# J K Rowling and the trans furore
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795
**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:** 42
### Author:  [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/823 "2020-07-01T15:37:26Z")
**iiandyiiii**
> Is one of the things that those who disagree with me are trying to say is that there’s some level of privilege from being raised as a boy, and (for some trans women) spending some of their adult life treated as a man? If so, then my answer would be “yes, obviously - **who do you think is denying this**?”
To the question in bold: Everyone who subscribes to the “fuck biology” school of thought for deciding who is a woman.
Socialization matters. Women are socialized as females from the minute they are born and given feminine names, They quickly get schooled on all the gender norms, expectations, and roles that members of their sex class are subject to. There is no escaping it because it just doesn’t come from parents. It comes from everywhere.
Every time my daughter draws the family, she always draws me in a dress. _Always_, even though I wear pants and leggings about as often than I wear skirts and dresses. I can’t judge the little critter because when I was a kid, I drew women the same way. We are “people in dresses” even when we’re not. That’s the level of sophistication available for children when it comes to gender. When I say this level of sophistication isn’t substantially higher in adult proponents of gender ideology, I’m not exaggerating. Many people’s concept for woman seems to be about as crude and superficial as the “people in dresses” model that my innocent daughter uses when drawing me.
> Of course there’s also some privilege to being cis that trans people lack. Which makes this discussion a bit complicated… But such is the intersection of the many various forms of discrimination in our society and culture.
What privilege does a “cis” girl have that gives practical meaning to this statement? As pointed out already, females children are disproportionately targeted for sexual abuse. They are also victims of misogyny. Depending on where the girls reside in the world, they may have their clitorises hacked off, denied educations, or married off to men old enough to be their father. Even in less misogynistic societies, girls still get treated to sexism. Both casual and not casual. Such as a lack of representation in media (how many girl pups are in Paw Patrol, my daughter’s favorite cartoon? Anywhere close to 50%?). Fewer opportunities to shine in athletics (which makes male athletes playing against girls extra maddening to me). Disparate treatment in school and work. Being treated as domestic servants as the default. Lack of role models at the highest ladders of success.
When I hear about “cis” privilege, I honestly don’t know what is meant by that. I can certainly understand the desire to be perceived as your preferred gender. I don’t have to do anything special to be “clocked” as female and this relieves me of a burden others have. I don’t have gender dysphoria to overcome. I sincerely get that. But very often being clocked as a female comes with risks and challenges. In some parts of the world, being clocked as female gets infants killed. You can’t ignore this reality when asserting the existence of cis privilege.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/824 "2020-07-01T15:39:59Z")
> [@YWTF](#):
>
> To the question in bold: Everyone who subscribes to the “fuck biology” school of thought for deciding who is a woman
Since you’re quoting me there, I’ll mention that I am not denying **andy** ’s statement in any way.
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/825 "2020-07-01T15:43:26Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> I don’t believe this would satisfy JKR, though, at least by my understanding of her writing. I don’t think she accepts any transwomen are actually women, no matter how long and how serious they’ve been living as women.
Well, some people believe that you can treat someone with respect and dignity without perceiving them a certain way besides “human”. As long as JK Rowling isn’t snatching the microphone away from transwomen and denying them the right to a platform so they can advocate for themselves and tell their stories and she’s supporting their rights to dress and act however they want to without suffering from violence or workplace/legal discrimination, then it strikes me as rather petty to bash her for not “seeing” every transwoman as a woman.
Frankly, I think this “you gotta go all they way on the gender ideology train or else you ain’t woke” mentality is not going to convince the average person to be supportive of trans rights.
---
### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/826 "2020-07-01T16:01:21Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> > [@monstro](#):
> >
> > You can see the weakness of this “anyone who says they are a woman is a woman” notion, but instead of saying that, you are saying that OF COURSE that’s not what anyone is really pushing. You seem to be implying that _everyone_ believes that the “have made a serious and long-term effort to live their lives as women” stipulation is an important criterion for “woman”. But that is not what _everyone_ believes. People would not be reducing to “woman” to a mental state if that’s what _everyone_ believes. I wouldn’t be here arguing if _everyone_ believes that.
> >
> > If it’s “unspoken”, we need to make it “spoken”. Because as long as it remains “unspoken”, then we’ll have people coming up with whatever definition of “woman” speaks to them, with actual women feeling like they can’t say anything about it without incurring the wrath of the angry mob.
>
> I think what I said goes for the vast majority of trans activists (and the cis women feminists whose writing I’ve found convincing on this). But I’m sure there are exceptions. I’m happy to make this part “spoken”, and I’ll let you know if any of the trans folks I talk to have a problem with this. I suspect they won’t.
This is literally what they are pushing for. Here is Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act, held up as an example to follow by Stonewall in the UK:
> [@](#):
>
> Under the [Gender Recognition Act (GRA)](http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/25/enacted/en/html), people who wish to have their change of gender recognised by the State – in birth certs, passports, driving licenses – would simply make a formal declaration of their “settled and solemn intention”, or to live in a preferred gender, to the Department of Social Protection.
>
> In order to change your gender with the State, a person needs to sign a statutory declaration that states:
>
> > i) have a settled and solemn intention to live in the preferred gender for the rest of my life,
> > ii) understand the consequences of the application, and
> > iii) make this application of my own free will.
No requirement to “have made a serious and long-term effort to live their lives as women”.
Here’s the campaign from the National Union of Students:
> [@](#):
>
> - **We are calling for the removal of a requirement for lived experience.** The current criteria relies on outdated gender stereotypes and pushes trans people into absurd situations where their documents and clothes are deemed more important than their actual lives.
From Mermaids, a charity supporting ‘trans and gender diverse children’:
> [@](#):
>
> **Self-Determination**
> There should be no medical requirements, **nor an evidential requirement of lived experience** , for gender recognition. The current GRA depends on a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria and the provision of evidence that the person has been living “in role” for at least two years. These requirements are degrading and unnecessary barriers.
In addition, Stonewall is campaigning to remove the exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 that allows the provision of single sex (ie sex, not gender) services in certain circumstances.
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### Author:  [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/827 "2020-07-01T16:02:52Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Karen White is bad. But what happened to [Tavoy Malcolm](https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/03/21/transgender-woman-says-she-was-repeatedly-raped-by-two-inmates-w.html) is also bad. I think I have a legitimate concern that a rush to prevent more Karen Whites is going to do real harm to a lot of Tavoy Malcolms
You should be for advocating 3rd spaces for the Tavoy Malcolms then. Not downplaying or denying the existence of the Karen Whites.
I’m seeing men insist that they care about women’s rights. But words are cheap. If your answer to making trans women safe is to subject women to more risks, then it means you don’t really care about women’s rights. I think I would have more respect if more people would just cop to that position rather than denying the fact that women have already been harmed by trans-supportive accommodations.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/828 "2020-07-01T16:06:13Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Karen White is bad. But what happened to [Tavoy Malcolm](https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/03/21/transgender-woman-says-she-was-repeatedly-raped-by-two-inmates-w.html) is also bad. I think I have a legitimate concern that a rush to prevent more Karen Whites is going to do real harm to a lot of Tavoy Malcolms.
The UK has now created a separate unit for transgender prisoners. If you campaigned for that in America, you’d be able improve everyone’s safety and get a lot less pushback to implementing it.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/829 "2020-07-01T16:10:32Z")
I don’t have any particular objection to that.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/830 "2020-07-01T16:12:57Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#):
>
> Kimstu, not a strawman at all…really common in my experience among gender queer youth. They have a LOT of definitions to choose from, and aren’t really sure which one fits. So one of my youngest roommates has switched pronouns and names so many times that even their best friends aren’t sure on any given day what name/pronoun to use (and if using the wrong one is going to set them off). One of my girlfriends has a daughter identified male at birth who has transitioned back and forth (non surgically) three times. She’s 21. And while you see that I’m respecting her choices and pronouns, I’m not going to be at all surprised when I’m readapting myself to refer to her by a different name and different pronouns. Neither of these individuals see themselves as genderfluid or non-binary - its a binary thing for them (from what I can see, though I think my youngest’s former roommate may settle on genderfluid, my friend’s daughter has long expressed disgust for the non-binary and genderfluid).
Dangerosa, thanks for this and your other posts. One of the most difficult things in this thread has been posters dismissing this stuff as ridiculous exaggerations and not engaging with the debate.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/831 "2020-07-01T16:23:19Z")
According to their website, the National Union of Students is also “calling for an end to coercively assigning gender at birth, and an end to gatekeeping of gender identity and experience by the state.”
Non-gendered society (where women still do 70% of the housework, and get paid 18% less in their jobs), here we come! They also castigate cis-women for not doing enough to undermine their own rights.
[https://www.nus.org.uk/en/take-action/liberation-campaigns/gra/](https://www.nus.org.uk/en/take-action/liberation-campaigns/gra/)
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### Author:  [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/832 "2020-07-01T16:27:46Z")
> [@monstro](#):
>
> This is why I totally get why JK Rowling of all people would be speaking out. Why does JK Rowling go by her initials? Why does she write under the pen name “Robert Galbraith”? Because she knows she would have a harder time being published if she went by “Joanne”. “Joanne” is discriminated against not because people named Joanne say they are a woman. They are discriminated against because people who look they could be named Joanne aren’t taken seriously. When boys and men see a book has been written by “Joanne”, they are programmed to go “ew” and search for a writer with a name like “JK”.
Yes, this 100%. If anyone knows how pernicious sexism is, it is the most commercially successful female novelist of all time. She has overcome _so fucking much_ to achieve what she has. So one would think that maybe, just maybe, people would see her as a credible voice on the issues she’s experienced and witnessed as a woman. But nope. It’s because she’s a woman that she is instantly seen as non-credible. But you know who are credible? _All_ the trans women. Because males would never lie about being trans, but women do lie about misogyny.
Unlike most posters in this thread, I found nothing disagreeable in what JKR said. I’m getting the feeling that people feel obligated to say she was wrong somehow, even if they are willing to say it wasn’t evil. But I maintain the opinion that nothing she said was wrong or inflammatory or offensive. What we’re seeing is the worst case of group think and recreational outrage that we’ve seen in a long time.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/833 "2020-07-01T16:41:26Z")
> [@YWTF](#):
>
> To the question in bold: Everyone who subscribes to the “fuck biology” school of thought for deciding who is a woman.
>
> Socialization matters. Women are socialized as females from the minute they are born and given feminine names, They quickly get schooled on all the gender norms, expectations, and roles that members of their sex class are subject to. There is no escaping it because it just doesn’t come from parents. It comes from everywhere.
I’m sure these attitudes exist, but I’m not sure how this disputes “there is some level of privilege from being raised as a boy”. How we’re raised is about society and culture, not biology.
> [@](#):
>
> What privilege does a “cis” girl have that gives practical meaning to this statement? As pointed out already, females children are disproportionately targeted for sexual abuse. They are also victims of misogyny. Depending on where the girls reside in the world, they may have their clitorises hacked off, denied educations, or married off to men old enough to be their father. Even in less misogynistic societies, girls still get treated to sexism. Both casual and not casual. Such as a lack of representation in media (how many girl pups are in Paw Patrol, my daughter’s favorite cartoon? Anywhere close to 50%?). Fewer opportunities to shine in athletics (which makes male athletes playing against girls extra maddening to me). Disparate treatment in school and work. Being treated as domestic servants as the default. Lack of role models at the highest ladders of success.
>
> When I hear about “cis” privilege, I honestly don’t know what is meant by that. I can certainly understand the desire to be perceived as your preferred gender. I don’t have to do anything special to be “clocked” as female and this relieves me of a burden others have. I don’t have gender dysphoria to overcome. I sincerely get that. But very often being clocked as a female comes with risks and challenges. In some parts of the world, being clocked as female gets infants killed. You can’t ignore this reality when asserting the existence of cis privilege.
All the bad things you describe can harm some trans people too (generally those raised as girls, or those as adults who pass in society as women). “Cis privilege” for children is perhaps not terribly complicated – generally just consisting of being raised and treated as your gender identity. But cis privilege for adults is much more complicated (and perhaps significant) – in addition to being treated as your gender identity, it also means being free from trans-bashing violence, anti-trans discrimination, greater rates of suicide and mental health difficulties, and the kind of rhetorical erasure (very often of trans men) that I’ve criticized JKR for (i.e. some trans men menstruate and have challenges getting menstruation supplies, and many trans men were raised as girls and abused or otherwise mistreated as children, just like cis women). There are certainly many challenges cis women face, and there’s probably even privileges from just not being a cis woman, even (perhaps) for some trans folks raised as girls.
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### Author:  [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/834 "2020-07-01T16:46:23Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> You called her “a suspicious male”, presumably because she’s masculine looking. I don’t think you apologized for linking to something so dishonest, or for misgendering her.
I called her suspicious male with the assumption she was bearing a sword and bragging about freaking out a cis woman. If she wasn’t actually bearing a sword, okay. I can admit that I used a source of information that wasn’t reputable. Will need to be more careful in the future.
But do you really doubt I could find an example of a “suspicious male” in a women’s restroom? I just googled “male women’s restroom spying” and found [this](https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/man-dressed-as-woman-arrested-for-spying-into-mall-bathroom-stall-police-say/1979766/) story on the first page of hits. This was a man dressed in women’s clothing who could’ve easily passed as trans.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/835 "2020-07-01T16:48:58Z")
> [@monstro](#):
>
> Well, some people believe that you can treat someone with respect and dignity without perceiving them a certain way besides “human”. As long as JK Rowling isn’t snatching the microphone away from transwomen and denying them the right to a platform so they can advocate for themselves and tell their stories and she’s supporting their rights to dress and act however they want to without suffering from violence or workplace/legal discrimination, then it strikes me as rather petty to bash her for not “seeing” every transwoman as a woman.
>
> Frankly, I think this “you gotta go all they way on the gender ideology train or else you ain’t woke” mentality is not going to convince the average person to be supportive of trans rights.
I think some of the language JKR chose to use (discussed previously) did not qualify remotely as “respect and dignity”, and in fact was denigrating and possibly even hateful.
---
### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/836 "2020-07-01T16:54:01Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> This is literally what they are pushing for. Here is Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act, held up as an example to follow by Stonewall in the UK:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Under the [Gender Recognition Act (GRA)](http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/25/enacted/en/html), people who wish to have their change of gender recognised by the State – in birth certs, passports, driving licenses – would simply make a formal declaration of their “settled and solemn intention”, or to live in a preferred gender, to the Department of Social Protection.
> >
> > In order to change your gender with the State, a person needs to sign a statutory declaration that states:
> >
> > > i) have a settled and solemn intention to live in the preferred gender for the rest of my life,
> > > ii) understand the consequences of the application, and
> > > iii) make this application of my own free will.
>
> No requirement to “have made a serious and long-term effort to live their lives as women”.
>
> Here’s the campaign from the National Union of Students:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > - **We are calling for the removal of a requirement for lived experience.** The current criteria relies on outdated gender stereotypes and pushes trans people into absurd situations where their documents and clothes are deemed more important than their actual lives.
>
> From Mermaids, a charity supporting ‘trans and gender diverse children’:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > **Self-Determination**
> > There should be no medical requirements, **nor an evidential requirement of lived experience** , for gender recognition. The current GRA depends on a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria and the provision of evidence that the person has been living “in role” for at least two years. These requirements are degrading and unnecessary barriers.
>
> In addition, Stonewall is campaigning to remove the exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 that allows the provision of single sex (ie sex, not gender) services in certain circumstances.
All of those explicitly say or imply “serious” (or a synonym), and some explicitly say or imply “long-term” (or a synonym). The preference for no “lived experience” stuff would seem to conflict with “long-term”, but not if they’re talking about “lived experience” _post transition_. Someone can have a serious and long-term intention to live as a man or as a woman (if they were raised as a girl or as a boy), and that’s still serious and long-term _even if the full transition takes years and years_. I’d still call them a man (or a woman) when they’ve completed their transition, even if most of their “lived experience” was as the opposite gender identity (or as a trans person in the midst of transitioning).
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### Author:  [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/837 "2020-07-01T16:55:22Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#):
>
> And this leads to some interesting interactions. My youngest roomed with a bunch of gender queer students last year. Two grew up as boys. Five grew up as girls. I spent a number of days watching them…and the kids who grew up as boys have…they take up more space in conversations, they expect to be deferred to, they even expect to be served. They treat each other differently than they treat the female identified at birth- i.e. they treat each other with respect, but there is little respect for the others. And yet one of them actually had the nerve to complain to me that my kid didn’t treat her with enough respect (drilling down, it turned out mine doesn’t like to lose intellectual arguments, and she expected to be capitulated to).
Huh. I don’t know that I have anything to say about this that’s at all profound, but it’s very interesting.
The really awful thing is that I see myself doing it to my daughter. She’s Aspergers and presents more like a “boy” in some ways – very outspoken without feeling like she needs to respect the feelings of whoever she’s talking to. And I find myself tamping that down a LOT in her, because she’s going to have a really hard time interacting with people in the world if she doesn’t know how to “pass” as a woman. Unless she decides she’s male, I guess.
(I guess the redeeming feature is that I talk about the same kinds of things with my neurotypical son, too, and he seems to be better than she is about respecting other people’s feelings. Maybe.)
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/838 "2020-07-01T16:55:23Z")
> [@YWTF](#):
>
> Unlike most posters in this thread, I found nothing disagreeable in what JKR said.
Even her lazy rhetorical erasure of trans men who menstruate and have challenges getting supplies? Even calling transgender a “contagion”?
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/839 "2020-07-01T16:55:35Z")
CIS privilege and misogyny are sort of fascinating as I’ve been watching this play out with my youngest and their friends.
For the “female at birth” becoming non-binary or transmen is often about escaping misogyny. Its about rejecting gender norms. They frequently see themselves as having more male brains that don’t match what society has told them should go with their female bodies. This isn’t the case for the transmen I know who are my age, in their 50s - for them its about dysmorphia.
For the transwomen and identified male at birth non-binary people I know, it seems to be far more about dysmorphia, regardless of age. They often seem shocked when they have to give up privilege once the perception of them has changed.
I don’t think you can seperate the desire to change gender identity from gender privilege - especially when talking about female to non-binary or female to male transitions. Which is why cis-women are often talking across other types of people in these conversations. Because other types of people tend to be pretty dismissive of women’s lack of privilege. And for women of my generation, for whom Title IX was a big deal, who were born (and perhaps applied to college) when Ivy’s didn’t admit women and couldn’t access credit, this a a huge part of our history (I’m speaking as an American here, but it isn’t like British women had it that much better).
And yes, boys who are visibly queer do NOT have it easy - whether that’s being feminine or being a very masculine football player who likes other guys. Feminine boys ARE oppressed - beaten, shamed. But the oppressive and humiliating experiences of being a girl are pretty universal among CIS women - at some point most of us have been cat called, bodyshamed, treated as dumb due to our gender, a lot of us have had abusive relationships or been sexually assaulted, many of us have faced workplace discrimination…heck, its enough that I’d like to reject being a woman. And that means we come to this conversation from a different place than everyone else. (If gender has a culture, this is where it sits and comes from.)
My son (CIS-Male) is a Korean adoptee, and its strange, because FOUR of the young transmen I know are Korean adoptees - which makes me really wonder about the intersections of identity and the search for identification.
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/840 "2020-07-01T17:00:05Z")
He will get a pass by society if he doesn’t learn. She won’t. Which is why it concerns you with her. My youngest is the same - not Aspergers, but ADHD presenting in a similar fashion, along with us raising them to … not be girly in their behaviors - we didn’t tamp it down with them…it took me too long to find my voice, I wasn’t going to facilitate them losing theirs.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/841 "2020-07-01T17:01:35Z")
**Dangerosa** , thanks for your replies here. I think this is really interesting, and I think we’re going to see more gender-fluid kids like the ones you’ve described. And the whole (paraphrased) “some transwomen still act like the entitled dudes they’ve been acculturated to act like” thing is a real problem that I’ve seen, and I’m curious whether it’s something that trans activists are addressing within their community. (I mean, I spend a fair amount of time shutting my own damn mouth rather than speaking up, because I don’t want to do that shit, and everyone raised as male should be paying attention to their pernicious acculturation in this regard as well).
My hope is that we’ll reach a step where it’s considered, if not the default, at least normal and unremarkable for kids to go through a phase where they question their gender identity and make sure it’s right for them. Just like there are plenty of kids who try out same-sex sexuality to see if it’s right for them, and that’s not (or at least shouldn’t be) a big deal.
Anyway, what you’re seeing in your kid’s social groups is interesting, and I appreciate your sharing it.
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### Author:  [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2020, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/842 "2020-07-01T17:06:06Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> I’m sure these attitudes exist, but I’m not sure how this disputes “there is some level of privilege from being raised as a boy”. How we’re raised is about society and culture, not biology.
Right. But biology is present since birth and it influences how the surrounding society and culture treat you continuously. The person that is raised female from day 1 has a competely different perspective and set of experiences than a person who was raised as male for 30+ years and then decides to transition.
So yes, the advantages that come with being raised as a boy in a society that prizes males matters a lot to the final product. It can’t be ignored. Blindly parroting “TWAW” negates the lived experience that women bring with them into adulthood, that specifically arise from being outwardly perceived as female since infancy.
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