[redacted]I've seen the same reaction among gay men to statements about LGBT+ people, and at times had to deal with it in myself. I believe it's something to do with the way that the concept of identity has been constructed: if you naturally find your way to a certain shelf, everything on that shelf should fit you, so the argument goes. It doesn't work in practice, but I don't think it's specific [redacted]; I think it's a structural problem with the capitalist, market-orientated account of identity, that identity = brand.
Rowling is very repetitive, as others have said, maybe she is continually saying, what about me. I also find the constant tweets irritating, as you can't have a solid discussion, but maybe that suits her also. It's just sound-bites.
She must know some people who menstruate don't identify as men, so why make these adolescent jokes? As fineline said, it looks like trolling, and attention seeking.
I also meant to say I enjoy discussing sex/gender, identity, non-binary, trans, etc., but there is no discussion possible with somebody who fires off provocative tweets.
Another point here, [redacted] equating woman = menstruator. In old money, that would be called reductive, and overly biological. But feminism had fought its way out of biological determinism.
Another point here, [redacted] equating woman = menstruator. In old money, that would be called reductive, and overly biological. But feminism had fought its way out of biological determinism.
[redacted]some of it is fear: "Men will pretend to be women and violate our spaces" and some of it is protectionism: "We have out space, no one else gets in."
Feminism and exclusion have a long history. It is an all too human thing to fight for one's own rights exclusively.
I didn't mean diversity in term of real-world representation (in that regard it's diverse compared with much of the fiction that preceded it, and more diverse than my own secondary school, but probably not fully representative of the secondary school population in the UK at the time it is set). I said messages. Metaphor and analogy are often better teachers than blunt representation[redacted]
It is easy to paint inclusion with a broad brush, but the details are what illustrate better where a person stands. That real minorities were so sparsely represented might be due to other factors, but it is also coincident with people who talk about paths they've never trodden.
It is easy to paint inclusion with a broad brush, but the details are what illustrate better where a person stands. That real minorities were so sparsely represented might be due to other factors, but it is also coincident with people who talk about paths they've never trodden.
minus transpeople, of course. [redacted]
The problem with the latter is that anti-semitism has taken so many forms and guises over the years that accidentally stumbling into tropes that appear anti-semitic is not difficult. Take dwarves as portrayed by Tolkien (and latterly by Pratchett and others), loving gold and hiding their women, portrayed with beards. Anti-semitic or simply playing with and mixing ideas from different sources? Heck, you could make a decent case that the Doctor Who episode Aliens of London with its reptilian skin-suit wearing Slytheen draws on David Ike's anti-semitic reptoid conspiracy theory.
This form of thinking has always struck me as weird and paranoid. Trans women are much more at risk of assault than cis-women, so if these spaces are protective, they should absolutely be in them. They should be in them anyway as women, but anyone genuinely concerned about sexual assault needs to have their back on this. Nobody shows birth certificates to get into toilets anyway, but there are enough countries that operate forms of self-ID that if it was going to cause cis-men to take up a toilet and changing room predatory habit under the guise of being trans, we'd have seen it by now.
To me it's the 'ruining heterosexual marriage' of this debate. Once one country reforms, it's easy to see if it's happened or not.
This form of thinking has always struck me as weird and paranoid. Trans women are much more at risk of assault than cis-women, so if these spaces are protective, they should absolutely be in them. They should be in them anyway as women, but anyone genuinely concerned about sexual assault needs to have their back on this.
...
I've had some success talking to transphobic women about this by explaining that a cis woman's discomfort in the women's room is orders of magnitude less significant than a trans woman's risk of RAPE AND MURDER in the men's room.
What's particularly bizarre is that if women-only spaces are defined by assigned-at-birth gender, you could find that trans men couldn't be prevented from entering. Surely that would be far more scary for survivors of domestic abuse? Or are the terfs trying to have their cake and eat it by excluding all trans folk? Surely also some butch lesbians read as disturbingly masculine to some survivors too?
Maybe I'm being dim, but if we say that women are often abused and attacked by cis men,[redacted] some men will disguise themselves as trans women in order to attack women? Why would they do that?
I think this subject came up in the big trans thread in Purg a while back, in the context of a changing room - basically, a rape victim didn't want to unexpectedly meet an adult penis in a changing room. I certainly have sympathy for a rape victim not wanting to unexpectedly meet a penis, but is this really a likely scenario? I know a few trans women, although none of them on such intimate terms that it's reasonable for me to strike up a conversation about their genitals. I suppose I assumed that if they had a penis, they would be inclined to change in a cubicle rather than letting it all hang out in public.
The only trans woman who I know has not had any surgeries--she is openly saving money for one, so I know at least one is contemplated--is very shy about that sort of thing and receives very regular dead-naming and abuse at work and when she tries to date. She finds it traumatic and would definitely not do anything to encourage more such. I doubt she changes in public in changing rooms, but if she did I am quite sure she is by very many orders of magnitude more likely to be hurt than to hurt.
The hashtag - which ever one of those - hardly handles the individual differences, differences among groups of self identified people, age and developmental differences. What comes to mind is the idiographic and nomothetic issue.
[redacted] Which the opposite of taking group experience and suggesting it applies to the individual also problematic.
[tangent]
Does a hashtag hold together if there are spaces.
[/tangent]
[redacted] Whilst it does appear that many young children "grow out of" gender dysphoria, few people who maintain it into teenage years do.
Second, why does that even fucking matter? That people actually maintain gender dysphoria into adulthood is enough to accept it. [redacted]
[redacted]Whilst it does appear that many young children "grow out of" gender dysphoria, few people who maintain it into teenage years do.
Second, why does that even fucking matter? That people actually maintain gender dysphoria into adulthood is enough to accept it. [redacted]
Twitter is not the right medium [redacted] to have used. Too short. Is the content in the link I posted also disagreeable?
Being trans is not wanting to be or wishing you were the other gender. It is not even feeling that you are more like the other gender than your own.
It's knowing that you actually are that other gender. Already.
We've been here before, that it is different if you are 3, 13 or 23 years old etc. [redacted] It's asking if the mere raising of the idea that gender could be fluid and change forth and back as children grow up and isn't firm- this raises a grave concern for non-acceptance. That if a young person can find prior gender dysphoria goes away, at what age, who, how, etc., and how is it possible to affirm, confirm, support any person's real gender identity? And then we have the reality that the failure to affirm is dangerous, harmful, cruel, persecution!
When I was 8, I wished I were a boy. But after talking to my mom about it, I realized she didn't want me to want that. She talked about being happy with who you are and it being okay to be tomboy. I saw that I couldn't be a boy, and she drew a mental picture of 'girl' that seemed to include me. So I decided it was okay that I couldn't be a boy.
When I was 11, I was bullied for not being properly feminine. I spent a remarkable amount of time and money (for what I had) trying to be a proper girl. I failed and had the most miserable year of my school years. Finally I gave up and spent the rest my K-12 school years alone.
It wasn't until college that I found out people could be trans. But honestly that didn't bring any enlightmenment. I knew I wasn't a guy by then. I just wasn't good at being a girl either. Being a guy would have been easier than being a girly girl because being a guy was neutral, but none of that felt relevant to me.
It was years later that I found out there was a whole umbrella of things under the trans* umbrella including being nonbinary. By now I can't say I really need that emotionally most of the time. I'm pretty used to passing for female by now, but I'm not really. And it's nice to know that maybe fewer children will go through middle school and high school wondering why they are so bad at being a girl/boy.
So yes, being unsure is a part of a child but also words shape understanding. If we don't know an option is available, we'll try to fit into the available choices as best we can.
Please. Because children might be unsure, no one age can be? Do we operate anything else this way?
Everything re children and teens.
The data show that teens who identify as trans stay trans.
This is application of a nomethetic idea, as above. Arguing from a group that what is true for a group must be true for the individual. In addition, an all or none would never be expected, i.e., there are probably some teens who don't. Teen age is from 13 to 19. There's a very wide developmental arc within those years. Do you have some good quality data to support your statement? Most of what I've seen is anecdata or aggregating some collection of individuals to show that they either do or don't stably identify. With insertion or conflation of all sorts of other issues like mood disorders, self harm, autism, socio-demographic of family, personal social history factors.
Although hormone therapy can be incredibly beneficial for many transgender youth, clinicians may question whether it is appropriate for their patient: “Is my client’s distress part of the normal ups and downs of adolescence, or is it truly dysphoria?”
These anxieties are exacerbated by a commonly cited statistic that 80% of children expressing cross-sex identity issues will not “persist” in identifying as transgender into adulthood. However, the basis of this statistic is quite misleading, as study authors classified children who were lost to follow-up as “desisters.” The authors also used medical intervention as the outcome variable indicating gender persistence, which problematically conflates gender identity with a desire for hormone therapy or surgery.2 This study design creates undue panic over the supposed instability of transgender identification in young children.
Stacey Karpen, PhD, senior manager of behavioral health at Whitman-Walker Health, Washington, DC, says that clinical preoccupation with desisters misses the point of gender-affirming care. “I can’t tell you how your child will identify in 10 years, or even tomorrow. If you’re looking for someone to tell you concretely about your child’s identity, then I’m not a good fit. But I say, look I want your child alive. If they feel differently at 18 then they do at 14, at least we got them to 18.”
When I was 8, I wished I were a boy. But after talking to my mom about it, I realized she didn't want me to want that. She talked about being happy with who you are and it being okay to be tomboy. I saw that I couldn't be a boy, and she drew a mental picture of 'girl' that seemed to include me. So I decided it was okay that I couldn't be a boy.
When I was 11, I was bullied for not being properly feminine. I spent a remarkable amount of time and money (for what I had) trying to be a proper girl. I failed and had the most miserable year of my school years. Finally I gave up and spent the rest my K-12 school years alone.
It wasn't until college that I found out people could be trans. But honestly that didn't bring any enlightmenment. I knew I wasn't a guy by then. I just wasn't good at being a girl either. Being a guy would have been easier than being a girly girl because being a guy was neutral, but none of that felt relevant to me.
It was years later that I found out there was a whole umbrella of things under the trans* umbrella including being nonbinary. By now I can't say I really need that emotionally most of the time. I'm pretty used to passing for female by now, but I'm not really. And it's nice to know that maybe fewer children will go through middle school and high school wondering why they are so bad at being a girl/boy.
So yes, being unsure is a part of a child but also words shape understanding. If we don't know an option is available, we'll try to fit into the available choices as best we can.
Thanks for sharing, @Gwai. A lot of what you say resonates.
I too disagree with quite a few of the things [redacted] on this, but our own experiences have a huge impact on our views, even if we pretend they don't.
Transwomen are women, misogyny against trans women and misogyny against domestic violence survivors are both misogyny. People who think misogyny against trans women isn't of a piece with misogyny against cis-women are kidding themselves (and vice versa)
The most vocal anti-trans voices in Scotland, male and female, leapt to defend Alex Salmond against the women who suffered his Benny Hill show-like antics in their professional working environment (remember this was his defence - his behaviour to those women was awful but not a crime). They include vocal misogynists and people who target female politicians using both twitter mobs and litigation. Their supporters do things like attacking Rape Crisis Scotland online.
There's a reason why modern day fascists like Viktor Orban are so assiduous in targeting trans people. Fascists want men to be 'manly' violent men and women to be 'womanly' - get back in the kitchen and keep having babies! They don't like anything that suggests gender can be fluid, or people can change categories, or question 'biological' determinism. Anyone who thinks fanning anti-trans sentiment is beneficial to women is grossly misled. It's not a left-wing or feminist ideology, it is a very dangerous anti-feminist stance.
I also want to say a word as an abuse survivor - fears of sexual abuse against women have often been hypocritically used to target minorities. Lynchings were justified and carried out on the basis of false assumptions that black men were sexual predators to white women. Gay and lesbian people were stigmatised as potential sexual predators to children, to be kept out of schools and youth leading. In each case the fact that the majority of predation was carried out overwhelmingly by the majority male demographic was handily ignored. Trans people constitute something like 0.6% of our population. Any analysis of sexual abuse that foregrounds them stinks to high heaven. [redacted]
But misogyny is a real thing and we need to stand against all of it and see it as a whole - that attacking trans women is of a piece with all the other misogyny.
That's very interesting, Louise. I forget that people like Orban target trans people, partly because they dislike gender fluidity, as the right wing and fascists always have. [redacted]
Comments
She must know some people who menstruate don't identify as men, so why make these adolescent jokes? As fineline said, it looks like trolling, and attention seeking.
Here, BTW, it the opinion piece[redacted]
And that piece talks about women and girls and non-binary people, so no erasure of women.
Feminism and exclusion have a long history. It is an all too human thing to fight for one's own rights exclusively.
You didn't like =/= overrated.
[redacted][redacted].
I didn't mean diversity in term of real-world representation (in that regard it's diverse compared with much of the fiction that preceded it, and more diverse than my own secondary school, but probably not fully representative of the secondary school population in the UK at the time it is set). I said messages. Metaphor and analogy are often better teachers than blunt representation[redacted]
minus transpeople, of course. [redacted]
The problem with the latter is that anti-semitism has taken so many forms and guises over the years that accidentally stumbling into tropes that appear anti-semitic is not difficult. Take dwarves as portrayed by Tolkien (and latterly by Pratchett and others), loving gold and hiding their women, portrayed with beards. Anti-semitic or simply playing with and mixing ideas from different sources? Heck, you could make a decent case that the Doctor Who episode Aliens of London with its reptilian skin-suit wearing Slytheen draws on David Ike's anti-semitic reptoid conspiracy theory.
I say this as a survivor.
To me it's the 'ruining heterosexual marriage' of this debate. Once one country reforms, it's easy to see if it's happened or not.
[redacted]
I've had some success talking to transphobic women about this by explaining that a cis woman's discomfort in the women's room is orders of magnitude less significant than a trans woman's risk of RAPE AND MURDER in the men's room.
What's particularly bizarre is that if women-only spaces are defined by assigned-at-birth gender, you could find that trans men couldn't be prevented from entering. Surely that would be far more scary for survivors of domestic abuse? Or are the terfs trying to have their cake and eat it by excluding all trans folk? Surely also some butch lesbians read as disturbingly masculine to some survivors too?
I think this subject came up in the big trans thread in Purg a while back, in the context of a changing room - basically, a rape victim didn't want to unexpectedly meet an adult penis in a changing room. I certainly have sympathy for a rape victim not wanting to unexpectedly meet a penis, but is this really a likely scenario? I know a few trans women, although none of them on such intimate terms that it's reasonable for me to strike up a conversation about their genitals. I suppose I assumed that if they had a penis, they would be inclined to change in a cubicle rather than letting it all hang out in public.
[redacted] Which the opposite of taking group experience and suggesting it applies to the individual also problematic.
[tangent]
Does a hashtag hold together if there are spaces.
[/tangent]
Second, why does that even fucking matter? That people actually maintain gender dysphoria into adulthood is enough to accept it. [redacted]
[redacted] Fuck yes.
It's knowing that you actually are that other gender. Already.
We've been here before, that it is different if you are 3, 13 or 23 years old etc. [redacted] It's asking if the mere raising of the idea that gender could be fluid and change forth and back as children grow up and isn't firm- this raises a grave concern for non-acceptance. That if a young person can find prior gender dysphoria goes away, at what age, who, how, etc., and how is it possible to affirm, confirm, support any person's real gender identity? And then we have the reality that the failure to affirm is dangerous, harmful, cruel, persecution!
Everything re children and teens.
When I was 11, I was bullied for not being properly feminine. I spent a remarkable amount of time and money (for what I had) trying to be a proper girl. I failed and had the most miserable year of my school years. Finally I gave up and spent the rest my K-12 school years alone.
It wasn't until college that I found out people could be trans. But honestly that didn't bring any enlightmenment. I knew I wasn't a guy by then. I just wasn't good at being a girl either. Being a guy would have been easier than being a girly girl because being a guy was neutral, but none of that felt relevant to me.
It was years later that I found out there was a whole umbrella of things under the trans* umbrella including being nonbinary. By now I can't say I really need that emotionally most of the time. I'm pretty used to passing for female by now, but I'm not really. And it's nice to know that maybe fewer children will go through middle school and high school wondering why they are so bad at being a girl/boy.
So yes, being unsure is a part of a child but also words shape understanding. If we don't know an option is available, we'll try to fit into the available choices as best we can.
This is application of a nomethetic idea, as above. Arguing from a group that what is true for a group must be true for the individual. In addition, an all or none would never be expected, i.e., there are probably some teens who don't. Teen age is from 13 to 19. There's a very wide developmental arc within those years. Do you have some good quality data to support your statement? Most of what I've seen is anecdata or aggregating some collection of individuals to show that they either do or don't stably identify. With insertion or conflation of all sorts of other issues like mood disorders, self harm, autism, socio-demographic of family, personal social history factors.
[redacted] From this article:
Thanks for sharing, @Gwai. A lot of what you say resonates.
I too disagree with quite a few of the things [redacted] on this, but our own experiences have a huge impact on our views, even if we pretend they don't.
[redacted]
[redacted]
Transwomen are women, misogyny against trans women and misogyny against domestic violence survivors are both misogyny. People who think misogyny against trans women isn't of a piece with misogyny against cis-women are kidding themselves (and vice versa)
The most vocal anti-trans voices in Scotland, male and female, leapt to defend Alex Salmond against the women who suffered his Benny Hill show-like antics in their professional working environment (remember this was his defence - his behaviour to those women was awful but not a crime). They include vocal misogynists and people who target female politicians using both twitter mobs and litigation. Their supporters do things like attacking Rape Crisis Scotland online.
There's a reason why modern day fascists like Viktor Orban are so assiduous in targeting trans people. Fascists want men to be 'manly' violent men and women to be 'womanly' - get back in the kitchen and keep having babies! They don't like anything that suggests gender can be fluid, or people can change categories, or question 'biological' determinism. Anyone who thinks fanning anti-trans sentiment is beneficial to women is grossly misled. It's not a left-wing or feminist ideology, it is a very dangerous anti-feminist stance.
I also want to say a word as an abuse survivor - fears of sexual abuse against women have often been hypocritically used to target minorities. Lynchings were justified and carried out on the basis of false assumptions that black men were sexual predators to white women. Gay and lesbian people were stigmatised as potential sexual predators to children, to be kept out of schools and youth leading. In each case the fact that the majority of predation was carried out overwhelmingly by the majority male demographic was handily ignored. Trans people constitute something like 0.6% of our population. Any analysis of sexual abuse that foregrounds them stinks to high heaven. [redacted]
But misogyny is a real thing and we need to stand against all of it and see it as a whole - that attacking trans women is of a piece with all the other misogyny.
“It’s not mysogyny if they’re not women” is a lame defence for transphobia.