You make good points, but I’m having a hard time being labelled a cisman when I’ve always just been a man. We shall see.
Like I said, very natural. (I recall having some glitches myself with the label “straight woman” after I’d grown up taking it for granted, along with the rest of the dominant culture, that the label “woman” in itself already meant that you were sexually attracted to men.)
My guess is that, as in my previous examples, we’re eventually going to end up mostly using the generic version of the words “men” and “women”, and only applying the modifiers when we really need them to distinguish subcategories for relevant reasons.
So you and all the other men, both cisgender and transgender, will mostly continue to be just labelled “men” except when it’s relevant to indicate whether your gender identity is the same as your birth sex.
(Which, AFAICT, is what transgender people themselves as a group have mostly wanted all along. They weren’t asking to be constantly labeled and singled out as “transmen” and “transwomen”; they just wanted to get on with living their lives as recognized members of the existing gender category (or nonbinary/agender category or whatever) that they identify as. Just as gay people as a group mostly weren’t seeking a particular special status called “same-sex marriage”; they just wanted their relationships to be able to be recognized in the existing category “marriage”.)
That was probably true originally. Then the movement latched on to this postmodern queer theory stuff that says sex isn’t real, and now we’ve got people insisting there’s no such thing as a female body and we are not allowed any words to describe biological sex, let alone allowed to make distinctions on that basis.
As for non-binary etc people, you can hardly say they are just trying to get on with their lives. Asking for non-standard pronouns is inevitably going to make you stand out.
I may have missed this in the recent discussion, but what exactly is it you think Radcliffe or any other Harry Potter actor needs to be apologizing to Rowling for?
AFAICT, Radcliffe’s comments in no way express or endorse any kind of abusive or hateful language towards Rowling, much less “curb stomping”. He’s simply criticizing, in thoughtful and temperate language, some of the things she chose to say.
If Rowling’s entitled to express an opinion on a controversial subject and criticize other people’s opinions on it, why isn’t Radcliffe entitled to do the same? Why should anybody have to apologize to her for rationally and courteously disagreeing with her views, or have to justify it by having “a gun held to [their] head”?
(And that’s not even taking into account the rather servile-seeming implication that actors are obligated to be deferential to the popular authors who wrote the books whose screen adaptations they starred in, because the authors are “the hand that fed them”. Yes, the fame of Rowling’s books made the movie versions very profitable for their young actors (and everybody else involved in them), but the actors put in plenty of talent and hard work as well. I don’t see why they should be considered to owe Rowling a lifelong debt of subservience and/or silence about her publicly expressed views even if they disagree with them.)
But what exactly is that supposed to mean, and who is saying it? I’ve seen plenty of transgender-rights advocates arguing that biological sex is complex, not entirely binary, and not the same thing as gender identity, but ISTM that’s very different from claiming that “sex isn’t real”. Certainly everybody participating in this thread seems to be in agreement that sex is real.
Even the much-criticized feminist philosopher Judith Butler, AFAICT, wasn’t arguing that biological sex literally had no physical reality: she was saying that its reality is affected and mediated by our cultural constructs regarding sex and gender. So I remain fairly baffled as to what exact point the GC advocates are trying to make with the slogan “sex is real”.
Again, I’m not seeing how this description squares with reality. All of us in this thread have constantly been using words to describe biological sex, and all of us acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary and relevant to make distinctions on the basis of biological sex.
What some of us are disagreeing about in that regard, AFAICT, is just whether it’s right to insist on using certain unmodified general terms like “woman” and “female”, or “man” and “male”, as strictly and solely synonymous with biological sex.
True, at least in languages that don’t already have standard gender-neutral pronouns. But ISTM that asking to be referred to as a “person” and “they/them” is still pretty normal and low-key. If we did actually do away with sexist gender roles and imposed conventions of gender expression in our society, I suspect most transgender and nonbinary people wouldn’t stand out at all.
I’ll take my victories where I can get them. 
Why exactly are transgender-rights advocates arguing that biological sex is complex, not entirely binary, and not the same thing as gender identity? Because they want to make people think sex isn’t real. That there is no such thing as a biological female or male. The aim is to entirely replace the concept of sex with gender identity, both in people’s minds and in the law.
And yes, there still are terms for sex, but they are all frowned upon and discouraged by the TRAs: biological male, biological female, female at birth, male at birth. It’s obvious that whatever term we come up with for sex will soon be co-opted to mean gender, or banned in polite company, because denying and hiding that distinction is the whole point. We wouldn’t be seeing ‘people with uteruses’ and ‘people who menstruate’ if there was a politically correct term available to describe those people.
Would there be any need for the concept in such a society? How do you think it would look?
What does it mean that biological reality is affected by cultural constructs? Can you explain this idea with plain language with an example or two?
From where I sit, “cultural constructs” are man made concepts; biology is not. Female mammals have biological properties that male mammals don’t. This is a must for reproduction to occur.
I can readily see how culture is affected by this reality. What is nebulous is the idea that culture affects this reality.
His response was stupidly unnecessary and only served to stoke the fire of mindless outrage.
Neither JKR’s tweets or follow-up essay invalidated anyone’s sincerely held gender identity. Radcliffe’s platitudinous “trans women are women” was a non sequitur of the highest order because the substance of her commentary was about female people and dangerous men.To the extent that JKR even mentioned transwomen, it was in a positive and affirming way. Radcliffe’s response completely disregarded this by framing her commentary as an attack on transwomen, thus painting her a TERF.
This statement below was really stupid:
“Any statement to the contrary (TWAW) erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”
Nothing she said “erased the identity” of trans people. Anyone who read the dang tweets knows she was arguing against the erasure of women, and it really takes some bullshit for brains to argue otherwise. But if your aim is make everyone think JKR eats trans babies for breakfast, what Radcliffe wrote is effective propaganda.
Honest and thoughtful disagreement is impossible! Only a liar or someone with “bullshit for brains” could possibly disagree!
Makes discussion kind of pointless…
If I said 1 + 1 = 0, I encourage you to tell me that I have bullshit for brains.
I usually try and give the benefit of the doubt when arguing with someone, especially if I’ve had discussions with them for many years and know them to be generally decent, intelligent, and thoughtful. Even if it seems stupid to me at first, I might be missing a legitimate different understanding or interpretation of the facts.
I want to hear more about how Rowling is really not anti-trans…
You are personalizing a comment when you have no real reason to personalize it. Yes, I think it’s stupid to spin JKR’s opinion about female erasure as trans erasure. Yes, I think that’s some bullshit. I’m not going to mince words about this opinion just because you think it applies to you. A throwaway comment is not an invitation to argue.
Believing gender doesn’t define whether someone is a man or woman does not mean one wishes harm against trans people. Jesus Christ, what is with this propensity of the TRA movement to engage in splitting against everyone in the world?
Actually this is rather interesting. Is he implying we should lie about it to protect trans people’s mental health?
Who the fuck said anything about “wishing harm”?
It’s mean-spirited, so it does surprise me that she would endorse the shop. Cool tshirt though.
Rowling might not have known anything more about the shop’s merchandise than that one witch-themed T-shirt, I suppose. Still, even the faintest concept of due diligence would have suggested checking out the inventory more thoroughly before actively endorsing it.
I really don’t think she can claim not to be promoting anti-trans bigotry (and other forms of bigotry as well) when she publicly supports a vendor whose other merchandise includes buttons with, as you say, mean-spirited slogans like
“Transmen are my sisters”,
“Transwomen are men”,
“Woman not CIS”,
“Lesbians don’t have penises”,
“Lesbian not queer”,
“Get the L out of LGBT”,
etc.
I mean, when folks back in the days before Obergefell v. Hodges were selling merch with slogans like “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman” and “Adam and Eve Not Adam and Steve”, they likewise claimed that they were just stating facts!, and omg it didn’t mean that they wished any harm to gay people!.
Uh-huh, maybe, but that ish still definitely comes across as homophobic. And militant slogans adamantly denying the gender identification of transgender people (and laying down the law for everyone else about, say, who may or may not identify as lesbian) definitely comes across as transphobic. (Not to mention queer-phobic in general.)
That seems to me like a huge jump to a conclusion. When I see transgender-rights advocates arguing that biological sex is complex, not entirely binary, and not the same thing as gender identity, what I hear them saying is that biological sex is complex, not entirely binary, and not the same thing as gender identity.
All of which claims are, AFAICT, true. And none of which is in any way equivalent to, or in any way implies that, “sex isn’t real”.
Do you mean that “TRAs” are objecting to the very existence of such terms and their clinical use? Or simply that they don’t like people referring to, for instance, a transgender woman by the term “biological male” instead of “transgender woman”?
Because if it’s the former, I disagree with their stance, but if it’s the latter, I don’t. I think it’s fine to say, for example, “Transgender women differ from cisgender women in having biologically male anatomy”, or “in being assigned male at birth”, etc.
But I think it’s mean-spirited and assholish to say, for example, [i]“Ellen doesn’t get cervical screenings because she’s a biological male”[i] (or worse, “because he’s a biological male”), rather than [i]“Ellen doesn’t get cervical screenings because she’s a transgender woman”[i]. I don’t think that objecting to such gratuitously mean-spirited assholish language is anywhere near the same thing as trying to argue that “sex isn’t real”.
I don’t know, I have a hard time picturing what any of today’s categories of sex and gender would look like in such a society. Maybe we would all just default to designating everyone by gender-neutral terms like “person”, “individual”, “partner”, “spouse”, and gender-neutral pronouns, and would only particularize their birth biological sex or any other sex- or gender-related characteristic if we really needed to. Which IMHO would be perfectly fine, frankly.