[RD] JK Rowling and Explicit Transphobia

[Robo-Star]

By their own admission these are only media-reported incidents and post-policy, allied media approached the topic with increased scrutiny:

A self-fulfilling prophecy indeed. Bad science.

They do recognize and attempt to correct for that, offering alterative hypotheses, but I guess it ultimately is ambiguous.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

https://womanmeanssomething.com/wp-...nalysis-of-Media-Reports-at-Target-Stores.pdf

people have already commented, but here is my hot take.

1. This man is an avowed anti-trans activist, there is a clear conflict of interest here
2. His "study" is not based on actual incidents, but media reports of incidents. There is no guarantee that "fake news" haven't made it into his statistic, nor that incidents do not show up multiple times
3. The man is an outspoken Christian fundamentalist who is in favor, and again an advocate, for capital punishment, especially for sex crimes. Double conflict of interest.
4. He, like our boy Tristan, does not do anything to tackle the correlation/causation problem in his study, he just ignores it

 

[Robo-Star]

Who is Tristan?

 

[Cloud_Strife]

The man is an outspoken Christian fundamentalist who is in favor, and again an advocate, for capital punishment, especially for sex crimes. Double conflict of interest.

Terfism and christian fundamentalism are close allies, closer than many realize, the latter actually seems to be funding the former, perhaps because they realize the religious argument is dead.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Who is Tristan?

that was just a joke with no actual relation to the trans topic

 

[Samson]

https://womanmeanssomething.com/wp-...nalysis-of-Media-Reports-at-Target-Stores.pdf

Is there any providence to this article? Google scholar has only the link you provide, indicating that it is not a peer reviewed paper, nor is it considered reference worthy by anyone. It seems to me that the statistics is very questionable, with no attempt at control for extraneous factors and I cannot see any attempt at significance testing or confidence intervals.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Still, I want to thank Robo-Star for even searching for a source in the first place and putting it out there. I think we're all a little smarter for it. The main fact I took away from that study is that there is little empirical study done on sexual assault in bathrooms in general, not just in respect to trans issues, and that I can believe.

 

[aelf]

The stories they must have read to be fans of hers condemn bullying. Bullying based on her "influence" would therefore require obvious cognitive dissonance.

EDIT: I misread this post at first.

But this doesn't follow. You know for a fact that people, especially at that age range, are always able to logically analyse and draw the appropriate conclusions from a piece of light fiction they read?

 

[Yeekim]

Not at all,, no. All of this was started (and revolved) around Rowling embracing Maya Forstater, whose only claim to fame is that she believes people cannot change their sex, aka transwomen and women and transmen aren't men. that was one year ago.

Then, with the recent controversy, she embraced Forstater again and repeated some of her talking points. Rowling genuinely went out of her way to deny that transwomen are women, and she even went out of her way to say transpeople don't face discrimination. It was never about perverts in bathrooms so much, that's just a slander.

From her Twitter, literal quote.

OK. I admit I don't know the background.
But you got me confused on another point:

Maya Forstater, whose only claim to fame is that she believes people cannot change their sex, aka transwomen and women and transmen aren't men.

I thought "women" and "men" are genders, rather than sexes? So, transwomen would be women, but not female? Or ...?

 

[Robo-Star]

I thought "women" and "men" are genders, rather than sexes? So, transwomen would be women, but not female? Or ...?

Yeah, but Maya also believed that gender largely tracks sex.

 

[Yeekim]

She also followed Magdalen burns, who was an open transphobe. For context (including swearing and slurs):

Spoiler :

But even after this was pointed out to people, people still gave JK the benefit of the doubt.

"See, you were born as a male, so you are a hated oppressor. Thought you could pull a fast one with this whole transgender nonsense?
Think again! We still hate you. Double, for trying to steal our martyrdom."

Yeah, but Maya also believed that gender largely tracks sex.

Well, it largely does. Largely, but clearly not exclusively. Transpeople being the obvious exception.
Just trying to figure out whether "transwomen are women, but not female" is considered transphobic or not...

 

[Robo-Star]

Just trying to figure out whether "transwomen are women, but not female" is considered transphobic or not...

No.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I thought "women" and "men" are genders, rather than sexes? So, transwomen would be women, but not female? Or ...?

I was simply quoting her. I think most TERFs are philosophically both Gender and Sex essentialists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_essentialism

As far as I know, for example, TERFs must then, to stay logically consistent, also argue that intersex people (hermaphrodites) are neither male nor female. Gender/sex essentialism leads to all kinds of logical problems, much like all essentialisms.

Just trying to figure out whether "transwomen are women, but not female" is considered transphobic or not...

@Cloud_Strife could probably give you the best answer. I personally believe at some point there is a need to distinguish between transwomen and people who were born biological females, even if purely for medical reasons. That distinction in itself is not transphobic in my opinion.

 

[Robo-Star]

I was simply quoting her. I think most TERFs are philosophically both Gender and Sex essentialists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_essentialism

As far as I know, for example, TERFs must then, to stay logically consistent, also argue that intersex people (hermaphrodites) are neither male nor female. Gender/sex essentialism leads to all kinds of logical problems, much like all essentialisms.

Social constructionists, from what I can see.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

@Cloud_Strife could probably give you the best answer. I personally believe at some point there is a need to distinguish between transwomen and people who were born biological females, even if purely for medical reasons. That distinction in itself is not transphobic in my opinion.

Definitely, but that's a distinction that only matters when it comes to issues regarding medicine or biological functions, otherwise transwomen should essentially be treated like "biological" women in all other circumstances, the problem is people have used biology, and still do, as a basis on which to discriminate against others...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And what's the point in that?

Debunking overblown attribution of harm on a single particular bad post or set of posts.

Consider other nonsense/asinine propositions made on social media, similarly lacking accuracy and targeting a group of people without basis, and compare reactions in each case. If someone claims "all adult gamers are manchildren" or something, we can reasonably conclude that person's an idiot and move on. Even if we expect some ignorant element of the population might agree with the person's assessment. It's reasonable to call out the ignorance, but not to attribute this person's behavior to people being killed.

The entire conversation is basically geared towards making bullying acceptable, going back to the old days when minorities would be put in their place by a quip or a string of slurs.

Bullying is not acceptable.

@TheMeInTeam would have us believe she's no different and no more dangerous than any other troll but he's wrong and he's exposing his hand here.

If you have an effective argument, you can make it without resorting to ad hominem trash.

It's basically this:

You already posted that racist spam earlier in this thread.

Well, like, why would it be acceptable if it was "just" a twitter troll? I mean people do get killed over this, so really any individual person peddling hate speech is a possible killer or friend of killers.

That's quite the hyperbole, and it discredits the cause being argued unduly. It's like the asinine claim "silence is violence". Both false, both detrimental to the actual message attempted. Trolls are not acceptable, but they are also not "killers or friends of killers" from trolling alone. That's not what those words mean.

This is obviously nasty stuff from JKR regardless.

But this doesn't follow. You know for a fact that people, especially at that age range, are always able to logically analyse and draw the appropriate conclusions from a piece of light fiction they read?

We're inferring her platform is influencing them, and that includes both bullying and asserting that bullying is bad. Sure, some young folk are going to miss this incongruence, but are those same people then going to arbitrarily cherry pick aspects of JKR's message to be influenced by in significant numbers?

 

[Truthy]

This is a bad argument, unless he wants to defend the idea that speech can never be harmful. That's not going to get very far.

And if certain types of speech can be harmful, it doesn't follow that banning them is logical because it would prevent harm, since the act of banning them itself could cause greater harm. So even from a utilitarian standpoint the argument fails.

I don't really have to explain why burning her books do not follow at all from those in this context, do I?

It's a bit of pattern-matching as well. "Twitter can do what they want."

 

[Gorbles]

You're making a false equivalence, @TheMeInTeam.

"all gamers are manchildren" can offend, for example. But it doesn't have any stake in ongoing discussions about basic legal rights afforded to people in any country in the world. It has no practical consequences. A world-renowned author putting forward a statement in support of transphobes and TERFs has actual consequences in that it both normalises the opinions put fowards, and has been repeatedly presented in a way that doesn't seem idiotic on the surface.

I mean, what are you arguing? Are you arguing that we cannot prove that by posting something online, Rowling is therefore influencing anybody who follows her or is exposed to her words online? If so, that seems like a very flimsy technicality. It's also invalidated, if not by the legions of positive and affirming replies to her on social media on this subject, then definitely by her flat-out defending a transphobe and lying about the situation of said transphobe's employment (Forstater was not fired, for example). None of this can be reduced to "someone is being an idiot online" and that's precisely part of the argument as to why her opinions are so harmful.

To take another example, the guy who wrote Father Ted has spent the past few years absolutely losing it online (down the rabbithole that is transphobic beliefs), to the extent that known TERFs and other transphobes are becoming wary of him. Because he's become an actual liability in terms of image to the "gender critical" movement. He's posting the same kinds of stuff. The same misleading statements. But he's doing it in a far more incendiary and confrontational manner. It makes it easier to therefore dismiss him because (for better and for worse) we've got this whole respectability politics thing going on in modern culture where even if you're making exactly the same point, people are more predisposed to listening to you if you're calm about it.

 

[Truthy]

The only surprising thing about this thread is how ardently people are willing to defend some author who they apparently don't care for, whose books are only for children, and who they don't even necessarily agree with. Kinda fishy if you ask me.

Looks can be deceiving. My covert horse in the race is that her blog post was more nuanced and dealt with a wider range of topics than has been acknowledged here. Leaving bathroom stuff aside, since I think she's wrong on that front, other things she said were good points. (And there are adjacent issues of academic freedom)

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Looks can be deceiving. My covert horse in the race is that her blog post was more nuanced and dealt with a wider range of topics than has been acknowledged here. Leaving bathroom stuff aside, since I think she's wrong on that front, other things she said were good points.

She doubled down on her previous transphobic rhetoric, re-used the "man in a dress enters woman's changing room" argument, said that feminists also stand with transmen because they were born female, etc.

The whole belief that being trans is akin to a social contagion is absolute bull****, as it was when it was used again the LGB community.

Obviously there's going to be more people coming out and seeking transition as attitudes change, especially when there was a massive derth of information about it in the recent past.

edit:

also the study you cited relied on parents, not the children themselves, reporting supposed "Rapid onset gender dysphoria" on websites called "Transgendertrend" "youthtranscriticalprofessionals" and "4thwavenow", websites that are openly transphobic.

And this is only on the first page