It’s not exactly zero evidence. I posted this link before. Multiple government officials who have access and interest in preventing women from being assaulted stating on the record that they have not seen an increase in assaults or complaints related to their transgender protection law.
As you noted, this is trying to prove a negative, trying to prove that things haven’t changed. Frankly, I’m going to take the word of the state human rights commission, state coalition against sexual assault, or city police chief over the word of some retired bartender.
The pedantic in me likes having this kind of specificity, but I can’t see that really happening. There is a problem right now with the term “woman” having so many conceptual meanings. I’ve come to see TWAW as somewhat as a trick question. By answering yes, the trans community takes that to mean that transwomen are indistinguishable from ciswomen in all aspects physically, mentally, and in societal roles and divisions; and that no qualification or gatekeeping is required. For example, it seems absurd to me that anyone would consider that the “Women’s Boxing Association” is a subset of boxers based on gender identity rather than boxer biology. Even things like “Women in STEM” seem to be much more about the issues that genetically female people have in STEM rather than people who identify as women. Having more precise words would help in these instances since “woman” has now been expanded to concepts it did not have before and causes conflict in places where the women label has already been applied.
Gonna need you to realize that any source that characterizes concerns about males having unfettered access to women’s safe spaces as “right wing” is not very credible.
What women need is advocacy. Let adult females continue to call themselves “woman”. Urge transwomen to call themselves transwomen. We need our own words because we are different.
Patriarchy has always been about controlling women, all the way down to the language women are summoned by. When it took centuries for society to only start rejecting the casual use of “girl” when referring to women under the age of 40, it really takes cake to see “woman” treated like a song someone has sampled without permission. If adult females don’t have the copyright to this “song”, then who does?
No one is confused when I say “women and transwomen are different and deserve their own words”. The word woman hasn’t yet lost its meaning, and I would prefer to keep it that way.
Having now read Troubled Blood in its approximately thousand-page (!) entirety, I still think my initial estimate of it is correct. I’m sure that anti-transgender-rights advocates could try to make some kind of argument that aspects of the book support their viewpoint, but I think any such argument would be laughably feeble from any rational point of view.
Trying to explain my position without committing any spoilers: The crossdressing plot point (which is only a small part of the serial-killer subplot, which itself is a comparatively small part of the book) is relying on the facts that it’s possible for men to disguise themselves as women, and some predatory men use such disguises to deceive their intended female victims and possible witnesses about their identity.
No rational person on earth, AFAICT, denies the truth of these facts. Yes, crossdressing is a thing that some men do, and that some predatory men do for nefarious purposes. No argument there, and it is not in any way inherently transphobic to acknowledge that reality.
How this issue relates to transgender rights, ISTM, is only in the context of somebody making one or both of the following assertions:
1.“So-called transgender women are just men pretending to be women in order to prey on (real) women.”
2.“Some individuals who identify as transgender women may be sincere and non-predatory, but acknowledging their identity as women is still a bad thing because it makes it easier for predatory men to harm (real) women.”
I don’t agree with either of those assertions, and I don’t think that Troubled Blood provides any support for either of them. Here’s why:
1. There aren’t even any transgender characters in the book; the occasionally-crossdressing serial killer is 100% cisgender and heterosexual, although he sometimes deliberately uses mild gender-nonconformity in his social life, such as it is.
2. There isn’t even any socially visible recognition of transgender rights or transgender identity in the time period where the cross-dressing serial-killer predation occurs. The book’s 1970s-era serial killer successfully used his gender-nonconformity and cross-dressing tactics with absolutely zero reliance on social tolerance of transgender or nonbinary gender identity. And there’s no suggestion in the book that greater social tolerance of that kind would have facilitated his predation.
Well, I can’t make that call for you; all I know is that I bought and read the book, and didn’t find it to be making any kind of coherent anti-transgender-rights argument. As I said, I’ve read what I do consider to be some blatantly dumb and illogical things that Rowling has said in tweets and essays about transgender issues, and I didn’t see those viewpoints in Troubled Blood.
That doesn’t guarantee that I’m right, of course. If some transgender people and/or transgender allies think Troubled Blood is transphobic and ought to be boycotted, and if they feel I’ve let them down as an ally by not boycotting it, then they’re entitled to their opinion and I’m not going to worsen the sitch by trying to persuade them that their view of the book must be wrong.
But personally, I feel that if you were okay with the earlier Cormoran Strike novel The Silkworm, which contains an actual transgender-female character who even commits violent physical assaults (and who is nonetheless referred to throughout by the narrator and the other characters using feminine nouns and pronouns), I can’t see why you would consider Troubled Blood transphobic.
(Disclaimer: The author of this post is in no way affiliated with or sponsored by Hachette Book Group, J.K. Rowling, or any other claimants to or beneficiaries of intellectual property rights in the work Troubled Blood or remuneration thereunto pertaining.)
I think this position actually makes the most sense. Women means adult females and transwomen are free to define what it means to be a transwoman. When Alex Drummond says her full beard is expanding what it means to be a woman, that’s not exactly correct. What she is actually doing is expanding what it means to be a transwoman. She is showing that a transwoman doesn’t have to conform to traditional feminine stereotypes. A transwoman doesn’t have to look like a 50’s housewife if she doesn’t want to. She can look however she wants to look and still be a transwoman. And it’s this breaking of stereotypes which means that it’s not really accurate to say a transwoman is a woman. Decades ago that might have been closer to the truth since transwomen were expected to greatly conform to female stereotypes, but we are diverging from that now. Now a transwoman can look and act however she likes even if that has no correlation to traditional femininity.
? Can’t a cisgender woman also look and act however she likes even if that has no correlation to traditional femininity?
I don’t see why transgender women should be considered more entitled to the freedom of not “conform[ing] to traditional feminine stereotypes” than cisgender women are.
I have no problem with, for example, transgender woman Alex Drummond having a beard. But I also have no problem with cisgender woman Harnaam Kaur having a beard (in her case, due to polycystic ovary syndrome).
If you’re trying to tell me that having a beard is an acceptable “breaking of stereotypes” for Alex Drummond as a transgender woman, but not for Harnaam Kaur as a cisgender woman, then I think I have something of a problem with you.
Absolutely! In no way did I mean to imply that ciswomen had to conform to any standard. Ciswomen can do whatever they want and still be women because they inherently meet the definition of woman: an adult female. A ciswoman could have the muscles, height and full beard of Paul Bunyan and still be a woman. But I don’t think that was always the case for transwomen. I feel like there was a time when the trans community would not be accepting of a transwoman that looked like Paul Bunyan. Now that is changing. Now the trans community is accepting of trans individuals regardless of what they look like.
This breaks down if the original category is important.
For example, all these arguments could also legitimize occasionally calling homeopathy or intelligent design a science, but you wouldn’t go there, because that would leave you with no word for what science now means. And you’d have good reason to suspect that in addition to lots of people honestly discomforted by science-jingoism, there are also lots of people who actually want to leave you without a word for what now is called science.
Ever met someone where you can’t tell if they’re male or female by looking at them? Someone who straddles that dividing line? Julia Sweeney created a character named Pat a couple of decades ago on SNL where everyone around him/her was looking for tells that might give away Pat’s sexuality. They were always thwarted ins their efforts. I’ve met plenty of women who could pass for men and men who could pass for women and they weren’t even necessarily transitioning. I don’t know if going by the eyeball test is all that reliable.
And perhaps it isn’t. I don’t spend a lot of energy trying to suss out who in cis and who is trans. Close enough is good enough. But if you’re someone that looks jarringly out of place, then perhaps blending in is not high on the list of priorities for you. Whether we like it or not, we notice anomalies. It’s no use pretending it doesn’t matter, even if you believe it shouldn’t matter, contextual anomalies matter. What is maybe more important is how you behave and how you are treated despite your non-conformity (whatever it may be). But what I think is key is showing sufficient social awareness and sensitivity, particularly when it comes to matters of expectations of privacy and security in personal spaces that are subject to traditional gender rules. I cannot imagine women wanting to police who comes inside their bathroom or locker room. I imagine they want to feel safe in that space. If your appearance as a transwoman is a direct challenge to established norms and you behave as if it doesn’t matter to you, then I wonder if proving a point is more important to you than being accepted as member of that class with respect to all its other aspects.
Now the trans community is accepting of trans individuals regardless of what they look like.
I’ve asked this aloud before, and I’ll ask it again. Do we know how the average trans person on the street feels about this?
Because I just stumbled upon this article:
Her IG post is pretty ragey, IMHO. On one hand, I can totally get why someone would be offended by the gender-policing she’s doing. Like, what gives her the right to speak for the transgender community and define who is and who isn’t under that “umbrella”? But on the other hand, she’s correct that the glitterbeards are making it harder for the normies to really get behind everything that would benefit trans folks. For ages we were told that trans folks are stuck in bodies they don’t want to be in. But that narrative is being diminished by the trans folks who are totally fine with their bodies but still want the perceived advantages of “female” and “male” designations. If transwomen can literally be anyone, then “transwomen” becomes meaningless (sounds familiar, doesn’t it? )
Imagine the female counterpart to the bearded/mustachioed male in that article. A normal-looking female with long, groomed hair, no facial hair, wearing a polo shirt and Dockers. Most of us would not assume anything about this person other than that they are a female. They could be straight or lesbian or asexual. Our minds would not jump to “That’s a man!” Probably because androgynous/masculine women are normal in our society. Some degree of masculinity in women is socially acceptable. It is often encouraged.
It would be nice if femininity in males could be treated the same way. Instead of diagnosing males with a little swish as “women” and thus entitling them to special variances based on their performance of femininity, imagine how wonderful it could be if femininity in men could be conceptualized as being perfectly normal and thus no big deal. Imagine a society where a male in a skirt elicits a shoulder shrug rather than “yassss queen” from an adoring fan base of allies. Maybe folks like Shauna wouldn’t find it necessary to gatekeep “transwoman” because there would be fewer folks out there trying to hitch their wagon to hers.
I have a feeling that if a tomboyish woman with some feminine traits was rejected from a men’s space, this wouldn’t elicit much sympathy in most people. Especially if she had significant boobage, thighage, hipage, and buttage. Because tomboyish women are a dime a dozen. They aren’t special. But a male in a skirt is. They are a freaking unicorn to the average person. We need to stop seeing these folks as unicorns and start treating them like people we can politely disagree with and say “no” to without worrying about their feelings.
I pointed out earlier that there is already an attempt at a semantic treadmill. I admit that this attempt exists. Some silly and ignorant people think that if an overwhelmingly bimodal distribution is not perfectly bimodal, then the “binary” does not exist at all and therefore there is no need for any label whatever for the two poles of that distribution, the two places where the overwhelming majority of human beings exist.
That’s rubbish.
But ultimately there won’t be a semantic treadmill. Or at least I can’t see it. The distinction between sex and gender was specifically created to make these sorts of useful distinctions. The usefulness has not gone away. People like me aren’t going to be pushed off of it. We take this step to clarify our language, out of both courtesy and usefulness. If that doesn’t take, then it doesn’t take. It will have been worth the effort regardless, in my estimation.
There’s no point in going further, so it won’t. The language will either settle on the original terms, as you prefer to define them, or on the first step out. Outside of a western Cultural Revolution, I don’t see any other stable equilibrium here.
I’m glad you think it won’t happen (because this mean you don’t actually want it to happen), but @RickJay is right to be insistent on this point. It has already happened and it will only get worse unless there is a concerted effort to stop it.
Here is why I’m saying this. A few weeks ago, trans rights activists asked Merriam-Webster to change the definition of female. See the very last clause in the screen cap below.
The definition of male has been changed in the converse way.
This is Orweillian-levels of insanity for multiple reasons, but I won’t go into them here; people either see the circular meaningless on their own or they don’t. This either pings their alarms or it doesn’t. I’m too old to be explaining logical fallacies to people who should know better.
But it clearly shows that the concept of sex has now been co-opted by those who insist upon denying female human beings the right to a word that only applies to them. Males are now being conceptually shoehorned into our sex-specific language, even though doing so makes no linguistic sense.
If you agree that “female” and “male” are useful terms that shouldn’t be sacrificed to the gender ideology gods, then you’re only undermining yourself by excusing the colonization of “woman”.
Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness used to identify as a man. That I can totally grok: a men who likes skirts and heels etc. I thought it was progress to have someone like that on TV, to show that there are many different ways to be yourself. Now I think they identity as NB. Of course, if they feel better that way I respect their choice, but I can’t help but wonder what it “adds”, what was “wrong” with being a feminine guy. Did the fact that they like heels mean they must at least be partially woman, because this would be impossible for a man? Do they need to be treated differently in terms of rights from someone who “simply” identifies as a femine man and in what way? I’m not as eloquent as Monstro, but I can see why some people see this kind of thing as regressive.
What if you’re wrong? If I’m wrong transpeople use spaces created for them…spaces that might also be used by cis people. If you’re wrong, a lot of physical and sexual harm and victimization of women will occur.
The TWAW policy that you’re espousing was wrong for this 5 yr old girl. She has been sexually assaulted at 5 years old by a gender fluid person in the girl’s bathroom. Its reasonable to say that she’s been harmed by a TWAW policy.
The policy you’re espousing was wrong for this incest survivor in the women’s shelter mentioned earlier in this thread. She was further victimized because of a TWAW policy…we can safely say that she was harmed by a TWAW policy.
The policy you’re espousing was wrong for the women imprisoned with and sexually assaulted by Karen White. Women were sexually assaulted by a person who wouldn’t have been in the women’s prison if not for a TWAW policy…it’s reasonable to say TWAW has made things worse for those women.
If I’m wrong, the only thing that happens is that transwomen use locker rooms and spaces created for trans people. What is so horrible about that? What is so awful about a trans person using a trans space or a unisex space that it’s worth an assault on a 5 yr old girl or it’s worth further traumatizing an incest survivor at a shelter?
We all have been taking our shoes off at the airport for close to 20 years now because one time, one guy tried unsuccessfully to use a shoe bomb. Man after man after man after man have actually victimized women and girls via TWAW policy…why do we have to prove that TWAW makes things worse before we can act? Why can’t we just act on the info we have now in a similar fashion to what we did when we changed TSA policy even though not even one person had been harmed by the shoe bomber?
I agree with your entire post, but this part is really the crux of the issue isn’t it? It’s becoming harder and harder to believe that this all doesn’t boil down to entitled males wanting what they want and not caring who’s hurt or injured along the way.
I don’t know what the future holds long term, but this confusion is absolutely going to happen at least for awhile. The push to pretend sex doesn’t exist is a hard one. Remember, that’s why this thread is titled about JK Rowling. Her big initial offense was in saying sex is a thing that exists.
You talk about the distinction between sex and gender, but that distinction just isn’t understood by most people. The splitting of those words into different meanings is a recent one; for most of recent history “gender” just meant “sex” and was used because people were prudish and didn’t like the word “sex.” Splitting them into meaning “the physical state of being one of the two reproductive classes” and “stereotypes and traditional roles associated with a sex” is a very useful one. It’s a linguistic change that unquestionably improves English. I do not see, however, that the vast majority of English speaking people use those words that way. Gender is still frequently used to mean sex, even amongst the TWAW crowd but, to be honest, mostly just out of habit by everyone. In theory this distinction would be very helpful, but in practice it’s not.
As a side note, I have to again clarify, despite what the TWAW posters keep saying, that I am not opposed to language changing. That’s not the point here. Language changes - there’s nothing one can do about it anyway - and English is a language built by change, by borrowing, by experimentation, by the human experience. It’s not perfect and MANY changes improve it, like the sex/gender distinction. I hold that “y’all” would be an excellent formal addition to our language because we lack a second person plural, so adopting that word as acceptable would clearly enhance the language. My point is that the TWAW push isn’t meant to improve the language, it’s meant to be dishonest, and will inevitably just shuffle words around. Screaming “bigot!!” at someone who dares to use the word “woman” to mean “a person who is physically female” is… well, it’s Orwellian. I can’t think of a better term.
If you’re trying to tell me that having a beard is an acceptable “breaking of stereotypes” for Alex Drummond as a transgender woman, but not for Harnaam Kaur as a cisgender woman, then I think I have something of a problem with you.
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