Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s A or B or both or neither.

These people really don’t know what a definition is, do they?

I’m not so sure. There’s a difference between not knowing what a definition is, and not having one, or not daring to offer one for fear of getting it wrong. It’s a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of ecumenicalism, wherein everybody under the infinitely elastic “trans umbrella” refuses to examine anyone else’s credentials for being a member. As soon as any kind of binding, coherent definition is offered up, somebody will be “excluded” or excommunicated, because so many of the posited attributes of the myriad gender possibilities are completely contradictory. By this measure, the lack of any such definition of “gender” is a feature, not a bug.

If “gender identity” were an actual phenomenon, Rowling’s questions would be the basis of potentially fruitful lines of research. Correction: her questions would have been the pathway to such research, because these issues would have been investigated long ago; Hines would have already had answers to them. They would have been debated and thrashed out within the field itself. But no. The field is empty and fruitless. Nobody has been working in it because it is barren; “There is no there there.” Like astrology and palmistry, there has been no real attempt to delineate the exact nature, limits, and mechanism behind the phenomenon they claim to know so well. It’s all just claimed and assumed. They’re making it up as they go along with no thought or concern for coherence and consistency. Queer theory is above this petty need for evidence and explanation. In the light of rational inquiry (or simple questions), queer theory withers and dies, and genderism with it. Rowling’s comments are just making this plain.

That an “unschooled amateur” like Rowling can come up with such devastatingly simple, basic, fundamental criticisms of this alleged field of alleged study is (or should be) a source of shamed embarrassment, rather than smug condescension. You don’t need titles or degrees to see that the Emperor is naked, though in the case of genderism, it’s more like there is no Emperor at all. Hines’ response is, ironically, just an iteration of PZ’s “Courtier’s Reply”. You’re supposed to steep yourself thoroughly in the minutia and nuance of their refined, cerebral bullshit before you dare comment on it.