I agree with this. An employer is always going to be concerned about its brand. They are not ethically obligated to keep on anyone on who has put their image at risk. If the public wishes to express its displeasure at her firing, that is what boycotts and letter writing campaigns are for.
Dseid, I remember us debating the ethics of boycotts before (during Imus, I think?). Not sure if you’ve rethought your position, but this is something to keep in mind if her firing is part of a trend that bothers you.
I likely missed it but I have seen no mention of the think tank claiming that her non-company related political activity put the company’s fundraising at risk or had any impact on the company in any way. Or that she violated any stated policy or directive. All I can find anyway is that she was told to put a disclaimer on her posts that she was speaking for herself alone and that she did so.
Not at all similar to ignoring a clear directive and trying to express your political speech at work.
I do completely get that if said beliefs are incompatible with the job or your expression of those beliefs have highly probable significant negative impact on the company, then you should go.
Again if the company made that claim and supported it, I missed it. My point however remains that holding employment contingent upon restricting otherwise protected speech expression on items that have no impact on the company, not at the company, because the company powers that be disagree, is wrong.
Of interest is the case of the woman who got fired for flipping off Trump. Indeed their successful defense against her wrongful termination case was that her action could hurt the company with retaliation by the Trump administration on some contracts. She did win on her severance case however.
That said, yes in at-will states there is no free speech for employees if they want to keep their jobs. A few states do protect employees’ freedom of speech outside of work, but in my mind way too few. Here for example is one:
This makes great sense to me. Realize of course that restricting freedom of speech is something those with power (Something an employer tends to be) can do generally on those without much power (something a working stiff who needs the job tends to be).
I am corrected though that the ability to abuse power in this way already exists even within the United States in many states. Firing someone for putting a BLM sign, or a Warren sign, on their house window is okeydokey. It is still wrong.
Kobal2, even the U.K. board agreed that “TERF” is an insult. Of course that is not the only insult I have in mind and that has been used here.
What I have in mind is actually impacting opinions and accomplishing what I see as a public good. That happens by way of public conversations with people of other opinions who are often of good faith, conversations that are heard by some others whose positions are not set in stone.
The people I care about most in this discussion are those who have actual real and significant difficulties (inclusive of dysphoria) due to a mismatch between their anatomical sex at birth and their pervasive and persistent gender identity. I care about protecting their ability to exist without such dysphoria as the gender of their longstanding pervasive identity. I personally do not give a shit one way or the other about someone who has no significant dysphoria or difficulties. I’ll be polite and call them whatever pronoun they want because I give no shit; they are of no issue to me at all.
I also see the potential harms to others by stating that those without any dysphoria, with anatomy of their birth, who are comfortable and choose to present as the anatomy of their birth, should be fully legally considered as the same as all others of the other gender at any time with no criteria other than stating “it’s how I feel right now”. The harms I envision are not least of all to those with gender dysphoria because that would provoke a pushback by many that would drive support away from transgender rights in general. What do you think would be the impact on public support of transgender rights when the face of transgender rights is the legal right for someone with a penis, who, like Murray presents by choice with a beard and in stereotypical male attire, to go into the woman’s locker room at the gym and share the public shower and and common changing space with cis-women and girls?
I seem to have a much greater belief in gender identity as a real biologically determined trait than you with the face does, but with her I am clearly thrown into the transphobic bigot camp by some who post here. So would many Americans who consider themselves strongly supportive of rights for transmen and women.
BB yes your perspective is “Fuck the debate.” Your approach in my not at all humble opinion does HARM to transgender rights for those who need the protections. You may get off on posturing along with a few others but the impact you, and others quick to label any view other than your own as bigotry, have is negative only. And WTF are you doing posting in Great Debates with that as your mantra? Maybe stick to the Pit if your mission is to insult those who do not agree with you.
ywtf you have a very good memory! That was '07! But while I may be less strident on the subjects of boycotts now than I was more than a dozen years ago, my basic mindset is pretty much the same. I merely imagine the same attempts to control speech expression being applied to speech I strongly endorse, and if I think such controls would be an abuse of power, by an employer or merely “the mob”, if applied against my speech then I feel it would be against speech I disagree with as well. As said there then, within some definite limits.
(I am frankly surprised I’ve moved so little in over 12 years … :))
…the very debate has done actual HARM to transgender rights. The United States didn’t kick transgender people out of the military because someone called somebody a TERF on twitter. They didn’t roll back protections on transgender people because a random person on the internet said “fuck the debate.” Don’t blame me for the actions of the people who are doing the actual harm.
Its just like climate change. The scientific consensus overwhelmingly supports one side of the debate. But by keeping “the debate alive” “climate skeptics”, just like “gender critical feminists” can keep their talking points in the news, can keep propagating propaganda, and can continue to roll back transgender rights.
I’m not “posturing.” I’m taking a definitive stand. I’m drawing a line. I honestly wish I had drawn that line many years earlier and I’m ashamed that I hadn’t. Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. I’m not going to debate this with you.
This isn’t “my mantra.”
This thread asks the question " Is JK Rowling transphobic?" It isn’t a debate about whether or not transgender people have a right to exist. If that’s the debate you want to have then it isn’t me that needs to start a new thread.
And I haven’t insulted anyone. That you take my posts as “insulting those that do not agree with me” says everything about the position you have staked out here. You imagine that “both sides” of the debate have equivalence: they simply do not.
LOLing and implying I may be a racist are very poor substitutes for arguments.
You have clearly stated that you would use your power as an employer to punish people for holding beliefs different than your own by firing them, and then complain about authoritarianism; your position in your own words is “Fuck the debate” and that you don’t want this discussion to happen, while accusing others of tone policing.
This and other self contradictory statements coming from you do nothing but undermine your self professed absolutist view on the issue.
I’ll tell you what my views are, the female and male classification is based on biology, you can’t wish those away; man is the label given to a male human and woman is the label given to a female human (similar to mare and stallion for horses), if you want to go around saying that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man you must make clear that you are dissociating the terms from their biological basis; which is not something I see much of from radical. pro trans quarters, rather the opposite actually (i.e. “Men can have periods too”).
Personally, and formally, I would refer to a biological human male as man, a biological human female as woman and people who assume the gender identity of an opposite sex as either trans man or trans woman and I have no problem personally addressing either as men or women.
But the reality is that at a biological level a trans man is not the same as a man and a trans woman is not the same as a woman. The problem (or part of the problem) arises from people, like you presumably, who want to ignore this reality and substitute it with your preferred social construct; when you set out to fight against reality the conflict will never end and people will continue to be harmed in the process, specially if it’s carried out in a dogmatic manner, which leads back to what I said before about your position being self contradictory.
Nobody should suffer discrimination of any kind based on biological sex or gender identification. Anyone should be able to exercise this freedom until their actions impact on the freedoms of others and it can be argued, much as you would rather shut down any discussions on the matter, that in some instances where biological differences between males and females constitute a significant factor trans men and women can infringe upon the rights and freedoms of cis men and women; when those situations arise debate is necessary to arrive to a workable solution for all parties.
…I never implied you were a racist. But I did LOL, because what you wrote made me literally laugh out loud.
**Punish **is your word. I have no intention of being punitive.
I’m not complaining about authoritarianism. I’m fucking terrified of authoritarianism. And you are welcome to have this discussion if you like, but the gender identity of my staff is not up for debate. And “tone policing” and saying “fuck the debate” are not the same thing at all. There is no contradiction going on here.
LOL.
We don’t need to make clear “we are disassociating with the biological basis”. There isn’t any reason to hold to the biological basis.
So why is biological basis important or relevant then?
So what? Why does it matter? I’m not fighting reality. The science isn’t complicated here, and the science backs up my “preferred social construct” and the science fits with my “reality.”
We can stop the conflict now if people would simply stopped persecuting transgender people.
The only people who have been objectively harmed in this “debate” are transgender people.
As if the gender-critical position isn’t “dogmatic.”
And there is nothing self-contradictory about my position.
What rights do cis men and cis women have that aren’t shared by transgender men and transgender women?
The truth is the exact opposite of what you blabber on about.
The public discussions and very debates have been extremely successful in moving the needle on the general public’s acceptance of transgender rights. There are, most realize, strong differences in public opinion according to political, educational, and religious camps (which of course co-vary to some degree), with a fairly narrow majority of Republicans feeling society has gone “too far” on this subject, and a solid majority of Democrats believing “not far enough”. The GOP currently has more political power and plays to fairly narrow majority within their party. But public opinion over all is NOT in favor of rolling back protections because of the real discussions and exposure people have had without being demonized on the process.
“They” didn’t roll back protections for transgender people because of the arguments made by a handful of feminists skeptical of the very concept of gender as real.
No, the debates of this thread are NOT “just like climate change” in which the “scientific consensus overwhelmingly supports one side of the debate.” The discussion is not really even about the science, it is about values.
As to a discussion about the scientific consensus, such as it is (based on the relatively limited data that exists), it is that there is a durable biological element to gender identity that sometimes is discordant with anatomical sex. (A decent review.) Further the consensus is that such discordance often causes significant psychological distress, that modifying the gender identity is not successful while altering the lived identity (up to and including the anatomical identity) is. The scientific consensus does not state that a transman or woman is the exact same as a cisman or woman (they of course are not in many ways, some very important to their healthcare, and some based on different lived lives), or define who qualifies as having that identity. The view that strengthened to a great degree over the past decade about how we as a society should respond to people with that discordance with dignity, respect, and greater rights as the gender of their identity, are issues not of science but of values. The scientific consensus does NOT support that gender identity in this sense is something consciously decided like whether or not to get a new tattoo (but with less commitment).
Completely agree and I continue to strenuously object to your attempt to make it into that discussion by dishonestly claiming others take a position that they most certainly do not. I have not read anyone here … or Rowling or Forstater arguing that transgender people do not have a right to exist. I do read some claiming that Forstater’s position that gender is not a real thing for anyone IS that (when it is not). I do read some claiming that Rowling’s objecting to someone for being fired for that, as that position, when it is not. And I read some falsely labelling any disagreement with their exact position as saying that and then arguing against that straw … person.
“I never implied you were a racist.”
I know, and you know that your question was a poor attempt at a gotcha.
"We don’t need to make clear “we are disassociating with the biological basis”. There isn’t any reason to hold to the biological basis. "
Male and female are classifications that arise from biological reality, when you write things like that you make it patently clear that you put your undebatable beliefs ahead of observable reality.
“The only people who have been objectively harmed in this “debate” are transgender people.”
The thread topic is about a woman who was harmed, by losing her job, and JK Rowlings reaction to it that has led to a significant amount of negativity directed at her, the sort of vitriol you, I’m sure of, would readily describe as harmful if directed against someone who agrees with you.
“And there is nothing self-contradictory about my position. "
You are positively oozing self-contradiction in everything you write, the line just before that is " the gender-critical position isn’t “dogmatic.”” followed by “You aren’t going to debate that at my workplace.” preceded by statements like " Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. I’m not going to debate this with you." or “Fuck the debate”, what you are doing is the very definition of dogmatism, declare something to be the unquestionable truth; and to drive in the self contradictory nature of your statements. You wrote of Forstater “I’m not trying to stop her participating in the debate. She is welcome to debate all she likes.”. People are allowed to debate you say, next you say fuck the debate, there’s no debate.
“What rights do cis men and cis women have that aren’t shared by transgender men and transgender women?”
Make up your mind, either you say “transmen are men and transwomen are women” or don’t. If you would be consistent you would ask What rights do men have that women don’t have?, and the answer, or some of the answers anyway, is they have different rights that arise either from the underlying biological differences between males and females (i,e. in regards to reproduction, for instance issues related to abortion) or rights that arose out of social structures that distinguish between the sexes, (i.e. segregated locker rooms).
Yeah, well that’s just like your opinion, man. Others disagree with that viewpoint and among those others are women who have to deal with this “biological basis” day in and day out. They lack the luxury of discarding the importance of biology because biology gave rise to their gender. I see no compelling reason to tell these women they are wrong.
If biology is irrevelant, then are you saying athletic competitions shouldn’t be segregated by biological sex? Are you saying it’s transphobic for non-trans women to object to competing against trans women who have lived the majority of their lives enhanced with endogenous testosterone and lack female secondary sex characteristics that make females weaker and slower than males? I’d like to know youR stance on this.
If biology is irrelevant now, how should criminal suspects be described on the 6 o’clock news? If a bank is held up by someone who looks like Jason Momoa’s twin brother, is it inappropriate to use the word “man” or “male” when describing him to the public? Should this change if he was wearing a skirt instead of jeans?
Even if this guy held up the bank in a ballgown and earrings, the public is going to see him as a “man in a ballgown and earrings” before they see him as the gender he identifies as. Because that is information that a stranger can’t discern by sight. Biological sex in general* is *discernible, in the absence of man-made intervention. it is never going to be irrelevant when it comes to how gender is perceived.
If you’d asked me a week ago whether what I’m saying is controversial, I would have told you no. But it apparently it is. It’s a surreal feeling.
In this regard - of course the respect for freedom of action until their actions impact on the freedoms of others is a large part of the discussion in terms of how transgender individuals are treated by some and why protections are needed. Mostly, damn near exclusively, the freedoms being restricted are the freedoms of the transgender to live as the gender of their identity in safety and treated with dignity and respect.
To put the argument of some in this thread in the best possible light, a question might be if someone questioning whether or not gender is a real thing, or your statement pretty much denying gender identity as real thing as well, in and of itself counts as impacting the freedom of others. Specifically to the op, does a statement that explicitly endorses and supports the rights of people to freely live as the gender of their choice with dignity but at the same time implies support for a belief that sex (“a biological basis”) is still real, whatever the gender identity is, count as restricting the freedom of others? Do Forstater’s tweets qualify as restricting the freedom of others and if so to the degree that her freedom to express her thoughts outside of work in a manner that to the best of our knowledge had no direct impact on the workplace or the company, be restricted as a condition of employment?
Yet the protections have been rolled back. Transgender people can’t serve in the military. And there is a very good chance that Trump is going to win again next year.
That isn’t my fault. That isn’t going to happen because someone in this thread called someone a TERF. The needle in the public discussion wasn’t moved because activists decided to be “polite.” Its like you are pretending that things like Stonewall never happened.
They hold identical biological essentialist beliefs. They rolled back the protections because they don’t believe transwomen are women.
Of course you want to avoid the science because the science is on my side here. The science position is inherent to the gender-critical argument: its all about “biological men and women.”
I’m stating that there isn’t any reason to hold to the biological basis. “Male and female” are classifications that have more than one definition. Using one definition in one specific context doesn’t not mean that I am denying “observable reality”.
I never denied I was being dogmatic. Where did I do that?
But nothing I have said has been self contracticary.
That is not contradictory. She is welcome to debate. She isn’t welcome to debate with me. Fuck the debate. Nothing contradictory there.
Correct. No intention to be punitive. Only protective.
I’m not policing their beliefs. They just won’t be able to work for me if they openly express transphobic beliefs. I won’t tell them what they will do. I will not police their thoughts. I won’t police their thoughts because they won’t be working for me.
No contradiction.
No, it was a question to you. You claimed “, that in some instances where biological differences between males and females constitute a significant factor trans men and women can infringe upon the rights and freedoms of cis men and women.” The question was relevant to this particular claim of yours.
Racists don’t frame their argument around racist positions: that isn’t how propaganda works. "The white race is “dying” due to growing non-white populations and “forced assimilation” can sound almost reasonable until you dig a little deeper.
We are at the beginnings of the post-truth age. What people say doesn’t necessarily tell us what they mean, to find out what the truth we need to look at what the endgame is.
And the endgame for the gender critical movement is this:
[QUOTE=Vox]
TERF ideology has become the de facto face of feminism in the UK, helped along by media leadership from Rupert Murdoch and the Times of London. Any vague opposition to gender-critical thought in the UK brings along accusations of “silencing women” and a splashy feature or op-ed in a British national newspaper. Australian radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys went before the UK Parliament in March 2018 and declared that trans women are “parasites,” language that sounds an awful lot like Trump speaking about immigrants.
…
Gender-critical feminism, at its core, opposes the self-definition of trans people, arguing that anyone born with a vagina is in its own oppressed sex class, while anyone born with a penis is automatically an oppressor. In a TERF world, gender is a system that exists solely to oppress women, which it does through the imposition of femininity on those assigned female at birth.
…
This conception of gender as a system would be relatively sound if not for the existence of LGBTQ people. Gender- and sex-based oppression can be imposed on a range of people who were assigned male at birth, like gay men and, of course, trans women. In practice, however, the movement more closely resembles an organized hate campaign against a marginalized community — whether that’s through online harassment or filing briefs in landmark civil rights cases.
Adherents to TERF ideology treat trans women, trans men, and nonbinary people much differently. Gender-critical feminists blame the patriarchy for deluding trans men into thinking they can identify out of female oppression, or blame structural homophobia for convincing trans men they can become straight men rather than lesbians.
…
If trans people are given anti-discrimination protections, WoLF writes in its brief, “it will mark a truly fundamental shift in American law and policy that strips women of their right to privacy, threatens their physical safety, undercuts the means by which women can achieve professional and educational equality, and ultimately works to erase women and girls under the law.”
[/QUOTE]
I stand by my words. The gender critical crowd want to deny transgender people the right to exist and they are actively fighting in the courts to make it so.
I don’t know anything about the so-called TERF world, but there are plenty of people who believe the notion of gender has been used to limit both men and women. Anyone who has seen little boys bullied because they act like “sissies” can attest to this.
I’m not sure why the author of this piece is so authoritative that of a sudden we gotta pretend toxic masculinity isn’t a problem that stems from how gender is applied in our society, but again I marvel at how surreal this discussion feels.
You know, these "trans women who have lived the majority of their lives enhanced with endogenous testosterone and lack female secondary sex characteristics that make females weaker and slower than males:"they are consistently beaten by biological women.You WaNT tO knOW mY STancE oN THIs? My stance is “is there a problem? What is it you think the problem actually is?”
When I think of all the things that transgender activists are fighting for: I never imagined they would be fighting for this. I mean…
…you are still going! You managed to write two paragraphs about this? Congratulations!!!
Apparently it isn’t. I’m glad I could clear that up for you.
…well that would be because the author doesn’t suggest we pretend toxic masculinity isn’t a problem that stems from how gender is applied in our society.
I really appreciate the debate. I have to say that I’ve heard some good arguments on both sides of the discussion.
However, I’m still not sure I’m any closer to understanding what gender is.
These are the possibilities I’ve explored over the past few days.
**#1. Gender is a social construct–a loose culturally-specific description of a set of behaviors and physical traits that are typically (although not always) attached to the two biological sexes. **
What I infer from this definition:
Gate-keeping is allowed under this definition, since “social construct” implies its founded on social rules. Self-identification takes a backset to external perception under this definition.
As a social construct, it is subject to change from place to place and time to time. So an individual who claims to feel like they are a specific gender isn’t speaking of some metaphysical condition. They are simply saying that the social rules for that gender are more in line with their identity than the social rules for another gender. Thus, when this person transitions to their preferred gender, it is reasonable to expect them to reflect at least some of the social rules for that gender.
**#2. Gender is a biological description–a way of describing an individual based on congenital or acquired sex characteristics. **
What I infer from this definition:
Gate-keeping makes some sense if we accept this definition, since the presence of a biological indicator(s) is required for gender classification. If an individual does not possess the minimum number of biological indicators associated with a specific biological sex, that individual is ineligible for the concomitant gender.
An individual need not be born with the sex characteristics of their preferred gender to be designated as that gender. But they would need to acquire these characteristics through surgery/hormone treatment to be considered that preferred gender.
This definition is problematic because it renders folks who have ambiguous or mixed biological indicators (intersex folks or folks with vaginas who have XY chromosomes) as “genderless”. It also limits our understanding of gender to the biomarkers we know about it. Our knowledge of our own biology is always shifting.
#3. Gender is more like a personality description than anything else.
What I infer from this definition:
Personality is a subjective experience, so it is difficult to gate-keep. But it is not impossible to do so. Extroverts can be distinguished from introverts, even if there is some subjectivity with both terms. Like, one can reasonably argue that a person who becomes lonely or bored if they go an hour without communicating with another person is questionable as an introvert. If gender can be described as a personality description, theoretically a psychological test should be able to reliably predict a person’s self-identified gender.
This definition suffers from circularity unless we actually describe what a “man” and “woman” personality is. We can describe an introvert without referencing “introvert”. The same with other personality descriptions. But “A man is a person who feels/thinks/acts like a man” doesn’t tell us what “man” is.
I don’t know what traits would go into a “man” or “woman” personality that can’t be debated to death.
**#4. Gender is a category that is defined primarily by the individual who professes to belong to it. **
What I infer from this definition:
Gate-keeping would be pointless under this definition, since individuals are free to designate themselves by whatever criteria they deem meaningful.
Gender has no objective meaning because it solely exists as an individualized experience. Because gender has no objective meaning, there is no real point of segregating or specifying individuals by gender, since there is nothing cohesive linking same-gender identified individuals together besides the ability to communicate “I am Gender X”.
It is because of the above reason that I believe a lot of posters here are arguing two contradictory things. Gender has great social important! But don’t you dare gate-keep! It seems to me that if something is socially important, then some gate-keeping should not only be expected, but it should be also valued. Socially important things must be protected somehow. Prohibiting gate-keeping only makes sense if gender has little social importance (being perceived as “woman” is no different than being perceived as “extroverted” or “agreeable” or “person who drinks overly sweet tea”).
So…it seems to me if we don’t want people to gate-keep gender, we have to take it off the high pedestal that it currently sits on. We need to do away with gendered pronouns. We need to do away with all gender-exclusive spaces. We need to discourage people from using gender as a criterion for relationships. Either that or we need to teach folks that gender is totally different from biological sex, which can be substantiated objectively. You want a female gynecologist because you want to optimize your chances of getting treated by someone who has empathy for your stigmatized, historically downplayed “female issues”? Well, if you select by gender you may get women with penises and women who have only spent a small amount of time living with female parts. You better ask your practitioners to disclose their biological sex with you if that is important to you–even thought it is hella awkward to ask a stranger you aren’t planning to have sex with what kind of genitals they have.
I have discriminated based on gender when it comes to my own health care. When I started getting pap smears a few years ago, I decided I wanted a woman to perform them. When I was making that selection, I wasn’t thinking, “I want a person who feels like a woman”. I was thinking “I want a person who has lived in a body with certain organs, awash in certain hormones, just like I have.” So in that case, I was using definition #2. When I sought psychotherapy, I screened psychologists based on gender (among other criteria). When I made my selection, I wasn’t thinking, “I want this person to have the same personality traits that I do.” I was thinking, “I want this person to have been socialized as a woman and thus be someone who may be able to relate to some/many of the experiences I have had.” So in this case, I was using definition #1.
Definitions #3 and #4 are questionable to me. But I think I can go with #3 as long as it could be fleshed out some more. Definition #4 doesn’t make any sense to me, and it probably never will. Despite the excellent dialogue, I’m still not convinced that means I’m transphobic. A person who desires a meaningful classification scheme, yes. But not a hateful person.