# J K Rowling and the trans furore **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 16, 2020, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795 "2020-06-16T18:05:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 240
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4787 "2020-10-08T03:02:29Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > If I’m attracted to someone, I am NOT thinking"dickdickdick". OR “pussypussypussy.” I’m not thinking “I must breed now”. Reproductive fitness can be removed from the equation entirely and still leave sexual arousal. I often have cravings. Specific kinds of cravings. Meat cravings. Sweet cravings. Salt cravings. Am I consciously making myself have those cravings? Or is it almost certain that those cravings are being generated by my subconscious mind–the control panel in tune with the rest of my body and thus aware of its nutritional deficits? It senses when my iron stores are low, triggering a meat craving. Or it senses when my electrolytes are low, so it triggers a salt craving. I’m not thinking “saltsaltsalt” when I have a salt craving. It’s “picklespicklespickles” or “DoritosDoritosDoritos”. But it’s the same impulse that draws deer to salt licks. It takes a big leap of faith to think that humans can override our programming just for shits and giggles. It may feel like we can do this, but there is no proof of this. Everything we do can be traced to a biological impulse. Our impulses are the emergent property of a cascade of chemical reactions all flowing from the interaction of genes with our environment. Genes are the result of billions of years of evolution. You can speculate that we have souls which allow us to do all kinds of wild and crazy and unpredictable things. But this is purely speculation. There is no evidence of this. The theory with the most evidence is the one presented by @YWTF. Our sexual orientation is the result of our biological programming. Some of us are picky. Some of us aren’t. It is stupid for either group to shame the other. It’s as stupid as straights shaming the gays or the sexuals shaming the asexuals. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4788 "2020-10-08T03:07:03Z")
I haven’t said anything one way or the other about sexual immutability. I have no idea where you’re getting this from. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4789 "2020-10-08T03:09:53Z")
“Biological programming” does not necessarily imply “must have specific sex organ”. One can be (biologically) attracted to women or men without necessarily requiring or even desiring any particular genitalia. Lots of people have lots of sex that doesn’t involve the genitals of both people. Based on my understanding, there are massively wide variations in human sexuality, and genitals play a big role in much of it, but not so big a role in much of it as well. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4790 "2020-10-08T03:10:20Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > It is stupid for either group to shame the other. It’s as stupid as straights shaming the gays or the sexuals shaming the asexuals. You are right. It’s not right for someone straight or sexual to tell tell someone gay or asexual that it is dismaying that they are undoing what they’re own community has worked so hard to accomplish. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4791 "2020-10-08T03:13:31Z")
And craving some particular nutritional element is not…at all… Like being attracted to someone. At least not for me, and not most of the time. (I’ll be honest, at the risk of TMI- certain hormonal fluctuations can create a saltsaltdoritopickle sensation. But it’s a tiny amount of my life, and of my sexual arousal as a whole). ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4792 "2020-10-08T03:20:45Z")
I swear just a minute ago the queer movement was all about people having sex with who they wanted to without being shamed or second-guessed by moralists. Now suddenly shaming and second-guessing are back in fashion? Are y’all serious right now? ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4793 "2020-10-08T03:23:57Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I haven’t said anything one way or the other about sexual immutability. I have no idea where you’re getting this from. The whole “unlearn” messaging you’ve been defending ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4794 "2020-10-08T03:28:25Z")
Great for you, @raventhief! Seriously, you are one person. Maybe you are the magical unicorn who can choose who you are attracted to at will. But why should we assume everyone is like you? Why not assume that some people really and truly are driven solely by biology–meaning they need all the biological indicia of their preferred sex to be present for them to be aroused. Just because lots of folks are flexatarians doesn’t mean 1) flexatarians aren’t carrying out their own biological programming and 2) everyone is a flexatarian. Everyone is never one thing. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4795 "2020-10-08T03:30:45Z")
“Unlearn society’s nasty transphobia” does not mean “Learn to like dick.” It means, “Learn about trans people as actual human beings with wants and needs, and not caricatures you’ve seen on TV or heard gossiped about around the water cooler.” It requires the most ungenerous reading imaginable to wring that meaning out of it. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4796 "2020-10-08T03:31:16Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > “Biological programming” does not necessarily imply “must have specific sex organ”. One can be (biologically) attracted to women or men without necessarily requiring or even desiring any particular genitalia. Yes maybe that is possible. But the question we’re discussing right now is why are so few _lesbians_ open to sex with transwomen? To me, the answer is so obvious it makes me feel crazy it is even being debated. They are same-sex attracted, not same-gender attracted. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4797 "2020-10-08T03:32:05Z")
You’ve never heard that greatest erogenous zone is the brain? I’m sure some people are completely animalistic and driven only by pheremones and reproductive cravings. I think most people aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4798 "2020-10-08T03:38:44Z")
As a biologist, I vehemently disagree with you. You can call being driven by biological programming “animalistic”, but a better word would be “organismal”. Humans are organisms. Organisms are the product of a natural world. Only in a supernatural world would we be able to act independent of our biology. It’s fine if you believe that we can. But it’s not a scientific belief. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4799 "2020-10-08T03:39:48Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Unlearn society’s nasty transphobia” does not mean “Learn to like dick.” So why are you having such a hard time unraveling the mystery of why cis lesbians prefer cis lesbians? If “learn to like dick” or “learn to like vaginoplasty” figures no where in your thought process, you shouldn’t be blaming 2nd wave feminism for Serano’s dating woes. You should be able to intuit that she simply lacks the goods to close the deal; it’s nothing personal at all. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4800 "2020-10-08T03:51:10Z")
In that case, do you believe that the majority of human beings are only attracted to individuals that are reproductively compatible? That’s where this started- fully functional vaginas and reproductive health? Do you think that only a minority of people can be attracted to someone that is not available in a reproductive sense? Here’s where it breaks down for me, in a biological way. People are aroused by infertile people. People who are infertile remain interested in sex. People are aroused by same sex partners. Some people are not aroused by any partners at all. Some people’s experiences successfully override or change sexual impulse completely. Reproduction may be a biological imperative, but refusing to consider a strong psychological component is remarkably short sighted. In animals, for the most part, a lack of estrus indicates that sexual arousal will also be absent. That’s not the case for humans. My dog or cat, since the girls are spayed, want nothing to do with sex. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4801 "2020-10-08T07:20:36Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > People can get aroused by looking at a _drawing_ of a vagina, so I’m going to need some more support for this “organic basis” than, “trust me, I’m a horse doctor.” “People”. _Men_ can get aroused by looking at drawings of genitalia. Very few women do. This is because men and women are different, particularly when it comes to sex. (Unsurprisingly, since reproduction is the whole point of having two sexes.) This is why reading certain posts on r/asktransgender makes me shake my head, because they sure don’t sound like things a woman would write. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4802 "2020-10-08T07:47:26Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > Reproduction may be a biological imperative, but refusing to consider a strong psychological component is remarkably short sighted. In animals, for the most part, a lack of estrus indicates that sexual arousal will also be absent. That’s not the case for humans. My dog or cat, since the girls are spayed, want nothing to do with sex. For the life of me I don’t understand why you think a loss of libido in neutered animals proves anything except that sexuality is driven by biology. Yes, a spayed cat without a uterus and ovaries wants nothing to do with sex. It’s precisely because libido emerges from the interaction of sex hormones, sex organs, and the brain. Remove two out of three of those things and it goes away. People are attracted to infertile people, yes. Congratulations for arguing a point that no one has challenged. This doesn’t mean sexuality didn’t evolve as a force to facilitate reproduction; it’s completely inarguable that it did because reproduction results from expressed sexuality. If the two things weren’t initimately tied to one another, the human race would have never come to be. In a sexually reproducing species, there needs to be enough males and females irrationally and irrepressibly attracted to one another to keep the reproduction rate higher than the mortality rate. Your post is a bizarre display of massively misunderstanding the birds and bees. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4803 "2020-10-08T08:30:18Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > For the life of me I don’t understand why you think a loss of libido in neutered animals proves anything except that sexuality is driven by biology. Because this doesn’t happen when a person is infertile. Sexuality in humans cannot be reduced to reproductive fitness. Trying to explain same sex attraction from a reproductive viewpoint is frankly ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4804 "2020-10-08T09:51:41Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > n that case, do you believe that the majority of human beings are only attracted to individuals that are reproductively compatible? That’s where this started- fully functional vaginas and reproductive health? Do you think that only a minority of people can be attracted to someone that is not available in a reproductive sense? You are arguing a strawman. No one is positing this. > Here’s where it breaks down for me, in a biological way. People are aroused by infertile people. People who are infertile remain interested in sex. People are aroused by same sex partners. Some people are not aroused by any partners at all. Some people’s experiences successfully override or change sexual impulse completely. The last sentence is your personal belief. It is not backed up by any science. The other stuff is…bizarre. It doesn’t refute anything that I or @YWTF said. Infertile people still produce pheromones. Infertile people still respond to pheromones. People who are attracted to same-sex partners are attracted to same-sex pheromones (please read the articles I linked to above). The folks who seem to be “overriding” their biology are folks who are biologically programmed to be aroused by multiple pheromones, not just one kind. Bisexual women and men are programmed differently than gay men and lesbian women. Telling the second group that they could be like the first group if they tried is harder is no different than telling a gay person they could be straight if they tried harder. I don’t know why you can’t see that. ---
**Author:** ![Summerday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@Summerday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Summerday)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4805 "2020-10-08T09:55:17Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Consider this hypothetical. A lesbian meets another woman, and feels there’s a bit of a spark there. There’s a good flirty energy, she likes the other woman’s personality, and she finds her physical appearance attractive. Things are going really well between them, until the other woman says something like, “Before this goes any further, there’s something I should tell you. I’m trans. I had SRS fifteen years ago. Anatomically, I’m female, but I was born male.” The lesbian immediately breaks it off with the other woman. > > **Is it fair for the trans woman to feel “some kind of way” about that?** No, not in my opinion. If by, “feel some kind of way,” you mean sorta bummed, then I guess so, but otherwise no. No more than someone in that same scenario who’s rejected because they’re too old or they’re not tall enough or they’re twice divorced or they have kids or any other reason that people get rejected. I’m guessing that lesbians may be more likely to straight up tell a transwoman that they don’t date transwomen when rejecting them whereas with someone else they might use the typical excuses we all give when we don’t want to date someone like, it’s bad timing, I want to focus on myself/my career etc. But even still, people are rejected for things they can’t control all the time. No one is entitled to sex or a relationship with anyone; and in that article Serano, IMO, comes across as absolutely flummoxed, flabbergasted, and borderline outraged that the vast majority cis lesbians don’t want to have sex/romantic relationships with transwomen…which is just so entitled, arrogant, creepy, and gross. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/4806 "2020-10-08T09:59:05Z")
People with infertility aren’t neutered. They still have sex hormones. They still have sex organs. They still have genitals. They still have a brain that gets activated by certain pheromones, and nerves that get activated so that orgasm can occur. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795.md?page=239) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795.md?page=241)