Good post.
Transgender rights discussion
- Thread starter crappycraperson
- Start date
you accidentally posted a good, considered video that made a decent case against J.K. Rowling, thinking it was that awful video of awful Blaire White. Not all trans YouTubers are created equal.
How Hitler must have felt after sending Jesse Owens an invite.
Yeah pretty much
Try starting from the opposite question - when does biological sex actually matter? It might matter in some medical situations - along with other aspects of someone's medical history. It might matter in some interpersonal relationships. But most of the time it only matters to the individual, and if that's the case it's the individual you need to talk to, and that's the part you need to respect. Whether that's a he/she pronoun or the choice of a hairstyle or which bathroom they go in.
The trouble comes when people like Rowling suggest that you can't respect individuals, except at the expense of biological women (though that term in itself is fuzzy, with intersex and DSD women a non-trivial minority).
Rowling says she approaches it from the position of being an abused woman herself - emphasising a theoretical hazard created by a "male-bodied" individual in a setting like a women's refuge or a prison. A reasonable question, but equally reasonable if the question was posed about a strong, violent, predatory biological woman. Into everyday life, women's spaces (like public toilets/changing rooms etc) don't suddenly become more dangerous because the law says they're about gender, not birth sex - predators always knew how/when/where to hide.
There are complexities. The shared bedroom in a women's refuge (or cell in a prison) where psychological stress/fear of a "male body" by another woman needs to be respected. But that's an argument about funding and organisation, not about amplification fear of a minority of a minority into some kind of broader fear. At a more trivial (but still important) level - as I've said previously on here, I think women's sport at the elite level needs to be handled carefully if it's to maintain both credibility and fair competition.
Rowling seems to take those issues that test the principles hardest, the outliers if you like, and places them centre stage as if there's some kind of broader, novel threat to women being created by a movement that's about respecting individual as individuals. It's disingenuous. Exaggeration to make a point? Maybe, but then if you want to exaggerate, you can expect exaggerated reactions in response.
Great post.
You said, in response to whether you are really arguing that it's ok to send death threats:
And in regards to rowling specifically receiving death threats:
When confronted with this, you made the direct equivalence yourself:
Ignoring meanwhile the argument that was posed to you concerning the mental distress of receiving death threats in the first place. In fairness, you somewhat addressed this by baselessly and callously asserting that she probably relishes them as weapons for her culture war, so signs do point to you arguing in bad faith here.
Ugh, Blair White. Racist, homophobic, and (depressingly enough) a massive transphobe.
Of course you are.
Deliberately spreading lies and falsehoods, like she does, is a vile and hateful thing to do.
When in doubt, turn to scripture.
She might just believe what she is saying.
There are so many posts in here attempting to justify or minimise the abuse she is receiving.
Of course she believes what she's saying. Just like everyone of every opinion here believes what they're saying.
She's entitled to her opinion, nobody has to like it. "Wrong" opinions are often just as useful as "correct" ones in getting to the bottom of a topic. If people could learn to critique the opinion and not attack the person we'd do a whole let better, but people are cnuts and can't help themselves.
Yeah pretty much, judging the "woke" crowd by the cesspit of Twitter is also ridiculous. Be a bit like judging all United fans by the tossers who turned up at Woodward's house.
Or the redcafe football forums
That's a very long-winded way of saying absolutely nothing.
The Blair video is good...not sure why non trans people are so utterly desperate to paint Rowling as transphobic even at the expense of actual trans people who don’t care about the tweets...it’s weird!!
Brilliantly articulated.
Yes, I said that sometimes it's ok to send death threats, sometimes it's not. It depends on the nature of the threat and who it's directed against. In regards to Rowling specifically I said that I don't care. I do not approve and I don't think it's ok, but I don't care. That's because of the nature of the threats, among other things. A few random people publicly tweeting at Rowling do not constitute a genuine threat, and it's directed at a celebrity billionaire asshole, so I don't care.
Where you say I made the direct equivalence myself is where I say that I think there's a higher probability of Rowling contributing to someone's death by what she's saying than someone murdering Rowling for what she's saying. That's not a false equivalence of any sort, just like it's not a red car.
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That's a really good take on the issue.
Really?
Perfectly concise post, thanks.
You need to log off and go outside. If someone believes that J.K Rowling writing a Medium post is going to drive thousands of people to suicide, you're a maniac. She isn't that good of a writer.
Yes, really. As I said, I'm perfectly fine with people threatening those facilitating the Rohingya genocide, for instance.
- I don't know, perhaps when two women are murdered by their male partners a week in the UK.
- Or when 137 women are killed every day by their partners across the world.
- Perhaps when you're biological sex means you make up 70% of all human trafficking victims.
- Or when you're one of 200m girls who have been the victim of FGM.
- Could be that by being female you're more likely to earn less and be sexually harassed at work.
This wonderful reduction of how small and meaningless biological sex is and why it matters, speaks volumes about how little is understood about how natal females or "cis-women" are treated across this planet by men. Perhaps if the women above-identified out of being female they might not have had their genitals sewn up or not of been trafficked to a brothel several thousand miles from home.
There is space for trans women to co-habit and coincide with "cis women" and enable them to live a safe existence as their chosen gender, to live as women or as men or a non-binary. But when women who have been subjugated for millennia and are still abused en-mass to this day, want to ask questions or have concerns that natal men, who identify, (let alone transition) to female, will now have access to their safe spaces, I can afford them some questions and reservations on this subject without screaming that they, (THEY!) are killing people.
Surely the death threats are another issue though. They're obviously not on, and certainly not acceptable, since no-one should be threatened for having an opinion. But that's besides the point of this thread, isn't it?
I thought the sexual threats were more grotesque than the death threats, given that she also used the essay to open up about being a sexual assault survivor.
Fortunately these disgusting individuals are just a very vocal minority, the likes of which Twitter is infested with. Grim.
Fortunately these disgusting individuals are just a very vocal minority, the likes of which Twitter is infested with. Grim.
Or a sexual assault survivor who writes books for kids but has opinions on gender that you disagree with, evidently.
Ok, cool. Because the last couple of pages have danced around this without getting any clarity. At least we have that now. So the discussion should probably move on from whether the death threats are ok. Looks like we all agree they aren’t.
*slams fist on the table* where is the humanity?! Is this what the world has come to? a cis woman who has been told she is wrong multiple times feels threatened and can’t air her transphobic views anymore. What is the world coming to?!
I think she feels threatened by people saying they are going to rape or murder her, not because she can’t espouse her views. She’s allowed to say what she likes, and people are allowed to disagree. But sending her that stuff is fecked up.
Woman 'feeling threatened' is a nice way of putting it. Slightly more accurate would be 'has been threatened.' Hey it's ok though, she has been warned about this, and all she has to do is shut up and not voice her opinion. The things these women bring on themselves.
It’s also interesting that “cis woman” needs to be mentioned. As though this makes her less deserving of not being threatened with rape/murder (or, being charitable, less entitled to express an opinion on trans issues?)
Careful. You don’t wanna hurt yourself performing such elaborate mental gymnastics.
Your post wasn't indicative of non-problematic views. It didn't really take much in the way of gymnastics to see that.
I recognise the issues that come with being a woman. I'm conscious also of the battery of additional issues faced by poorer women and those from some other countries/cultures. In my younger days, I thought by now many of those things would have been left in the past, but progress has not only slowed, but in some places things have actually got worse. It's the connection between those issues and how we treat actual transgender people in the UK that I doubt.
On the specific question of safe spaces, I agree, at least partially. Safe spaces like refuges are complex - especially as they are often very intimate shared spaces - and they need to offer feelings of emotional/psychological safety as well as the reality of physical safety. But issues of safeguarding, risk analysis and community are already part of the daily experience of their management. The reality is that funding matters, so that other alternatives can be provided if that's better for the trans individual or for the group. It's fair to say that you can't/shouldn't add to their responsibilities without also making the funds/capability available.
Ah yes. The old "I take issues such as rape, death threats, sexual assault very seriously" post. But when it happens to trans people, "Sorry, but I didn't hear about it in the news" so it probably isn't an issue.
Myopic.
Correct. Only need glasses to drive though.