I feel like everyone’s focusing on the bathroom thing, when there are some valid points in there. It’s a long article.
Changing your body’s sex is a highly destructive thing, and the long term consequences if you ever want to switch back are irreversible. And it seems like there are quite a few people who do switch back. Additionally, girls in particular often hate their body during the teenage years (and sometimes beyond). It seems like social groups are transitioning together, which is very odd and suggests a viral phenomenon. Additionally, there is a trend in society and among doctors towards encouraging and understanding transitioning, rather than putting barriers in place until the person is sure they want to permanently modify their body (destroying fertility etc). Finally, there’s a good chance that many lesbians who feel attraction to the same sex at an early age are choosing to transition instead.
These are all strong points worthy of discussion rather than strawmanning.
That doesn’t seem like a good summary of her article to me. The bathroom statement is one comment out of a very long essay. And once it becomes the only quote, everyone on here piles on to that one thing because they don’t bother reading the original article. Feels like reddit.
This is not Rowling’s first entry into this space. Maybe you need to read what she’s been doing for awhile, and not just articles. She has Twitter history too. Her push is not some long discussion about saving girls from exceedingly expensive and permanent surgeries that a fraction of a fraction of trans individuals would even consider at that age.
This may be true, but I’m not interested in discussing Rowling’s motivations, because I cannot read her mind, and I find those discussions to not be fruitful. An article of hers was posted, and I’m responding to the article.
You don’t need surgery to damage a female body. Hormones will do the trick just fine. And this is indeed a trend.
I read the article, as did, I assume, most of the posters here. As @Nesrie says, this is not Rowling’s first rodeo, and this is not something new from her.
These points are stated as fact in her post, but in substantial dispute in the medical and psychological community.
Assuming that the folks in the thread are ignorant of these issues is a bad look.
Yeah but then you say you don’t want to talk about her motivations. Look, I have no strong opinions about HP one way or another. I am not a fan or an anti-fan. I think she’s said some clever things in the past, but on this topic… she’s not new. You can’t approach this topic like she woke up yesterday and wrote one article. She has a history, and that forms what she says today. She doesn’t just get to undo everything and start from scratch.
Her push here is one of fear, and it’s irrational because the danger or risks she frequently talks about, as well as the abuse… those remain the same. Yes, pubic restrooms are a risk for women and children as they always have been. Predators are creatures of opportunity, and like everything else in life, you try to minimize that to within reason which means if you’re in the middle of nowhere and there is a bathroom, you go in there with a buddy. You don’t send your children in there alone… single parents or parents just out for the day alone handle the bathroom situation in a variety of ways but it’s not typically sending them in there alone… for a reason. These spaces are not inherently considered that safe to begin with.
I think you’re trying to lump the entire group into one decision. Removing the breasts, adding a penis, hormones… there is a large range of what people can do and choose to do. But to say a female body transitioning to male doesn’t include surgery is just what exactly, something you heard? I assure you breast removal and the addition of a penis does happen. These are medical procedures.
Transitioning is hugely expensive, painful, often preceded by and followed by counseling and general guidance. This is also the group with a tragic number of people who commit suicide. For one because it’s expensive, a lot of insurance doesn’t cover it… sometimes transition doesn’t happen simply because they can’t afford it. They feel trapped, rejected… it’s so horrible
So yeah if we can make the lives someone struggling, a teenie, tiny bit better by allowing them to choose bathroom that is a tiny bit more comfortable for them… let’s do it. Screw the people running around saying think about the helpless women! That’s ridiculous noise. We’ll go into the bathroom armed with the same be-careful warnings we’ve always had when it comes to close spaces in areas with too little or too much traffic. It’s not new.
I thought that linking to an article meant discussing the article, rather than the motivations of the person involved.
I hear you, and I think that’s a good rebuttal of that one point. But it’s one point out of many in the article.
I don’t know what position you think I’m taking on this point. I thought you were making the point that young teens wouldn’t transition needlessly because the surgery is both expensive and painful. All I was saying in response to that perceived point is that there are cheaper, less painful options – not complete ones, I agree, but ones that can still cause permanent damage to those teens.
Given your main argument - that the bathroom thing is a non-issue - I’m with you on this point. I am concerned about the other points mentioned in the article.
I feel like you really want to give her the benefit of the doubt. That you read something in this article that really made you think, and that maybe you give more weight to her research abilities than I would.
She can’t talk about the dangers of these young people you are concerned with without the throwing in these weird ideas about, what did she call it, the erosion of women’s and girl’s right. Rights to what exactly?
I mean take what she says and get rid of all the paragraphs that talk about people being angry with her and people praising her. and what money she gives and to where. What rights are being eroded? She mentions abuse… she has a right not be abused. We have several laws about abuse… and they’re not being taken away.
What it all boils down to is JK Rowling is incapable of talking about the safety and the needs of a specific and really tiny group of people without bringing it right back to what is really going on, she’s afraid. That’s not me guessing. She writes. Erosion of rights, less safe… what women have fought for. What we have fought for.
So really JK Rowling’s position, no matter how many e-mails she gets that supports her, or attacks her, no matter how much money she gives to charity, no matter how much research she puts into her work and books… she’s afraid. That fear is irrational and it manifest itself almost every time she speaks about this topic. And she’s so afraid, she can’t even talk about the needs of others, without also bringing up that fear, pretty much every time.
The rights of women are not going to suddenly disappear because there are people who we call women. Everyone has the to vote. We’re not going to lose that. We have a right to equal pay. We’re not going to lose that. We were never that safe in public bathroom because predators exist. We’re not making new ones with this approach; we’re just making the lives of vulnerable people a tiny bit better.
So what if they change their mind or the transition is harmful, as long as it is done lawfully? As far as I’m concerned they could go back and forth 5 times, it has nothing to do with me and I don’t see an impact on our society either. Do you have the same concerns re breast implants, botox etc. ? What about eating junk food and getting diabetees at 16? People do stupid shit all the time. If Janet feels like she should have a penis and later changes his mind, what exactly is there to debate? Your argument sounds like that Russian law designed to “protect” children from turning gay.
I tend to agree with your feelings towards her complaints, but if someone were to bring up this same argument in the BLM thread and replace the word “abuse” with “discrimination”, you would rightfully take them to task.
Having rights and having laws are not the same thing as those rights and laws being respected or being given the weight that they deserve. Rowling’s arguments seem to be that granting certain trans-people rights might be used to diminish the rights of the much larger group of women - rights that are not usually given too much respect as they stand, and rights that have only recently been gained, politically-speaking.
I don’t personally find her arguments to be all that persuasive. The bathroom thing (which she brings up several times) is laughable as @Nesrie points out upthread, and all the other stuff seems to be some variation of a “slippery-slope” argument, which tend to be reducto-ad-absurdium strawmen.
I am intrigued by her arguments about social-media induced mass-transition events, which kind of ring true to me… but I’m really wary about stuff like this nowadays. I’d need a lot more data.
Except this would be like a white person saying if I give another group rights, somehow I will lose mine. And what… rights are those exactly?
BLM has several people pointing out that the desire is equality, real equality. It’s not revenge, and not taking.
What hard fought rights does Rowling believe women are going to lose? It’s not speaking up. She has a voice, she has heck of a lot of volume, but no she is not shielded from criticism. Women fought for the right to vote. We’re not going to lose that. Does she think suddenly a bunch of men are going to call themselves women so they can claim the Fortune 500 CEO is truly representative… that’s ludicrous.
The thing is, if you agree with “my body my choice”, then there is nothing others can do to stop someone from transitioning, or even do a reversal. For underage kids sure, they probably need parental consent as well, but not for adults.
I think there are less judgemental ways to help confused people other than to say “this is a phase” or “you don’t know what you are doing”. Anyway if people are going through medical procedures to transition, the doctors would have fully informed them of the implications.
Sort of – that comparison occurred to me too, but I think it’s a little unfair to her argument.
Sticking with the BLM analogy I think it would be more like an African-American person saying that if Haitian-American immigrants were given some special status it would diminish the rights of the larger group, hard-won back in the 60s. So a large-but-disadvantaged group saying that by giving a much smaller disadvantaged group something it would take away rights from the larger group.
She does seem to think it’s a zero-sum game somehow, and It’s certainly a shitty look: Hey, we’ve been mistreated, so I don’t like the fact that these other mistreated people are making progress!
Yeah, I have trouble figuring that out too. I’ve read her article a couple times, and the only thing I can really cite easily is this:
[The trans-rights movement is] pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.
The problem is that it has irreversible consequences. Once you destroy fertility and cut off breasts, there’s no way to bring those things back (the former, not at all, and the latter, not in a natural way). So encouraging young teens or kids who are naturally bad at making decisions make these decisions that have massive impact on the rest of their life is problematic, and requires barriers.
When my daughters were young I know exactly where I would have stood on this discussion. But now that they are older, and we have talked about this for various reasons, I am much less sure of my argument. I can understand peoples unease with it. But I don’t think it will result in a pandemic of sexual assaults in women’s restrooms. Violence in restrooms usually comes from other sources.
