Correct or not, JK Rowling's thoughts about femininity are likely shared by the vast majority of the world. Exaggerating her beliefs by calling her transphobic and radical isn't going to progress trans rights in any way.
Note that this attitude is entirely monopolized by "woke culture." It happens in other spaces as well (e.g. encouragement to name and shame a company you had a bad interviewing experience with).
https://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/ayshames/Python/LORETT...
I thought and still think it's funny, "Where's the fetus going to gestate Stan, are you going to keep it in a box?" But now I'm afraid to laugh or reference it in public. The movie is probably going to end up on a list, and its fans made to feel bad for being horrible people. I think I can both laugh at Stan, who's not real, and accept and support misgendered people, who are.
Surely, in many other books the serial killer is a straight male. Why are their authors not accused of anti-heterosexual speech? Are we promoting some sort of discrimination against straight males? Are they the only ones allowed to be evil?
That's not what OP is referring to. Go read her Twitter feed and blog.
Mostly the cultural effects of the Hays code and decades of queer-coding villains as evil or sexually depraved in fiction and popular culture. A fictional male serial killer tends not to simply "have worn a dress," that specific detail, like all details in fiction, is intended to communicate something to the reader/viewer, and most of the time it's to present the character's non-heteronormative behavior as a symptom of their moral evil.
Technically speaking there's nothing wrong with depicting a Black person eating a watermelon and fried chicken but there's context behind the tendency to interpret it other than purely literal terms.
Except the details of being white or male - those are not intended to communicate anything?
Not typically. Being white and male (and straight, and Christian) is considered so normative in Western society and culture that it's basically a blank slate, "default human." How often is a white character's race specifically mentioned, unless it's to form a contrast with some other non-white character's race?
It almost never happens, because white male characters are often just there. Every deviation from that norm has to be specifically mentioned and pointed out, and unless the author is part of the group or culture being portrayed, is usually done through stereotype.
Basically, there's a long and sordid history of the Cross Dressing Predator as a literary and film trope and this has been used against trans people heavily.
Is it influenced by her view? Of course.
Does it perpetuate it? Surely that depends on how readers react to it. We are free to interpret works as we like.
My own view on this is complex.
The problems JK Rowling outlines are clearly real, but of course so are the problems of trans people in gaining acceptance in society. Both TERFs and Trans people are groups that face gendered violence.
If the mere writing of a character that holds a view ‘perpetuates it’, then don’t we need to burn all books written before the 1990s?
You can sanction Rowling, don't buy her books. You can criticize Rowling, you can publish books hating on Rowling, those are all great ways in a free society to show opposition. The problem is that activists want to destroy Rowling, erase her from public space, and deny others the right to buy and read her books. Rowling has enough power and stature where she isn't really threatened, but smaller authors are being "disappeared".
That is to say, I think there are actual true believers when it comes to free speech.
Edit: I just reread your comment and there's a "most" I missed the first time. Leaving this comment up, but safe to say I agree.
But the online trans community is extremely aggressive against any criticism, trying to slander whoever they consider their opponents and performing character assassinations.
Anti-trans speech may be perfectly fine. They're not saints and they're not perfect, why should they be beyond critique?
I'm still not convinced this is anti-trans. I mean it's reality so for people to want to cancel her over this is ridiculous (which sums up the woke-ideology pretty much).
If you read Rowling's comment inclusively then it's a clumsy, ambiguous complaint about shifting language norms that is harmless and warrants a clarification. If you read the comment exclusively -- which I think is fair given Rowling's other statements over the years -- then I find it hard to read in a charitable light. It is, I admit, entirely possible that Rowling doesn't hold trans-exclusionary views and has merely, accidentally chosen ambiguous wording over the years and is pig-headed enough to be unwilling to clarify but I do find this _unlikely_ considering that she's a famously clear author who is willing to clarify (and extend) her body of work for years after the fact.
Equally does a man who wears women's clothes make them a woman? I'm happy for them to call themselves a trans-woman, and "she", but we have to have language that separates the sexes at the biological level.
> What if these people feel in their person like women?
The word "feel" in this context is extremely woolly. This is how we have gotten ourselves into this ridiculous situation where no-one can agree on anything to do with gender / sexes.
> If you read Rowling's comment inclusively then it's a clumsy, ambiguous complaint about shifting language norms that is harmless and warrants a clarification. If you read the comment exclusively -- which I think is fair given Rowling's other statements over the years -- then I find it hard to read in a charitable light. It is, I admit, entirely possible that Rowling doesn't hold trans-exclusionary views and has merely, accidentally chosen ambiguous wording over the years and is pig-headed enough to be unwilling to clarify but I do find this _unlikely_ considering that she's a famously clear author who is willing to clarify (and extend) her body of work for years after the fact.
So you might be partly right on this - but given her contribution to literacy and the arts and woman's rights we know she is a thoughtful, intelligent, compassionate person. Given all her positive contributions to society the hostile reaction from the trans-side is telling really.
Those are biological females (women).
>And many women don't menstruate.
What is your point here?
The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people.
What sort of answer to your original question did you expect?
This is false.
> The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people.
It was until it was high jacked.
If one would do a general survey, most ordinary people would consider sex and gender the same thing. Most of them would also say that they know the sex of somebody they see for the first time. Which is statistically true, because people whose sex and gender don't match are truly a small minority.
>The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people.
For the pedantic I guess she should have said: women who are in their fertile age without health problems or taking medications which prevent menstruation.
>What sort of answer to your original question did you expect?
A possible medical breakthrough.
People who menstruate is much shorter than your suggestion.
"gender markers" and "chromosomes" are the same thing for 99% of the population. So guessing really is knowing.
> People who menstruate is much shorter than your suggestion.
Women is even shorter and everybody in the whole world understands it.
People who menstruate is more accurate.
It’s not. Its TE (or racist, or whatever) to have a TE (or racist, or whatever) opinion.
Or is it only ‘TE’ within the theoretical framework of Trans activists?
Trans people exclude CIS people from the category of Trans.
Do we call them CIS exclusionary?
Just saying someone else is exclusionary is meaningless.
Cis and trans are opposites by definition. They existed long before they were applied to gender.
True, but the relevance is not obvious because these aren’t problems caused by so called TERFs.
It’s also not true that censoring JK Rowling is required as part of solving them, either.
> Cis and trans are opposites by definition. They existed long before they were applied to gender.
Does that mean that you think that cisgender women are not in the same category as transgender women?
Rowling hasn't been censored.
Cis women and trans women are in the category of women.
This just isn’t true.
> I've seen none support creation of separate but equal facilities for trans people. It's too costly for such a small minority they say.
TERFs don’t say this. People controlling budgets do. They are are the ones withholding services from trans people. Not TERFs.
> Cis women and trans women are in the category of women.
Only according to certain trans perspectives.
You have clearly agreed there are two kinds of women. It is reasonable for them to not see one another as members of the same category.
Most trans exclusionary people say trans women are men. Some say they should be treated like cis men in all respects including imprisonment. Others accept keeping them apart from cis women means putting them with cis men in practice.
It shouldn't surprise you politically active people have opinions about tax and how it's spent. I've seen it myself. Even people who say they support separate but equal facilities start hedging when asked about funding.
Cis women and trans women being categories of women isn't just a trans perspective. And don't play games. You asked a question. I answered.
There are many more than 2 kinds of women!
Yes, but being allowed into women’s shelters is not the only solution to violence against trans people.
> Most trans exclusionary people say trans women are men.
Do they? And if they see them as men, isn’t that their business?
I am not aware of TERFs arguing against services being provided for trans people.
> Some say they should be treated like cis men in all respects including imprisonment.
So TERFs in general do not.
> Others accept keeping them apart from cis women means putting them with cis men in practice.
Yes, agreed, and this is a terrible outcome but lack of services for trans people is not a consequence of TERFs.
> It shouldn't surprise you politically active people have opinions about tax and how it's spent.
This irrelevant statement to anything either of us have said so far.
> I've seen it myself. Even people who say they support separate but equal facilities start hedging when asked about funding.
What do you mean by ‘start hedging’?
> Cis women and trans women being categories of women isn't just a trans perspective.
Of course not, but that doesn’t make it universal.
As far as I can see your argument is just based on there not being enough money for trans services.
That’s absolutely correct, but has nothing to do with TERFs.
People building fame in art and using that fame to advocate for causes, including the cause of preserving the marginalization of particular marginalized communities, is not novel.
Famous people are still people, and they still have opinions. Opinions you might not even agree with. Are we to exclude the famous from speaking their opinions? I would love to see how that would work, both legally and as kind of a sci-fi premise. Actors interviewed on late night shows offering only the blandest of reactions to what is said. No longer are musicians able to fund charities with their wealth, since donations are speech, as per the Supreme Court. Court battles are waged over how wealthy must be or how many Google hits are found for their name before someone is too famous to have opinions.
It lacks laser-guns and aliens, but as a very dry, Burgess-like exploration of government policy as a near-future sci-fi, it might be workable.
First, my response was denying that the description was of a phenomenon which was in any way novel as the upthread poster claimed, it wasn’t my description.
Second, I don’t read it that way: it was simply describing that, Rowling achieved fame and then, having achieved it, used it to sell certain ideas. There was no suggestion that it was planned in advance as a strategy, or even that that use was especially prominent among her uses of the fame.
This kind of response is precisely the thing that irks me to no end and it's something nobody will ever discuss. They'll just shun you or hurl a slogan at you as if you said something utterly ridiculous.
Let's broaden our time horizons a bit to something longer than the time it takes to read a tweet. When did you start to stand up for "trans" and oppose "anti-trans"? I'm asking a serious question, if only rhetorically. When did this become the obvious thing to do, the right thing to do, a matter of fact, and beyond discussion? Was there ever a discussion? Because all I can remember is that one day we were calling this gender dysphoria, a mental disorder, and the next day, a bunch of aggressive campus demonstrators were making demands and hurling accusations and trying to silence and bully people into going along. Then, all of a sudden, a new generation of college graduates started entering the workplace repeating these stock slogans verbatim. What are they, agents of the Komsomol?
What horrifies me is how easily people go along without question. It is truly horrifying. It horrifies me that they don't even seem to realize that that's what they're doing, floating downstream, wherever the current takes them. Milgram was crude child's play by comparison!
So when you condemn JK Rowling for disagreeing as if she had committed some crime against humanity, in light of how things actually transpired, in light of how viciously this program has been and is being implemented, I really makes me wonder.