I disagree with Rowling on trans-issues *and* I think Rowling's critics are dishonest

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

I don’t think trans girls past age 8 or 10 (eg past puberty onset) should be allowed to play in any girls sport where there is a competitive tryout. I am fine with them joining rec teams or no-cut high school teams. But where a team has tryouts or cuts (varsity sports, club teams, select teams, etc.), I think it is grotesquely unfair and morally wrong to allow trans girls who have started or gone through male puberty to take a spot that would otherwise be taken by a natal girl.

Cheerleading is extremely competitive and I would say that the same rule should apply.

What about girls who are naturally stronger or taller than the other girls? Should they get a pass for their biological advantages? How is that fair?

Oh stop with the gaslighting. We see through this nonsense now.

No seriously. Explain why natural advantages in strength and height among biological females don't count but trans-women should be excluded because of their biological advantages? It's just an excuse to be exclusionary based on "tradition." There's no objective reason to include the one but exclude the other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I want to know: do the trans advocates in this thread about JKR and transphobia believe that convicted rapists that self-ID as women should be placed in women’s prisons? And do you believe that women who have been raped are bigots for not wanting to be seen by people with a penis when those rape victims are in crisis?

These are positions that JKR takes publicly and for which she has endured countless rape threats, death threats, and for which she has to pay for additional security.

What is your position on these points?

Nobody wants to be in prison with convicted rapists. Not even other convicted rapists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I want to know: do the trans advocates in this thread about JKR and transphobia believe that convicted rapists that self-ID as women should be placed in women’s prisons? And do you believe that women who have been raped are bigots for not wanting to be seen by people with a penis when those rape victims are in crisis?

These are positions that JKR takes publicly and for which she has endured countless rape threats, death threats, and for which she has to pay for additional security.

What is your position on these points?

Nobody wants to be in prison with convicted rapists. Not even other convicted rapists.

Answer the question asked, please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

I don’t think trans girls past age 8 or 10 (eg past puberty onset) should be allowed to play in any girls sport where there is a competitive tryout. I am fine with them joining rec teams or no-cut high school teams. But where a team has tryouts or cuts (varsity sports, club teams, select teams, etc.), I think it is grotesquely unfair and morally wrong to allow trans girls who have started or gone through male puberty to take a spot that would otherwise be taken by a natal girl.

Cheerleading is extremely competitive and I would say that the same rule should apply.

What about girls who are naturally stronger or taller than the other girls? Should they get a pass for their biological advantages? How is that fair?

Oh stop with the gaslighting. We see through this nonsense now.

No seriously. Explain why natural advantages in strength and height among biological females don't count but trans-women should be excluded because of their biological advantages? It's just an excuse to be exclusionary based on "tradition." There's no objective reason to include the one but exclude the other.

Transwomen are biologically male and begin with a natural advantage when competing against women - even with hormone therapy. This is called science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I want to know: do the trans advocates in this thread about JKR and transphobia believe that convicted rapists that self-ID as women should be placed in women’s prisons? And do you believe that women who have been raped are bigots for not wanting to be seen by people with a penis when those rape victims are in crisis?

These are positions that JKR takes publicly and for which she has endured countless rape threats, death threats, and for which she has to pay for additional security.

What is your position on these points?

Nobody wants to be in prison with convicted rapists. Not even other convicted rapists.

what a dumb response

no kidding, and that's why the rapists want to be in prison with the women - more raping

explain why you hate these women so much that you think they should be locked up at night with male rapists?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:J.K. Rowling has said some stuff I disagree with about trans issues. She seems to think that the danger to women biologically born that way from trans-women entering women's spaces is greater than I think the reality actually is. I'm not a woman, trans or otherwise, so my opinion on that issue doesn't necessarily carry any weight. But I know that a lot of biological women are on the side of trans-women and don't really care if, say, they come into women's bathrooms.

So, anyway, I think Rowling has it wrong on trans issues. On the other hand, I routinely see characterizations of Rowling's positions from trans-advocates that just aren't supported by Rowling's actual statements. For example, a tweet from someone with 90k followers came across my feed saying, "Rowling literally tweeted that all trans women should legally be presumed to be rapists." (https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1626209112630628352) That's a pretty concrete declaration. The author is not speaking figuratively and says that this is something that has been tweeted by Rowling. When asked for a screenshot or link to this specific statement ... the response that it was not a tweet and that the actual quote was, "it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence." Which is ... a little bit different.

I mean, I guess I don't worry too much about Rowling -- she can cry herself to sleep on big old bales of money. But overheated rhetoric about a more nuanced line of conversation, in my opinion, undermines trans-advocacy.

JK Rowling made so much money that she can say anything she damn well pleases. What a liberating feeling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

I don’t think trans girls past age 8 or 10 (eg past puberty onset) should be allowed to play in any girls sport where there is a competitive tryout. I am fine with them joining rec teams or no-cut high school teams. But where a team has tryouts or cuts (varsity sports, club teams, select teams, etc.), I think it is grotesquely unfair and morally wrong to allow trans girls who have started or gone through male puberty to take a spot that would otherwise be taken by a natal girl.

Cheerleading is extremely competitive and I would say that the same rule should apply.

What about girls who are naturally stronger or taller than the other girls? Should they get a pass for their biological advantages? How is that fair?

Oh stop with the gaslighting. We see through this nonsense now.

No seriously. Explain why natural advantages in strength and height among biological females don't count but trans-women should be excluded because of their biological advantages? It's just an excuse to be exclusionary based on "tradition." There's no objective reason to include the one but exclude the other.

It figures that you don’t care at all about the hundreds of years of exclusion and overt sexist violence athletic girls have faced and continue to face. You just want to destroy the hard-fought right girls have to play in safety and to destroy those carefully built spaces for athletic girls that have taken literally decades to build.

This is what people mean when they talk about how much of the trans rights movement is part of a global violent and sexist backlash against advances by women and girls. This isn’t “inclusion.” It is destruction. And it needs to be identified as the destructive force that it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:J.K. Rowling has said some stuff I disagree with about trans issues. She seems to think that the danger to women biologically born that way from trans-women entering women's spaces is greater than I think the reality actually is. I'm not a woman, trans or otherwise, so my opinion on that issue doesn't necessarily carry any weight. But I know that a lot of biological women are on the side of trans-women and don't really care if, say, they come into women's bathrooms.

So, anyway, I think Rowling has it wrong on trans issues. On the other hand, I routinely see characterizations of Rowling's positions from trans-advocates that just aren't supported by Rowling's actual statements. For example, a tweet from someone with 90k followers came across my feed saying, "Rowling literally tweeted that all trans women should legally be presumed to be rapists." (https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1626209112630628352) That's a pretty concrete declaration. The author is not speaking figuratively and says that this is something that has been tweeted by Rowling. When asked for a screenshot or link to this specific statement ... the response that it was not a tweet and that the actual quote was, "it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence." Which is ... a little bit different.

I mean, I guess I don't worry too much about Rowling -- she can cry herself to sleep on big old bales of money. But overheated rhetoric about a more nuanced line of conversation, in my opinion, undermines trans-advocacy.

JK Rowling made so much money that she can say anything she damn well pleases. What a liberating feeling.

I think it is a credit to her that instead of quietly riding off into the sunset and enjoyed her piles of cash, she is funding rape crisis centers and speaking out for the safety of women prisoners. She is wealthy enough that she can take a stand to protect vulnerable women and children without fearing for her job (though she does have to fear for her life, given the violent threats she receives). She herself has a history of sexual assault that she’s been open about. I think her advocacy for marginalized women and children is admirable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

I don’t think trans girls past age 8 or 10 (eg past puberty onset) should be allowed to play in any girls sport where there is a competitive tryout. I am fine with them joining rec teams or no-cut high school teams. But where a team has tryouts or cuts (varsity sports, club teams, select teams, etc.), I think it is grotesquely unfair and morally wrong to allow trans girls who have started or gone through male puberty to take a spot that would otherwise be taken by a natal girl.

Cheerleading is extremely competitive and I would say that the same rule should apply.

What about girls who are naturally stronger or taller than the other girls? Should they get a pass for their biological advantages? How is that fair?

Oh stop with the gaslighting. We see through this nonsense now.

No seriously. Explain why natural advantages in strength and height among biological females don't count but trans-women should be excluded because of their biological advantages? It's just an excuse to be exclusionary based on "tradition." There's no objective reason to include the one but exclude the other.

It figures that you don’t care at all about the hundreds of years of exclusion and overt sexist violence athletic girls have faced and continue to face. You just want to destroy the hard-fought right girls have to play in safety and to destroy those carefully built spaces for athletic girls that have taken literally decades to build.

This is what people mean when they talk about how much of the trans rights movement is part of a global violent and sexist backlash against advances by women and girls. This isn’t “inclusion.” It is destruction. And it needs to be identified as the destructive force that it is.

This sounds like QAnon level conspiracy. Trans women are transitioning to take rights away from natal females on a vast global conspiracy. Not because they experience gender dysphoria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

Why is it that whenever anyone says it not fair for trans girls to compete in girls’ athletics, people act as though the only alternative is for trans girls to be excluded from athletics altogether? Has there been any movement to prevent trans girls from competing in boys’ athletics? Cis girls have joined boys’ wrestling and football teams when there was no girls’ equivalent.

Good point. Trans girls should be able to play with the boys. But why are cis girls playing with boys and taking spots from natal boys? I don't understand that logic. Why is that allowed in a competitive environment?

Testosterone is basically a natural performance enhancing drug that cis women do not have access to, at least not in the same quantities. Cis women are playing at a natural disadvantage when they play in men's leagues. People respect that.

Trans women, on the other hand, have or had a testosterone advantage that cis women do not have access to. Many people consider that unfair as women's leagues were created to level the playing field for cis women.

All of that may be true but there's more to boys and men's sports than competition. One of my kids is a boy. Outside of video games, sports is one of the main ways they create and maintain friendships. By eliminating one boy from (using your example) the football team, you're cutting him off from socially integrating with the other boys his age. Boys need sports for reasons other than competition. If the girl wants to play football, she should join the girl's football team. If there isn't one, she should start one. Girls on boys teams is wrong and harmful to boys. Trans girls on the football team is fine since they're natal males. Sex segregated sports is an absolute necessity.

This is not a problem. There are only 32 transgender athletes in the US according to the NCAA. 32!

How is 1 girl going to create a team of girl for football and then form other teams of girls to play against? Talk about an impossible task. If a girl makes a boys team, she should be allowed to play. If your son isn’t better than her at playing that’s on him.

So you think girls should play on the boys team but trans girls shouldn’t play on the girls team. Wow either we believe in sex segregated sports or we don’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

I don’t think trans girls past age 8 or 10 (eg past puberty onset) should be allowed to play in any girls sport where there is a competitive tryout. I am fine with them joining rec teams or no-cut high school teams. But where a team has tryouts or cuts (varsity sports, club teams, select teams, etc.), I think it is grotesquely unfair and morally wrong to allow trans girls who have started or gone through male puberty to take a spot that would otherwise be taken by a natal girl.

Cheerleading is extremely competitive and I would say that the same rule should apply.

What about girls who are naturally stronger or taller than the other girls? Should they get a pass for their biological advantages? How is that fair?

Oh stop with the gaslighting. We see through this nonsense now.

No seriously. Explain why natural advantages in strength and height among biological females don't count but trans-women should be excluded because of their biological advantages? It's just an excuse to be exclusionary based on "tradition." There's no objective reason to include the one but exclude the other.

It figures that you don’t care at all about the hundreds of years of exclusion and overt sexist violence athletic girls have faced and continue to face. You just want to destroy the hard-fought right girls have to play in safety and to destroy those carefully built spaces for athletic girls that have taken literally decades to build.

This is what people mean when they talk about how much of the trans rights movement is part of a global violent and sexist backlash against advances by women and girls. This isn’t “inclusion.” It is destruction. And it needs to be identified as the destructive force that it is.

This sounds like QAnon level conspiracy. Trans women are transitioning to take rights away from natal females on a vast global conspiracy. Not because they experience gender dysphoria.

More dishonesty and lies. I suppose it is expected.

Just be honest. That is what women like JKR are demanding: that trans rights activists be honest about their desire to put violent self-ID’d rapists in with vulnerable women, to force raped women to get crisis care from people with penises, to take limited athletic opportunities away from natal girls, to allow self-ID’d natal men into traditionally female places where women used to be free of sex assaults and harassment. Just be honest about what you are really advocating for. Then we can have a real conversation about what is actually happening and the balance of harms to the vulnerable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I think there has been a chilling effect on women who are concerned about having transwomen in certain spaces. I want to be sensitive to these concerns, some of which are legitimate. (Other concerns are maybe borne of fear that isn't completely justified but are, nevertheless, sincere and aren't coming from a place of malice.)

Also, I want to be supportive of trans people. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to reconcile these things.

An (admittedly imperfect) analogy. I think society should be supportive of people with disabilities. But I don't think this means we should eliminate vision requirements for a bus driver.

Similarly, I have no problem forbidding
1. Transwomen working in a rape crisis center (such as that funded by JK Rowling)
2. Transwomen who have committed sex crimes in a women's prison
3. Transwomen in women's sports

Inclusion is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

Disagree mostly with transwonen in women’s sports. D1 varsity sport’s & professional level stuff, I can see. But at lower levels of competition, I don’t think trans women and girls should be excluded. I know 4 biological boys transitioning to girls and honestly they are unathletic. If they want to get involved with sports, they’d be way more comfortable with other girls & wouldn’t be depriving other girls of very much.

How young do they have to be? There are multiple high school girls who have lost access to university athletic scholarships because they raced against trans girls who are unquestionably faster in high school. That is, in my view, a miscarriage of justice.

Track is literally a zero sum game. When one wins, another loses. And qualifying races start the first year of high school.

The number of girls going to college on an athletic scholarship is a rounding error compared to the number of girls in sports. If colleges want to make girls' scholarships available only to biological girls and women, I wouldn't personally have a problem with that. I just don't think trans-girls should be excluded from girls sports as a matter of course. I think we lose site of the big picture when we focus narrowly on the very top athletes and then use those concerns to make policy affecting the median and lower level athletes who are, nevertheless, getting a variety of benefits from participating in sports.

But the world doesn’t work this way. At the elite levels, which start in middle school, athletics is a zero-sum game. A girl who doesn’t get a spot on the track team does not get the better coaching and exposure that leads to the offer of a position on the regional team, etc. Look, I can tell you have no experience at all with competitive middle school and high school athletes, but what you are saying simply doesn’t work for those ages because athletics is a zero sum game. If a trans girl takes the spot of an otherwise competitive high school runner, that high school runner isn’t getting a scholarship opportunity. And it’s not just college: it’s varsity sports, it’s local scholarships, it’s training for the next level. You think college athletics is this unique independent thing that has nothing to do with teen youth sports, and that is absolutely not tethered to any reality whatsoever.

I am ok with trans girls joining purely rec teams and teams of kids under age 8. But I think it is grossly unfair and misogynist to allow trans girls to take spots from natal girls in teen girl competitive sports.

Honestly, this sounds like a problem with how kids' athletics are structured that goes beyond gender issues.

Fine, but that doesn’t change the reality, which is that trans girls in competitive girls sports at the middle and high school level take opportunities away from natal girls. You may not like the system, but it is how it works.

I’m not sure what else you want. You want very competitive kids to not be competitive? Do you prefer the European and Chinese system where kids who aren’t identified at age 8 never have a chance at high-level athletics again?

If you don’t like kids playing competitive sports, I don’t know what to tell you. Some kids like being very competitive athletes, and some of those kids are natal girls. You appear to wish natal girls weren’t competitive athletes so you don’t have to deal with the fact that they are losing opportunities, but they exist.

When you say competitive athletics, are you referring to athletics with scholarships only or are you saying no trans girl should be allowed to play sports in high school? What about something like cheerleading where it's sort of individual as well as team based? Some schools definitely give scholarships for it.

I don’t think trans girls past age 8 or 10 (eg past puberty onset) should be allowed to play in any girls sport where there is a competitive tryout. I am fine with them joining rec teams or no-cut high school teams. But where a team has tryouts or cuts (varsity sports, club teams, select teams, etc.), I think it is grotesquely unfair and morally wrong to allow trans girls who have started or gone through male puberty to take a spot that would otherwise be taken by a natal girl.

Cheerleading is extremely competitive and I would say that the same rule should apply.

What about girls who are naturally stronger or taller than the other girls? Should they get a pass for their biological advantages? How is that fair?

Oh stop with the gaslighting. We see through this nonsense now.

No seriously. Explain why natural advantages in strength and height among biological females don't count but trans-women should be excluded because of their biological advantages? It's just an excuse to be exclusionary based on "tradition." There's no objective reason to include the one but exclude the other.

Let me ask you this: why do we have woman's sports at all? We don't have woman's math, woman's accounting. woman's poetry. The answer to that question determines who should qualify as a"woman"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Onion weighs in with what, I assume, is a response to the "In Defense of Rowling" New York Times piece.

https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997

It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible
...

“Quentin” is a 14-year-old assigned female at birth who now identifies as male against the wishes of his parents. His transition was supported by one of his unmarried teachers, who is not a virgin. He stole his parents’ car and drove to the hospital, where a doctor immediately began performing top surgery on him. Afterward, driving home drunk from the hospital, Quentin became suicidally depressed, and he wonders now, homeless and ridden with gonorrhea, if transitioning was a mistake.

We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.

(The bolded made me laugh.)

The Babylon Bee's take is better.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - According to sources, a dangerous right-wing extremist named J.K. Rowling has taken to the internet to spread hateful rhetoric. Authorities have called for decisive action to silence the bigoted fascist before she further spreads her message.

"Men aren't women," said the disgusting transphobe in a recent Twitter post. She then doubled down on her controversial message by also saying "Women aren't men."

"This is a hate crime," said EU Diversity Minister Günter Schreiber. "Everyone knows that women aren't a real thing, but rather a fantastical state of being that ebbs and flows through the human imagination like a wisp of magical fairy dust. That's just science."

The EU has called for a hearing to discuss what they can do to silence the deadly thought criminal before she gains an audience and teaches them basic biology.

+1

I wish the people who are angry at JKR could understand how wildly out-of-touch they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I want to know: do the trans advocates in this thread about JKR and transphobia believe that convicted rapists that self-ID as women should be placed in women’s prisons? And do you believe that women who have been raped are bigots for not wanting to be seen by people with a penis when those rape victims are in crisis?

These are positions that JKR takes publicly and for which she has endured countless rape threats, death threats, and for which she has to pay for additional security.

What is your position on these points?

Who is making these threats to do her bodily harm? Women?

Men. Women don’t typically send out rape threats.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:England’s transphobia is worse than America. I don’t know why this is suddenly a thing. Trans people are such a tiny percentage of the population! I am talking just transgender folks, not drag queens which is an entirely different thing. It makes me very sad that there is so much vitriol these days towards trans people. I grew up with someone who is trans. She is just a lovely person. She is very kind and wouldn’t hurt anyone. I knew her when she was a child. When I told my Republican mother that he was transitioning to a woman, my mom said, “oh it all makes sense!” My mom knew him in grade school and could sense there was something up. Many people are making decisions for others that they don’t even know! They fear something they know nothing about!

I have a child with ASD and depression and I am fearful of a gender clinic convincing them to change their gender.

You should be. This is what happened to mine.

I know one that has become convinced "they" are trans. Not through a gender clinic, but from the internet. I guess it gives them hope, and so maybe it is not all bad. But I worry what will happen when they realize this is not a magic cure.

Do they have gender dysphoria?

It is hard to tell. They never used to express this at all. They do not claim they have felt this all their life. They just now say that their problems are due to being trans.

It sounds like you haven't actually had an indepth discussion about it with them. Most trans people I know seem to have experienced gender dysphoria from a young age. That seems to be common? But these are more binary trans people. I'm not sure if nonbinary people are the same?

My kid sees his ASP behavior as hidden trans behavior. And if a guy is sensitive, he’s told he’s probably trans.

What? Who told him he's probably trans? Has he been dressing up in women's clothes at home his whole life and wishing he was a girl/woman? Otherwise, why would someone think he's trans because he's sensitive? He's probably just super gay.

You must not have any tweens or teenagers in your house. Those things are not required for an adolescent to be told they are trans. Any sign of gender non-conformance will do these days.