she doesn't want to be seen as indecisive.
 
TheVat said:
How so? Are you thinking it would something only a wealthy élite could access?
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History.

We argue that, unlike systems with specific applications which can be evaluated following standard engineering principles, undefined systems like "AGI" cannot be appropriately tested for safety. Why, then, is building AGI often framed as an unquestioned goal in the field of AI? In this paper, we argue that the normative framework that motivates much of this goal is rooted in the Anglo-American eugenics tradition of the twentieth century. As a result, many of the very same discriminatory attitudes that animated eugenicists in the past (e.g., racism, xenophobia, classism, ableism, and sexism) remain widespread within the movement to build AGI, resulting in systems that harm marginalized groups and centralize power, while using the language of "safety" and "benefiting humanity" to evade accountability.​

Gebru and Torres↱ apparently weren't expecting that outcome when they started; it's just what they found:

The same discriminatory attitudes that animated first-wave eugenics are pervasive within the TESCREAL literature and community. For example, the Extropian listserv contains numerous examples of alarming remarks by notable figures in the TESCREAL movement. In 1996, Bostrom argued that "Blacks are more stupid than whites," lamenting that he couldn't say this in public without being vilified as a racist, and then mentioned the N-word (Torres, 2023a). In a subsequent "apology" for the e- mail message, he denounced his use of the N-word but failed to retract his claim that whites are more "intelligent" (Torres, 2023a). Also in 1996, Yudkowsky expressed concerns about superintelligence, writing: "Superintelligent robots = Aryans, humans = Jews. The only thing preventing this is sufficiently intelligent robots". Others worried that "since we as transhumans are seeking to attain the next level of human evolution, we run serious risks in having our ideas and programs branded by the popular media as neo-eugenics, racist, neo-nazi, etc.". In fact, leading figures in the TESCREAL community have approvingly cited, or expressed support for, the work of Charles Murray, known for his scientific racism, and worried about "dysgenic" pressures (the opposite of "eugenic") (see Torres, 2023a). Bostrom himself identifies "'dysgenic' pressures" as one possible existential risk in his 2002 paper, alongside nuclear war and a superintelligence takeover.​

That is to say:

The bundle's constituent ideologies have a common genealogy going back to first-wave eugenics. All are intimately connected to transhumanism, and — as noted — transhumanism was initially developed by twentieth century eugenicists. Indeed, transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, and cosmism are examples of second-wave eugenics, since all endorse the use of emerging technologies to radically "enhance" humanity and create a new "posthuman" species.​

Meanwhile, the question of costs and elitism has a pretty clear prospectus: We have no reason to expect this ostensible business venture that intends to somehow profit will suddenly transform into accessible egalitarianism. Moreover, these are people who rant against "DEI" and need to revise the social contract for the sake of their business endeavors while seeking to cultivate postnietzschean superhumanity. In a world where education, justice, and healthcare are prioritized by wealth, it seems unlikely that those who seek to profit from such circumstances and pursue eugenic outcomes will change that standard.
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Notes:

Gebru, Timnit and Émile P. Torres. "The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence". First Monday, v. 29, n. 4. April 2024. FirstMonday.org. 11 March 2025. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636/11606
 
billvon said:
Again, I am not basing decisions on whether she has a valid argument on her age. I am making a general statement that older people grew up during times of older morality. If you could bring a circa-1850 man back to life, he would be horrified by the state of race relations in the US. Not that blacks are being discriminated against, but that blacks are accepted like anyone else in society. Even back then, the most progressive of the liberals thought that black slaves should be freed - but not that they should ever marry whites.

Does that mean he is horrible and people like him should have been condemned? Nope. He was a product of his time. And for his time, he was progressive, and wanted to free the slaves - which was a good thing overall.

No one is that old nowadays. But the older you are, the more what you grew up with as "normal" has changed. Google "Overton Window" - it's a good explanation of how the window of what's acceptable moves with time. And the older you are, the more your window has moved. And if you decide that what's acceptable is whatever happened in your life during your 30's (which a great many people do) - then the older you are, the less tolerant you will be of new social mores.

Keep in mind that her making Dumbledore gay got a reaction from the right because it was too "woke." Her Overton window considers homosexuality "acceptable" but transgender women "radical." If she had been born ten years later, it would have likely been centered just a little higher on that list.
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OK I will react.

I don't think Rowling's postion is that transpeople are "radical". That implies she views it as a political issue rather than a psychological one, which I do not think is the case. As I understand her (though I'm willing to be corrected), she accepts that gender dysphoria is real, that some people feel the need to change gender and that society should accept such people.

What she does not accept, according to my understanding, is firstly that a simple "self-certification" of a gender change is sufficient and secondly that the term"women" should be extended to self-certified people who have not undergone gender reassignment surgery.

This is largely my feeling on the subject. I would refer to the partner of my friend's daughter as a transwoman, but not as a woman. He/she has not undergone surgery nor embarked on any hormone programme and, as if to prove the point, has just fathered (and I use the term deliberately) a second child with her, since coming out as a transwoman. To look at, he[sic] is just a man in drag. I have no problem with him/her feeling more comfortable as a woman - each to their own - but I don't see why real, actual women should be expected to share toilets, changing rooms etc with someone who is still quite obviously male in all physical respects. If he wants to be a real woman he should have the op, would be my view. There have been cases of men using this as a ruse for their own sexual kinks. Not many perhaps, but including a well-publicised case in Scotland, in which a soi-disant transwoman claimed to have changed gender after committing rapes, in order to be sent to a women's prison. That is obviously not good enough.

This is a very tricky subject and attitudes and understanding change with every passing year. What I resent - and therefore resist - is the extremely shrill campaigning pressure that denigrates people who remain deeply uncomfortable about some of this and tries to frogmarch them into unquestioning acceptance that an apparent man in women's clothing should be called a woman and accepted as such. I think Rowling articulates what many people feel about this.
 
TheVat said:
I think the thread would benefit from a citation there.
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Why if you don't think shes done anything wrong no facts are going to change your mind. but seriously just comments. she'd on the record as saying shed rather go to jail than use a trans persons pronouns. shes a bigot plain and simple and trys to hide behind her gender to pretend others wise.
 
TheVat said:
I think the thread would benefit from a citation there.
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pjdude1219 said:
Why if you don't think shes done anything wrong no facts are going to change your mind. but seriously just comments.
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In truth, the better answer is that we try not to pay attention to those people. For instance, I can't remember the name of Rowling's friend, the one who was running online stores selling terfmerch, oh, there she is:

Author JK Rowling, who has come under fire for statements about trans activism that many have called transphobic, promoted an online store that sells items with offensive, anti-trans phrases.

The website, called Wild Womyn Workshop, advertises pins with quotes including the phrases "Transwomen are men," "Transmen are my sisters," "Transition = conversion therapy," "F--- your pronouns," and "Woman is Not a Costume."

In a tweet on Tuesday, Rowling recommended Wild Womyn Workshop, where she said she bought the t-shirt she was wearing, to her 14.3 million followers. Rowling's shirt in the photo reads "this witch doesn't burn" ....

.... The online store is run by Angela C. Wild, a lesbian feminist activist. Wild is also a founding member of the activist group, Get the L Out, which opposes transgenderism.

Get the L Out considers transgender identity to be part of "misogynistic politics and systems that prioritise men's interests," the organization's website says.

(Greenspan↱)​

That was 2020. In 2024, a social media poster↱ observed photos of Rowling at a "boozy lunch" including Wild, Suzanne Moore, Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce, Liane Timmerman, and Julie Bindel.

It's true, I try to forget they exist as much as circumstance allows.

†​

Maybe I'm getting ahead of the discussion, but does nobody remember the bit where Rowling started deleting defamatory social media postings after starring in a very public harassment campaign against a female athlete for not being ladylike enough?
____________________

Notes:

@mothrasattorney. "Here is Rowling with the shop owner and founder of ‘Get The L Out’ Angela Wild. This is the same 'boozy lunch' where she met Allison Bailey from the LGB Alliance and Helen Joyce, who once claimed we need to be 'reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition'." X. 20 January 2024. X.com. 11 March 2025. status/1748655379049742722

Greenspan, Rachel E. "JK Rowling promoted a store selling anti-trans merch saying 'transwomen are men' and 'f--- your pronouns'". Business Insider. 23 September 2020. BusinessInsider.com. 11 March 2025. https://www.businessinsider.com/jk-rowling-terf-online-store-selling-anti-trans-merch-2020-9
 
pjdude1219 said:
Why if you don't think shes done anything wrong no facts are going to change your mind.
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The thread wouid benefit from a citation here.

Facts change my mind all the time. Please don't make this personal, especially with someone you don't know.

And my mind is not at all made up re Rowling's actual views on transgender. I started the thread in order to learn something and offer a couple posters who had clashed on the matter a venue for discussion.
 
exchemist said:
[...] I don't see why real, actual women should be expected to share toilets, changing rooms etc with someone who is still quite obviously male in all physical respects. If he wants to be a real woman he should have the op, would be my view. There have been cases of men using this as a ruse for their own sexual kinks. Not many perhaps, but including a well-publicised case in Scotland, in which a soi-disant transwoman claimed to have changed gender after committing rapes, in order to be sent to a women's prison. That is obviously not good enough.
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It can certainly be exploited, just as the internet introduced a new means to rob people, or the Mafia tagged along with productive Italian immigrants, etc. Few if any major changes are as absolutely ideal as some supporters may contingently depict an _X_ with the usual array of argumentive and statistical apologetics.

This is a very tricky subject and attitudes and understanding change with every passing year. What I resent - and therefore resist - is the extremely shrill campaigning pressure that denigrates people who remain deeply uncomfortable about some of this and tries to frogmarch them into unquestioning acceptance that an apparent man in women's clothing should be called a woman and accepted as such. I think Rowling articulates what many people feel about this.
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Just as the old religious establishment had its ethical fetishes that it expected the masses to properly accommodate...

Literary intellectualism revolving around critical theory incrementally became the secular replacement for the Church in the course of the 20th-century. With various activist and partisan mediators digesting that conceptual material, refining it for general consumption, and molding such into social justice protocols, agenda, and policies.

Of the LGBT+ community, the transgender domain arguably has the most violence, hostility, and maltreatment directed at it. Making it a key moral totem and virtue preoccupation to center outrage around in terms of disrespect and indignities, which (putatively) legitimize the left or reformist case for radical socioeconomic rehabilitation and rebuilding of society.
_
 
C C said:
Literary intellectualism revolving around critical theory incrementally became the secular replacement for the Church in the course of the 20th-century. With various activist and partisan mediators digesting that conceptual material, refining it for general consumption, and molding such into social justice protocols, agenda, and policies.
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Things do seem to dogmatize. Especially when intellectuals take such issues up in their castles without talking with anyone down on Main Street. The street level emotional reactions to seeing a pair of hairy legs in the stall next to yours, or male giblets flopping around in the ladies dressing/locker room, or a trans female scooping up all the trophies at the girls track meet, are all vaulted over by the idealist in the tower.

C C said:
Of the LGBT+ community, the transgender domain arguably has the most violence, hostility, and maltreatment directed at it. Making it a key moral totem and virtue preoccupation to center outrage around in terms of disrespect and indignities, which (putatively) legitimize the left or reformist case for radical socioeconomic rehabilitation and rebuilding of society.
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Why this reform can't somehow include some private stalls for the "un-opped" trans folk is a question for the Left to receive graciously, and I see that as why Rowling keeps pecking away at the notion that just donning a dress and claiming a pinkish brain gets you into the locker room or powder room. The more attacked she feels, the more she will entrench in a more critical view of transgenderism. My spouse is the same way. Many people are kind of oppositional in their basic emotional makeup, and that ain't gonna change. When I first learned about transgender, fifty years ago, it was in a social climate where I could say "ewwwww!" and work through my initial reactions without being pilloried for it. That helped me work towards some greater understanding as I got older, separate gender from the XY thing, see how painful it might be to suffer gender dysphoria, and get used to the idea that lopping off the old johnson and attendant luggage didn't have to be a horror show of self-mutilation. And TBH there's still the lingering feeling that embracing one's inner gender doesn't have to necessarily be asserted by means of costly medical interventions so that you fit some societal template. (but that's probably a whole other thread)
 
pjdude1219 said:
Why if you don't think shes done anything wrong no facts are going to change your mind. but seriously just comments. she'd on the record as saying shed rather go to jail than use a trans persons pronouns. shes a bigot plain and simple and trys to hide behind her gender to pretend others wise.
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No. It's not plain and simple. It's nuanced and there is a lot of different areas.
 
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