# 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:** 97
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1924 "2020-07-29T13:05:53Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > So this when you show evidence that Stonewall believes pre-transition counseling is a need to ensure safeguarding, as @Trinopus has ascribed to trans activists. …characterizing Stonewall as “trans activists” is misleading. They are an organization that advocates for lesbian, gay, bi and trans people. There mission is [here](https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/our-mission-and-priorities). While they have a position on transition, It should be quite clear that their focus isn’t on transition, and it doesn’t have to be. There are other organizations, like Mermaids, which are better suited for that. But all of that doesn’t matter. Because you claimed that > [@YWTF](#): > > Stonewall U.K characterizes requirements for counseling and medical assessment as “traumatic” and “demeaning”. But they don’t claim that. Just admit you got it wrong already. I have no obligation to prove something that **somebody else claimed**. However you made a claim here, I’m addressing **your claim** , and that claim is clearly not backed up by the cite you provided. By the way, as a trans activist, along with many other trans activists in this thread, I don’t favour “drop of the hat” transitioning in a flight of whimsy. I favour informed, intelligent decisions, made with full awareness of all the repercussions. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1925 "2020-07-29T13:46:31Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > But they don’t claim that. Just admit you got it wrong already. They are claiming that. What other inference is there? Nothing that they have stated suggests they believe counseling and medical assessments should be a pre-condition for getting a GRC. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1926 "2020-07-29T13:58:04Z")
Dr.Strangelove > It’s odd that they get lumped together, since the two groups have very different needs. If I had gender dysphoria, I don’t think I’d be too happy if another group moved in, claimed the same name, and then started making demands that diluted my own cause. Dysphoria sufferers have needs, medical and otherwise, that non-sufferers do not. Politically speaking, it makes sense for trans activists to treat gender dysphorics and gender euphorics the same. The former is a tiny percentage of the population. The latter is tiny too, but probably as not as much. The bigger a group is, the more power it has and the more microphones and bullhorns it can yell into. And I can see a person with a more conventional transgender narrative thinking that if society grants rights to gender fluid/nonbinary folks, then they will stand to benefit as well. Because it would mean that they don’t have to go through a huge effort to prove their gender identity. They don’t have to meet the burdensome Caitlyn Jenner standard to be treated like a woman. But I think I’d feel the same way you do. I think if I struggled my whole life with dysphoria, I would want my narrative to be elevated over the person who just wants to live as a woman for the thrill of it. Personally, I don’t have a problem what a person does for the “thrill of it”, but I don’t think society is obligated to indulge every thrill they are seeking. You love it when people refers to you by feminine pronouns? OK, I’ll make you happy by calling you a “she”. But you want to experience the thrill of being in a women’s support group and being privy to all the sordid “girl talk”, whatever you imagine that to be? No, you aren’t entitled to that. It should be perfectly OK to reject someone who appears to be looking for that. I know people think gender euphorics are such a rare and insignificant portion of the population that it is silly to even consider them, but I think that’s short-sighted bullshit. Cross-dressers have always existed. So have bandwagoners–people who cling to whatever identity is in fashion to feel special and exploit whatever benefits they perceive to exist from those identities. I don’t think having access to women’s spaces are a benefit or a privilege, but there’s no doubt in my mind that a whole lot of people disagree with me. There is no doubt in my mind that those spaces are a forbidden fruit to a lot of folks. Not all of them are predators but none of them are female. How do women prevent their spaces from being inhabited by voyeurs if gatekeeping is off the table? ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1927 "2020-07-29T14:01:35Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > They are claiming that. > [@stonewall](#): > > The process of getting a GRC is controlled by the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004. It’s very outdated, and is a stressful, dehumanising and traumatic process for trans people to go through. > > … > > A lot: it’s secretive, discriminatory, and it’s medicalised. It can also take several years to go through, costs a lot of money and is a bureaucratic mess full of red tape and intrusive medical assessments. It also only allows for people to switch from one binary gender to the other – male to female or vice versa – which means it doesn’t work at all for non-binary people who don’t identify as either. > > The whole process is so traumatic and demeaning that many trans people simply can’t face it. There’s no need for it to be this way. Lots of other countries, including Ireland, have already reformed this process and (at the time of writing) the world hasn’t collapsed around them. They simply aren’t saying what you claimed they said. It was specific to the GRC. End of story. You are wrong. > [@YWTF](#): > > What other inference is there? There is nothing to infer. They said what they said. > [@YWTF](#): > > Nothing that they have stated suggests they believe counseling and medical assessments should be a pre-condition for getting a GRC. Thats a strawman. You are asking Stonewall to back up an assertion made by somebody else that posted in this thread. That isn’t how things work. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1928 "2020-07-29T14:17:15Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > There is no doubt in my mind that those spaces are a forbidden fruit to a lot of folks. Not all of them are predators but none of them are female. How do women prevent their spaces from being inhabited by voyeurs if gatekeeping is off the table? Not having any criteria would also create problems when money could be made. For example, athletes in many women’s sports can win lots of money. If there is no restriction to play in the womens leagues, then lower ranked men could just switch over to the womens side and dominate the sport. When the #200 ranked mens tennis player might make $50k and the #1 womens player makes millions, why wouldn’t the lower-ranked mens players switch sides? If they don’t have to change anything about themselves other than to check a box for “F” instead of “M” on the entry form, there are going to be lots of men exploiting the lax requirements. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1929 "2020-07-29T15:06:48Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > They simply aren’t saying what you claimed they said. It was specific to the GRC. End of story. You are wrong. GRC is a legal sex change: changing the way the government classifies a person as male versus female. If gatekeeping should apply for anything, it would be GRC. Most people should see this as serious business with significant implications. So its very remarkable that Stonewall is saying they don’t want “medicalize” this process. It’s remarkable that they are characterizing a review by professionals as “traumatic” and “demeaning”. And notice how they don’t come out and say what they believe the GRC process should actually entail. The importance of counseling is not mentioned once. If they thought that was an essential for safeguarding, they have done a horrible job of showing that. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1930 "2020-07-29T16:16:16Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > But we’re talking about the edge cases where that’s not the case. Those edge cases are _explicitly_ the topic of this thread! Well, that’s your opinion. Transwomen are not “Edge cases.” They are men. Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv is a man. Rachel MacKinnon/Veronica Ivy is a man. [This person is a man](https://www.womenarehuman.com/man-may-win-lawsuit-demanding-to-change-in-locker-room-beside-high-school-girls-says-aclu/), and in over a thousand posts no one has come up with a coherent reason to think otherwise except “words change,” which doesn’t change the underlying concept, which should travel with the word. Someone who has actually had sex reassignment surgery, well, you would have a point there - but in fact that is NOT what we’re talking about, nor are we talking about people with intersex conditions. We’re talking about people with penises who claim to identify as women. Men. ---
**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:** [July 29, 2020, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1931 "2020-07-29T16:32:36Z")
So two students, one was given a private stall to change in, the other required to change behind a privacy curtain in the locker room that corresponded to his gender identity. But that wasn’t good enough. No compromise is allowed, no concession to the other kids’ right to privacy. The ACLU is also fighting to allow biological males to compete in girls’ high school sports. But if the Democrats get their way, they won’t need to, because it’ll be mandated by law. They certainly have forgotten that sex is real. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1932 "2020-07-29T17:01:47Z")
What is a bit amazing in this thread is the lack of the No True Scotsman retort. While the lack of this particular fallacy is refreshing, its absence is a tacit admission that no distinctions can be made between a true trans woman from a false one. There is no such thing as a true or false transwoman, if you follow gender ideology down the rabbit hole. Thought experiment time: Is this a trans woman or it is a man? > **[Predator who claimed to be transgender declared dangerous offender](https://torontosun.com/2014/02/26/predator-who-claimed-to-be-transgender-declared-dangerous-offender)** > > A sexual predator who falsely claimed to be transgender and preyed on women at two Toronto shelters was jailed indefinitely on Wednesday. Personally, I wouldn’t want to call this person a trans woman. It just seems really unfair to lump him in when a class of people just on the basis of his say so. I will forever believe he’s just a man that posed as trans so that he victimize women. Am I a bigot for believing this a man and viewing him as evidence as that male predators will use whatever loopholes they can to prey on women? Or would it be better if I called him a transwoman, out of a respect for his self-identity? There is a problematic catch 22 here. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1933 "2020-07-29T19:19:51Z")
Thank you for that link it’s an eye opener. I had no idea the ease in which some men under the guise of Trans rights are able to access woman only spaces and do egregious harm. I found the essay entitled “We just want to pee” and I would usually say oh no, it’s not all that at all, no one is forcing females to accept all access from males. But I can’t say I think the trans movement has my best interests as a woman in mind anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2020, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1934 "2020-07-29T21:36:20Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > GRC is a legal sex change: changing the way the government classifies a person as male versus female. If gatekeeping should apply for anything, it would be GRC. Most people should see this as serious business with significant implications. …you really don’t need to explain to me what the GRC is. And explaining what the GRC is doesn’t change the fact that what you said is wrong. Stop deflecting and just admit it. > [@YWTF](#): > > So its very remarkable that Stonewall is saying they don’t want “medicalize” this process. It isn’t remarkable at all. And even if it were “remarkable”, it still doesn’t change the fact that you got things wrong. How hard is it for you to simply concede? > [@YWTF](#): > > And notice how they don’t come out and say what they believe the GRC process should actually entail. Notice how they actually did say what they thought the GRC process should actually entail. > [@stonewall](#): > > The whole process is so traumatic and demeaning that many trans people simply can’t face it. There’s no need for it to be this way. Lots of other countries, including Ireland, have already reformed this process and (at the time of writing) the world hasn’t collapsed around them. Ireland has a Gender Recognition Certificate. Its obvious that Stonewall supports the Ireland system. They don’t have to expand more on this. Its a FAQ. Not a policy document. > [@YWTF](#): > > The importance of counseling is not mentioned once. If they thought that was an essential for safeguarding, they have done a horrible job of showing that. You don’t support Stonewall anyway. This was a Q and A, if you actually want that question answered then send them a [question](https://www.stonewall.org.uk/contact-us). When they get back to you with an answer please feel free to share it with the rest of us. And you are still wrong. ---
**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:** [July 29, 2020, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1935 "2020-07-29T23:46:49Z")
Something else I read on that site. > [@](#): > > As many women who are critical of the gender identity movement have pointed out, the media only features women who identify as trans men when they give birth to babies. Meanwhile, men who identify as trans women are “vaunted for being CEOs, entrepreneurs, political powers” and sports stars in the media, as a Facebook user put it. Interesting point, though it probably says more about the media than anything else. Also found this article: > **[The Trans-Everything CEO](https://nymag.com/news/features/martine-rothblatt-transgender-ceo/)** > > Futurist, pharma tycoon, satellite entrepreneur, philosopher. Martine Rothblatt, the highest-paid female executive in America, was born male. But that is far from the thing that defines her. Just ask her wife. Then ask the robot version of her wife. The highest-paid female executive in America was born male. Depressing, isn’t it? She even says “I can’t claim that what I have achieved is equivalent to what a woman has achieved. For the first half of my life, I was male.” That’s unusually fair. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1936 "2020-07-30T00:44:41Z")
What is depressing is this quote: > “There are five billion people in the world and five billion unique sexual identities,” she wrote. **“Genitals are as irrelevant to one’s role in society as skin tone.** Hence, the legal division of people into males and females is as wrong as the legal division of people into black and white races.” Under normal conditions, we would almost universally spot the offensiveness in a comment like this. Progressives everywhere would be agreeing this is a quintessential example of rich white male privilege. Can’t count on that unity now cuz some progressives think rich white males have the right to opt into an oppressed minority group and co-opt the struggle of that minority. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1937 "2020-07-30T07:05:27Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > The women’s locker room isn’t anything special at all. It’s a room where little old ladies with sagging boobs, self-conscious 11 year old girls, teenagers with tampon strings hanging between their legs, and mothers with tiger stripe stretch marks can be naked away from the male gaze, without worrying about someone groping or raping them. > > So why does someone with a penis need to be in a space designed for these privacy concerns? AFAICT, there’s nothing about a transgender woman’s penis that magically protects her from concerns about male gaze or being groped or raped. Lots of transgender women would be self-conscious about strange men in locker rooms staring at their boobs or asses too. And of course, if someone identifies and lives as a woman, then she tends not to be comfortable using male-designated spaces where women are customarily not allowed. These seem to me like pretty self-evident reasons why transgender women want to use women’s locker rooms, whether or not they happen to have a penis. > [@YWTF](#): > > I don’t believe trans women are women, you are correct. I believe “woman” means more than just a title someone can claim in a flight of whimsy or because they feel more feminine than masculine or whatever. I’m a believer in words actually having meaning. The thing is that there isn’t really any clear universal biological meaning for the word “woman”, in the sense of being able to simply and unambiguously identify who’s a woman and who isn’t, in the entire human population. There are people with XY chromosomes and undescended testicles who have breasts and vaginas and who live as women, for example. Does your use of the word “woman” “actually have meaning” when applied to them? It certainly doesn’t have exactly the same meaning as it does when applied to XX women with full female reproductive anatomy. Sure, the ordinary biological definition of “woman” successfully categorizes the vast majority of people who identify as women. But we’re talking here about how to accommodate the reality of quite small minorities of humans, whether physically intersex or transgender, or both. “Successfully categorizes the vast majority” isn’t an adequate criterion for “having meaning” when we’re talking about the very people that the ordinary definitions don’t successfully categorize. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1938 "2020-07-30T07:14:29Z")
Don’t know the story of that CEO, but I have commented that we should like to see a world where people don’t have to worry about making less money, or not being offered a prestigious job, or being harassed, because they have the wrong genitals. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1939 "2020-07-30T07:22:20Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > […] based on the prevailing opinion within the community, “ trans” is open to anyone who wants in. It’s not a condition that requires you to treat and seek therapy for. But is that actually endorsing the idea that transgender identity is an unimportant or fleeting “whim” that the transgender-identifying person doesn’t have to take seriously? Or is it merely objecting to the treatment of transgender identity as a pathology that makes the individual somehow “broken”? I mean, for example, I can see how gay people would similarly dislike having to be diagnosed with a “condition” called “mating dysphoria” or something like that, before being allowed to publicly identify as gay and have it acknowledged that their same-sex sexual attraction is real and not some kind of pathological abnormality. If same-sex sexual attraction is a real and normal, although comparatively rare, variant form of human sexual orientation, then it shouldn’t require a medical diagnosis for individuals to identify as gay and assert their right to live openly in relationships with members of the gender they’re attracted to. Similarly, if transgender identity is a real and normal, although comparatively very rare, variant form of human gender identity, then it shouldn’t require a medical diagnosis for individuals to identify as transgender and assert their right to live openly as the gender they identify as. Of course, medical diagnosis and consultation for actual medical treatments such as hormone therapy is appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1940 "2020-07-30T07:44:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Someone who has actually had sex reassignment surgery, well, you would have a point there - but in fact that is NOT what we’re talking about, nor are we talking about people with intersex conditions. We’re talking about people with penises who claim to identify as women. Men. Then what do the words “woman” and “man” mean if we are talking about intersex people? Are they some other kind of human that’s neither women nor men? Or are they classified as women or men solely on the basis of their chromosomes, or their genitalia, or what? And it seems weird to declare so categorically that one’s gender category is determined by the genitals of one’s birth sex, but then be willing to modify the definition for people who have had bottom surgery. A transgender woman who identifies and lives as a woman is unambiguously a man, in your view, as long as she still has a penis, but if she gets sex reassignment surgery then that alters her “underlying concept”? She has the same chromosomes, same face, same general appearance, same name, same life history on the day after the operation as on the day before, but merely removing the penis has now made her not-a-man? For advocates who claim to be so uncompromising about the importance of biological reality, it seems odd that the surgically constructed appearance of a different biological reality should make you so amenable to modifying the classification. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1941 "2020-07-30T10:49:43Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Similarly, if transgender identity is a real and normal, although comparatively very rare, variant form of human gender identity, then it shouldn’t require a medical diagnosis for individuals to identify as transgender and assert their right to live openly as the gender they identify as. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if this “right to live openly as the gender they identity as” didn’t require society to act in a certain way. But that’s not the case, now is it? If any man with the desire to be a woman has the ability to call himself trans and then claim space in women’s sports, locker rooms, prison, or dorm rooms—with zero vetting by a professional—then essentially you’re giving all men the right to access women’s spaces. But for someone reason you want to still call these women’s spaces. If there is no expectation that the authenticity of a transgender identity be verified by a 3rd party, the public is well within its rights to not treat transgender identities as real. Sex is observed and recorded at birth by medical providers before its captured in our official government records; to not require a similar process for gender furthers the impression of an anti-scientific agenda. ---
**Author:** ![YWTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d07c76/32.png) [@YWTF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWTF)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1942 "2020-07-30T10:55:20Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Don’t know the story of that CEO, but I have commented that we should like to see a world where people don’t have to worry about making less money, or not being offered a prestigious job, or being harassed, because they have the wrong genitals. Yes this is an aspiration that we all have. But one only has to consider the millions of baby girls killed and mutilated in some parts of the world to see how wrong it is to say that genitals are irrelevant to one’s place in society. ---
**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:** [July 30, 2020, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1943 "2020-07-30T10:59:36Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But is that actually endorsing the idea that transgender identity is an unimportant or fleeting “whim” that the transgender-identifying person doesn’t have to take seriously? Or is it merely objecting to the treatment of transgender identity as a pathology that makes the individual somehow “broken”? > > I mean, for example, I can see how gay people would similarly dislike having to be diagnosed with a “condition” called “mating dysphoria” or something like that, before being allowed to publicly identify as gay and have it acknowledged that their same-sex sexual attraction is real and not some kind of pathological abnormality. > > If same-sex sexual attraction is a real and normal, although comparatively rare, variant form of human sexual orientation, then it shouldn’t require a medical diagnosis for individuals to identify as gay and assert their right to live openly in relationships with members of the gender they’re attracted to. > > Similarly, if transgender identity is a real and normal, although comparatively very rare, variant form of human gender identity, then it shouldn’t require a medical diagnosis for individuals to identify as transgender and assert their right to live openly as the gender they identify as. Of course, medical diagnosis and consultation for actual medical treatments such as hormone therapy is appropriate. Gay people don’t need lifelong hormone therapy or extensive surgeries, and they don’t need to make irreversible changes to their bodies. If a teenager experiments with being gay and then changes their mind, there’s no harm done. If two gay people get married that doesn’t affect me, but if trans women use the women’s locker room and showers, it does. Gay people aren’t trying to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports, and they don’t tell us rapists have a right to be housed in women’s prisons. They aren’t demanding we abandon useful terms like ‘male gaze’ because some men are not attracted to women. Lesbians don’t call straight women homophobes for not wanting to have sex with them. My view is, either we divorce gender from sex completely, and everyone can define themselves how they like, change from day to day if that’s how they feel, and no one else should have a say; but we keep some spaces, services etc divided based on sex, not gender. Or else changing gender does change what you have access to, but there has to be gatekeeping and checks on the process. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795.md?page=96) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795.md?page=98)