J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
923

Kimstu,

Well, no, I’m just emphasizing that it’s relatively easy and natural, based on human hormone levels, to change many typical physical characteristics across gender categories. Which is not at all the case for changing one’s physical characteristics across species categories, which is why your analogy between transgender identity and “otherkin” non-human identities is not very persuasive.

There are plenty of trans people who could never pass as the opposite sex (because they are built like titans), so what you’re asserting as a general case
doesn’t apply to a lot of people.

But the real flaw of your argument in a logical sense is that you are connecting gender to a biological and physical reference point, while at the same time supporting a self-determined definition for woman that doesn’t have anything biological or physical behind it. If woman = whatever a person wants it to be, then the ease at taking estrogen to grow boobs and acquire a feminine fat distribution is a red herring.

How convenient that the importance of a female reproductive system and its outputs is discounted the minute someone argues it needs to be in the definition that society uses for woman. But when the argument shift to something else, suddenly the ability for males to mimic certain female reproductive system outputs is relevant.

As your first paragraph correctly states, I certainly am not in the least trying to argue that anybody, whether transgender or cisgender, should be expected or required to make their physical characteristics conventionally gender-conforming.

But you are implying that in your attempt to explain why gender identity is not comparable to species identity.

There may be a day that otherkins can acquire features of their identified species. Gene technology is making advancements everyday. I can totally imagine that one day, people who identify as part-chimpanzee, for instance, can take a cocktail of genes or gene products and grow a full body of chimpanzee hair and other attributes.

This still wouldn’t make them chimpanzees.

924

The disagreement is over what “respect” means. You can respect someone without perceiving them the way they want to be perceived. You can also have your own classification system for people without it being inherently disrespectful.

If transwomen want to honor transwomen professionals in a forum like YWTF described, I would not expect the folks in attendence to be overjoyed by awards being granted to ciswomen or cismen. I can imagine why either of those would feel like a slap in the face to the people in the audience. They have a set of shared experiences. Why wouldn’t they want to honor others with those shared experiences?

So if I can sympathize with those folks, I can sympathize with women folk.

If the only way ciswomen can have a space for themselves is to explicitly label their spaces “ciswomen”, I guess I can get behind that though it will take some getting used to, not gonna lie. But then I don’t want folks to scream “TERFs!!!” in response, because this respect thing needs to go both ways . If ciswomen always catch flak when they cordon themselves off, then we’re not treating all gender classes equal and fairly.

There would be many ciswomen who wouldn’t mind sharing the “recognition” stage with nonbinary women/transwomen, male-presenting or otherwise. But there will also be ciswomen who just can’t see that there’s enough similarity between these groups and their own identity. I really do think that this needs to be OK at a certain point. As long as those ciswomen aren’t denying anyone human/civil rights, then let them be free to define their gender identity however they see fit and stop telling them they must accept everyone as a sister. You can accept someone as a fellow human without seeing everyone as metaphorical kin to you.

925

Okay.

If this happens, hold on to your seats. The will be a cultural backlash so fierce I don’t think anyone posting here will be prepared for it. Butchering the word used to refer half the population, so the other half can opt into at will, is the decision you will need own and defend years from now. Good luck with that!

926

@Boudicca90
I’m interested to hear your opinion on this. Do you think it’s reasonable to expect trans women to put enough effort into their appearance that they are ‘read’ as women (even if they don’t pass as cis), before expecting people and society to treat them as women? And the opposite for trans men.

927

@Miller, I meant to show you this yesterday:

http://archive.is/FYWSN

928

Another article on that theme:

I’ve been focusing on women in this thread, but I think attention should also be paid to the impact gender ideology has on LBG. Rowling stated it well when she said if sex isn’t real, the concept of sex-attraction becomes invalid.

If woman = whatever a person thinks it mean, think about how that makes the lives of lesbians harder. They already have a hard time finding partners due to their low numbers and the invisibility of sexual orientation. But now any male who identifies as a woman can also identify as a lesbian. Same-sex attracted women now are finding it harder to connect with each other because males are in lesbian spaces, vying for their attention.

Trans-supportive progressives seriously need to think through the implications of gender ideology on women and the LGB community. I’m seeing two historically marginalized groups being negatively impacted by this growing emphasis on gender identity, and their concerns are being ignored and dismissed and branded transphobic.

929

[quote=YWTF]There are plenty of trans people who could never pass as the opposite sex (because they are built like titans), so what you’re asserting as a general case doesn’t apply to a lot of people.
[/quote]
“Change many typical physical characteristics” != “pass as the opposite sex”, so I’m not actually asserting what you claim I am.

There’s no contradiction there. It is well known, and I’m not in the least trying to deny, that traditional binary gender categories are indeed connected “to a biological and physical reference point”: namely, to genetic/anatomical sex. It remains true for the vast majority of humans that their gender identity aligns with their genetic/anatomical sex, and nobody at all AFAICT is attempting to deny that.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t validly employ definitions of social gender categories that sometimes override or transcend biological/physical characteristics, just as we do for sexual-orientation categories.

The historically dominant definition of female identity, for example, includes not only a female reproductive system but heterosexual orientation (as well as all kinds of other female-coded behavioral gender norms. This is why, for example, an unconventional woman in early modern times could be described as having “unsexed herself” merely by wearing men’s clothes or reading learned books.).

It remains true for the vast majority of humans that their sexual orientation aligns with their genetic/anatomical sex and their gender identity. For instance, most women have female reproductive systems, think of themselves as female, and are sexually attracted to men. That’s all fundamental to the traditional definition of what it means to be a woman, and for the majority of women it’s still an accurate description.

But nowadays we have definitions of sexual-orientation categories that sometimes override or transcend biological/physical characteristics. It is socially acknowledged to be possible for someone to have a female reproductive system, to think of herself as female, and yet be sexually attracted to women rather than to men.

We as a society are free to choose to change the commonly accepted definition of “woman” as a social category so that it doesn’t automatically imply a particular biological sex, just as we’ve chosen to change the commonly accepted definition of “woman” so that it doesn’t automatically imply a particular sexual orientation. We can similarly change the social category “man”, and also create/confirm other social categories for non-binary gender identities.

And I maintain that we should include in those changes an across-the-board loosening of gender-conformity expectations, for cisgender as well as transgender and non-binary people, so that whether you’re “allowed” to claim a particular gender identity doesn’t depend on how closely you conform to the traditional behavioral norms of that gender identity.

Such a program of change is radical and non-traditional, yes, nobody’s denying that. But it’s logically self-consistent and IMHO it’s morally right.

930

A law currently being debated in Scotland could turn JKR into a criminal, liable to up to 7 years in jail. So much for free speech.

931

Well duh, there are fierce cultural backlashes against most major social changes. For example, there has been, and to a lesser extent still is, an immense backlash against the proposal to change the social definition of “marriage” to include same-sex marriage as well as traditional heterosexual marriage.

? What do you mean “half” the population? I hope I’ve made it clear all along that I support using the expanded definition of the social category “man” as well as that of the social category “woman” (and also including additonal categories that are neither).

That means that assigned-male-at-birth people can “opt into” the category “woman” if they personally identify as female, and also that assigned-female-at-birth people can identify with the category “man”. (And of course, either of them can instead “opt into” a non-binary category.)

This is a fundamental category shift not just for half the population, but for the whole population.

I certainly acknowledge that transgender acceptance makes dating a somewhat more difficult process for anybody who doesn’t want to date a transgender person (and I have no problems with anybody not happening to be personally attracted to transgender people for dating purposes, that’s their business).

However, ISTM that lesbians as a group are more in favor of transgender acceptance than opposed to it, as illustrated by this statement of support from some major publications:

Yes, of course there will be backlash against this: there always is.

932

Yes, this has been going on in Iran since the 1980’s: the Iranian government recognizes transgender identity but criminalizes homosexuality, so sex reassignment is used in an attempt to force cisgender people with same-sex attraction, as well as genuinely transgender people, into the “right” category.

Needless to say, I think this is a very bad and oppressive thing. This is why IMO transgender acceptance must be accompanied by resistance to imposed norms of gender conformity, for both cis and trans people. You should be able to identify as whatever gender you feel you identify as, and be sexually attracted to whoever you feel sexually attracted to, whether or not most of the people who look like you have the same gender identity or sexual orientation as you do.

As a cisgender woman, I think I have just as much right to speak for the group “women” as a whole as you do (i.e., not much IMHO for either of us).

And as a woman, I think that transgender acceptance is ultimately a good thing for women overall, and that its benefits outweigh the predicted negative impacts (to the extent that those actually materialize).

933

I don’t know what a “social gender category” means. I’m being 100% honest when I say that this has zero meaning to me.

Earlier in this thread, I asked you to provide a definition for “woman” that would cover adult human females and trans women. Did you post one and I missed it?

I keep asking for a definition not to be a jackass, but so that I can better understand how people conceptualize the group that I’m a dues-paying member of. I want to know what abstractions exist in their head that they want to communicate when they say “this person is a woman”. Doesn’t it make sense that I would be interested in knowing this? I promise you I would be making the same request if I suddenly learned the definition of “black person” had expanded to include people currently classified as white.

I believe the sounds that come out of our mouths (speech) are actually supposed to mean something we both know and understand. It is very frustrating to see people using the word “woman” outside it’s conventional definition but then they won’t actually decrypt the term for me. A “social gender category” is just one more layer that needs decryption.

934

Sure, like I said, I am 100% in favor of acknowledging the fact that transgender and cisgender women are not identical in biology or typical experiences, and I think cisgender women are entitled to focus sometimes on uniquely cisgender experiences within that more restricted identity category.

But I think that will require some serious and continual consideration about what the specific restrictive criteria should be. Is a transgender woman who’s been identifying and living as female since childhood disqualified from taking part in a group about women’s teenage experiences of sexism, for example? If this transgender girl spent her teen years being perceived as female and experiencing the same sexist reactions as her cisgender girl friends, does her experience not “count”?

I’m not trying to nitpick anybody into abandoning the principle that cisgender women (or cisgender heterosexual women, or cisgender American women, or any other subcategory) have the right to sometimes talk among ourselves. I’m just saying that if the uniqueness of our subcategory’s experience really means anything, then we need to think critically and carefully about how we’re defining that experience, and who shares it and who doesn’t.

935

Our sexual orientations don’t override anything. They just are. There is no need to “socially acknowledge” that which is a observable truth.

It’s true that in the past, gender norms firmly prescribed that men were only attracted to women and vice versa. We have moved beyond this mode of thinking precisely because we discarded antiquated ideas about gender. There is no wrong or right way to be a male or female. You can be attracted to whomever you want (or no one at all), you can wear your hair any way you want, you can dress however you like, etc. None of these things make you a man or a woman; only certain organs and parts do.

Changing how people conceptualized sex/gender was key to changing public perception of homosexuality.

With the advancement of gender ideology, I see us rapidly regressing. Little kids start recognizing that they are gay and the first question they ask themselves now is whether this means they are trans. We’ve gone back to thinking sexual orientation has bearing on whether you are a “real woman” or a “ real man”.

Evidence has already been presented that shows how transitioning is being used to “treat” homosexuality in Iran. In that country, transitioning is being imposed on to gay people by homophobic entities. But is it really that far-fetched that there is lot of internal pressure to transition as well, due to internalized homophobia? It isn’t far-fetched to me.

936

No problem, I’ll illustrate with an example that I think I used earlier in the thread, which may have been before you joined us. That example is: We as the modern mammalian species of humans now have a social category “mother” that is different from the biological category “mother” from which it’s derived.

For mammals, the biological category “mother” is pretty clearly defined: If you conceived and gestated an offspring in your uterus and gave birth to it, you’re its mother: if you didn’t, you’re not. There’s a small biological gray area around that definition (e.g., are women who gave birth to stillborn infants classified as “mothers”? how about women who got pregnant but miscarried before birth? etc.), but for the most part it’s biologically unambiguous.

However, at some point in human development, many human societies (and by this point, pretty much all of them) developed the social category “mother” that is more inclusive than the biological category “mother”, because it also includes adoptive mothers who did not gestate or give birth to the offspring but assumed a maternal role for it post-birth. (There’s evidence of, e.g., legal contracts acknowledging the full parental rights and responsibilities of adoptive parents from some of the earliest records of literate societies, so ISTM that this category expansion most likely happened at some point in prehistory, and probably quite a ways back, but I digress and I’m using up more of my precious 3500 characters so never mind that for now.)

“Mother” meaning “biologically female individual that gestated and gave birth to the offspring” is a biological category (and in fact nowadays we typically use the term “biological mother” to refer specifically to such individuals). But “mother” meaning “female individual recognized as having maternal role and responsibilities in an offspring’s life” is a social category that we as a society have defined to include adoptive as well as biological mothers.

Analogously, humans have a traditional biological category “woman” defined in accordance with all the female-plumbing criteria that you’ve been emphasizing. Again, there’s some biological gray area around this category (e.g., what about XY individuals with androgen insensitivity syndrome who develop breasts and vaginas but not uteruses? what about other types of anatomically/genetically intersex people?, etc.), but for the vast majority of instances it’s clear and meaningful.

But we can also choose to define a social category “woman” that includes, for example, transgender as well as cisgender women. That’s an example of a social gender category as an expansion of the biological category it’s derived from, just as our modern social famillial category “mother” is an expansion of the biological category it’s derived from.

Sorry, I thought I had made it clear that I’m in the “hopelessly circular” camp on this. I’m fine with the definition of “woman” as a social category being “a woman is somebody who identifies as a woman”.

937

I’m going to screw up the quoting and use up my character limit if I try to quote, but I’m responding to the idea of featuring a trans woman at women’s conference.

If a woman that was born male and lived as a man but transitioned recently was speaking about how she overcame the challenges faced by women trying to succeed in business, I’d be offended and I’d think she was a horrible choice for that topic. But if they chose Ivanka Trump or even Wendy Thomas (daughter of Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s) to make that speech, I’d be equally offended. Because I think all of those women have had advantages that make their experience atypical.

OTOH, I think a recently transitioned woman with a powerful job might have a really unique and interesting viewpoint on the ways men and women are treated differently in business and I might be interested in hearing her give a speech on that.

No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for a woman that hasn’t overcome gender-based struggles to give a speech on overcoming gender-based struggles. Maybe she didn’t overcome them because she had a penis for most of her career, or maybe she had a rich father that handed her everything on a platter.

And if she is named one of the top 10 or 100 businesswomen in some sort of list— yes, her being male at the start of her career may have given her an advantage over other women. But other women on the list may have had equally significant advantages.

And lastly, I really don’t like some of the imaginary scenarios I’m hearing.

I’m tired of hearing about the person that’s 6’6”, has a beard, presents as male but claims to be woman so he can use their bathroom and take their scholarships.

Because THAT is nothing but right-wing fear mongering. It’s up there with people that argue against abortions “because women will get pregnant just so they can have an abortion and sell their fetus to Planned Parenthood.”

I’m probably one of the most illiberal liberals on this board, but this is Fox News level tactics and I’m surprised at the traction it’s gained here.

938

The way I look at it is that there’s always going to be people who feel wrongly excluded by some while welcomed by others. It is up to individuals to find their people. Since ciswomen contain much political and ideological diversity, I don’t think it will be hard for a transwomen to find her sisterhood among them somewhere.

Yes, a male-bodied individual who has been “doing woman” for 30 years should definitely be considered by a ciswomen organization. I just think it is wrong to shame that organization for being unwilling to take on a male-bodied individual who has been claiming woman for two weeks. There’s a huge swath between these extremes and I think it should be up to individuals and organizations to decide what to do with that swath. Maybe in some cases it really isn’t a big deal to have a “open door” philosophy. But there will definitely be cases where that’s not fair or appropriate (such as, if you’re running a woman support group for rape victims).

I have a sister (not YWTF) who jokes that she’s a guy in a female body. She says this all the time. It gets a big shrug from me because I know she’s just being funny. But if my sister were to try to shoehorn herself into the “transman” identity? I wouldn’t find that funny unless she were serious about “doing man”. I wouldn’t expect transmen to find it funny, for a very womanly feminine woman to say she’s a man just she cuz likes to screw and she’s sympathetic to the male psyche. (I also don’t think a lot of cismen would like having my big-assed, ample-bosomed sister strutting around in the restroom with them while they’ve got their junk exposed. My sister would absolutely love this, though.)

I don’t think a transmen organization would be cruel if they told my sister, “Look, we’re sure you’re a fine person, but we don’t perceive you to be in our club.”

If gender isn’t a big deal, this shouldn’t be tantamount to abuse or hatred. It’s just letting someone know they aren’t flashing enough of the signs of that gender class to be eligible for the membership card. My sister is still free to see herself as a man stuck in a female’s body. But she can’t force other people to see her that way in the absence of changing something about how to presents to others.

939

I have a different take on gender than YWTF. I don’t think woman boils down to reproductive parts. But I do think it requires a lived experience of presenting a certain way–whether that is in a female body or in a body styled to resemble those who inhabit female bodies. I’m going with that definition of “woman” because it isn’t circular and it doesn’t leave us in a situation where everyone and their daddy can claim to be a woman. It also loops in the political part of woman that matters most to me. If you aren’t wearing the woman uniform and the oppressors are out here eating women up, then I’m not going to feel like you are on my team fighting alongside me. You might not be an oppressor, but I won’t be feeling like you’re sharing in my experience. And that is important criterion for membership in the social construct of “woman”, IMHO.

940

Um, actually, there is quite a bit of need to socially acknowledge that which we consider to be true, because social acknowledgement plays a big role in what gets the “truth” label in a society. Prior to the last several decades, it was almost universally considered an “observable truth” that same-sex sexual orientation was a delusion, a mental illness, or some other sort of psychological malfunction.

Partly, and partly because we paid attention to evolving scientific research on human gender and sexuality, which told us that the simplistic one-size-fits-all model of “having vagina implies being sexually attracted to penises, and vice versa” didn’t adequately account for the complex variety of real human psychology.

Similarly, evolving scientific research on human gender and sexuality nowadays is strongly suggesting that the simplistic one-size-fits-all model of “having vagina/penis implies having innate mental perception of own gender as female/male and preferring to be acknowledged as woman/man” doesn’t adequately account for the complex variety of real human psychology.

I completely agree, and always have, that homophobia can unhealthily influence people to believe that they’re doing their sex or their gender “wrong”. That’s a bad thing and we must push back against such gender-normative stereotyping, as I’ve been saying all along in this thread.

But I don’t think the way to do that is to shut down on transgender acceptance. I completely agree with you that “There is no wrong or right way to be a male or female. You can be attracted to whomever you want (or no one at all), you can wear your hair any way you want, you can dress however you like, etc.” And I would add that you can identify as whatever social gender category you feel is right for you, irrespective of what your “organs and parts” are like. (Obviously there are also situations, such as when you have to go to the reproductive-system doctor, that you need to determine in accordance with your biological sex category rather than with your preferred gender identity.)

941

The difference between “mother” and “woman” is that the former refers to a role. I am not just a mother to my kids; I mother them. The verb form of the word mother tends to be reserved for women, in a way that is actually unnecessary (my husband and I parent our children the same way). So I see what you mean about this term. When we think of “mother” (both noun and verb) we think of women even though the word can be used outside a female reproductive context. There is a social element.

But “woman” doesn’t work that way. It’s not a role, it’s a category of human being. We can choose to construct a social category that includes trans women”, but why would we lump this social construct under the same linguistic umbrella that includes a biologically-defined group? What makes a “male who identifies as woman” as much of a woman as an “adult human with a female reproductive tract”?

To make this work, you need to have a objective thing that unites these groups, in an exclusive way. Adult human females are united by having the same reproductive system. But what unites females with trans women—who range from the transsexual whose entire body simulates a feminine physique to someone like Pips Bunce? I can’t lay my finger on that common chord, and it is not something I believe should be left up to imagination. It’s not something that “social gender category” answers satisfactorily.

942

:open_mouth: Great day in the morning, I’ve spent how many days in this thread, since coming back to the Dope post-migration, without realizing until just now that former BB Board Doper you with the face is almost certainly the same person as current Doper YWTF, who’s been in this thread all along?!? (And I’ve even been idly speculating about what that username acronym might stand for. Where’s the “embarrassed” and “hitting-self-on-head” smileys in this new setup?)

Apologies to YWTF and all if I’ve been needlessly repeating earlier remarks under that misapprehension.