[RD] JK Rowling and Explicit Transphobia

[Arwon]

You are unable to google it because I am a dummy. I did in fact mean the Gender Recognition Act.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-to-be-dropping-gender-self-identifying-plans

Yuck, that sucks

People have been changing their gender on birth certificates and ID documents here with an ordinary doctor's or psychologist's certification, to M F and X, since 2014 and the world has not collapsed in on itself. Kids too, through their parents.

 

[REDY]

I wonder, what does gender mean legally? Do you have it on ID?

 

[Crezth]

I wonder, what does gender mean legally? Do you have it on ID?

Who cares?

 

[REDY]

It seems that in Australia they have it, but I have no idea what does it actually mean than additional category.

 

[Robo-Star]

I wonder, what does gender mean legally? Do you have it on ID?

What rights a person is granted on the basis of sexual characteristics; it's on birth certificates, at least.

 

[innonimatu]

You must be more of an idiot than I thought. Who said anything about banning or burning her books? This thread is expressing concern about what she says online as an influential author. FFS.

Then think through the implications of what you support, before supporting it. If, as you claim, this thread were just about "expressing concern", what was the point? She is not going to read it. It would change nothing at all.

And I think this thread conclusively proves that boomers and older Gen X just can't get it. Just ask them to bugger off and wait for them to die

You want to change the world, I get it. Small object meets huge inertial mass... far more likely that the world will change you. And your whole "generation", which in any case is a figment of political speech.
And that's not a tragedy for the world. It's just your personal one - if you choose to make it so. Same as that of million or billions of others before and after. Don't be bitter over not changing the world your way, that's a waste for you. The world does change, but pushing it around, even organized, is hard slow work! Do your part and learn patience, drop the pointless anger.

And, for the record, using Twitter's ability to prevent replies to her tweet (of the blog post) thus preventing constructive and fair counterarguments isn't free speech at all. She's capitalising on her huge platform on one of the worlds leading social media platforms. It's funny you see you sticking up for such a thing though.

I never cared about or used Twitter, hence those details go past me. But it seems to me that the obvious way to handle a platform where you are put at a disadvantage by the rules is not to use it. Why this obsession with twitter and what is said there? Why feed it? You do know that these social media corporations deliberately incite divisions because that gets them more posts, more views and more advertising money?

If the rules of the game and vitiated, refuse to play it. Is that so hard?

Reaffirming the anti-trans belief that trans women aren't proper women causes trans people harm. Do you disagree?

You know what "fundamental" means in "fundamental right"? It means they should not be subsidiary to others, except where absolutely inevitable whent they clash with other fundamental rights. If freedom of expression is a fundamental right you can't suspend it in some cases - arbitrarily decided on - because it might "cause harm" to some people. You have to prove very clearly that some other fundamental right is being undermined by it.
What harm is caused? Is another fundamental right being undermined by the exercise of free expression on the issue of whether "trans women aren't proper women" ? Who even defines "women" and "trans-women"? Because that may be the point of contention. Want what is "proper" but a weasel word?
This looks to me a dangerous invitation to arbitrary judgement in suspending a fundamental right. I cannot support it.

 

[emzie]

And I think this thread conclusively proves that boomers and older Gen X just can't get it. Just ask them to bugger off and wait for them to die

I mean, my boomer mom gets it. Her parents, 90 and 94, get it. Last year I became friends with a WWII vet.

 

[Arwon]

I wonder, what does gender mean legally? Do you have it on ID?

What do you mean?

 

[Crezth]

Then think through the implications of what you support, before supporting it. If, as you claim, this thread were just about "expressing concern", what was the point? She is not going to read it. It would change nothing at all.

Have you ever thought through the implications of being someone who spends a lot of time telling marginalized people to shut up and just be nicer? Do you think you’re helping? Because let me assure you your advice is no help to anyone. Nobody cares if you aren’t convinced or if you can’t support abrogations against the “rights of free speech.” Your support is meaningless.

If in your mind trying to convince people to support trans rights and criticize Rowling’s remarks is meaningless because nobody’s minds will be changed, what do you hope to accomplish here?

 

[innonimatu]

If in your mind trying to convince people to support trans rights and criticize Rowling’s remarks is meaningless because nobody’s minds will be changed, what do you hope to accomplish here?

That's a valid question. But I have not criticized the complaint in the message which started this thread, only the language, the way how it was written: it was unclear and imo did nothing to gain any support for an idea but from those who already supported it. Making this a kind of esoteric matter for the already initiated, or an echo chamber. For me it was more of the same, seen it before in other places. And on that I still say: what's the point of preaching to the converted? Worse, often antagonizing the rest by, shall we say, being quick to strongly condemn? But that's an open question, I have no more to add.

Then I got into this latest argument with @aelf over what looked to me like a call for censorship... perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't, the line has been more blurred than usual.

 

[Crezth]

Hmm. Well if you want something to think about, think about the people you may have "antagonized" in this thread by suggesting a pro-trans line that denounces Rowling's statements is like what the Nazis did.

 

[REDY]

What do you mean?

Well I have no idea why its important to have it? I doubt that it will stop any fight over toilets and its IMHO very personal for most of trans. I have no idea why I would put my gender or sexual orientation on ID.

 

[Arwon]

Well I have no idea why its important to have it? I doubt that it will stop any fight over toilets and its IMHO very personal for most of trans. I have no idea why I would put my gender or sexual orientation on ID.

Ah, gotcha.

Yeah on a lot of forms of photo identification it really doesn't have much rationale. There was a rather funny episode last year in Australia where it was reported Queensland had removed gender from driver's licenses and a lot of people went all "the politically correctness has gone mad!" and the Prime Minister weighted in saying "we will never remove gender from birth certificates, licenses and passports". Except it had happened two years prior in Queensland, without anyone noticing for that long, and driver's licenses in some other states including the PM's home state already didn't have gender on them - just photo and address.

Gender is mostly needed on things like birth certificates and passports because they're key to documentary identity chains establishing who someone is in official legal and bureaucratic settings. When you get married, open a bank account, do various official registrations like enrolling to vote, you often need to prove who you are with reliable legal documents. I imagine in places with national identity cards, they take the place of birth certificates and passports as a reliable government-endorsed proof of identity. But here, with no national identity card, proof of who you are often ultimately traces back to either birth certificates or passports with other official identity, like driver's licenses, bank accounts, medicare cards, assumed to have been checked against those when issued..

Correcting the key official docuemnts to reflect a person's actual current gender helps make life easier for trans people. That's partly because it does reaffirm who you are in a vague fuzzy wellbeing sense, but it's most strongly just to smooth interaction with bureaucracy which otherwise may make a big deal out of the document not matching what they see presenting before them. The "X" also serves that purpose for non binary and other gender non-conforming people - it at least signals to our hypothetical identity checking official to be careful about their expectations, which could also smooth the interaction.

I recognise that this logic is entirely circular - it is literally "gender on documents matters because gender on documents matter". But of course, we don't live in a genderless utopia, so we can't exactly wait for that to happen without making the real world function better and more easily for people as well.

 

[Yeekim]

Yuck, that sucks

People have been changing their gender on birth certificates and ID documents here with an ordinary doctor's or psychologist's certification, to M F and X, since 2014 and the world has not collapsed in on itself.

It's been done here since 1999 and world hasn't collapsed either, so you're probably safe.

 

[aelf]

Then think through the implications of what you support, before supporting it. If, as you claim, this thread were just about "expressing concern", what was the point? She is not going to read it. It would change nothing at all.

I think the implication of our conversation is that you're as thick as bricks and don't understand the contemporary world at all.

Only the village idiot would equate "there's a problem with what a popular author is saying online and how that might influence people" with "let's burn the author's books". I mean, it's so stupid my estimate of you has fallen through the bottom.

Moderator Action: This is an RD thread and, as such, a certain level of decorum is expected. ~ Arakhor
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

I mean, my boomer mom gets it. Her parents, 90 and 94, get it. Last year I became friends with a WWII vet.

Exceptions are not the rule.

Regardless, you will meet boomers who don't and won't understand. Just ask them to bugger off.

 

[Zardnaar]

Large amount of boomers are liberal. Meeting themselves not that unusual.

A majority are conservative and the live in the right areas that matter in US elections.

 

[uppi]

Gender is mostly needed on things like birth certificates and passports because they're key to documentary identity chains establishing who someone is in official legal and bureaucratic settings. When you get married, open a bank account, do various official registrations like enrolling to vote, you often need to prove who you are with reliable legal documents.

But these documents could fulfill the same purpose without any gender on them. For an identity chain, the gender is not really relevant, is it?

For passports there are probably international agreements requiring gender and it is "needed" for countries with discrimination set into law, but supporting this should not be our goal.

 

[Arwon]

But these documents could fulfill the same purpose without any gender on them. For an identity chain, the gender is not really relevant, is it?

For passports there are probably international agreements requiring gender and it is "needed" for countries with discrimination set into law, but supporting this should not be our goal.

Yeah as I said it's all pretty circular and only exists because the world hasn't changed yet.

 

[Gorbles]

I never cared about or used Twitter, hence those details go past me. But it seems to me that the obvious way to handle a platform where you are put at a disadvantage by the rules is not to use it. Why this obsession with twitter and what is said there? Why feed it? You do know that these social media corporations deliberately incite divisions because that gets them more posts, more views and more advertising money?

If the rules of the game and vitiated, refuse to play it. Is that so hard?

If you've never cared about or used Twitter, maybe you're not best-placed to advise on how people handle a big name on Twitter using that platform to spread discrimination?

JK Rowling has 14.5 million followers. That's a lot. People critical of her leaving the platform would only let her preach to the platform she has already garnered. Twitter exists at this point, and individual actions aren't going to be able to effectively undermine that. Nevermind the fact that some people need to use it for their jobs.

Besides, none of this has any relevance to you defending Rowling's "free speech" when she's using the moderation tools on a moderated platform to prevent the free speech of her critics. It's just you telling her critics to suck it up and go elsewhere, which wouldn't actually impact Rowling negatively in the slightest. By "negatively" I mean "be affected by constructive criticism of her terrible and discriminatory opinions".

You know what "fundamental" means in "fundamental right"? It means they should not be subsidiary to others, except where absolutely inevitable whent they clash with other fundamental rights. If freedom of expression is a fundamental right you can't suspend it in some cases - arbitrarily decided on - because it might "cause harm" to some people. You have to prove very clearly that some other fundamental right is being undermined by it.
What harm is caused? Is another fundamental right being undermined by the exercise of free expression on the issue of whether "trans women aren't proper women" ? Who even defines "women" and "trans-women"? Because that may be the point of contention. Want what is "proper" but a weasel word?
This looks to me a dangerous invitation to arbitrary judgement in suspending a fundamental right. I cannot support it.

Why are you talking about fundamental rights (I'm guessing to free speech)? What does that have to do with the basic decency of calling trans women, women?

You didn't even answer the question, disappointingly. It's not a question of "might cause harm". Dehumanising trans women causes them harm. Dehumanising anybody causes them harm. Nevermind segregating them in terms of legal protections, it comes with a whole host of cultural baggage. It causes harm. I asked you for an argument as to it not causing harm; for you to provide some kind of counterargument. Anything, really.

You can complain that being forced not to say discriminatory things (or outright hate speech) infringes on some kind of fundamental "right", but that complaint doesn't invalidate the harm done. The way your post reads, it suggests that it doesn't matter what harm is done by what Rowling has said and written - what matters most is that she gets to say such horrendous things.

Hard pass. Trans women are women. We wouldn't even need the prefix in common culture if there wasn't this transphobic attempt to exclude trans women from being called women in the first place. You hold free speech up as a fundamental right, but apparently the basic human right to existence is secondary to that.

 

[Lexicus]

Hmm. Well if you want something to think about, think about the people you may have "antagonized" in this thread by suggesting a pro-trans line that denounces Rowling's statements is like what the Nazis did.

Perhaps ironically, one of the reasons hardly anyone knows anything about trans people is the Nazis literally burned much of the initial knowledge on the subject...

On 6 May 1933, while Hirschfeld was in Ascona, Switzerland, the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institute of Sex Research. A few days later, the Institute's library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz. Around 20,000 books and journals, and 5,000 images, were destroyed.