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Comment by zozzle | Hacker News Reader

> the BBC gave JK Rowling a Russel Prize for her anti-trans manifesto

It wasn't an "anti-trans manifesto", but a thoughtful explanation of her reasons for speaking out on the sex and gender issue, where she discusses her concerns for women's rights and safety, the well-being of vulnerable children, and how important it is to be allowed to speak freely on this topic. Plenty of people on the left (and centre-left) agree with her too.

As with all her work, it was very well written, which the article you linked rightly acknowledges.

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Oh hello, welcome to this 18-comment deep thread. This is the second time now that I've mentioned JK Rowling's transphobia and had a randomer show up and comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37058027). You, like them, also only speak about JKR on your profile. How curious.

All that link shows is you have a long-running habit of disparaging outspoken feminists.

It's shows that JKR, a billionaire, has an army of sleeper accounts willing to jump at any mention of her nakedly virulent transphobia. Second-wave feminists would deplore her bio-essentialism. She is an anti-feminist.

Second-wave feminists like Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys?

Have you never encountered a generalisation in your entire life?

EDIT: Fun tidbits:

- Sheila Jeffreys thinks that "any woman who takes part in a heterosexual couple helps to shore up male supremacy by making its foundations stronger".

- Janice Raymond thinks that "all transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves".

- Germaine Greer published a book of some 200 pictures of young boys "to advance women's reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure".

Truly the height of second-wave feminism right here.

Point is that second-wave feminism, and radical feminism in particular, centred on recognising sex as the basis of women's oppression under patriarchy. This led to advocacy for women-only spaces to protect against male violence and predation. Which is what JKR's position is: a continuation of second-wave radical feminism.

Partially correct but you are conflating the movement fighting for biological rights (eg: reproductive rights) as it being bio-essentialist. And there certainly was infighting about trans people within second-wave feminism (eg: feminist sex wars), but then there's also intersex people. Second-wave feminists more generally did not have the kind of one-drop rule towards womanhood as you do, where someone could have lived their entire life as a woman, be perceived as a woman, experienced misogyny as a woman, experience patriarchy as a woman, suffered domestic abuse as a woman, have breasts and a vulva, etc, but once some test determines them to be intersex, you disqualify them from womanhood entirely and cast them as male. Second-wave feminists would not have done this. In fact, I believe even Greer deplored surgeries being performed on infants to make them comply with society's perception of the binary.

Second-wave feminism explicitly challenged and rejected biological essentialism, which is the misogynistic belief that women are biologically suited to roles like housework, taking care of a husband, raising children and so on, and should do that instead of making any other choices in life. If you are familiar with JKR's feminist views you should know that she isn't bio-essentialist. Very much the opposite.

Also, you're responding to an argument I didn't make. I said nothing about intersex people or any "one-drop rule". My point was that second-wave radical feminism centred sex as the basis of women's oppression under patriarchy, leading to advocacy for women-only spaces. Which is exactly what JKR is defending.

That is the continuity I'm highlighting. It was in response to your earlier comment:

> Second-wave feminists would deplore her bio-essentialism. She is an anti-feminist.

> Also, you're responding to an argument I didn't make. I said nothing about intersex people or any "one-drop rule"

@Defletter can see your comment history, as can I!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46176554

When I noticed you gave up on our argument, I thought I'd see what else you were up to. It seems your only goal on this site is to defend JKR. Unfortunately, JKR's views don't actually make sense, which explains why none of your arguments in defense of her make sense either.

I was rate-limited so didn't reply. And when I went back to that thread the next day and remembered you were pretending not to know what the male sex is or human sex development works, decided not to bother wasting any more time.

> Second-wave feminism explicitly challenged and rejected biological essentialism

Exactly, hence why JKR's depraved dogma is anti-feminist: the idea that women can be disqualified from their womanhood for not being biologically pure enough is aggressively bio-essentialist. See JKR's disgusting reaction to Imane Khelif where mere rumour was enough for JKR to disqualify her womanhood entirely and call her a "a man beating a women in public for entertainment". And as konmok as said in their comment: you were all too willing to do the same in another comment thread. This is exceedingly cruel, hateful, anti-feminist, and not worthy of respect within a civil and democratic society. I will no longer be responding to this level of inhumanity.

EDIT: Sidenote, you claiming to have been rate-limited despite having a pretty sparse profile is very funny and implies that you're either running multiple accounts (probably to defend JKR and her cronies) or because you're thrumming the API like nobody's business trying to find any criticism of JKR. Or both. It could be both.

That's not what bio-essentialist means.

Khelif is male, and that was already known when JKR made her remarks, which were accurate. It is certainly not anti-feminist to be opposed to males in women's sports, especially not a sport where they get to repeatedly pummel female competitors.

If you want to see cruel and hateful, perhaps consider your complete lack of empathy for the women adversely affected by this. I suppose in your mind, the fact they are female means they are of no importance. Same as your miserable attitude towards feminist women as demonstrated in your comments above.

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