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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Okay - you've shown us the motte, but where is the bailey?

Where does Chimamanda advocate for discrimination against trans women? Because there is nothing in your source that implies that.

Also, that is only a motte in liberal circles. Saying "I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people" is not necessarily a no-brainer moral stance for the general population.

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The bailey is in the othering of trans women as a separate class which opens opportunities for discrimination by separating them from women-at-large. And since we still have binary gender norms to contend heavily with in the US and beyond, this ends up playing out as bills banning trans women from playing in a league in accordance their gender, bathroom bills, etc. [1]

There's a fantastic book about this written by Julia Serrano called 'Whipping Girl' [2] that goes over these things and more and describes these phenomena as 'Transmisogyny' - trans individuals being subject to both misogyny and misandry depending on the situation, and sometimes both when it's convenient.

[1] - https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/anti-...

[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoatin...

Why is speaking of "trans women" othering them into a separate class, but the same isn't true when speaking about "black women" - which is something that is celebrated in modern intersectionality theory? Don't trans women face unique challenges relating to their womanhood - just the same way that black women do?

If you're interested in an intersectional discussion, then sure. But too often this framing of 'trans women are trans women, not Women' is used in bad faith to open the dialog of "What should we do about them in women's spaces then, since they aren't?'

Isn't it bad faith to assume that someone who says something like "I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people" is actually arguing against the rights of transgender people without any evidence otherwise?

To be clear, Adichie has said she finds J.K. Rowling's opinions on trans people reasonable, so it's not just an assumption. There's evidence backing it.

She said that Rowling's article was "a perfectly reasonable piece", relative to "all the noise" it was generating online. Are we talking about Rowling's actual words, or what they were morphed into on twitter?

Have you ever characterized something which you don't necessarily agree with, but appears genuine and well argued, as "reasonable"?

> Are we talking about Rowling's actual words, or what they were morphed into on twitter?

Her words. I read it. In the essay Rowling says explicitly that she doesn't think trans women should be allowed to use women's bathrooms or women's shelters, dismisses concerns about suicide rates in the trans community, and lumps in advocates for trans rights with Donald Trump and incels as part of a new wave of anti-feminist sentiment sweeping the liberal west.

I didn't find it well argued or reasonable, it's a rehashing of tired arguments that transphobic people have been making on Mumsnet and Fox News in the US for years.

Saying that you support the rights of transgender people is great, but it's possible to say that and still get it fundamentally wrong so much as to actively harm people. So if someone says that but then says "But I have concerns about women's safety" now you see how quickly trans women become removed from the conversation.

https://juliaserano.medium.com/debunking-trans-women-are-not...

Chimamanda, as far as I can tell, never argued about women's safety, or really anything like that. What I do know she said that got pushback was that transgender and cisgendered people have different histories and experiences. That doesn't seem particularly controversial, but then again I am not a twitter justice warrior.

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