Crosswords0 min ago
What's It All About?
96 Answers
Sorry for a dumb question, but can anyone explain to me what is the essence of the issue about the trans question? Why is Ms Rowling so passionate about it?
I hope for a calm explanation rather than an attack.
Here’s hoping...
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//but I doubt if many men pretend to be women just to be able to lock themselves in a room with a load of women//
They don't have to pretend. they just have to claim they are women;
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Trans women have been quietly using women's loos for decades without problem.
In recent years though there has been reports of some militant trans women making it obvious they are men and deliberately making others feel uncomfortable just to prove they have the right to be there.
If that is true, it is vile behaviour. I heard of one super glam trans woman saying to the woman at the next sink - what you looking at? You wouldn't want me standing at the urinal next to your husband, would you?
How true these stories are I don't know but it causes division and resentment.
Atheist...a friend of mine would like to join the local council run gym where she lives. But the council is switching to unisex changing facilities. But the council also claims it costs too much to provide doors that reach the floor. She will not tolerate that..most women won't. They...we...want to feel safe. Privacy is part of that. By wanting that, some will call us transphobic.
rowling has unfortunately publicly associated herself with individuals like posie parker who call for trans people to be entirely eliminated and quite happily allies herself with neonazis... this raises some rather important questions about what exactly jk rowling means when she says that she wants to "defend women" or "protect free speech"... obviously nobody would disagree with those words but is that really what she means? why if she only wishes to support free speech does she support such extreme people with exterminationist politics?
You will struggle, I think, to find a calm explanation about "what the essence of the issue" is from anyone on this site, or indeed any other source, myself included. It does not help that much of the debate about transgender topics takes place online, between people who are too busy talking at each other to listen to them.
I'm not sure I should spend any time trying, either, but I will note a few points:
1. Autogynephilia (jackthehat's "AGP") is at best a controversial explanation, and more accurately is wholly wrong -- not least because there is no room for trans men, or non-binary identities, in this picture; but also because it confuses sexuality with gender identity. Who we are is not the same as whom we love.
2. Many other conversations about this are problematic because it's all too easy to misunderstand what trans people are trying to say. In particular, the common refrain that trans people are in one way or another "denying" the reality of biological sex is a misconception: trans people do not argue that biology isn't real, but rather that biology is not all there is when it comes to understanding who we are as people. How we see ourselves, how we present ourselves to others, and so on also play a key role.
I may, or may not, come back with more, and I'm happy in particular to answer any more concrete questions you may have, Atheist. But it's difficult to have a calm and dispassionate conversation about an issue that, on the one hand, matters to me personally, and on the other requires anyone arguing for respect for trans people on our own terms to overcome the idea that we represent an existential threat to society, and particularly to women. And, of course, it follows that anyone who sees trans people (and by that I mean trans women, usually) as such a threat will be equally passionate. I can understand that, even as I say that it is wholly misplaced: fear is a powerful motivator, and it doesn't become any less powerful just because I don't agree with its basis. Hopefully, I'll be able to expand on this later, and perhaps others will be willing to add their perspectives and explain why I'm barking.
Still, trans people exist, and always have done, and like all other people deserve a basic modicum of respect for their identity and for how we understand ourselves.
untitled - That is a load of rubbish. KJK (the Posie Parker) has never allied herself with nazis - that is a smear directly from an appearance she made in NZ.
The Free Speech that JKR wishes to defend is that when the word woman is used is specifically defines an 'adult human female'. This is now under threat in Scotland.
ClareTGold - I am nowhere near wholly wrong. We are discussing Sex not gender. Sex IS Binary - gender can be subject to as many 'feels' as it is possible to shake a stick at.
But that doesn't mean that women should be made to 'budge-up' to accommodate men who have decided they believe that they think that they know what it feels like to be a woman.
The problem with that last, jth - among others - is that trans people are, in broad terms, those whose gender and sex don't align. It stands to reason that we aren't discussing exclusively one or the other, but to an extent both.
Also, it is reductive and dismissive to talk about gender as just "feels".
ClareTGold - No, I don't think it is.
If you believe that your gender is not as it may appear to others.....it's because you feel it is, not because there is any fact to the matter.
And considering that there are supposed to be somewhere in the region of 150(!) genders, not all of them are based in reality.
One final point, for now at least, that I feel is worth making: it is common to paint trans rights and women's rights in opposition. But they are not, and need not be, and the choice to set them against each other has the effect of neglecting and hurting both, equally. It's also a division that is more common in media and online discourse than in reality. In my experience, all I've ever seen is acceptance and support from the cis women I meet, work with, or encounter in the street. Perhaps I'm lucky, but it's useful all the same to have a day-to-day experience of how trans people are seen and treated by others that many people in this thread will not.
// And considering that there are supposed to be somewhere in the region of 150(!) genders, not all of them are based in reality. //
I don't wish to argue that there are 150 genders, or any other number, partly because I doubt the veracity of this claim -- 72 is sometimes also listed as the 'total number of genders', but as I recall when I was looking into that the last time someone made a similar point, the only source I could find for the number 72 gave these genders in alphabetical order, but stopped at the letter "G".
But this particular discussion ultimately springs from a misunderstanding of what's meant by "gender" in this context, and perhaps also an unwillingness even to try to understand what's meant. There's no room for a calm explanation when so much time is spent trying to argue that there is something reasonable to explain here.
I had wondered if you'd pick up on "cis", jth. But cis and trans are merely opposite prefixes, and that's all that's intended here; since, after all, I see trans women as women, it follows that there are times when it's useful to talk about "women" in a way that doesn't include trans women. That, and that alone, is why "cis" exists, and why I use it.
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