The Rowling vs. Trans People Hijack

[Josquius]

Probably too late as its trailing off but continuing the gaming thread talk here...

I'm comfortable in my position-pretty simply,  chill out and leave trans people alone.
Suggesting there is a problem and a debate to be had where all facts show there is no problem, is the entire position of the reactionaries. I won't cede them the ground they're desperate to secure.

Also worth noting you haven't given any actual points here. What you're saying is basically that theres a valid debate to be had - to which no there isn't is the natural response.

"Chill out and leave trans people alone" is out course good advise.  No one should be going out to bother trans people just for being trans people.

The problem though that can potentially arise is if/when the rights of trans people intersect with other rights.  "The right to swing your fist ends where the other person's face begins".

I'm going to deliberately pick up some low-hanging fruit here just to show you there are debates to be had.

There are small scale questions to be sorted out certainly. There are in everything. But this is quite a different thing to the overall "Trans debate" that gets presented.
The way Rowling and co have it its not about any minor cases of dotting the is and clarifying weird edge cases in the law, its not even about trying to block the push for expanded trans rights, its a battle to roll back the fundamental rights of trans people.

There's the story of Jessica Yaniv, a Vancouver-based trans activist.  She filed numerous human rights complaints against various businesses for discriminating against her.  In at least one (and I think several) instances she filed human rights complaints against female estheticians for refusing to give her a Brazilian wax on her genitals.  Her genitals, in this case, was a penis.  Her human rights complaints were ultimately thrown out as the estheticians described that not only did they not want to be working with a penis, but doing a Brazilian wax on a penis and testicles requires different training than for a vagina.  It was found by a court that it was allowable for a female esthetician to discriminate against trans women because of their penis.

As noted this isn't really relevant to the topic. But since we're just discussing and not playing debate club I'll reply on it.
I'd say this sounds fine.

The issue here isn't about this person being trans, its about having a dick in a specific genitals oriented case. Their genitals are clearly relevant here and were they a trans man or a post-op transexual there would be no discrimination so there should be no issue.
Needs noting that this goes both ways too- see the infamous "People who menstruate" medical guidance that was key to kicking off Rowling's descent.

A story that comes out from time to time is lesbians feeling pressured to accept trans women as romantic partners.  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385  Impossible to say how widespread this is, but you can definitely see the sentiment on Twitter if you look for it.  So the conflict here is between the right for transwomen to be women, and for the right of lesbians to select their romantic partners based on their genitals.  But I think most people fall on the side of "people are attracted to who they are attracted to, and it's nobody else's business if someone is not interested romantically in you".

Yeah, I saw that. Its silly paranoia.
Its interesting to see this popping up lately as traditionally this kind of nonsense came from straight guys; paranoid about being tricked by trans women (the IT Crowd, written by my favourite transphobe, had an episode with this as a key plot point).
Really smells of the LGB alliance and the favourite tactic of the modern far right in hiding behind being from a traditionally marginalised group in order to hate on other minorities.
Its a load of nonsense and if any trans person tries to pull this then they're the shit bag. If someone isn't into somebody it could be for a myriad of reasons. I find obese women really unattractive- that doesn't mean I can't still be friends with them and treat them with full respect.
This one is even more divorced from the issue being discussed.

And on an actual case I worked on - a trans woman was filing an application in court claiming her rights were being discriminated against in prison.  I was assigned the case, and worked with prison officials.  They were cognizant of calling this trans woman by her name, and using the right pronouns.  One issue where I agreed with her complaint was that they would not issue her women's prison clothes or underwear, and I believe they promised to do so (this is perhaps not that great a deal as women are basically issued yellow sweat pants and top, while men are issued an orange jumpsuit, but it was important to her).  But where the prison would not settle on was that they would not house her in the women's section.  This was not their first trans woman prisoner, and they always felt that placing a trans woman in the woman's section would be disruptive.  "who gets placed with who" is a huge issue for prisons, having to worry about sex, but also gang affiliations, level of risk, no-contact provisions, and others.  So what they do is place trans women in the medical unit.  In the end we did not get a final judicial decision on the Charter rights challenge, but in the end even the trans woman herself seemed satisfied with being in the medical unit (she also had unrelated mental health issues).

I've no idea how things are in Canada, but in the UK this has been in the news lately and really highlighted the ignorance of TERFs.
There's so little awareness amongst them that already things are handled on a case by case basis, trans prisoners are assaulted far more often than they assault somebody (interestingly the data of iirc 7 cases in the past 10 years doesn't distinguish between trans men and trans women), and that gay and lesbian rapists are a thing that exists and the prison service has a lot of practice in dealing with.
And honestly for me this system seems fine. There's so few trans prisoners that it isn't a massive burden to treat each case as you find it rather than having a one size fits all rule that will inevitably screw over some people.

But you can't just say "trans women are women" and say that ends any possible debate.

Trans women are women.
I'd say discriminating against people purely on the basis of being trans is never OK.
The recent culture warrior push for banning trans women in sports for instance is such a load of nonsense.
Any 'discrimination' should be based on science that is relevant to the issue at hand. For instance high testosterone levels or having a certain muscle structure via male puberty, and this clearly giving an advantage in that particular sport.
In practice this will disqualify most trans women from high level sport (things should be a lot slacker at grass roots where winning isn't the important factor and few people are pushing physical limits) but this should be based on the actual science rather than a cultural hang-up of trans = automatically banned.
And this choosing of who is a women or not for the purpose of competition should be left to the sports governing bodies. They've been grappling with it for decades. People with a political axe to grind shouldn't wade into it with their ignorance.

[The Brain]

Any 'discrimination' should be based on science that is relevant to the issue at hand. For instance high testosterone levels or having a certain muscle structure via male puberty, and this clearly giving an advantage in that particular sport.

Science can never answer the question what's a fair or unfair advantage. Unless you think that any person who has an advantage of a great enough magnitude or rarity shouldn't be allowed to compete?

[Gups]

It would help your argument Jos is you actually presented some evidence/links for your assertions.

For example:

"The way Rowling and co have it its not about any minor cases of dotting the is and clarifying weird edge cases in the law, its not even about trying to block the push for expanded trans rights, its a battle to roll back the fundamental rights of trans people."

What are the "fundamental rights" you are referring to and in what way is Rowling seeking to "roll" them back.

[Josquius]

Any 'discrimination' should be based on science that is relevant to the issue at hand. For instance high testosterone levels or having a certain muscle structure via male puberty, and this clearly giving an advantage in that particular sport.

Science can never answer the question what's a fair or unfair advantage. Unless you think that any person who has an advantage of a great enough magnitude or rarity shouldn't be allowed to compete?

Sure. There'll always be a judgement call in there. Athletics have changed how they define this loads of times over the decades as the science develops.
But just because you can't get to a stage of something being absolute 100% proven fact doesn't mean you should ignore it and just go with complete hand waving.

It would help your argument Jos is you actually presented some evidence/links for your assertions.

For example:

"The way Rowling and co have it its not about any minor cases of dotting the is and clarifying weird edge cases in the law, its not even about trying to block the push for expanded trans rights, its a battle to roll back the fundamental rights of trans people."

What are the "fundamental rights" you are referring to and in what way is Rowling seeking to "roll" them back.

Rowling isnt the worst of the bunch. Her role is more in being a rich and famous supporter of the biggest scum.
She does seem to be degrading and getting worse year by year however.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/10/what-has-jk-rowling-said-about-transgender-people/

[OttoVonBismarck]

Not sure what this is a hijack from, but has this article been mentioned?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/jk-rowling-transphobia.html

[viper37]

All I see with JK Rowling is a bunch of people sending her death and rape threats for voicing her opinion.  Which is mostly based on science.  Biology still matters.  The rest is her flawed perception that any biological men represent a threat to any women.  But it's far from uncommon.  And you can't deny that there have been agression by transpeople on women in some shelters or prisons, basically, places already prone to violence.

[Valmy]

And you can't deny that there have been agression by transpeople on women in some shelters or prisons, basically, places already prone to violence.

I am sure in the vast history of humanity everything has happened once. I guess my question is if transwomen are more dangerous than ciswomen, that seems to be the claim. That if a transwoman is there this person represents some kind of serious threat that a ciswoman would not. Pointing out that not every transwoman in history has been a perfect pacifist angel is kind of bullshit since nobody else is held to that standard.

All I see with JK Rowling is a bunch of people sending her death and rape threats for voicing her opinion.

Well she posts on twitter, a platform basically designed to create that result. I don't know why anybody chooses to stay in that environment when it has been the norm for over a decade. It was rampant in 2014, I cannot imagine it is better now.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I haven't delved deep enough into this to have strong opinions, but the NYT article I linked mentioned there was a journalist who was assigned the job of compiling a list of every transphobic thing Rowling has said that attacks trans people--and basically worked on it for weeks and could not find a single thing she said that was directly transphobic or an attack on people specifically. Instead it seems like a lot of quotes about Rowling asserting biological females deserve certain spaces or certain situations in which their biological sex should be given regard. I'm a little hesitant to weigh in too much on trans issues because I'm so deeply uninformed on them most of the time, but it seems like she is being lumped in with the "worst kinds" of anti-trans people when that isn't a fair representation of her stance.

[Barrister]

Not sure what this is a hijack from, but has this article been mentioned?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/jk-rowling-transphobia.html

I'm busy at work and can't spend a lot of time replying to Jos (don't worry I will).

But I did also want to note that A: there was an open letter to the NYT critical of the NYT's treatment of trans issues.

https://nytletter.com/

The NYT wrote a polite but firm "we stand behind our reporting" response.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Trans women are women.

If they were women they wouldn't be trans.
At most they're men that have been surgically altered to look like women, but biologically (and at the end of the day it's the only thing that matters) they're still men. All the rest is technology and society being nice (which is proper).
(And vice versa for women).


What you have, however, is a very loud and obnoxious minority of what basically amounts of alphabet-fascists screaming at the top of their longs in an attempt to bully the entirety of society to conform to their faulty views, thus ruining it for the rest that just want to live their lives in peace and quiet.
People don't like bullies, not even when they claim to be 'progressive'.

In general, in western societies, lgbt have acceptance and tolerance. They don't require society to cheer them on, as that is not part of tolerance (just like you couldn't demand the catholics cheered on the protestants when the original Edict of Tolerance was proclaimed).
There are, however, a great many countries and societies where coming out means at the very least ostracisation and at worst a death penalty. Maybe the energies of those ideologues would be better focused there, where there's real difference to make. But that's much harder of course, requires putting some real skin into the game.
(same for the virtue-signalling companies with their rainbow-flags... but only in western countries! Hypocrites.)

another obvious conclusion is that social media (tiktok and twitter especially) are tools of the devil. Not a place for anyone under 30, basically.

[Barrister]

Trans women are women.

If they were women they wouldn't be trans.
At most they're men that have been surgically altered to look like women, but biologically (and at the end of the day it's the only thing that matters) they're still men. All the rest is technology and society being nice (which is proper).

Trans women are not women.

Neither are transwomen "biologically male".

Trans women are trans women - their own beautiful and unique category.

[chipwich]

Trans women are women.

If they were women they wouldn't be trans.
At most they're men that have been surgically altered to look like women, but biologically (and at the end of the day it's the only thing that matters) they're still men. All the rest is technology and society being nice (which is proper).

Trans women are not women.

Neither are transwomen "biologically male".

Trans women are trans women - their own beautiful and unique category.

Not according to the trans dogma that Rowling blasphemed against.

[Barrister]

Trans women are women.

If they were women they wouldn't be trans.
At most they're men that have been surgically altered to look like women, but biologically (and at the end of the day it's the only thing that matters) they're still men. All the rest is technology and society being nice (which is proper).

Trans women are not women.

Neither are transwomen "biologically male".

Trans women are trans women - their own beautiful and unique category.

Not according to the trans dogma that Rowling blasphemed against.

I am proposing my own solution to this particular conundrum.

[Razgovory]

Well don't do where anyone can see you.  You'll get your video game review bombed.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Trans women are women.

If they were women they wouldn't be trans.
At most they're men that have been surgically altered to look like women, but biologically (and at the end of the day it's the only thing that matters) they're still men. All the rest is technology and society being nice (which is proper).

Trans women are not women.

Neither are transwomen "biologically male".

Trans women are trans women - their own beautiful and unique category.

That's society being courteous, which I can certainly accept.

In reality however, there's only XX and XY (and then some combinations due to construction that confirm the rule). Biology, remember.

But sure, as their own category, I've got no beef. (Beauty is in the eye of the beholder however.)