billvon:
You make an analogy with race. There are people who claim that they are "blind to race". Those people will claim, with a straight face, that they literally don't see race. You see, they are so enlightened that, unlike the great unwashed masses, they are able to see that all human beings are the same. Hence, there are no white people and no black people. There are just people.
The reality is that this is a pretence, because everybody notices physical characteristics such as the colour of another person's skin and other racial markers.
More importantly, though, it's a potentially dangerous pretence. Different groups of human beings are more or less susceptible to different illnesses, for instance. It follows that pretending that everybody needs exactly the same medical treatment will result, on average, in worse health outcomes for people who deviate furthest from whatever the "average" is in the level and kind of medical treatments available and/or used, due to their racial characteristics.
While we're on the topic of medicine, it is worth pointing out that the medical needs of a pre- or post-transition transgender individual are likely to be somewhat different, in a number of respects, than those of the average cis-gender individual. Pretending that all that medical differentiation simply disappears as soon as somebody says "I now identify as a women", or whatever, could validly be regarded as nuts.
It might be worth investigating what harm, if any, accrues when a woman takes on her husband's name upon marriage, and compare it to the harm, if any, that accrues when she does not do that.
If it turns that there's no measurable impact of doing one or the other, than it would seem that allowing the woman to make her own choice would be the best thing to do. After all, she is the one who will be using the name as her identification.
Note: it's not just a matter of considering potential harm to the person most closely affected. It also requires a consideration of the potential harms to any other people that will be affected by mandating one choice over the other, by law for example.
We agree.
I do not dispute at all that they identify as female, but that's about gender, not sex.
I would describe them, accurately, as intersex. Many of them, if they were aware of their chromosomes, would no doubt also self-describe as such, while continuing to identify as the female gender.
This is the heart of the matter. What is a woman? (And let's not forget that this whole discussion applies equally to "what is a man?")
Traditionally, as we have discussed, a woman is a person who has XX chromosomes, first and foremost. Traditionally - for instance, before anybody is aware that a person who identifies as a woman has XY chromosomes - people with XY chromosomes who identify as women have also been included under the umbrella term. But not knowingly.
Now, the activists want to change the meaning of the word "woman" to mean "anybody who identifies as a woman", which explicitly and deliberately ignores all matters of biology.
Rowling is concerned about the possible harms involved in that attempt to break with "tradition". She is also concerned about receiving death threats, rape threats and threats to her children, from the kinds of people who are unwilling to allow any discussion of the concerns of Rowling and other feminists who identify as women.
Right. And I'm arguing that the tradition of referring to XX people "women" and XY people "men" makes a lot of sense. For starters, those words accurately describe both the sex and the self-described gender identities of the vast majority of people in the world.
I think you'll probably find that the people who Rowling regards as "nuts" are the activists who want to pretend that sex isn't real and that all that matters is gender.
You make an analogy with race. There are people who claim that they are "blind to race". Those people will claim, with a straight face, that they literally don't see race. You see, they are so enlightened that, unlike the great unwashed masses, they are able to see that all human beings are the same. Hence, there are no white people and no black people. There are just people.
The reality is that this is a pretence, because everybody notices physical characteristics such as the colour of another person's skin and other racial markers.
More importantly, though, it's a potentially dangerous pretence. Different groups of human beings are more or less susceptible to different illnesses, for instance. It follows that pretending that everybody needs exactly the same medical treatment will result, on average, in worse health outcomes for people who deviate furthest from whatever the "average" is in the level and kind of medical treatments available and/or used, due to their racial characteristics.
While we're on the topic of medicine, it is worth pointing out that the medical needs of a pre- or post-transition transgender individual are likely to be somewhat different, in a number of respects, than those of the average cis-gender individual. Pretending that all that medical differentiation simply disappears as soon as somebody says "I now identify as a women", or whatever, could validly be regarded as nuts.
This example is concerned with a matter that is purely one related to cultural preferences. Nothing biological hangs on what somebody's last name is.
It might be worth investigating what harm, if any, accrues when a woman takes on her husband's name upon marriage, and compare it to the harm, if any, that accrues when she does not do that.
If it turns that there's no measurable impact of doing one or the other, than it would seem that allowing the woman to make her own choice would be the best thing to do. After all, she is the one who will be using the name as her identification.
Note: it's not just a matter of considering potential harm to the person most closely affected. It also requires a consideration of the potential harms to any other people that will be affected by mandating one choice over the other, by law for example.
No, I'm not concerned. I'm very confident that she is not claiming that, based on other things she has said.
Sorry. Sometimes, when I'm explaining somebody else's views on something I don't always make it as clear as I could that I'm not giving my opinions, but rather than I'm giving an example of the kind of thing that other people would say, believe or advocate for. Perhaps I overestimate the ability of my readers to remember what I've already said about my own views, prior to contrasting them with the typical views held by people on the "other side".
Yes. And not their genotype. And not all the secondary sexual characteristics they may have gained by going through puberty pre-transition. And not all the epigentic influences on their phenotype. And so on and so forth.
We agree.
Well, that's the question, isn't it? Are they "still women" if they have XY chromosomes?
I do not dispute at all that they identify as female, but that's about gender, not sex.
I would describe them, accurately, as intersex. Many of them, if they were aware of their chromosomes, would no doubt also self-describe as such, while continuing to identify as the female gender.
This is the heart of the matter. What is a woman? (And let's not forget that this whole discussion applies equally to "what is a man?")
Traditionally, as we have discussed, a woman is a person who has XX chromosomes, first and foremost. Traditionally - for instance, before anybody is aware that a person who identifies as a woman has XY chromosomes - people with XY chromosomes who identify as women have also been included under the umbrella term. But not knowingly.
Now, the activists want to change the meaning of the word "woman" to mean "anybody who identifies as a woman", which explicitly and deliberately ignores all matters of biology.
Rowling is concerned about the possible harms involved in that attempt to break with "tradition". She is also concerned about receiving death threats, rape threats and threats to her children, from the kinds of people who are unwilling to allow any discussion of the concerns of Rowling and other feminists who identify as women.
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