Will Mermaids be apologizing?
Less than a month ago, though, Mermaids was energetically blaming JK Rowling for suicidal thoughts among trans youth and for sharing her non-expert opinions on what it is to be a woman.
Today, J.K.Rowling re-stated her position on transgender lives. We have previously reached out to her both publicly and privately, offering a calm conversation around the issues she has raised and today, we sent a further email to her team, renewing that offer. We are yet to receive a response…. Without giving personal detail, without betraying confidences, we must represent the seriousness of the situation. We are aware through our work with families that there have been cases of self-harm and even attempted suicide following J.K.Rowling’s statements and the public response on social media and in the press…. We do not believe J.K. Rowling ‘hates’ trans people. We also welcome and accept that she is sympathetic towards trans children and teenagers. Therefore, as a woman of great power and someone sympathetic to trans young people, we ask her to acknowledge the many young people around the world who fundamentally disagree with her position on trans acceptance and we beg her to at least consider the possibility that trans young people are able to express who they are for themselves.
But are trans young people “expressing who they are for themselves”? Or are they expressing who they think they are, which is shaped by what they have heard and read and picked up from social media and friends and tv documentaries and…organizations like Mermaids? Young (and not young) people don’t just decide they’re something called “trans” out of nowhere; they decide it because it’s a thing, a meme, a fashion, an item on the list of available “identities” and causes and opportunities for being special. How do we know? Because of the novelty of the whole thing. It simply wasn’t happening 20 years ago.
J.K. Rowling rightly speaks of brave ‘detransitioned’ young women. Yet, does she consider trans people, living openly in spite of public hostility, less brave? Are those who have fought for decades to be treated with respect and dignity in a society that ridicules and demonises them, less brave? Are those children and young people who state their true gender in the face of rejection from family and friends less brave?
But what is someone’s “true gender”? What does that mean? How does it differ from knowing one has a female or male body?
There’s a long and complicated rope of bullshit that’s been woven and it’s going to take a long time to unravel it.
There is no such thing as a ‘true gender’. I know that now. There are only real, sexed bodies, and the various social expectations arbitrarily placed on people because of our real, sexed bodies.
Only tangentially related: about a third of the way through Troubled Blood and am thoroughly enjoying it. The (male) narrator is excellent and it is indeed feminist as fuck. I can see how relating the real experiences of being a woman (as Joanna communicates) might make pretenders uncomfortable.
Will Mermaids be apologising?
Of course they will. Right after Trump stops being an arsehole.
There are, of course, genuine transsexuals, and for them I have every sympathy. Men as male as I am but who pretend to be women are another matter.
Yesterday I was reading the Wikipedia article on Ben (formerly Barbara) Barres (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Barres), who died in 2017. I don’t think any reasonable person would argue with his contention that he was assigned the wrong sex at birth.
Athel, I consider myself a reasonable person, and I dispute your contention that Ben Barnes was “assigned the wrong sex at birth.” Barnes was born a girl, and this biological fact was correctly observed. Barnes suffered from a disorder of sexual development (Mullerian agenesis from MRKH syndrom), which only affects women, and of which nobody was aware until she was 17.
The DSD did not affect her hormone production but did result in amenorrhea and infertility. Barnes was born with normal female 46 XX chromosomes, and died with normal female 46 XX chromosomes. There was no “mis-assignment of gender,” not only because Barnes was female, but because “assignment of gender” is a made-up thing that doesn’t exist.
Barnes became unhappy living as a woman, and later in life had medical procedures and took medications so she could present, and live as a man instead. Barnes was happier living as a man. Barnes was a truly remarkable person who gave a lot to society, and it would be foolish and stupid to argue with Barnes’ choice to present as a man. No reasonable person would argue against treating Barnes with kindness and understanding. If Barnes was happiest presenting as a man, then bully for him.
But “mis-assigned gender?” Nope. A “genuine transsexual” remains, biologically, the same sex they were born as. Kindness does not require us to pretend not to understand reality.
Except that it’s not just about “who they are”, is it. There is no way for me to claim to be the same as you without also making a claim about who or what you are. if X is the same as Y, then Y is the same as X.
Imagine lining up the population of the world on a very large field:
• To the left you place all the people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers regardless of what you prefer to call them.
• To the right you place all the people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers regardless of what you prefer to call them.
• In the middle (or off to the “reft” or “light” in some dimension perpendicular to all the four known dimensions of spacetime, it doesn’t matter). you place the people without a strong preponderance either way.
If I claim to be what the people on the left are* (and what the people on the right are not) despite having physical traits that would place me squarely among the people on the right, that’s not just a statement about me. That’s just as much a statement about what the people on the left (or, for that matter, the people on the right) are. If you ask me what makes me the same as the people on the left (and different from the people on the right) and I tell you it has something to to with my way of thinking or feeling, that’s not just a statement about me. That’s just as much a claim about what’s going on inside the heads of the people on the left (as well as the people on the right). This is why, as I keep repeating, it’s not simply a matter of whether or not trans people get to define “who they are”, but whether they get to define who other people are as well. Once again, their ultimatum to the people on the left is: “Don’t want to be accused of transphobia and have your name pulled through the dirt all over the internet? Then I get to define you in whatever I have to to make me one of you, and you don’t get any saying in the matter.”
* Hence being entitled to access all spaces (toilets, sporting events etc.) reserved for these people.
Myself, I have decided that deep down inside I am a UNICORN. Will my employer’s insurance pay for the surgery to install a horn on my forehead? THIS is the next human rights cause, people! Otherkin Liberation!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
“Transpecies dysphoria of the soul” Hahahahhahahahahahaha The world is an amazing place. Human beings are amazing, if sometimes awful things. Why do people need to invent these amazing flights of fancy to make themselves SPECIAL?
Brian, will you accept transotters in your campaign? If so, I am with you!
Brian is not the Unicorn Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Otherkin are funny enough when they identify as a real species (except for otters: trans-otters are otters, fact) but they’re bloody hilarious when their identity is a completely fictional creature.
Not long before B&W parted company with FTB, Ophelia put up a post expressing mild amusement at the idea of Otherkin which was immediately pounced on by the Horde, who saw it as further proof of…something or other. Among those dropping by to ‘educate’ Ophelia was a certain veterinary technician with personal experience – the vet tech identified as a dragon and nobody had the right to deny that identity. I don’t recall whether the following claim was made in the comments at B&W or at PZ’s, but the vet tech went on to claim to know they’re a dragon because they suffered real, actual, severe pain exactly where their horns and wings should be, and because of that ‘lived experience’ nobody had the right to deny their genuine dragon-ness.
The vet tech’s outraged ranting was one of the funniest things I ever read over there. I’m still not entirely sure that they weren’t actually satirising the Otherkin nonsense, but that’s Poe’s Law for you.
Why, thank you for that validation, AoS! I was on the verge of running right out and throwing myself under a monster truck (not hard to find here, and a moving one would be the most effective). Now I can continue to live my life because my identity is not questioned. You saved me!