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  #21  
Unread 07-08-2020, 01:01 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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Her "belief about gender identity" is that we should make it more difficult for trans people to access life-saving medical care.

Last edited by Aaron Novick; 07-08-2020 at 01:13 PM.
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  #22  
Unread 07-08-2020, 01:09 PM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is online now
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I don't agree with her there and didn't share her view of Jeremy Corbyn, but we agreed on Brexit and I admire her attitude to income tax.

It just seemed a bit "little" to call her a horrible person when the rest of your arguments are expressed with such dignity. I feel that there should be a gap between differences of opinion and personal animosity, to keep the disputed ground free of mud and the discussion clear of it.


Editing back to say I now read the above as superior and smug and I apologise for not finding a better way of saying it.
.

Last edited by Ann Drysdale; 07-08-2020 at 01:21 PM. Reason: self-evident.
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  #23  
Unread 07-08-2020, 01:30 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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Perhaps you are right, Ann (and I don't read your post as superior and smug at all). I have enough trans friends that I tend to react rather negatively to people espousing the view that they are best off dead or, failing that, at least miserable. (If you will a policy, you will its consequences.)

Regardless, nothing in my larger point turns on agreeing with me that Rowling is horrible. 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.

The same is true for Bari Weiss, another distinguished signatory of the letter, who is most noteworthy for her attempts to get professors fired for espousing wrongthink about Israel.
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  #24  
Unread 07-08-2020, 01:39 PM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is online now
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Thank you, Aaron. That is an extremely gracious reply. I, too, have several trans friends and am well aware of the destructive power of the TERFs.

Your further clarification is appreciated, too.
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  #25  
Unread 07-08-2020, 01:46 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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It's a whole other matter, but, as it happens, I do agree with the "gender critical" crowd about one thing: they aren't TERFs. There were actual radical feminists who were trans exclusionary (and that's its own problem), but Rowling, Kathleen Stock, and company aren't radical feminists. They're just reactionaries, recycling the arguments of the "gay panic" of my childhood into a new "trans panic".

(They aren't "gender critical", either, since their position amounts to reinforcing sharp gender boundaries and expectations; their "criticism" of gender is just that we should just call it "sex" instead. But that, too, is a whole other matter.)
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  #26  
Unread 07-08-2020, 02:05 PM
W T Clark W T Clark is offline
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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
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  #27  
Unread 07-08-2020, 02:16 PM
Max Goodman Max Goodman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by W T Clark View Post
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.
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  #28  
Unread 07-08-2020, 02:18 PM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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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.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 07-15-2020 at 08:22 AM.
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  #29  
Unread 07-08-2020, 02:38 PM
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Kevin Rainbow Kevin Rainbow is offline
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Quote:
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.

Quote:
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.
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  #30  
Unread 07-08-2020, 02:38 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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[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.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 07-08-2020 at 02:40 PM.
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