J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
262

My post was a sarcastic response to YWTF apparently being mystified about how we could discover someone’s mental state. Of course I’m not suggesting we’d actually want to do this - it amounts to a lie detector test.

Gender identity is by definition part of one’s mental state. Are you really saying that you don’t accept the idea that a persons gender identity can differ from their chromosome configuration and genitalia at birth? I assume that’s not what you mean, since that’s pretty much the definition of being transphobic.

263

The more I keep hearing “transphobic” being hurled at every point of disagreement, the more I become desensitized to it.

I didn’t say “gender identity”, Riemann. I said “gender”. I don’t think gender is a mental state and I don’t think it should be defined that way.

264

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having that kind of space. I do have a bit of a problem with the idea that it’s impossible for a trans women to exist in that space without fundamentally destroying it. Where does a trans woman go if she wants a space where she doesn’t have to deal with mansplaining, or being told her opinions are silly or hysterical?

If you were the leader of this hypothetical group, and you found out that a woman who had been attending regularly and non-disruptively was trans, would you kick her out? If someone showed up for a meeting, and you thought they were maybe trans, but could be cisgendered and just masculine looking, would you demand proof of sex?

Well, perhaps, but nobody’s trying to pass “Women’s Support Group” bills. And, regardless, the assertion was made that pressure for trans rights mainly comes from men and trans women. There does not appear to be any evidence to support this. Available evidence suggests that women are more supportive of trans rights than men.

265

krondys

I’ll freely admit to not being plugged in to this particular debate on a daily basis, but are these things that are actually happening or things that it is feared might happen?

Before I provide a list of examples of it happening (which means I will have to take the time to repost some things already posted in this thread which, to be honest, I really don’t feel like doing), can you tell me whether it is likely to make a difference on your opinion?

If I show multiple examples where males have beaten and displaced females in sports, will you call those isolated incidents that aren’t worth me worrying my petty little head over? Or will you agree this is a problem?

If I show evidence of at least one male taking a political seat reserved for females, thus making it even harder for women to be represented in politics, will you see the validity of my concerns? Or will you argue that it’s not a big deal because women still can get in office elsewhere?

I’m seriously not trying to play gotcha games, I promise. I just don’t want to invest a lot of time trying to prove something when my efforts are destined to fall on deaf ears.

266

How many times has that actually happened in this thread? So far, the overwhelming majority of uses of the word “transphobic” in this thread have come from you, YWTF, and Demon Tree.

267

Can she create her own?

I mean, if she’s been living openly as a woman for decades, then yeah, I think she’s earned the right to “woman” and I would embrace her as such. But if she just started living as a woman a month ago? And it’s clear that she is still in the process of figuring herself out, including how she wants to express her new-found womanhood? Nope, I probably wouldn’t see her as a woman. At least, not “woman” enough to join an organization for women. I would want her to have some experiences as a woman before joining my organization.

268

No, because visual presentation matters to me when it comes to gender. I understand that not everyone feels that way, but it’s an important criterion to me. If you “do woman” sufficiently (to use a term I picked up from a transgender activitist), then I’m OK giving you a “woman” card even if the biology isn’t there.

Whenever I encounter situations like this, I just default to “they are just a masculine-looking woman” and keep it moving. So no, I would not.

But let’s say someone I know to be a biological male as of two weeks ago shows up to the meeting and they tell me that they are a woman. And they’ve always been a woman, they tell me. But they aren’t “doing woman” in any discernable way, and I happen to know this person is a sexist edgelord. I want to be able to tell that edgelord to go fuck himself without a chorus of onlookers saying stuff like, “Well, how do you REALLY know they are lying!?” I wouldn’t know what I could say to prove he was lying. But I would still know it, and I wouldn’t want him in my safe space.

It seems like the anti-Rowlings are saying this is a hysterical unrealistic concern that women shouldn’t be worried about. Or they are saying that if an edgelord tried to gain entry into the club, then of course it would be acceptable to close the door on him. But I can think of many scenarios where the edgelord isn’t so easy to spot. Like, if someone legally registers as a woman while presenting as a male and possessing a penis and signs up for a scholarship targeted at women engineers, is it acceptable to say something about that? Or is that in the “no big deal” category, so we should just let it slide?

I don’t even think women like Rowling are worried about fraudsters per se. Like, the guy might sincerely believe he’s a girl and sincerely believes he’s deserving of the scholarship. But if you’ve got enough folks like this receiving these scholarships, then it becomes reasonable to wonder if you really helping women. Or are you really just helping males who claim the female identity–which is a different group than the one the award is supposed to be helping.

I think what I’m asking for is the “permission” to say “hold up!” I promise I won’t say “hold up” a lot, but I still want to be able to say it when I feel the need to. It seems like with all the other identities we have in society (nationality, religion, race), it is totally acceptable to say “hold up!” It seems reasonable to me that we treat gender the same way.

269

.I just did a search find on “transphobic”. You and I have said “transphobic” the same number of times. Banquet Bear and DemonTree are about tied for the winner.

270

…context, as always, is important here. I haven’t hurled “transphobic” at every point of disagreement. If my usage of it has lead to you being “desensitized” then that isn’t my problem.

271

What bugs me about the whole complaint about “gatekeeping” – surely there has to be SOME kind of criteria, or definition that a person has to fit in order to be trans/genderqueer/non-binary or whatever.
Because then if the only requirement to be X is to say “I’m X”, well, then doesn’t it lose all meaning?
(Google Trisha Paytas, for example)

I would think there has to be some kind of bare minimum, at the very least.

(As for Rowling, I do hope she manages to educate herself and change. I don’t think she’s a bad person, just an ignorant one)

272

I think I’ve said a couple times now, I’m okay with calling out bullshitters. In this case, “No, Barry’s not a woman, he’s just being an asshole like usual,” is an acceptable response. There’s a difference between, “I think trans people, as a class, are lying about their gender,” and “I think this specific fucker right here is lying about his gender,” and almost nobody is going to give you grief about the latter.

273

Interesting. We seem to have inconsistent search results. I only see my name come up twice, and both times, it’s because I’m quoting someone who used the term.

274

Riemann

This has nothing to do with stereotyping behavior. I don’t claim to understand exactly what differences in mental state are associated with feeling “male” or feeling “female”. But almost everyone self-identifies as having some gender identity (not necessary binary, of course), and this is clearly something that is in their brain .

I don’t have a gender identity, and insisting that I do is ideological, not evidence-based. I’m simply a person that exists in a female body. A lot of women I know express the same thing. I know of no studies that support the claim that everyone “self-identifies” as having a gender identity.

I don’t identify as a woman. I am a woman. I can say this not because of my feelings and mental state, but because (Christ Jesus I can’t believe I’m explaining this shit) I possess the type of reproductive system that society has called “female” since the inception of human speech.

Do you need to check between your legs to determine your own gender identity?

I don’t have a gender identity. I’m a member of the sex class called female. Adult human females are called women, just like adult female horses are known as mares. I’m the human counterpart to a mare.

Does a cis woman cease to be a woman when she stops menstruating?

Of course not. A menopausal woman still has a female reproductive system. Even if she had her sex organs removed, she’d still be biologically female. Our chromosomes are sexed. Women are XX. Men are XY. The exceptions to this rule are when genetic anomalies occur that result in intersexed conditions. People with these conditions are usually infertile but not always.

In principle, we might one day develop the technology to determine someone’s gender identity in a manner that you might find more satisfactory by scanning their neuron configuration directly by fMRI or something. But the technology we currently use to interrogate gender identity involves stimulating someone’s neurons with sound waves, and detecting and decoding the sound waves that they output in response. Or, if we’re more polite, we wait for them to volunteer the information if they choose to.

If gender identity is so obviously neurological, we would be able to test for it and not just rely on the word of fallible humans. I mean, forget about trans people for a sec. There are literally billions of brain scans that could be taken of cis men and cis women that could be compared to isolate where so-called brain sex resides and looks like. To date, there are no studies that show men and women have sexed brains.

This has nothing to do with whether mental states have objective physical reality. What you’re claiming here is that trans people are faking it , that they are either lying or deceiving themselves about their mental state.

If there is no way to distinguish fakers from non-fakers, then this underscores how nebulous all this gender identity stuff is. In the sciences, if you can’t objectively measure something, that makes it untestable. If it’s untestable, there’s no way to distinguish a true claim from a false one. So any male that self-identifies as a woman is as valid as any other male saying the same thing. This is the stuff faith made out of, and I don’t do faith.

Taken to its logical conclusion, self-ID gives men the right to be called women at their request. I take it you are good with this?

275

If you assert that nothing of gender resides in the mental state, and that you’re a woman only because of your type of reproductive system, how can you logically maintain that you would not cease to be a woman if that reproductive system were removed?

Suppose a (cis) woman has indeed had her sex organs fully removed. Your claim is that nothing of gender resides in the mental state, so what now is the relevance of the chromosome configuration? What are the genes now doing to make this person (by your definition) a woman? We didn’t even know that genes and DNA existed until recently, so chromosome configuration certainly isn’t in itself something that has defined people as female “since the inception of human speech”.

I don’t see how you can logically claim that it’s solely your female reproductive system that makes you a woman; yet simultaneously maintain that the loss of that reproductive system would not entail loss of womanhood.

276

Sorry, but that’s simply wrong.

Males and females differ in some aspects of their brains, notably the overall difference in size, with men having larger brains on average (between 8% and 13% larger when not corrected for body size),[2] but there are areas of the brain that appear not to be sexually differentiated. Additionally, there are differences in activation patterns that suggest anatomical or developmental differences, but the source of these differences is often unclear.

Additionally:

Early postmortem studies of transsexual neurological differentiation was focused on the hypothalamic and amygdala regions of the brain. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), some trans women were found to have female-typical putamina that were larger in size than those of cisgender males.[11] Some trans women have also shown a female-typical central part of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) and interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus number 3 (INAH-3), looking at the number of neurons found within each.[12]

277

Because I was born with that reproductive system. Just like a bicycle doesn’t cease to be bicycle just because you remove one of the wheels, I would still be a member of the female half of the species if I removed my sex organs.

I’m a veterinarian who has spayed and neutered a good number of animals. When you castrate a dog, it doesn’t stop being male just because it lacks testicles. It has a penis and it also often still retains behavioral patterns of an intact male. Lop off the penis and guess what? It’s still male. That Y chromosome still reveals the sex class the dog belongs to. Sex is immutable.

278

What if a cis woman has her sex organs removed and you ask her what her gender identity is and she says, “What the hell is that?” Do you put her in the “cis woman” category? Or do you put her in the “agender” category?

When you see someone who resembles a cis woman physically, do you say, “Hmm, I wonder if this person identifies as a woman?” Or do you say, “There’s a woman.”

279

This is not sound reasoning. We know virtually nothing of how the brain works in most respects. All we can do with scans at present is crudely distinguish activity from inactivity.

And you can’t just forget about trans people. They are indeed the strongest evidence we have that there is a mental phenotype that correlates with gender, a sense of self that includes gender identity, that has some genetic component, and that exists at least somewhat independently from somatic sexual characteristics. If that’s not the case, how do you explain trans people? Given the historical social cost of persecution and misery, the immense social pressure to conform to a cis identity, trans people clearly do not claim a trans identity for fun. It may be a complex phenomenon, but how is it plausible that it’s not fundamentally something real?

280

Agreed. But since the reproductive system has now gone, where does the identity reside, exactly? In the pancreas?

Indeed. Behavioral patterns. Well, that seems to rule out the pancreas hypothesis, doesn’t it. So - the brain, maybe?

281

Why should we believe that no one switches genders “for fun”?

Genderfluid folks don’t necessarily suffer from persecution. Many are honest about simply getting their kicks out of experimenting with and living different gender identities. They aren’t trying to free themselves from a body that feels wrong. They are just living life the way that feels comfortable to them.

Seems to me that if we can believe that it is possible to have a brain with the opposite gender of the body it is attached to, it is possible for someone to have a brain that flits from one gender to another. If it is possible to have gender dysphoria, it is possible to have gender euphoria.

I definitely believe there are women who claim the “nonbinary” identity to push back gender expectations and stereotypes . “I don’t like make-up or skinny jeans and I dig skateboarding and comics. Therefore, I’m nonbinary.” I doubt that the majority of “nonbinary” folks are any different mentally than the “binary” folks. They just think about gender in a different way.