I hope you’re right. I’m somewhat hopeful that as these excesses come to the attention of a larger audience there will be a backlash, but they might just get steamrollered as being old fashioned or bigoted and not worth listening to. And if there is a backlash, then I’m afraid trans people will be the ones getting hurt.
…I deleted the previous post because, even though I masked the names of a really bad trolling website, I didn’t IMHO mask it enough. I politely request (and you have my permission) that anyone quoting my previous reply please take care to delete any reference to the website in question.
The picture appears to be from a different tweet, with a pretty different message. The original conflation of the two tweets appears designed to tell a false story.
https://twitter.com/adriennecohea/status/1147336551782735873
Damn, I had a look at that site BanquetBear mentioned, and found a thread on a feminist blogger I used to read years ago. She is now a he and preparing for top surgery. I don’t even know how to feel.
From another tweet in the thread:
“Not only was that photo clearly not in a restroom, it was taken a month earlier than the point where she was in the restroom that you’re talking about.”
The dates seem to confirm that.
People saying they are women, or undergoing sex-change operations, is IMHO not terribly exciting and I am not sure why Rowling is on about it. What should concern everyone is people dismissing women’s concerns and issues as though they do not matter, as they have done historically.
It strikes me that almost the entirety of the public discourse surrounding transgender individuals has been focused on transgender women. Of course Caitlyn Jenner is probably the most famous transgender person in the world, but off hand I can think of Candy Darling, Lavern Cox, and Christine Jorgenson with Brandon Teena and Chaz Bono being the two transmen I can think of off the top of my head. For whatever reason, transmen seem to just slip under the radar.
The use of language is interesting. A few years back it wasn’t uncommon to refer to someone as a transgendered individual. However, that’s now considered rude and it’s generally preferred to refer to someone as a transgender male, female, or person. I don’t fully understand why the change was necessary, but I was certainly happy to use the preferred nomenclature myself. I had never considered it before but I think you make a valid point, I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of effort to include transmen in media directed at men. It’d be very odd if I were reading a pamphlet on prostate cancer at my doctor’s office and the text referred to “people with prostates” instead of men.
monstro
I’m going to try to be hopeful and optimistic, though.
I’m trying to be hopeful too. It’s hard when you see the most sexism coming from the progressives, though. Once you see it, it can’t be unseen.
But the thing that disturbs me the most though is the trend towards eliminating meaningful language. The idea that we’re supposed to be thrilled with making woman = “whatever a man believes it is” just seems so…wrong. Like, evil, cackling villain wrong. Seeing it pushed and celebrated honestly makes me feel like I’m having a fever dream.
Even if we weren’t talking about a historically oppressed population who has, as you pointed out, seriously struggled against erasure and lack of representation in the past—from Shakespearean plays with men cast as female characters to complete political disenfranchisement occurring within our grandmothers’ lifetimes—I cannot support dismantling the established definition for half the species just so that members of the other half can claim it as a title, with no questions asked. It’s regressive, it’s Orwellian, and I would rather it stop now, well before it gets to the point where trans-Biden presidents get recorded as women in the record books. Demon Tree has already shown evidence it is happening in corporate America so yes, it could happen in the White House.
Posters in this thread are saying there are a ton of women that are trans-supportive and have no qualms with where dthings are headed. Most women start with this position. I was certainly one them. My assumption for the longest time was that trans women were limited to transsexuals struggling with gender dysphoria. While I don’t think a transsexual necessarily loses their birth sex, a male who has gone through therapy, hormones, and bottom surgery has jumped over a lot more hurdles than a male who does none of these things. I believe most women who consider themselves strong allies are assuming the same thing that I used to assume. They aren’t envisioning male people who are physically indistinguishable to other adult males (unaltered penises and all) insisting on being recognized and treated as women.
When they do realize this is happening, their blind support tends to go away.
So, honest question, why is that, in your opinion, such a terrible thing?
[quote=“YWTF, post:690, topic:855795”] The idea that we’re supposed to be thrilled with making woman = “whatever a man believes it is” just seems so…wrong. Like, evil, cackling villain wrong.
[/quote]
Well, if that’s the idea, it also implies that man = “whatever a woman believes it is”, doesn’t it?
I don’t think most trans allies are envisioning this, male or female. They either aren’t aware that male-presenting women are a thing or they think this subpopulation will always be super teeny tiny relative to female-presenting transwomen, so it’s “hysterical” to even be concerned over what effect they may have on the “woman” social construct.
This is why the trans-Biden scenario seems like a “wacky pathetic” scenario to them. They can’t wrap their heads around something like this happening; ergo, it isn’t important and can be dismissed without any thought.
But we aren’t just talking about the trans-Bidens. Trans-Biden is just an illustration to show the pitfall to an ideology that many women as a sociopolitical group are perfectly justified to be concerned over. We would have someone telling us they represent us and our issues because they supposedly have “our” mental state, and we wouldn’t be able to push back on that like we could if that person had any other socially constructed identity. We wouldn’t be able to tell that person to sit their male ass down somewhere because some super small group of navel-gazers has decided that “male” is a slur when used in that context. We aren’t supposed to be offended that “woman” is being likened to a mental state rather than a deeply entrenched social and biological reality, but we are somehow supposed to understand how “male” is an offensive term. And none of this would be coming from the “offended” themselves. No, all this lecturing and scolding would be delivered by rabid allies.
I think we need more compassion and sympathy on both sides, but especially on the side that’s expecting radical changes.
"iiandyiiii
I wasn’t aware of this either, but it shouldn’t have been surprising to me - like everything else, the starting point for this will be that men get what they want; women are stomped over along the way. It doesn’t change my criticism of JKR, but woman critics like her will get extra special heat that men with the same positions don’t get.
I appreciate you saying this.
I wish the only reason she is getting extra heat was because of run-of-the-mill sexism. Its more sinister than that. I believe the claws are out because she’s raising points that challenge the prevailing dogma about gender ideology. When you dig into it, it is very regressive. Thinking about it for even a little bit causes cognitive dissonance for people who want to believe in it.
Consider that we have at least one poster in this thread promulgating the idea that men and women have innately different “mental states”. Doesn’t that remind you of the times where women were unquestionably assumed to be hyperemotional, intellectually weak little childlike beings? It reminds me of that.
But notice the only people in this thread pushing back on that idea are women. The men are tacitly approving it with their silence. And so I’m feeling like all of sudden 1950’s is knocking on the door, even though I’m surrounded by 2020 technology. I have to believe Rowling is feeling the same way when she wrote:
We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.
Do you really think men would allow women to define them?
To even ask the question you’re asking, you’d have to assume that the power dynamic between men and women is equal. It isn’t. It never has been. The inequality between men and women is why a subset of feminists is so mad over gender ideology’s hyperfocus on redefining women and womanhood. If the focus was more balanced, maybe it wouldn’t seem so alarming. Maybe it wouldn’t be perceived as men yet again controlling women.
No. Nope. Don’t see it. I’m missing something. Where’s the correlation? How is Caitlin Jenner defining herself as a woman controlling women?
I think this is an inter-progressive fight, between very progressive people and very progressive people (except for trans issues). Probably 60-70% of the population (and their “dogma”) is, to some degree, “trans people are weird and kind of gross” at the very best.
I’m sure much of the heat is sexism and misogyny. But I think some of it is from trans people that are fed up with being treated like garbage. Some are definitely overreacting (the threats), but who am I to tell some trans person who might have been beaten by their dad, stomped by cops, fired from their job, kicked out of their apartment, raped in prison, etc., not to be angry at JKR for saying some inaccurate and (IMO) hateful (“contagion”) things about trans people?
I have sympathy for people who are treated like garbage by society – and trans people fit that bill. So do women and girls, of course. And I still think this conflict is mostly, if not entirely, unnecessary. The threat, to trans people and to women and girls, is predatory men (mostly cis men). By and large, trans people are not a threat to women, and women are not a threat to trans people. The focus should still be on predatory men. They are orders of magnitude more dangerous to women and girls (and trans people) even if the very worst fears of JKR turned out to be 100% true.
I don’t have beef with individuals.
I have beef with an ideology that says anyone who says they are a woman is a woman, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Go_Arachnid_Laser_Go
So, honest question, why is that, in your opinion, such a terrible thing?
pinching myself for the 100th time to confirm once again that no, I’m not in a fever dream
Are you really not understanding why meaningful language is important? We are the only species on Earth who has evolved the capacity for oral and written language. It’s probably our most powerful skill. A complex society can’t thrive without the means to communicate abstract concepts. You can’t effectively exchange ideas if you don’t have an inventory of terms and phrases that convey mutually understandable meanings.
If someone says “I’m a woman”, I need to know what that means if I’m supposed to do with something with that information. If an adult human female tells me that, then I know she’s a member of the sex class associated with a female reproduction system. She may have the potential to become pregnant and experience the other biological realities of a female. She has the lived experience of being socialized as female from day 1.
But if she’s not an adult human female? What does a “woman” mean in that case? It means whatever the male who is calling himself a woman wants it to mean. That’s not how this is supposed to work.
Well, if that’s the idea, it also implies that man = “whatever a woman believes it is”, doesn’t it?
Yes, but news flash. Men don’t have a long and sordid history of oppression at the hands of women. So it’s unlikely this would ever happen, just as I pointed out earlier.
But even if it did, it still would be bananas.
It’s closer to a religion. “A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman,” which is the usual new definition, doesn’t mean anything; it’s circular nonsense, and the expectation of people who trumpet “Trans Women Are Women” is that it will be accepted without question, in part because the questions become pretty hard to answer and because the sad fact is that a lot of men who trumpet it are sexists who don’t want gender nonconforming men in their spaces.
Right. What’s the problem with that? Honest question. Because I honestly still don’t see the correlation here.
iiandyiiii
I think this is an inter-progressive fight, between very progressive people and very progressive people (except for trans issues). Probably 60-70% of the population (and their “dogma”) is, to some degree, “trans people are weird and kind of gross” at the very best.
People like this are also thinking progressives have literally lost their minds defending gender ideology. And I can’t really blame them for thinking that. I can’t see how the very loud and coercive attempt to make everyone believe trans women are literally women (like, it’s even taboo to call them male now) will do anything except alienate people from progressive politics.
If I’m feeling alienated from progressive politics right now, then I know I’m not the only one,
You have no problem castigating JKR for using a badly chosen word, but you don’t feel it’s your place to criticise trans people sending her rape and death threats? What the hell is wrong with you?