Is J.K. Rowling transphobic

[DrZoidberg]

J.K. Rowling has of late been accused of transphobia becasue of some tweets she has made.

This is the most "transphobic" one.

"‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate"

The LGBTQ (etc) world went nuts and she was a target and accused of transphobia.

She then published a crime novel where the psycho killer is a transvestite.

At this point I thought J.K. Rowling was still the hero of the story. This whole movement of demanding "inclusive gender neutral language" is idiotic. Language isn't prescribed. It's an evolving creature of its own. People use the language they do because it's serves the communicators purpose. By inserting extraneous nonsense we confuse and make the language unclear. Something an author understands better than most people.

But here is were it gets interesting.

Here's the text that J.K. Rowling posts in her defence:

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

There's a couple of things here that make me react.

1. She draws a straight line between gender reassignment and biological men gaining access to female only spaces. As if transexuals raping straight women public restrooms is a big problem in the world. It isn't BTW. Yes, transexual women commit sex crimes at a rate comparable to any man. And since men perpetrate sex crimes about 100 times more than women they stick out in the statistic compared to women. But they're still rare. Roving gangs of transexuals in ladies lavatories isn't something any woman will ever have to worry about.

2. Why is she bringing up her own history of domestic abuse and being a rape survivor? How is this relevant in the discussion? It makes me think of gay rights opponents bringing up pedophilia and sex with animals as if that's the same thing as gay rights.

3. She makes herself out to be a spokesperson for this issue. She says she has been contacted by transexuals. So what? She's not an expert. Why does she have an opinion on this? She can just pass the ball over to an actual expert and then sit the fuck down. I understand that celebrities often do this. But it's never an excuse and not a behaviour anybody should condone. Being a celebrity doesn't make somebody a universal expert on every subject. I hate this. At no point in her letter does she explain why she's opening her mouth on a subject she's a complete outsider of.

4. I completely agree on her argument about their being biological differences between men and women. But how she ties that in with the rest? How is it relevant? It's like she's defending the right of girls to be girls and boys to be boys. Last time I checked that wasn't threatened by anyone. Trans rights is about giving opportunities to those boys and girls who don't want to be what they were born as, and nothing else.

5. Her argument about that it's whole groups of friend groups who have come out as transexual. So the fuck what? The teenage years are about experimenting with identity. Transexuality is the new thing. And a sure fire way for teens to annoy their parents. So obviously we'll get a huge overrepresentation in the stats. But we all know what this is about. Most of these kids will grow out of it. The ones who weren't genuine transexuals. That's no argument against transexuals peeing in ladies lavatories.

6. Also, this whole thing about transexual women wanting to be women. If you read what they're saying themselves, they're not. The trans community have since the trans rights movement was born, claimed that transexuals wanted to be acknowledged as a third gender. Neither men nor women. This is a straw man.

At this point I do think J.K. Rowling is transphobic. A phobia is an irrational fear of something and her fears do not seem rational at all.

Here's a summary of transexual women and crime.

https://medium.com/@evastanford/transwomen-sexual-offenders-a-closer-look-6c507d9e2414

Thoughts? Am I completely nuts here?

 

[Ahab]

6. Also, this whole thing about transexual women wanting to be women. If you read what they're saying themselves, they're not. The trans community have since the trans rights movement was born, claimed that transexuals wanted to be acknowledged as a third gender. Neither men nor women. This is a straw man.

That is not my understanding. A trans woman generally wants to be treated as a 'woman full stop'. They don't want to be referred to as female.

"That is to say: Stop using “male” and “female” to refer to men and women. In fact, stop using sex-based words to refer to people at all. They’re words for bodies, not for people with hearts and souls and minds."


That quote is from a NYTimes Opinion Piece written by Devin Michelle Bunten on June 23, 2020.

Have to admit that even though I am in support of equal rights for trans people I find the philosophical ramifications of Ms Bunten's remarks to be rather disturbing. Do we really want to deny that people are bodies?

 

[DrZoidberg]

6. Also, this whole thing about transexual women wanting to be women. If you read what they're saying themselves, they're not. The trans community have since the trans rights movement was born, claimed that transexuals wanted to be acknowledged as a third gender. Neither men nor women. This is a straw man.

That is not my understanding. A trans woman generally wants to be treated as a 'woman full stop'. They don't want to be referred to as female.

"That is to say: Stop using “male” and “female” to refer to men and women. In fact, stop using sex-based words to refer to people at all. They’re words for bodies, not for people with hearts and souls and minds."


That quote is from a NYTimes Opinion Piece written by Devin Michelle Bunten on June 23, 2020.

Have to admit that even though I am in support of equal rights for trans people I find the philosophical ramifications of Ms Bunten's remarks to be rather disturbing. Do we really want to deny that people are bodies?

You got to separate out a couple of things. The Woke movement mostly consists of white middle-class CIS people who are offended via proxy. They're putting onto transexuals, gays and non-whites offence and demand that the group is offended for all manner of minor things. They are very vocal and very visible in the media. As well as populate the teaching faculties within gender studies. I looked up Devin Michelle Bunten. This fits her bio. There seems to have grown up an industry around woke journalism, where these woke "feminists" get attention and get published by repeating the woke gender study dogma to a public who eat it up. But without this seeming to have much support from the people they're trying to help.

Add that to teenagers who want to be special, are experimenting with identity and think they are transexual because that's what's trendy now. That's just teenagers being teenagers. This group is incredibly loud and vocal. As well as extreme. This is the kind of people who will grow out of their transexualism.

These two groups pretty much drown out the voices from the genuine transexual community who I think are, generally, very chill and relaxed about this, as well as reasonable. They don't get their panties in a bunch (=lol inapropriate joke) when people use the wrong pronoun.

My tribe is the queer tribe. I hang out with these people. These are my friends. I have several transexual friends in varying stages of transition. I think they're all pretty ok about the idea that they'll never be "real" women. Nor do they seem to want to. In the transvestite community some have "fishy" as an ideal. Ie, to pass as a woman on the street. Transexuals don't seem to give a shit about that. They're not even trying. They often wear the clothes they're comfortable with and like to signal, (in their dress) the gender confusion. They're of course happy when they pass as their chosen gender. It's nice for them. But I doubt it's a source of distress.

It also lands in philosophy. What is a woman? What is a man? What's the differences?

What the woke activists don't seem to grasp is the self contradiction in what they are saying. On the one hand gender is just a construct. Men and women think the same, and it's all just down to social conditioning. On the other hand transexuality is something we're born with and it's not fluid.

Transexuals are very aware that men and women fundamentally think differently. Especially the transexuals who have been on hormones and have witnessed their own brain go from one gender to the other and their thoughts radically shifting, as well as tastes in partners. It's pretty much a rule that people who transition break up with their long term partners after transition, (who supported them through it) and they find somebody very different afterwards. So they don't buy into the woke rhetoric. No matter what they say, Woke isn't for them and certainly doesn't represent them.

I like Buck Angel. He's a great source of articles on the issue. I've heard him speak at Stockholm gay pride. He's awesome-

 

[Ahab]

Thanks much for the interesting and informative post.

I think you make you good point regarding the distinction between the Woke movement and the transexual community.

I think JK Rowling's is addressing the Woke movements attacks on her so I'm not willing to put her in the transphobic camp. Afraid I don't have much more to add to that.

Take care.

 

[ronburgundy]

Yes, transexual women commit sex crimes at a rate comparable to any man.

Here's a summary of transexual women and crime.

https://medium.com/@evastanford/transwomen-sexual-offenders-a-closer-look-6c507d9e2414

Most of your post seemed reasonable, except this part. Your cite is utter bullshit and not scientific. It's a blog post by some unqualified hack lying about data and making massive invalid assumptions. He creates his own tables with "transwomen" listed as a group claiming 60 of them are in prison for "sexual offences", and gives a cite indicating he got this table from the BBC, when he fact the BBC reports only 60 Transgenders in prison for sexual offences overall, including transmen. The blogger then claims that only biological males can "rape" b/c the law requires that a penis penetrate a person for it to be rape, but transmen can have "penises". Plus under UK law, "Assault by penetration" with an object other than a penis is distinct from general "sexual assuault", and treated as far more serious with max penalties equal to rape (life imprisonment vs. 10 years for general "sexual assault"). In fact, men are often charged with "assault by penetration" instead rape, b/c it's easier to prove penetration with something than specifically with a penis (the victim themselves may not be certain).

The BBC source the blogger uses only separates into "rape" and "sexual assault", so we do not know how they assigned "assault by penetration" given the law treats it more as a variant of rape than assault.

So, not only are all his stats for transwomen sex crimes inflated by between double to 4 times, but he's using data that includes a total of maybe 14-30 transwomen convicted of rape or sexual assualt from which the blogger is attempting draw conclusions about such crimes in the total population of transwomen. All that doesn't even factor the likely enormous criminal justice bias against transwomen who are viewed as male perverts compared to the huge bias in favor of not convicting cis-women of sex crimes.

BTW, the blogger also misrepresents a Swedish study that many anti-trans people love to distort. They claim it shows transwomen have the same criminality of cis-males. However, the study's author has given interviews to correct the widespread distortion of her findings, and has stated that nothing can be said about sex offences specifically b/c their data did not differentiate between types of violent offences (some of which include "pushing a person during an argument"). She also said that when they split there data by year, the higher criminality for transwomen than cis-women only holds for 1973 to 1988, but not for 1989 to 2003.

[P][P]

"If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences [from cis-women] in mortality, suicide attempts, and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality."

[/P][/P]

The author goes on to mention other data on mortality and suicide rates suggesting that this pattern of transwomen having greater violent conflicts prior to 1990 was due to the very high levels of violence they themselves suffered for being transgender along with high poverty levels due to unemployment.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Yes, transexual women commit sex crimes at a rate comparable to any man.

Here's a summary of transexual women and crime.

https://medium.com/@evastanford/transwomen-sexual-offenders-a-closer-look-6c507d9e2414

Most of your post seemed reasonable, except this part. Your cite is utter bullshit and not scientific. It's a blog post by some unqualified hack lying about data and making massive invalid assumptions. He creates his own tables with "transwomen" listed as a group claiming 60 of them are in prison for "sexual offences", and gives a cite indicating he got this table from the BBC, when he fact the BBC reports only 60 Transgenders in prison for sexual offences overall, including transmen. The blogger then claims that only biological males can "rape" b/c the law requires that a penis penetrate a person for it to be rape, but transmen can have "penises". Plus under UK law, "Assault by penetration" with an object other than a penis is distinct from general "sexual assuault", and treated as far more serious with max penalties equal to rape (life imprisonment vs. 10 years for general "sexual assault"). In fact, men are often charged with "assault by penetration" instead rape, b/c it's easier to prove penetration with something than specifically with a penis (the victim themselves may not be certain).

The BBC source the blogger uses only separates into "rape" and "sexual assault", so we do not know how they assigned "assault by penetration" given the law treats it more as a variant of rape than assault.

So, not only are all his stats for transwomen sex crimes inflated by between double to 4 times, but he's using data that includes a total of maybe 14-30 transwomen convicted of rape or sexual assualt from which the blogger is attempting draw conclusions about such crimes in the total population of transwomen. All that doesn't even factor the likely enormous criminal justice bias against transwomen who are viewed as male perverts compared to the huge bias in favor of not convicting cis-women of sex crimes.

BTW, the blogger also misrepresents a Swedish study that many anti-trans people love to distort. They claim it shows transwomen have the same criminality of cis-males. However, the study's author has given interviews to correct the widespread distortion of her findings, and has stated that nothing can be said about sex offences specifically b/c their data did not differentiate between types of violent offences (some of which include "pushing a person during an argument"). She also said that when they split there data by year, the higher criminality for transwomen than cis-women only holds for 1973 to 1988, but not for 1989 to 2003.

[P][P]

"If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences [from cis-women] in mortality, suicide attempts, and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality."

[/P][/P]

The author goes on to mention other data on mortality and suicide rates suggesting that this pattern of transwomen having greater violent conflicts prior to 1990 was due to the very high levels of violence they themselves suffered for being transgender along with high poverty levels due to unemployment.

Thanks for being more dilligent than I was. Sorry about that. Great comment.

But doesn't change my basic argument, that J.K. Rowling really is transphobic. In the real sense. It rather emphasizes it.

 

[ronburgundy]

Most of your post seemed reasonable, except this part. Your cite is utter bullshit and not scientific. It's a blog post by some unqualified hack lying about data and making massive invalid assumptions. He creates his own tables with "transwomen" listed as a group claiming 60 of them are in prison for "sexual offences", and gives a cite indicating he got this table from the BBC, when he fact the BBC reports only 60 Transgenders in prison for sexual offences overall, including transmen. The blogger then claims that only biological males can "rape" b/c the law requires that a penis penetrate a person for it to be rape, but transmen can have "penises". Plus under UK law, "Assault by penetration" with an object other than a penis is distinct from general "sexual assuault", and treated as far more serious with max penalties equal to rape (life imprisonment vs. 10 years for general "sexual assault"). In fact, men are often charged with "assault by penetration" instead rape, b/c it's easier to prove penetration with something than specifically with a penis (the victim themselves may not be certain).

The BBC source the blogger uses only separates into "rape" and "sexual assault", so we do not know how they assigned "assault by penetration" given the law treats it more as a variant of rape than assault.

So, not only are all his stats for transwomen sex crimes inflated by between double to 4 times, but he's using data that includes a total of maybe 14-30 transwomen convicted of rape or sexual assualt from which the blogger is attempting draw conclusions about such crimes in the total population of transwomen. All that doesn't even factor the likely enormous criminal justice bias against transwomen who are viewed as male perverts compared to the huge bias in favor of not convicting cis-women of sex crimes.

BTW, the blogger also misrepresents a Swedish study that many anti-trans people love to distort. They claim it shows transwomen have the same criminality of cis-males. However, the study's author has given interviews to correct the widespread distortion of her findings, and has stated that nothing can be said about sex offences specifically b/c their data did not differentiate between types of violent offences (some of which include "pushing a person during an argument"). She also said that when they split there data by year, the higher criminality for transwomen than cis-women only holds for 1973 to 1988, but not for 1989 to 2003.

[P][P][/P][/P]

The author goes on to mention other data on mortality and suicide rates suggesting that this pattern of transwomen having greater violent conflicts prior to 1990 was due to the very high levels of violence they themselves suffered for being transgender along with high poverty levels due to unemployment.

Thanks for being more dilligent than I was. Sorry about that. Great comment.

But doesn't change my basic argument, that J.K. Rowling really is transphobic. In the real sense. It rather emphasizes it.

Agreed, it makes her more transphobic. In fact, the data suggests that the more societal acceptance they get as "women" the less crimes and acts of aggression they commit. Thus, denying them access to spaces designated for "women" may have the ironic effect of increasing the likelihood that women and people in general are victims of violence by transwomen.

 

[Politesse]

Rowling isn't just transphobic, she's out and out embracing her identity as a public transphobe. I say let her. I enjoyed my time in her fandom, but there are other books and movies in the world than Harry Potter.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Agreed, it makes her more transphobic. In fact, the data suggests that the more societal acceptance they get as "women" the less crimes and acts of aggression they commit. Thus, denying them access to spaces designated for "women" may have the ironic effect of increasing the likelihood that women and people in general are victims of violence by transwomen.

Yes. I have been made aware of trans people having trouble finding work. They're effectively shunned by society. Even in progressive countries/regions it's hard for trans people to get work. If they do they tend to work in LGBTQ organisations. Which is almost volonteer work, so paid extremly badly. We're basically pushing (via incentives) transexuals towards a life of crime.

The story is the same for any marginalised group trargetted by xenophobia. The solution is of course that we stop marginalising them.