Things that are the product of human imaginations
Rowling must be punished for knowing the difference between sex and gender:
The indiscretion for which she must be punished is saying that sex is real.
That’s sex as in male and female, not as in the activity. What kind of body a person has, not what they might plan to do with it in a “social bubble” (an England-only social bubble, it should be stressed). Sex as in the real, observable, and immutable difference between men and women.
Fortunately for her own sanity, the woman who made up muggles and quidditch and death eaters knows the difference between things that are real and things that are the product of human imaginations. She knows that sex is determined by chromosomes whereas gender is a made-up set of rules about how men and women ought to be.
Another important difference between things is the difference between ideas in the head and brute facts of the body. We can all imagine our bodies any way we like, and we can also change them in some fairly minor ways through makeup, piercing, exercise, surgery and the like…but we can’t change them too radically if we want to stay alive to enjoy the changes. One thing we can’t change is our bodies’ histories. We can do a lot to resemble the sex we’re not but we can’t change what we were when we first tasted the air.
Unfortunately, she also knows what it’s like to experience both domestic abuse and sexual assault, which is one of several reasons why discussions about sex and gender are personally important to her. She, like so many women, has a very specific dog in the fight about who should be included in the definition of “woman”, and how laws and policies should protect women’s rights.
And guess what: so do most women. So, in fact, do nearly all women. A few may be so sheltered that they never experience domestic abuse or sexual assault, but even they probably still experience knee-jerk contempt and dismissal.
With Wednesday’s post she has made it crystal clear where she stands. Yesterday’s headlines focused on the disclosures she has made about her personal experiences, not her challenge to the Scottish Government to reconsider its plans to reform the law around gender recognition. Those who stick to secondary sources will have read about the darkest parts of the author’s life, but will likely have little grasp of why she has decided to write about them now.
Those in the outraged online echo chambers might try their best to drown out voices who want to talk about sex, but telling people not to read the world’s most famous author feels like a losing strategy. This discussion cannot be ignored. We cannot vaccinate women and girls against male violence, so we have a duty to listen to survivors.
And a duty to refuse to let trans ideologues shut them up.
If sex is such a nebulous, uncertain spectrum, spread across scores of possible outcomes, how is it that trans people are able to find their “target sex” (i.e. the other one that they are not) amongst all those other alleged sexes that are out ther? Why only transmen and transwomen? If sex is a spectrum, why is nobody “transing” to them? Where are all the trans demi-plie, neutrois skinny lattes?
And what about all those supposedly NB people who are neither sex/gender/whatever? What becomes of the enbies when their usefulness to the TA’s campaign to confusie and subvert definitions of sex and or gender comes to an end? How do people who supposedly reject the gender binary (while absolutely requiring its continued existence in order to be able to stand outside as the bold individualists that they are) get along with people who insist that everyone has to fit into one or the other gender box, as trans or cis? Trans activists depend upon the subordination of biological sex as a descriptor of humans in favour of reified (sexist) gender stereotypes, but still need the opposite sex as a destination. NBs need the gender stereotypes so they can step outside or beyond them. It’s no goo, no fun or exclusive at all if EVERYONE gets to be NB too.
Feminists, by wanting to burn all the gender bullshit to the ground, risk ruining all this finely crafted, if contradictory, theology. Game over. Funny how feminists are accused by TAs of “gatekeeping” womanhood and femaleness. Projection, projection, projection! TERF wars are turf wars. How dare feminists force freedom on those who want to live in boxes or cages, and who want to control the boxes and cages they wish to force everyone into.
“So, in fact, do nearly all women”
Do you have any data on that? I’d like it to be true, but the only data in can find with a quick Google search suggests maybe it’s the opposite. The data I have comes from an article at The Hill titled “Poll: Majority support law allowing transgender people to use bathrooms that align with their identity” which refers to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll from May 2019. The poll apparently found
“54 percent of men saying transgender people should use the bathroom of their birth sex and 54 percent of women saying transgender people should be able to use the bathroom that best aligns with their identity.”
As I said, I hope you’re right and it would be good to have data that shows you are. But I fear that in the current climate, you might not be.
Carmichael, I believe that Ophelia was making the reasonable claim that most, if not all, women have a dog in the fight. That doesn’t mean that all women are a monolith, and will have the same answer to a vague question. Most women have no idea that the label of ‘transwoman’ no longer applies to someone who has been castrated, had his penis removed, and has been on female hormones for years; which I would wager is the picture most of us had in our minds before peak trans. Were the question been phrased honestly as “Should any man who says he is a woman, regardless of whether or not he has made any surgical or hormonal changes to his body, be allowed into women’s spaces without being challenged?” I dare say the percentages would have been very different.
Carmichael: Here’s the quoted passage and my comment, again:
The knowing what it’s like to experience domestic abuse and/or sexual assault is the dog in the fight. You can have a dog in this fight without understanding that you do. I’m not saying most women support Rowling, I’m saying most women experience the dog.
Ophelia: Fair enough. I misunderstood. I guess I was just hoping to find evidence that women are not as on board with the current fashionable opinion as seemed to be the case.
Tigger_the_wing: You’re certainly right that the way a survey question is phrased is important. And I hope you’re right that the question you pose would result in the percentages you suggest, but we don’t actually know until we conduct such a survey. These are strange times. Who would have predicted that the idea that there is literally no difference between trans women (male humans) and natal women (female humans) would ever have gained such traction?
Carmichael – well to cheer you up, I think the reality is that most people don’t know much about the issue, and answer survey questions with what seems to be the approved thing in their circles. Knowing more tends to change the answer. But, who knows, maybe everyone will be conditioned the way the woke have been, and sexual attacks in women’s restrooms will become the new normal.
Carmichael, strange times indeed.
And it is a tragedy that many of the very people we thought would be gender-critical, those who ‘identify as’ skeptics, have turned out to be as credulous as any religious fundamentalist about this issue; and as ready to declare death to heretics who dare to point out the facts.
“A few may be so sheltered that they never experience domestic abuse or sexual assault, but even they probably still experience knee-jerk contempt and dismissal.”
And the fear. I would call myself lucky, perhaps, more than sheltered, to not have been seriously sexually assaulted, or hit by a domestic partner, but I was never so sheltered as to be oblivious to the realities of the dangers or the risks. I’ve experienced the fear, certainly, even if not the injury.