J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
4727

Why is that statement confusing to you, specifically? I happy to explain, but I don’t see what the issue is. If it’s just, “Why would you date a lesbian if you don’t like people touching your pussy,” well, like I just said, it’s cause the lesbian will have them when no one else will. A lot of people put up with stuff in a relationship that they don’t like - hell, that’s actually physically damaging to them - because they’re more terrified of being alone than they are of how their partner treats them.

This is, needless to say, not universal. I have also know couples between lesbians and trans men that worked out - usually if they were already a couple before the transition.

But there is also this toxic dynamic in queer culture that exists, and I think it’s relevant to the conversation.

Well, that’s sort of the point. A lot of these stories of lesbians being “bullied” by trans people are exactly the opposite - it’s the lesbian who’s the bully, and who continues the bullying by lying about the encounter afterwards and painting themselves as the victim. This is absolutely not all of them. There are also trans women who are shitty to lesbians for no good cause. The whole “lesbians have been banned from Pride!” thing is exactly that. There are some lesbian groups that show up at Pride parades to specifically harass trans people, and when they get thrown out, claim that they were unjustly targeted, and provide selectively edited video to “prove” it.

I’m sorry hearing both sides of an issue makes you uncomfortable, but this isn’t just a cut-and-dried “asshole trans people harassing innocent lesbians who just want to be left alone.” There are bad actors on both sides. In my impression, most of the really objectionable actions come from the TERFy types, but I recognize that could just be my ideological and social bias. I don’t think there’s any way to capture useful data about this, because I’m not talking about violent crimes, just things like, “How do you react to being asked out in a bar?” and “How do you react to a polite rejection?”

[quote]

You know, you keep asking me, in this sort of inquisitorial tone, if I understand the issues from the other side, and I think I’ve been pretty good at responding, given the speed and volume of the thread, but I don’t really see you doing the same thing. Can you understand why I wouldn’t be much interested in hearing the thoughts of someone like Yardley, who spends considerable amount of time tracking down trans women online just so they can call them “men?” Who tries to dox trans women who fight back against her harassment? Is it fair to me to wonder why I’m supposed to care about the harassment of cis women by trans women, but none of you will even address it when it happens the other way? Way back at the beginning of the thread, I tried to find some common ground and agreed that there were issues with housing anyone who identified as a women in the women’s prison, and said it was important to me that we also make sure the trans women were safe. Your sister accused me of caring more about pedophiles than women. I stand up for a woman I know to be a good, intelligent, thoughtful person, and an author of multiple books and articles whom you all are slandering because one piece she wrote five years ago - which you already admitted wasn’t as bad with the full context provided - and that “makes you uncomfortable,” like somehow treating someone who comes up in an online discussion like a human being suddenly makes me the bad guy. Which, I seem to recall, was sort of what you all were complaining about in the first place, wasn’t it? How is someone on Twitter calling JKR a Terf any different from you and your sister calling Serrano an Incel?

Are you listening, monstro? How many times have you dramatically wailed about how nobody on the TRA side will acknowledge X, when there’s literally dozens of posts in this thread from TRAs saying that you have a valid point, and that it’s not as simple as just shouting TWAW? I know I lost count about a week back.

4728

If a lesbian doesn’t accept transgender identity, fine. But she doesn’t, she shouldn’t date a trans guy and try to treat him like he’s just a butch lesbian. I don’t care where you stand on the ideological axis on the validity of trans identity - everyone should be able to recognize that that’s a shitty thing to do.

4729

Ths tends to be a throwaway remark that passes without comment but I feel it is pretty crucial to the discussion.

Your words above suggest there are circumstances and criteria by which you can judge the seriousness or sincerity of a persons commitment to their gender. By that I assume you think a failure to live up those criteria should mean those people do not necessarily get access to the full rights and benefits of the sex/gender they claim?

OK, that seems to be the position of pretty much everyone one here. So the discussion to have then is how do we assess that seriousness? Specifically what factors would lead you to think that someone was not serious? If agreement can be reached on that we have a basis for addressing many of the concerns raised.

I’ve asked this in various ways to various other posters. Invariably there is no specific response. I suspect that it is because self-proclaimed allies, though they claim differently in the abstract, do not want to put forward any criteria by which a self-identification can be practically challenged. That of course means that little agreement can be reached.

But I don’t know, perhaps you are willing to stick your neck out a little more.

4730

All the real-life trans people I know are in relationships with non-cis people - either trans, or genderqueer (including one 4-member poly marriage). None of the trans people I know are in relationships with cis people.

4731

I thought this was odd too. Why is it hypocritical for a lesbian to date a trans man? It’s only hypocritical if you subscribe to the theory that sexual attraction should be to gender and not sex, but it sounds like most lesbians don’t.

It’s sad if such relationships are often abusive, though, as @Miller said. I agree a lesbian should not start dating a trans man if she’s not willing to recognise him as a man.

But there’s something else no one has mentioned. Lesbians are a few percent of the population, while straight men are nearly 50%. If a straight man isn’t interested in dating a transwoman, it’s unlikely to come up at all, let alone more than once. If a small portion of both groups are interested, it’ll be easier for a transwoman to find a straight man than a lesbian partner, because there are just more of them. And conversely, lesbians are more likely to encounter trans women in dating, and thus to already know whether they would be interested or not.

4732

This is an interesting point, because IME posters on the SDMB, and progressives generally, tend to be pretty damn harsh when it’s men doing the asking, and getting rejected. Even unfairly so, IMHO. Maybe this contributes to the whiplash women feel when it’s a trans woman doing the asking, and the same people react very differently. Do you think the two situations are indeed not analogous and it’s appropriate to respond in a different way to each?

4733

Call me crazy, but I believe two people in a mutually consensual relationship are the arbiters of how each other should be treated. Neither one needs you or me or anyone else to dictate what is “fine” for them.

I don’t expect you to answer this but what is the difference between treating a trans man as a trans man vs treating him as a butch lesbian? There shouldn’t be any differences if you believe, as I do, that gender roles create more problems than solutions in the modern age and should be discarded. Besides which pronouns to use, I don’t get the distinctions in treatment we’re supposed to all be assuming should exist.

4734

Why is that statement confusing to you, specifically? I happy to explain, but I don’t see what the issue is. If it’s just, “Why would you date a lesbian if you don’t like people touching your pussy,” well, like I just said, it’s cause the lesbian will have them when no one else will. A lot of people put up with stuff in a relationship that they don’t like - hell, that’s actually physically damaging to them - because they’re more terrified of being alone than they are of how their partner treats them.

What it sounds like you’re saying is that lesbians are the bad guy no matter what. It confuses me because you’re a smart, presumably kind person, and I would not expect you to believe something that crazy. But here you are, pushing that idea. Lesbians are transphobic when they reject transwomen. They are transphobic when they are attracted to transmen’s biology. They are transphobic when they play with transmen’s biology…even though transmen are fully capable of telling them to stop and leaving the relationship like any other adult. Seems like the only way a lesbian can be down with trans folks is to deny her own desire to eat some pussy and be the passive one in the relationship. That sounds decidedly anti-lesbian to me.

Do you believe that lesbians are disproprotionately abusing trans folks? Do you believe there aren’t a whole bunch of cis men or straight/bi women playing with transwomen’s dicks against their wishes? I’m not in the queer community, but I’m just having a hard time believe that lesbians are the sole bad guy. So yeah, you singling out the badness of lesbians is making me feel a certain way about you. I’m not assuming that lesbians are angels. I just know they are getting bullied by people like your friends, and I want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk about the lesbians who are presumably in a consensual relationship with transmen who aren’t feeling sexually fulfilled, but the latter won’t leave the relationship because they are afraid of being alone. That’s sad. That would make for a great topic on the Oprah Winfrey show. But that’s nowhere close as bad as a sexual minority being bashed for having a sexual preference. It is not as bizarro world as a one queer group demonizing another queer group for not wanting to ditch a political idea that has earned them gravitas over the last half-century: the immutability of sexual orientation.

The whole “lesbians have been banned from Pride!” thing is exactly that. There are some lesbian groups that show up at Pride parades to specifically harass trans people, and when they get thrown out, claim that they were unjustly targeted, and provide selectively edited video to “prove” it.

So because some lesbians are jerks, they justifies some transwomen (and their allies!) calling the enitre group transphobic just because they won’t take them into their beds? If Serrano was talking about lesbians harassing her, I would get what you are saying and its relevance. But Serrano is whining because lesbians aren’t flocking to her. She’s attacking them because they aren’t saying “yes” to her. Why can’t you see that this is colossal bullshit? And if you can see, why won’t you say so?

Lesbians who are mean to transwomen are shitty people. But we aren’t talking about lesbians who are shitty people. We are talking about lesbians who don’t want to have sex with a penis. They want to have sex with a vagina. And instead of saying “Yes, I can see why that isn’t necessarily transphobic”, you’re going back to examples of lesbians being shitty people. That is so ugh, bro. I just can’t with that.

I’m sorry hearing both sides of an issue makes you uncomfortable, but this isn’t just a cut-and-dried “asshole trans people harassing innocent lesbians who just want to be left alone.”

You won’t even admit that Serrano is out of line. So apparently you can only see one group of assholes–the lesbians. And not just lesbians who are harassing transwomen. Lesbians who just don’t want to date your friend. All of them are assholes. What bullshit that is.

You know, you keep asking me, in this sort of inquisitorial tone, if I understand the issues from the other side, and I think I’ve been pretty good at responding, given the speed and volume of the thread, but I don’t really see you doing the same thing.

Responding defensively is not the same thing as listening. I see you reacting argumentatively, like it is your job to defend your friend, even though I really doubt you’d be acting that way if we were critiquing a similar piece written by a sexually frustrated man you don’t know from Adam. If we were talking about a young man who was mad that no pretty girls were hollering at him, would you waste electrons talking about all the mean girls who say cruel things about nerds and dorks? Or would you laugh at him and agree with the majority that the young man has some toxic ideas and that the only one with the problem is himself?

Because that’s what I think about your friend. I understand why you are taking a more charitable view of what your friend wrote (that’s what good friends do), but I’m letting you know that your friend sounds like all the other males who write “those bitches be cray” type posts. I’m not a expert in sex, but I am an expert in “those bitches by cray” type posts. Those posts come out of the same shitty school of thought: bitches don’t really know what they want and it is my job to teach them.

I don’t want to talk about all the ways lesbians have wronged transwomen. According to your camp, just about everyone in the world is wronging transwomen in some shape or fashion. I want to talk about transwomen who believe this bullshit notion that they get to dictate what women are attracted to. This bullshit idea is one of the main reasons why I have a super hard time going all in on TWAW. I don’t want people with Incel mentalities invading my group. As long as you and other allies continue to reflexively defend this bullshit, the more I will feel like lesbians are perfectly justified in picking up their ball and leaving your community. I don’t know how I feel about them wearing TRANSPHOBE t-shirts, but I’m not gonna hate on them for it because it seems like a reasonable reaction to people like you hating on them and not caring about them.

4735

Coming back to this, because it’s been bothering me. I read the story, but I knew before I clicked what it would say. There’s no ‘merely’ about it. She wasn’t beaten to death by a woman, gender critical or otherwise, but by a homophobic man. I’ve never seen a single case of a trans woman murdered by a cis woman. So why all the hatred and threats aimed at ‘terfs’, when men are by far the biggest danger?

4736

Well regardless of hardened positions, we all have to agree that at some point we’ll (well society at any rate) end up in a compromise, right? There will be some line that is determined, and around that line things will be determined on a case by case basis. So my view is that if we start at a transwomen are sincere and transwomen are women position, the case by case decisions will end up in a far better position than if we start at the premise that transwomen are insincere and aren’t women. In some regards its like the innocent before proven guilty standard in criminal proceedings - sure OJ goes free, but it’s far better than innocent people being deemed guilty.

For an individual lack of sincerity, I think it matters if someone bounces back and forth between male and female. Or if they declare it at an advantageous time.

4737

What does this look like in practice, though? Policy is rarely nimble enough for case-by-case decision making. When determining who should claim space in the women’s locker room, there’s no practical way we can keep out “insincere” transwomen without keeping out all of them.

The “insincere” fraction might very well be small, but women have good reason to fear these people. These are the people that go to extraordinary lengths to prey on us; they will be more happy to take a mile if you give an inch of latitude.

4738

In the past, it wasn’t really an issue that sincere transwomen would be male-looking and masculine. Sincere transwomen would take great strides to look very feminine, so if nothing else, you could see that someone is making a lot of effort and is likely to at least be very committed. But now that doesn’t seem to be the case. A transwoman can be as masculine and male-looking as she wants, and may look exactly like a man. Obviously not all transwomen are like that, but when it’s not possible to objectively discern the difference if an obviously genetically XY male-looking person is a man or a transwoman, it’s going to cause legitimate concern for women wondering what the person’s motivations are.

4739

I also noticed the victim was called homophobic slurs. This suggests her attacker targeted her for abuse because she was marked as a gender nonconforming man.

Since gender critics reject gender norms because they contribute to sexism and homophobia, it really is amazing to see a gender believer—someone who just declared it’s wrong to treat men like butch lesbians (as if everyone is supposed to know what this means)—suggesting rabid homophobia is a logical extension of GC beliefs. Nope, homophobia is a logical extension of using gender norms to dictate how someone should be treated.

We are living in a upside down world.

4740

“Not as bad” isn’t an indication of good.

Your extremely feminist friend wrote something that could easily be considered extremely misogynistic:

Julia Serano (your friend seems to be published with one r, not two) was reconsidering membership in a community because not enough people in that community were sexually attracted to her, and then treated that as if it were the explicit fault of the members of the community.



You have a context that we lack. You see facets of the person that are not visible to us, and you judge what you see based on the more complete picture. And of course, whenever a human being makes a mis-step on the internet – and the above writing is kind of a fucked up argument: an accusation of bigotry based on simple fact of sexual attraction – the mistake gets paraded around in a way that the broader qualities of the whole person are not, and can never be.

We react to what we have, as if what we see is all there is. That’s normal. Not ideal. But normal.

And what we see is not so good. I’ve actually come across Julia Serano’s writing before (though I would not have remembered the name without the prompting of this thread) and that also was not so good. But I’m going to try to avoid the assumption that these heavily selected examples are representative of the person as a whole, as you justifiably insist.

But what the “other side” of this argument is putting forward is what they see as a pattern of behavior that exhibits a damaging double-standard. There are women being treated poorly, in this case being accused of transphobia for the mere fact that their sexual attraction to females does not include trans women. As if it were inherently bigoted for having a particular kind of sexual attraction. That’s simply not fair. It’s not right. And yes, it is very much an incel-style of argument. It is not exactly the same thing, but there is a general pattern to it that fits. That doesn’t make her an incel. It just means this particular argument, however many years ago, was bad in an uncomfortably familiar way.



I’m not going to take self-selected samples as if they’re representative of a movement as a whole, for pretty much exactly the same reason that I’m not going to judge the value of a human being by a few poor pieces of writing.

But this cuts to pretty much the heart of this thread. How bad are these problems anyway? What proportion of trans activists are engaging in rather blatantly misogynistic accusations? How many “gender critical” women are being bigoted against the trans community, rather than just honestly trying to express the importance of their sexual identity and experiences as a biological female?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions.

But even if I don’t know general tendencies, I can identify bad behavior when I see it. At least sometimes. And try to work from there.

4741

“My side” is simply: “When a person tells me their gender, I will honor that, and treat it as the truth.” What it means as far as public policy is much more of a question mark, and where I see lots of room for reasoned debate, because it’s all far from simple. I’d never identified TWAW as a slogan/rallying cry before this thread, but it feels like it fits well.

Look . . .

. . . there’s plenty of over-personalizing to go around. I haven’t called you hateful, nor have I said you’re “gunning” for trans people.

And, it’s “personal” only insofar as this debate is deeply important and personal (and life-altering) to those that I love.

So, again, to you, whether a transwoman is a woman or a trans man is a man has everything to do with whether they’re kind enough to deserve it? I ask not in an accusatory way, but just to make sure I understand. For you, a trans person only “is” their stated gender if they behave in a certain way?

Also, shitty people are everywhere. If you’re shaping your views and spending your time here arguing against the most extreme trolls on the internet, then you need to expand your understanding. Let it be said: no one here agrees with “hate-raping TERFs.” In fact, the only voice of intentional violence that anyone has brought into this thread to support a position (at least in the last week or so) is Miranda Yardley.

I thought I was clear, but you’re totally missing my point, I assume intentionally at this point. Let me repeat myself:

Miranda’s gender or how Miranda describes themselves doesn’t bother me at all. Miranda can have her own take on her identity. What I challenge is your insistence that “transwomen are women” must mean, to those who say it “all transwomen are women” even for those people who may or may not call themselves transgender, and who may or may not consider themselves women. Where in the TWAW, um, guidebook, does it say that people who self-identify as X are actually Y? That’s pretty much the opposite of the intent. If we’re arguing that “hey, some trans women believe they are men, and TWAW erases them,” then perhaps you’re right. I’d be completely on board with working on adjusting the language to be more inclusive. But, it seems to me that you want to change that language because you want people to make that call for others (I get to decide whether you are a woman or not). And I can’t agree with that.

I don’t think they’re “mentally fragile weaklings.” But you know, you can have concern for or stand up for people without that implying you think they’re fragile or weak. People can require help who are not fragile. And, guess what, I don’t see offense in every single fucking thing. But Miranda Yardley refusing to call people who identify as women women, particularly in the context of Miranda actively seeking out trans women for the express purpose of calling them “men”, is offensive. It’s designed to be offensive. Y’all need to be careful not to ignore bad actors because they say things that appeal to you.

Yep, that’s what I was saying.

Nor have I.

Trans acceptance isn’t about “warm fuzzies”. I don’t care what the issue: if you write an opinion piece and begin it with a trolling attack, I’m going to be hyper-skeptical. And, if you try to draw conclusions about society based on 4Chan and the porn industry, I’m going to question the relevance of those conclusions.

If you want to address things in her article, let’s take this:

I believe (and I think you agree) that this quoted bit from ‘The Truth About Trans’ opens up a lot of questions, and isn’t as straightforward as that document would have one believe. What does any of this language mean? Do gay or lesbian really mean “attracted to a declared gender” or “attracted to someone with specific genitals”? Or maybe it can mean different things to different people? Or maybe not? Let’s work that out. But Yardley’s introduction to that quote: “how far they’re willing to go to eliminate the material reality of what it is to be a homosexual female” is off the rails. I think this is textbook “poisoning the well.” The quoted content only serves not as a springboard for discussion or even an explicit argument for or against a position, but rather as a failed proof of intent for intentionally erasing the “material reality of what it is to be a homosexual”. It’s an ad hominem piece against Ruth Hunt. Look at how evil she is!!!

When I see/hear “trans women are women/trans men are men” I want to explore what that means. When I hear “no they’re not” or “only if I say so”, or “claiming that trans people are the gender they identify as maliciously erases other sexual identities,” or “look at how awful the perspective of trans people and their allies are,” then I don’t know where there is to go with that conversation.

4742

absolutely, I agree. That debated compromise is absolutely crucial to a successful outcome.

Ok, I don’t necessarily fully agree but I see where you are coming from.

Possibly, but I’m not sure which direction one should approach it. In legal matters the person making the positive claim is normally the one with the burden of proof. i.e. “you claim I did something, you need to show it”. Where someone is making a claim of a life change in order to access services or areas that they otherwise would not be allowed to, that seems like circumstances in which evidence would be needed.

Well kudos for at least having a go at it. Plenty don’t. Would you not think that zero sustained attempts at hormones, surgery or lifestyle changes might also add to the case for a lack of sincerity? I think if there were such an agreed upon, sensible, sensitive, process in place it’d go a long way in smoothing the path on both sides.

4743

What does this have to do with any argument I’ve made or anything I’ve said? Where have I suggested that we can’t have “real conversations” about things?

Yardley calls trans women “men” for kicks. Yardley is a troll. That’s the only point I’m making. If you think pointing that out means I’m going “on and on” about pronouns, well, “Jesus” yourself.

And if you’d rather go back 200 years where women had true equality and a voice rather than live in this supposed dystopia of confused and inconsistent pronouns, well, good luck with that, I guess.

4744

It may indeed. I don’t think you are wrong in saying that if you were interested in accessing services, there needs to be more than declaration at the services office (maybe a previous legal declaration of some sort). I do think that the amount of folks who are abusing being trans are going to be very very low, so that should be taken into account when we decide how these legal declarations work - you don’t want to overly burden the vast majority of transpeople, most of whom are taking a massive risk by coming out at trans. As we’ve agreed, there is going to be a compromise here. We sometimes focus on the people saying the most radical things (and they have a role in pushing the discussion forward) to detriment of figuring out workable solutions.

4745

It’s impossible to have a “real conversation” when the subject of debate stays in shallow waters. You seem committed to inviting us into the shallow end of the pool. I’m asking you swim over to the deep.

You made this comment to @monsto:

“My side” is simply: “When a person tells me their gender, I will honor that, and treat it as the truth.” What it means as far as public policy is much more of a question mark, and where I see lots of room for reasoned debate, because it’s all far from simple. I’d never identified TWAW as a slogan/rallying cry before this thread, but it feels like it fits well.

Okay, so how about you actually join us in having this reasoned debate? We all acknowledge your position on the pronoun issue. We get that you think misgendering is bad. But there ain’t much more mineral to mine from this ore.

If all that was at stake was determining the offensiveness of dishonoring someone’s gender identity in mundane interpersonal interactions, it would make sense to devote bandwidth to debating this question to the exclusion of other questions. But that is not anywhere close to the only thing at stake here, and that is what Yardley’s essay is about.

And my point is that you are adding limited value to the “reasoned debate” we are trying to have here. You have every right to engage in self-righteous name calling, you have every right to clutch pearls over how a transwoman talks about other members of her own community, but please don’t mistake this performance as anything except that. A shallow, intellectually weak performance.

4746

I think that’s all very well put. It is a shame that moderate. productive voices on boths sides get drowned out by the extremes.