[Aaron Novick]

Her "belief about gender identity" is that we should make it more difficult for trans people to access life-saving medical care.

[W T Clark]

I note that the previous controversy never involved Aaron's comment on J.K.'s literary abilities. Can we all agree there, perhaps?

Regards,
Cameron

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by W T Clark

I note that the previous controversy never involved Aaron's comment on J.K.'s literary abilities. Can we all agree there, perhaps?

I might have some thoughts to share about that, but if you want to pursue the topic, it would be wise to start a new thread rather than lead this one astray.

[Mark McDonnell]

I believe there's a school of thought that suggests that some children and teenagers who believe themselves to be trans may actually be gay or just gender non-conforming, and that some gay and particularly some lesbian people are themselves uncomfortable with the militancy of some trans activists.

https://news.trust.org/item/20190412100802-6md1q/

I don't believe I've read anything from Rowling that would fit my definition of hatred. Here's the most in depth she has been about her interest in the issue

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j...gender-issues/

And I assume she signed the letter, not so much in response to the criticism she has received but in response to the woman she supported who was fired for saying "men can't change into women" (or similar). I've read about this from the perspective of trans people, gay people and feminists who feel uncomfortable with the focus on gender rather than biology and on transwomen accessing or working in previously women-only spaces such as women's refuge centres. And after reading a fair amount from all sides of the issue I still don't quite know what to think. This suggests to me that it's a complex issue and it's foolish to pretend it isn't. In fact pretending it isn't seems the definition of what the letter calls a "tendency to dissolve complex policy issues into blinding moral certainty". (As to Rowling having received nothing more severe than criticism, well, she has received hundreds of death threats I believe)

But I didn't really want to focus on this.

Aaron, maybe I'm just a dupe of the right wing media, who knows. I would happily read any stories about right wing suppression of speech (genuinely) because this isn't about partisan politics for me. I'm sure there will be many examples around the Israel/Palestine issue that you suggest is Chomsky's reason for signing the letter.

When I was in my teens I was a massive fan of The Dead Kennedys, the left wing, San Francisco shock-punk band. I read as much about them as I could, which wasn't easy pre-internet. I learned, through magazines and liner notes, that their lyrics and artwork had often been the target of censorship and even an obscenity case, which they fought and which financially ruined them. Their attackers were evangelical Christian groups, the "Moral Majority" (the name of one of their songs) and well-meaning 'concerned liberals' like Tipper Gore who created the "Parental Advisory" labels that started being stuck on records in the 80s. I knew nothing about US politics, sitting in my bedroom in northern England, other than Ronald Reagan was an idiot and used to be in bad westerns. But I knew whose side I was on. The moral majority is just wearing a different hat these days, but very often when I read about this stuff (in my right-wing news sources of choice, the guardian and the BBC ) I get exactly the same feeling. I know it when I see it.

Edit: I assume you'd agree that Germaine Greer, whether you think she's just a transphobe or not, is a genuine feminist.

[Julie Steiner]

[Cross-posted because I'm longwinded]

I don't think JK Rowling is either a terrible writer (specific objections, please?) or a horrible person, but she is obstinately, defiantly wrong on this particular point. The bathroom and dressing room policies she advocates cause real trauma to real people, supposedly in order to spare hypothetical people from hypothetical trauma. The only thing such policies accomplish is to legitimize the harassment and intimidation of trans people, for no good reason.

More people can actually pee in peace without the benefit of laws mandating who does and does not belong in which bathroom.

Trying to use legislation to force the trans person in my family to use the ladies' room rather than the men's room, despite his beard (!), is a solution to a problem that just doesn't exist. Other men don't care that he uses the men's room (although more discreetly than they tend to), and surely women who want the ladies' room to be a safe, man-free space are far happier with him not using the ladies' room.

The current arrangement is working just fine for everyone but JK Rowling, and those who share her notion that people's bathroom usage should reflect whichever of two cubbies their birth certificates pigeonholed them in, no matter what.

That said, I don't think the best way to persuade JK Rowling to have a change of heart is to attack and threaten and bully and vilify her. True, she is advocating policies that have demonstrably resulted in attacks, threats, bullying, and vilification for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Some might say there's a certain eye-for-an-eye justice in that. But I'll offset that cliché with the one that says two wrongs don't make a right.

Besides, if calling people stupid and horrible and deplorable and transphobic, etc., were actually an effective strategy for making people see the error of their ways, we'd all be making dozens of U-turns in our views each week. Instead, most of us tend to double down on our original points of view in response to such aggression, and surely we've witnessed our opponents do the same. So there's that, too.

[James Brancheau]

Never mind. Waste of time.

[Kevin Rainbow]

It remains the case that she has faced no consequences more severe than criticism. (And she has used threats of legal action to suppress such criticism.) So the point stands that her praise of "free speech" is rather laughable hypocrisy.

Why should she (or anyone else) for simply expressing a position about an issue?

Once you target the person him/herself with expressions like "horrible person", that is far from merely criticizing someone's position. It looks like your basis for judging people's souls is their tweets. What a profound way of delving into a human. But you have a lot of company in that approach.

And she has used threats of legal action to suppress such criticism.

That's false. She is specifically targeting misrepresentations and lies - defamation. If someone made gross misrepresentations about you, I think you would probably do something similar. Defending yourself against abusive lies and misrepresentations is not an attempt to suppress legitimate criticism.

[Aaron Novick]

Germaine Greer is an actual radical feminist; she is one of the figures for whom the epithet "TERF" was coined, and it is perfectly descriptive of her. Today's anti-trans activists owe little to nothing to this tradition, which is why it's misleading to refer to them as TERFs. They're just reactionary.

Yes, there's a school of "thought" that children and teenagers who believe themselves to be trans are actually gay. It's baseless.* Just because someone makes up worries out of thin air doesn't mean you need to believe them. It's just a "trans panic" akin to the "gay panic" of the 90s. That a bunch of lesbians are signing on, when they of all people should know better, is pathetic, but perhaps not surprising.

*It's anecdotal, but the trans people I know report that it's much more common to meet trans people who thought they might just be gay. Which isn't surprising, since being gay is much more socially accepted now than being trans—it would surely be "nicer" for them if they were gay and not trans.

I don't think you're a dupe of the right, Mark, so much as I think you are overly convinced by the optics of reasonableness, even when underneath it there's no substance. That does have the result of making you susceptible to the right in particular, since the right has figured out how to manufacture controversy, to make issues seem complex when they aren't. They are horrifyingly effective at manufacturing "sides" to debates that don't really have them. They've done it with climate change; they're doing the same damn thing with trans issues. Sometimes a cigar is just a god damn cigar, not a "complex issue". But since it's much easier to produce bullshit than to dismantle it, the "debate"-generator always has the upper hand in these matters, especially since when people lose patience with their nonsense, they can always accuse people of "a tendency to dissolve complex policy issues into blinding moral certainty."

Regarding the right-wing threat to free speech, see here and here.

[Aaron Novick]

[deleted ]

[Mark McDonnell]

it's anecdotal, but the trans people I know report that it's much more common to meet trans people who thought they might just be gay...being gay is much more socially accepted now than being trans.

This is also purely anecdotal, but I teach teenagers and I would say it's the other way around. Being trans and non-binary seems quite fashionable. It's all over YouTube. In the last two years at my high school (13 to 18 year olds) there have been about 8 cases of students changing gender identity and emails from management asking for them to be addressed by a different name and pronoun. But to my knowledge in that time I've taught maybe three 'out' gay teenage boys and no out lesbians. I don't know what to make of this, but it is my honest experience. If what you say is anecdotally true, why is it beyond the realm of possibility ("baseless") that it could also happen the other way around, given the high visibility of the trans issue? There's no judgement here, only calls for discussion. There's only panic if you want to see it.

I disagree that I'm "susceptible to the optics of reasonableness" and "susceptible to the right in particular". The right have nothing to do with my reserving the right to think, for example, that the trans issue might have some complexity to it, and I can see right wing takes on it, like that ridiculous article in First Things, for the nonsense they are. And what has climate change to do with this conversation? You insult me if you think I see that as an undecided issue. The "woke" chilling of expression in the arts is a real thing. It isn't the most important thing in the world. It isn't as important as getting rid of Trump for instance (though it may well be helping him) but as an "artist" (ahem) it sticks in my throat.

Btw I can only access the first link. I'll have a read.

Night night all.