# 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:** 98
**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, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1944 "2020-07-30T11:06:54Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 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? Depends on the person, there’s a huge range of intersex conditions. But as an analogy, if I agree that mixed race people can potentially identify with either - or neither - of their parent’s races, that doesn’t mean I have to recognise anyone of any race who identifies as a different one. ---
**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, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1945 "2020-07-30T11:21:26Z")
Would anyone falsely identify as a woman? Here’s an excerpt from the written evidence submitted by the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists to the Transgender Equality Inquiry in the UK: > [@](#): > > The converse is the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this. Not all of those reasons are unique to criminals who are already in jail, either. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1946 "2020-07-30T14:45:15Z")
I wonder if the folks who agree with her that “Genitals are as irrelevant to one’s role in society as skin tone” are in support of taxpayer-supported sex reassignment surgery. Why is this kind of surgery in the public’s interest if the kind of genitals someone has isn’t important? I mean, I am idealistic enough to believe that genitals shouldn’t be important to societal roles, however we want to define that. But genitals (more broadly biological sex) are very important to human nature. Humans have evolved to be social creatures. We have also evolved to notice and react to biological sex. Biological sex is very important in the context of human social interactions. I just can’t imagine this ever changing. I don’t know why it should change. It is reasonable to say that biological sex shouldn’t be relevant to ones sense of security and happiness. It shouldn’t determine the stratum a person inhabits in society. But it is unreasonable to say it isn’t relevant at all. ---
**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, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1947 "2020-07-30T14:59:41Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 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? I infer from this line of questioning that you think sex is an arbitrarily-delineated social construct that is shrouded in nebulousness and mystery. In other words, you subscribe to what I’m calling Viewpoint 2. It’s a viewpoint that I can’t take seriously. It feels like deliberate obtuseness of the trollish kind. When I come across it, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. It’s just so wrong. Everyone alive was born from a person with a female reproductive system. Not a single human being has come into this world through anything except a vagina or an incised uterus. We’re talking billions upon billions of people. _No one born with a penis or testicles has ever been pregnant_. The only people who have died giving birth have been women and girls. This fundamental fact of life, observed over thousands of generations, is the basis for sorting humans into the category of “woman” and “man”. Stop exploiting the existence of intersex people to attack the idea that humans can be reliably sorted by their reproductive biology. It’s an intellectually vacuous argument that not only “others” the intersex community In an offensive manner, but it dismisses the burden disproportionately shouldered by the female half of the species when it comes to reproduction. ---
**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, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1948 "2020-07-30T16:40:49Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > 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. Well sure, I have never tried to claim that this whole issue isn’t a big deal. It definitely is. And yes, all recognition of rights that weren’t previously recognized does “require society to act in a certain way”. When we recognized women’s right to vote and run for office and so forth, we required society to count their votes and accept them as elected officials if they won elections, even though many members of society thought that was flat-out wrong. Now that we’ve recognized same-sex couples’ right to be legally married, we require society to accord same-sex spouses the same legal privileges that opposite-sex spouses have, even though plenty of people object to that requirement. I have never tried to claim that the recognition of transgender rights is no big deal, or that it doesn’t “require society to act in a certain way” that a lot of people in society are uncomfortable with. And as I’ve been saying all along to you and monstro and others, I acknowledge that there are a number of possible compromises and negotiations and workarounds that might be implemented over time to reduce that discomfort. But what I think is simply intrinsically unworkable, in both legal and practical terms, is your insistence that recognizing the rights of transgender people must be done without any compromises on issues that could potentially, and legitimately, make other people uncomfortable. I’ve seen more practicable suggestions in, for example, the ground rules proposed by monstro, which ISTM I largely agree with and think could work. But what you seem to be demanding is, AFAICT, more innately inconsistent. I don’t see any way you could ensure the protections you want for women’s spaces in a manner that would hold up as constitutional, and I haven’t seen you convincingly explain how you think that could work in practice. > [@YWTF](#): > > 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. Well, the exact same argument could be used against recognition of gay rights: if there’s no expectation that the authenticity of a homosexual orientation be verified by a 3rd party, the public is well within its rights to not tread homosexual orientation as real. If I think Adam and Steve aren’t “really” a homosexual couple but are just deluding themselves or faking a relationship, then I can deny them a marriage license. That doesn’t sound like a good idea, and I don’t think it’s a good idea applied to transgender people either. Especially since, AFAICT, the overwhelming majority of people who identify as transgender are sincere about it, just as the overwhelming majority of people who identify as gay are. ---
**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, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1949 "2020-07-30T16:50:17Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Gay people don’t need lifelong hormone therapy or extensive surgeries, and they don’t need to make irreversible changes to their bodies. I’ve already made it clear that I support requiring medical diagnoses and consultations for actual medical treatments, such as hormone therapy and SRS. But not all transgender people want such medical treatments, or at least not at the beginning of their coming out as transgender. I don’t see a convincing reason why their assertion of transgender identity should have to be confirmed or validated by a medical diagnosis if they’re not seeking medical treatment. > [@DemonTree](#): > > 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. Okay, but again, the devil is in the details. How exactly should either of those alternatives be implemented so that “checks” or “spaces” or “services” perform their desired functions without being discriminatory? ---
**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, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1950 "2020-07-30T16:51:15Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But what I think is simply intrinsically unworkable, in both legal and practical terms, is your insistence that recognizing the rights of transgender people must be done without any compromises on issues that could potentially, and legitimately, make other people uncomfortable. I’ve seen more practicable suggestions in, for example, the ground rules proposed by monstro, which ISTM I largely agree with and think could work. But what you seem to be demanding is, AFAICT, more innately inconsistent. I don’t see any way you could ensure the protections you want for women’s spaces in a manner that would hold up as constitutional, and I haven’t seen you convincingly explain how you think that could work in practice. What is unconstitutional about enforcing the same _sex_-based protections that have been on the books for the last several decades? I laugh at the idea that I’m even proposing anything novel. All I’m saying is that we do what our laws already say we should do, which is to treat sex as a protected class and allow sex-restricted spaces remain sex-restricted. What you are arguing for actually violates the constitution, because you want biological sex to be subordinate to self-identified gender. ---
**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, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1951 "2020-07-30T17:25:05Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > I infer from this line of questioning that you think sex is an arbitrarily-delineated social construct that is shrouded in nebulousness and mystery. Er… no. That inference is not correct. I think that human biological sex is a real physical phenomenon, but a complicated and occasionally ambiguous one. It depends not just on sex chromosomes but on other genetic factor, on fetal environment and other factors affecting fetal development. Any one of those contributing factors can be inconsistent with some or all of the others, making binary sex categories more ambiguous or arbitrary. AFAICT, the same is true for the neurological phenomenon of perceived gender identity, which usually correlates with biological sex, but not always. There is certainly still a lot of “mystery” in the sense of not-yet-fully-understood science involved in the details of both human sexual development and human gender identity, but I don’t believe that either of those subjects is necessarily inherently “nebulous”, or that they’re nothing but social constructs. > [@YWTF](#): > > Everyone alive was born from a person with a female reproductive system. Not a single human being has come into this world through anything except a vagina or an incised uterus. We’re talking billions upon billions of people. _No one born with a penis or testicles has ever been pregnant_ . The only people who have died giving birth have been women and girls. > > This fundamental fact of life, observed over thousands of generations, is the basis for sorting humans into the category of “woman” and “man”. But it’s self-evidently not an adequate basis for sorting ALL humans into one of those two binary categories. Once again, you’re trying to justify claims for the universal applicability of a simple binary classification by pointing out that it’s valid for the vast majority of humans. But that doesn’t work. If you’ve got some individuals that are genetically XXY, for example, you can’t justify trying to classify them as either XX or XY by reiterating the well-known fact that most humans are unambiguously either XX or XY. The simple binary scheme works fine for most humans, but not for all. > [@YWTF](#): > > Stop exploiting the existence of intersex people to attack the idea that humans can be reliably sorted by their reproductive biology. But that claim of “reliable sorting” (at least if applied universally to all humans) is in fact exactly what the existence of intersex people does disprove. If you don’t like that fact, there’s nothing I can do about it. Your not liking it doesn’t make it not true, nor does my pointing it out mean that I’m “exploiting” or “othering” intersex people. In fact, I’m the one here who is resisting the “othering” of intersex people, by insisting that we shouldn’t attempt to reduce the phenomenon of human biological sex to a simple rigid binary classification that leaves intersex people with no category of human sex to belong to. ---
**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, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1952 "2020-07-30T17:32:01Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > What is unconstitutional about enforcing the same _sex_ -based protections that have been on the books for the last several decades? What protections do you mean, specifically? There have been a lot of laws on the books for the last several decades. Are you talking about rulings that female-designated spaces are exclusively for women in the sense of people with vaginas, and male-designated spaces are exclusively for men in the sense of people with penises? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1953 "2020-07-30T18:34:45Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Then what do the words “woman” and “man” mean if we are talking about intersex people? Depends on the person; there is no one DSD, and it has to be taken based on an assessment of the circumstances. Most intersex people are pretty easily seen as man or woman, though. [quote=“Kimstu, post:1940, topic:855795”] 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. [/QUOTE] One has to roll with the punches. > [@Kimstu](#): > > 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”? I don’t know what you mean by “underlying concept.” A person who has sex reassignment surgery has, after all, altered their physical reality. That’s different from someone who just says they’re not the sex they actually are. Sex is physical; “gender” is stereotype. There is no absolutely perfect approach to this or anything else in life. If a person could get sex reassignment surgery AND actually alter their DNA, well, at that point they’d pretty much be the opposite sex, right? Or if their new genitalia were actually totally functioning? Those aren’t things that are possible right now and may never be, but there clearly has to be SOME line over which a person will have taken on the other sex’s characteristics enough that they are that sex. “I say I’m a woman even though I’m a man” is not anywhere near that line; it is in effect to cast away any meaning in those words. To throw up our hands and pretend “man” and “woman” doesn’t mean anything is absurd. Of course they do, the same way “day” and “night” have objective meaning even though twilight exists. If I told you day and night weren’t things, you’d think I was nuts. ---
**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, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1954 "2020-07-30T18:36:40Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > What protections do you mean, specifically? There have been a lot of laws on the books for the last several decades. Are you talking about rulings that female-designated spaces are exclusively for women in the sense of people with vaginas, and male-designated spaces are exclusively for men in the sense of people with penises? Do you seriously not know what sex refers to, @Kimstu? Presumably your drivers license has F on it. Do you not understand what that F is based on? This is a sincere question. [This is what Wikipedia says about sex segregation:](http://https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_segregation#Education_and_socialization%5D) > In the United States in particular, two federal laws give public and private entities permission to segregate based on sex: [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_VII_of_the_Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964) and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972.[[3]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_segregation#cite_note-Cohen_2010-3) These laws permit sex segregation of contact sports, choruses, sex education, and in areas such as math and reading, within public schools.[[3]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_segregation#cite_note-Cohen_2010-3) ---
**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, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1955 "2020-07-30T19:29:05Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > “I say I’m a woman even though I’m a man” is not anywhere near that line; it is in effect to cast away any meaning in those words. To throw up our hands and pretend “man” and “woman” doesn’t mean anything is absurd. Acknowledging that the words “man” and “woman” can have multiple meanings is not the same thing as pretending that they don’t “mean anything” at all. For example, “woman” traditionally means something like “person with a female reproductive system”, but it can also mean something like “person who naturally self-identifies as a woman, often presenting a typically female appearance and wanting to be perceived as a woman”. The former definition relates to biological anatomy, while the latter relates to social gender categories, and neither definition invalidates the meaning of the other. > [@RickJay](#): > > Of course they do, the same way “day” and “night” have objective meaning even though twilight exists. If I told you day and night weren’t things, you’d think I was nuts. That analogy isn’t quite the “gotcha” argument you think it is, considering the many different ways we interpret the terms “night” and “day”. For example, sometimes we use “day” to mean a 24-hour period including nighttime, and sometimes we use it to mean only the daylight period (sometimes including twilight and sometimes excluding it). Sometimes we use “night” to mean an entire nighttime period, and sometimes we use it to refer just to part of an evening. Your analogy is just proving my point that the same word can have different meanings without collapsing into a chaotic state of simply not “meaning anything” at all. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1956 "2020-07-30T19:47:34Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > That analogy isn’t quite the “gotcha” argument you think it is, considering the many different ways we interpret the terms “night” and “day”. For example, sometimes we use “day” to mean a 24-hour period including nighttime, and sometimes we use it to mean only the daylight period (sometimes including twilight and sometimes excluding it). Sometimes we use “night” to mean an entire nighttime period, and sometimes we use it to refer just to part of an evening. > > Your analogy is just proving my point that the same word can have different meanings without collapsing into a chaotic state of simply not “meaning anything” at all. Words have many meanings and most of the time it doesn’t matter if the meaning isn’t crisply defined. If a person wants to shop for shoes in both the mens and womens shoe section, great! But if someone wants to play tennis competitively and win prize money, then it’s really important to define what is meant by “mens tennis” and “womens tennis”. What seems to be happening a lot in these discussions is that the loose understanding of the word from a scenario where it’s not well defined is then applied to a scenario where a crisp definition is needed. ---
**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, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1957 "2020-07-30T20:13:19Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > But if someone wants to play tennis competitively and win prize money, then it’s really important to define what is meant by “mens tennis” and “womens tennis”. Oh, absolutely; and I think one of the positive outcomes of this whole furore is going to be a more thoughtful consideration of how we design competition classes in sports, and how we might tailor specific criteria for competitive parity instead of just using broad general categories like sex, age, weight, etc. But to say something like “Transgender women are women but they’re not identical in all respects to cisgender women and we may need to take that into consideration when determining competition class qualifications in sports” does not somehow make the word “woman” cease to have any meaning whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1958 "2020-07-30T20:26:08Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Your analogy is just proving my point that the same word can have different meanings without collapsing into a chaotic state of simply not “meaning anything” at all. That’s not even the right analogy. Of course “night” has more than one meaning. When I compare “Day” and “night” and point out that they are distinct concepts despite the existence of twilight, you know full well I did not mean the word “day” in the sense of a 24-hour period. There is no ambiguity in the mind of any intelligent person which definition I was using. Of course “man” can mean both “a male adult,” or “to monitor or operate a job post or equipment.” Off the top of my head I can think of five additional definitions. What it cannon mean, in any meaningful sense, is “someone who thinks they’re a man.” Words can’t be defined that way. All arguments than “Transwomen are women” or “Transmen are men” come back to circular meaninglessness like that. > [@Kimstu](#): > > I think one of the positive outcomes of this whole furore is going to be a more thoughtful consideration of how we design competition classes in sports, and how we might tailor specific criteria for competitive parity instead of just using broad general categories like sex, age, weight, etc. The manner in which competitive sports are currently divided for fairness works extremely well, and the single most important division, the most clear cut and obvious one for maximizing fairness and opportunity, is dividing according to 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:** [July 30, 2020, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1959 "2020-07-30T20:36:49Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > 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. > > One has to roll with the punches. You might not want to agree to that: > **[Why it’s Impossible for Women to Compromise With the Transgender Movement](https://www.womenarehuman.com/why-its-impossible-for-women-to-compromise-with-the-transgender-movement/)** > > Some say that women and girls who believe that threat to our safety and privacy is heightened by opening the doors to such sex-specific facilities as public showers, locker rooms, battered wives an… ---
**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, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1960 "2020-07-30T20:39:08Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > Presumably your drivers license has F on it. Do you not understand what that F is based on? This is a sincere question. Sure: it’s based on the “F” I ticked on my driver’s license application form, which in turn is ultimately based on my mother’s obstetrician’s cursory inspection of my external genitalia when I was born (and subsequently on the fact that there were no later physical phenomena or subjective perceptions that contradicted the obstetrician’s initial assessment). Certainly nobody at the DMV required me to show them my coochie before printing “F” on my driver’s license. > [@RickJay](#): > > Of course “night” has more than one meaning. When I compare “Day” and “night” and point out that they are distinct concepts despite the existence of twilight, you know full well I did not mean the word “day” in the sense of a 24-hour period. Sure. And when somebody says something like “Male and female are distinct sex categories despite the existence of intersex people”, then I know full well that they’re referring to “male” and “female” in terms of biological sex rather than in terms of social gender categories or personal gender identity. But that doesn’t mean that their usage invalidates the alternative meaning of “man” in the sense of “someone who identifies as a man irrespective of genitals or chromosomes”, any more than your day/night/twilight example invalidates the other meaning of “day” in the sense of 24-hour period. > [@RickJay](#): > > What it cannon mean, in any meaningful sense, is “someone who thinks they’re a man.” Words can’t be defined that way. Except that in practice, they can. People are having conversations and correspondence all the time where they use the term “man” to include both biologically male cisgender people who identify as men, and transgender people who identify as men. And they know what they mean by that usage. The word “man” still has meaning in that usage, even though you think you’ve somehow demonstrated that that’s impossible. Like all linguistic prescriptivists, you’re running up against the inevitable occasional occurrence of a linguistic phenomenon that you think shouldn’t exist, and you’re tempted to believe that that means it doesn’t exist. But the realities of semantics don’t work that way. (Not knocking linguistic prescriptivism as a hobby, I’m an enthusiastic player of that game myself. But we shouldn’t fall into the trap of imagining that our semantic rationales are determinative of the meaning that exists in actual language use.) ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1961 "2020-07-30T20:49:35Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But that doesn’t mean that their usage invalidates the alternative meaning of “man” in the sense of “someone who identifies as a man irrespective of genitals or chromosomes”, any more than your day/night/twilight example invalidates the other meaning of “day” in the sense of 24-hour period. Shouldn’t there be some kind of criteria and general agreement on what it means to “identify as a man”? If “man” means anyone who identifies as a man, then what does “man” even mean? What are they identifying as? ---
**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, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1962 "2020-07-30T21:27:43Z")
> [@YWTF](#): > > [This is what Wikipedia says about sex segregation:](http://https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_segregation#Education_and_socialization%5D) > > > In the United States in particular, two federal laws give public and private entities permission to segregate based on sex: [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_VII_of_the_Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964) and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972.[[3]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_segregation#cite_note-Cohen_2010-3) These laws permit sex segregation of contact sports, choruses, sex education, and in areas such as math and reading, within public schools.[[3]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_segregation#cite_note-Cohen_2010-3) Those seem to be examples of what your cite categorizes as “administrative” or “permissive” sex segregation: i.e., where institutions are allowed to voluntarily enforce separation by sex but not legally required to. But if I understand you correctly, your concern also includes what your cite calls “mandatory” sex segregation, which is explicitly legally mandated for situations like public toilets, prison housing, etc. And if I also understand your answering-a-question-with-a-question response correctly, what you mean by sex segregation in all cases is separation of people with penises from people with vaginas. If I’ve got all that correct, then AFAICT the fundamental questions that we’ve been talking about here are: Are such sex-segregation practices constitutional, and do they meet your stated aim of not “normalizing” the presence of male-appearing people in female spaces which could potentially facilitate incursions by male predators? ISTM, as I’ve said before, that there’s a built-in Catch-22 there. If institutions are allowed, or required, to segregate male and female spaces based on the genitals of the users, then transgender women won’t be allowed to use women’s spaces, but male-appearing and male-identifying transgender men will be forced to use women’s spaces. If institutions are allowed, or required, to let individuals use the facilities for the gender that they identify as, then transgender men won’t be in the women’s spaces, but transgender women will; and some of them will be to some extent male-appearing. So whichever way it shakes out, ISTM that there is inevitably going to be some normalization of male-appearing people in women’s spaces. Unless, that is, transgender men are allowed to use their preferred facilities while transgender women are not: which AFAICT would clearly be unconstitutionally discriminatory. Do you disagree with any of that? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795/1963 "2020-07-30T21:31:30Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The manner in which competitive sports are currently divided for fairness works extremely well, and the single most important division, the most clear cut and obvious one for maximizing fairness and opportunity, is dividing according to sex. The sports arena is one of those things that I think where makes sense to have a “third league”. Men’s league = league for males Women’s league = league for females For people who don’t want to compete in either league (for whatever reason), we could have a mixed-sex league where players are chosen strictly based on ability. If the “biology doesn’t matter!” contingent were really sincere in their beliefs, they would be pushing for this. A mixed-sex league would demonstrate to the old-school unwoke folks the irrelevance of biological sex. But the fact that no one is pushing for this underscores how gender identity validation (aka warm fuzzies) is being elevated over actual opportunities (those things we might be tempted to call “rights”). We’re being told that the ideal world is the one where transwomen are able to compete exclusively against ciswomen. But it seems to me the ideal world would be the one where a person doen’t have to have any particular gender identity or arrangement of genitalia to be a successful athlete. How is it not oppressive to force a gender fluid athlete to commit themselves to playing in a “men’s” league or a “women’s” leagues given the variable nature of their gender identity? I don’t think it’s oppressive, mind you, but that’s the notion that is being communicated when people assert that gender identity is more important than biological sex when it comes to sports. So it seems to me that a sex/gender-neutral league would be perfect for gender fluid/nonbinary folks as well as transfolks. And also cisfolks who don’t like the old-school ways of dividing up humanity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795.md?page=97) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-furore/855795.md?page=99)