J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
2004

@Kimstu

Emphasis added. What produces “the suspicion of them not belonging there” in the first place is not their ID data but their appearance.

Looking like a man would produce suspicion. Having an M on their ID would lead to ejection,

Also, I’m kind of puzzled that you seem to think that a predatory man who would deliberately and falsely lay claim to female identity in order to be able to enter a women’s locker room for nefarious purposes wouldn’t manage to get a fake ID that says “F” instead of “M” on it in case his claim was challenged.

They could certainly try to do that, but I suspect that hasn’t been encountered very often in all the many decades that bouncers, security guards, and police officers have been kicking men out of women’s restrooms.

Why you acting as though this is unchartered territory I’m talking about? Its the norm right now. I’m not proposing anything that hasn’t been in practice since well before any of us were born. It has worked good enough to keep the sky from falling.

This thread is very surreal.

2005

Why do you think I believe the only way someone can be a woman is if they have experienced the same things I have? Can you post something I’ve said that would give you that impression?

If someone has the biological reality of an adult female, they will always be a woman to me. If they have similar gendered experiences as me but they don’t have the same biological reality, I’m OK with treating them as a woman. But if we absolutely nothing in common (biology or experiences), then I fail to see how we’re connected through the same socially constructed identity. If gender is not something that can be described biologically or experientially, then what the hell is it?

If you tell me you’re an American but you’ve never set foot on American soil and you aren’t connected to America through parentage and there’s nothing about your dress, speech, or mannerisms that register as American, then I am not going to see you as American. “American” means something besides “someone who says they are a American” to me. “Woman” works the same way for me. All identity labels work that way for me.

2006

In two of the news stories I just cited about cisgender women being kicked out of women’s restrooms, the ejection happened without any demand for ID at all: in one case with the enforcer actually refusing the offer to show ID. I think you might be over-weighting the “ID-check” aspect of security measures in relation to the “appearance-based-suspicion” aspect.

2007

Of course I will. I won’t ever forget that you said that trans men are not men and trans women are not women. I shuddered when someone I used to respect said something so horrible.

But, if (as seems increasingly unlikely) Trump wins, it will be those who have done what you say you’ll do that I will blame. You’ve said you will tell your conservatives friends that we’re liberals are fighting to allow men pee with women. You’re advocating fearmongering.

You’re ignoring the principles of liberalism and progressivism because they are directed at a group your are not a part of. You justify discrimination based on people feeling uncomfortable. That’s no different than when we had segregated bathrooms, because being around black people made them uncomfortable. It’s no different than the bathroom gay panic when people were scared that gay people would be in the same bathroom as them.

But they got over it. Same here. Heck, the only way they would feel uncomfortable is if they looked over and saw someone’s genitals, which they shouldn’t be doing anyways. You know how many penises I’ve seen going to the restroom? None.

If Trump were to win in November, the first thing I would think is that election shenanigans went on, as he’s already signaling he’ll try. But I will also wonder about how many trans-exclusionary feminists decided they were going to help Trump by presenting things to their friends in a way that makes liberals look bad. He’s also anti-feminist, so why in the world wouldn’t you do what you could to assuage their fears?

This is how illogical this whole things. You throw out the principles that made misogyny, racism, and homophobia wrong, because it’s towards a group you aren’t a part of who make you feel uncomfortable.

Many white people felt uncomfortable around black people, so they segregated their bathrooms. But when that was made illegal, they got used to it. There was the gay bathroom panic where people were scared that gay people would perv on them. But it didn’t happen, and we got over it.

Trans people haven’t been doing anything to cis people in bathrooms. And, if you actually use the restroom the way you’re supposed to, you’d never even know they’re there. What are you doing, looking into another stall?

Prisons were one place where I agreed there might be people who were traumatized. But my solution was to provide them some extra privacy that allows the guards to see them but not the other prisoners.

I honestly mostly avoid this thread because it makes me so angry that, in 2020, we’re still doing this. It’s been at least 15 years now. There’s a reason why the people who grew up with Rowling’s works are pretty much all on the side that what she did is horrible. There’s a reason why all the talk is about whether we can still enjoy her works. There’s a reason why everyone is saying you can’t give her money. This is all old, rejected crap.

There’s talk of how she’s had the same experience some older conservative men have. She’s been in a group that poisons the well against others. She no longer listens to other voices. She’s trapped in a world that used some legitimate grievances to pull her in, and made her a pariah, and now they’re the only ones who will accept her. And, being rich, it’s unlikely she can be pulled out–unless something lucky happens.

She wrote a liberal, inclusive message. But she had chosen to abandon those principles. And that also seems to be where you are.

It sucks. I’ve been angry enough to start a Pit thread several times from merely trying to read this thread. But I don’t, because I’ve actually decided to stop attacking people so much–it doesn’t align with my moral principles. I’m going to try not to personally attack people at all.

It blows my mind that anyone could remotely think the way you do. It makes me understand more how Trump supporters can exist, when even people I thought well of can get pulled into nonsense like this.

I am a trans ally. I have trans friends. I will continue to fight for them as best I can. And before you ask, I have female friends, too. That’s why I’m a feminist. But I’m not trans-exclusionary, because such is not required. You could choose to drop that part and treat trans people as fellow human beings–people who Matter.

And I will continue to hope you eventually will. Even people who attack me often wind up arguing the same things I used to argue. Somehow, I still get through, even when they hate me.

Trans rights are human rights. Love has no labels. Black Lives Matter. And the feminist slogan: Equality for ALL.

2008

I can’t imagine why.
CMC

2009

J K Rowling isn’t trapped in some sort of conservative mindset. She used to agree with you until she looked into the subject more closely. It’s a story you’ll see again and again. Liberal women who supported trans rights until they educated themselves and could no longer ignore the obvious: that feeling like a woman does not make you a woman, in any of the ways that matter. Feeling like a woman doesn’t stop you looking like a man, acting like a man, having a sex drive like a man, looking at porn like a man, committing crimes like a man. It doesn’t stop you being bigger and stronger and more aggressive, it doesn’t stop you dominating conversations and acting entitled like a man. It doesn’t make you vulnerable to pregnancy, it doesn’t give you female socialisation, and it doesn’t make people ignore your feelings and call your fears hysterical like they do women’s. Hormones and surgery and living in role can change a lot of these things, though not all. But you don’t want physically transitioning to matter, you say it’s not important.

But these things do matter. You talk about bathrooms and pronouns, but you also want trans people to use communal locker rooms and showers where genitalia are normally visible. You’re telling women who aren’t comfortable seeing penises, and being seen naked by people with penises, that we’re bigots. In a world where 1 in 5 women have been victims of sexual assault, and nearly all have experienced sexual harassment. Do you similarly think that women who receive unwanted dick pics should just get over it?

Liberals are fighting to put rapists in women’s prisons and halfway houses, and fighting to let males compete against women in sports. And it blows your mind why anyone might have a problem with this?

You talk about pronouns, but what you are really asking is for us to ignore our own assessment of who is a man - and thus potentially dangerous to us - because it’s a thought crime not to believe anyone who says they are a woman. You ‘shudder’ if someone says they don’t see transwomen as women, or transmen as men. Being polite and using the correct pronouns is not enough, we are required to be true believers.

I know that saying this hurts people. But it has real world implications, not least on the kids and young people who we are rushing into experimental treatments, while doctors and psychologists are not free to investigate because they are afraid of the activists. When we’re making policy that affects everyone’s lives, the truth is more important than people’s feelings.

2010

I’m not overweighting anything. I’ve been asked how a vagina-only policy might be enforced and explained how I believe could be (I.e. a for-cause ID check). That doesn’t mean every facility will be doing it that way. Believe it or not, people are pretty good at recognizing men when they see them, especially when genitals are exposed.

in the time it took you to dig up cites on women being unfairly kicked out of a restroom, no doubt there were plenty of men getting rightfully kicked out because they were up to no good or about to be up to no good. And all because someone acted on a hunch that they didn’t belong there.

2011

Members of other minority groups are somehow able to participate in heated conversations pertaining to them. I’ve been on the board for a long time now. While I don’t participate in every last thread about black people, I still manage to find the fortitude and patience to participate in the majority of them. Even when they hurt my feelings and piss me off. If I can’t be bothered to talk about the issues that affect folks like me so that the “other side” understands where folks like me are coming from, then I can hardly blame them for holding on to their misconceptions. I certainly wouldn’t allow allies to do all the talking. Allies are well-intentioned, but they don’t know everything. They don’t always know the best way to frame an argument.

This conversation has been much more civil than past conversations we’ve had on this board about race. If black folks can endure people saying they are less intelligent and more criminal than white folks, then trans folks should be able to endure people saying that there are some problems with gender ideology.

If trans folks don’t want to participate in this convo, that’s their right. But no one is keeping them from participating.

2012

Tell Buck Angel how you feel about it. He’s a trans man who believes the same as I do; saying trans men are men is biological erasure. He also believes its offensive to reduce womanhood to a feeling.

I’m sure he’d appreciate being mansplained about the wrongness of his views.

2013

And yet, he also calls himself a male- at least sometimes. Which biologically- he isn’t, and at other times he has referred to himself as female. He had also called himself the man with a pussy.

I don’t think he’s the spokesperson for the trans community- and doesn’t want to be. He considers himself to be transexual, rather than transgender.

2014

I feel it’s actually helping trans rights to hammer out these issues so that they are clearly defined and can be properly enforced. The problem with having no restrictions and having the law be “You’re a [G] if you feel you’re an [G] and be granted all rights and privileges of [G] without any restriction” is that it’s vulnerable to a lot of exploitation by insincere people. If anyone can join the womens sports, what’s to stop a bunch of boys from saying they identify as girls during the field hockey season and taking over the sport? What’s to stop a mid-ranked male swimmer from identifying as a woman in order to get to to go the Olympics on the womens swim team? If anyone can go into traditionally women’s private spaces, what’s to stop perverts from saying they identify as women and going into those spaces? What’s to stop boys from identifying as girls to qualify for “Women in STEM” scholarships? All of these kinds of negative consequences to lax and loose trans requirements need to be considered and loopholes closed or else non-trans people will exploit them for personal gain.

2015

Since JKR, he has been an outspoken critic of current efforts to downplay the reality of biological sex in the service of gender ideology. He feels trans activists are hurting not only women, but members of the trans community with its rhetoric and it’s denial of science.

A tweet from 2018 misses what Buck Angel and other transsexual voices are pushing against now. Their perspectives are not tolerated by the most vocal and powerful faction in the transgender movement. So you’re right when you say BA isn’t a spokesperson, but that doesn’t make him wrong.

2016

Is there anyone you would be feel comfortable calling a spokesperson for the trans community? I’m not playing gotcha or anything. I’m just curious if there is someone whose voice is widely seen as being representative of the trans community.

2017

Hasn’t this argument been nipped in the bud yet? I mean, social pressure is a highly effective gate check. Cheaters are generally not well regarded by society. It would be a pyrrhic victory to win by such transparent means.

Existing laws preventing such behavior. Someone making that claim could fairly be expected to provide a standing history of being a trans person in the course of ordinary life. Not just on the occasion when they feel like wondering into a women’s locker room or qualifying for a specific scholarship program.

2018

Even if we say that people don’t cheat in sports (ha!), people could still exploit this just to destroy trans rights. What’s to stop a bunch of conservative, transophobe boys from taking over girls sports just to prevent trans players from being on the team? Or the same boys taking over the girls locker rooms for the same purpose? If there’s no restriction on who can identify as a girl, then transophobe boys could just take over anything for girls as a form of protest.

I agree that there should be some kind of lookback and qualifying requirements, but not all trans activists want that. Some trans activists want there to be no qualifications other than “I identify as a woman”.

2019

What some of us are saying is that all kinds of social pressures are lightening up. Social pressure has kept trans folks from coming out and social pressure has kept predatory males from certain spaces. You can’t open the door to the women’s locker room to some males and not also implicitly invite others. If it becomes socially inappropriate to react negatively to a male in a women’s locker room, then the social pressure that would have otherwise kept predatory men out of locker rooms disappears.

2020

(Looks at the US Women’s soccer team). I’d like to see them try.

2021

This Woman Are Human site you keep linking to has a Stormfront Level of trans bigotry and it isn’t helping your case that you have a reasonable position.

2022

I know I’m a late-comer to a thread with over 2000 posts, so I may be treading well worn ground, but aren’t we spending an enormous amount of energy worrying about the marginal cases in which an ill-meaning individual is deliberately abusing an otherwise functional solution? And if they are and found out to be, can they be subsequently legally punished?

2023

It’s funny you mention that, because the US Women’s soccer team does scrimmage against HS boys, and the boys typically win. For example:

When I’ve heard the women players interviewed, they typically say that the boys are so much quicker and powerful that the better skill of the women players can’t overcome that.