Maybe if she had a taste of it
The Glinner update tells us there is a social worker, therapist and adjunct associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California called Ken Howard who thinks JK Rowling needs to be punished.
Ruth spotted him commenting on a thread about JK Rowling on the LGBTQ Nation Facebook page. In comments he now appears to have deleted, Howard stated that Rowling’s defence of women’s sex-based rights needs punishing “by way of a traumatic vaginal injury”.
It’s weird what a lot of angry trans activists or allies go straight to that. Not she’s wrong, not she’s wrong and doing harm, but she needs to be violently attacked in the genitals.
But Rowling isn’t stoking and abetting violence against trans women.
It’s funny how men like Ken Howard love trans women so fiercely and hate women even more fiercely. What does that suggest? To me it suggests that they know damn well trans women are not women, and that their loyalty is to other men while their violent loathing is reserved for women. Not pretend women, not trans women, but real women, the kind it’s possible to punish by way of a traumatic vaginal injury.
Rowling of course does not “promote trans women to be raped, maimed, or killed.” She doesn’t do that or anything resembling it, but therapist dude here does literally that toward her.
Ken Howard is the founder and director of GayTherapyLA. On his website he states, “I have devoted my professional career as a therapist almost exclusively to working with gay men as individuals or in gay male couples”. Only a couple of months ago he wrote about the need for gay men to have their own safe spaces.
So he gets that gay men need safe spaces, but he wants to see Rowling get a traumatic injury in the vagina for saying the same about women.
Unpleasant fella.
Though I am not a lawyer, I think there are laws against this sort of dog-whistling and incitement to violence in most countries. If Rowling were subject to any sort of violence and her attacker caught, duly questioned, and found to have responded to Mr Ken Howard’s call for such, the aforesaid Mr Ken Howard could find himself doing a stretch in some slammer. Which would give him reason to try a bit of therapy on himself. (NB: I give no guarantee that it would not be a waste of time.)
I’m not a lawyer either but I don’t think there are laws like that. I think incitement has to be much more direct than Ken Howard’s pious wish. But I do think there are sanctions well short of legal ones – social, commercial, and the like. Some people are tweeting at the USC department of social work, but I haven’t done that, since I don’t like it when people try to get gender critical women fired. It’s tempting though.
And they just keep repeating the mantra that transwomen are uniquely subject to violence, without (1) providing any evidence except questionable studies; (2) pointing out that it is men doing the violence, not women in most cases; (3) noticing that men who do violence against transwomen are not doing it because feminists say TWANW, and, of course, (4) not noticing that women are uniquely subject to violence of kinds no man has ever had to suffer. And that is on top of ordinary violence such as everyone deals with.
Dude’s a therapist?
Fuuuuck.
YNnB?, I think the dude’s a ‘therapist’. It’s one of those fields of therapy where the only qualification needed to practice is a sign on the door.
My wife and I recently had a young Frenchwoman, a relative of my wife’s come to stay with us in Canberra. She was on a world tour of sorts. While in Sydney, she was staying in a hostel in Redfern, which is one of that city’s rougher neighborhoods, particularly after dark. She told me that she was worried, because she had been a bit too closely followed one night by a dodgy looking character, along a section of a street in which there were few people out and about.
So I went out and bought her a most effective one-shot weapon, which I learned about in a martial arts magazine a few years ago. The advantage of it is that, unlike say a knife or gun, it cannot easily be captured and turned against the user, and it has a number of other advantages.
The young woman was delighted with it, practiced using it, and told me that it did make her feel safer. If anyone is interested, I can email the details to Ophelia, and she if she wishes can pass them on.
Omar,
I can’t be sure without knowing the details but carrying such a weapon would likely be illegal in the UK with a prison sentence very likely if caught, even if it’s non-lethal. I seem to remember the carry laws in Australia being similar. Be careful you’re not getting anyone into trouble.
I’ll add that my experience of teaching self defence tells me that carrying a weapon is not usually a good way to stay safe, paradoxical as that might seem, especially if you don’t really know how to use it. I know you have a lot of martial arts experience too, but I’d personally be very wary of arming anyone.
“A weapon you don’t know how to use belongs to the enemy”
But let’s say she is. Still, sexual assault isn’t anywhere approaching reasonable.
But let’s say it is. The fact that TRAs are reserving sexual assault as punishment for only the female GC feminists is telling.
But let’s say they also advocated it for male GC feminists. The fact that they are reserving it for GC feminists, and not the evangelical bigots, the Trump cultists, the conversion therapy advocates – the anti-LGBT political right in general – what the fuck, guys. They like to argue that we are in bed with the right by virtue of agreeing with them that female is female and male is male, but here they are advocating sexual assault as punishment solely against the non-woke left, with particular emphasis on those that are women.
Increasingly, TRAs are coming out as mini authoritarians with a social left veneer.
Revisiting the post, scratch the ‘mini’.
latsot:
As far as I am aware, there are no laws anywhere against defending oneself when attacked. We all have a right to do that, and if it comes to a choice between a serious chance of being taken to a police court or one of being taken to the morgue, it has to be a lay-down misere.
BKSA:
And part of self-defence training is techniques for disarming an attacker when unarmed yourself. A one-shot weapon is the least likely to be captured and used against you.
That being said, I have never encountered any self-defence technique which came with a 100% guarantee of success. But conversely, anyone who goes into a contest convinced that they are going to be beaten almost certainly will be.
To get back onto topic, this is an advocacy of corrective rape. A therapist literally advocating for the corrective rape of a woman for having the wrong opinions. I’m old enough to remember when left-leaning people abhored that sort of thing.
There should be a campaign to get Howard fired. The only thing way to get TRAs and their handmaidens is give them a taste of their own medicine. I remember back around 2010-2012 there was a bout of plainative “take things in good faith!” articles after a few of the Usual Suspects got called out by their fellow activists.
Omar, carrying an offensive weapon most definitely is a criminal offence in Australia, I wouldn’t advise it regardless of your false dichotomy. I’d certainly never carry a weapon of any kind or advise anyone to do so; they are almost always more trouble than they’re worth. But I’m not here to police your behaviour, I was just advising on the illegality of weapons.
@Seth:
Yes, it’s mind-blowing, isn’t it? And this authoritative push from the left seems to have happened so quickly. It’s starting to live up to all of what I had previously thought were inane stereotypes strawmanned into existence by the right.
I’m starting to feel glad I’ve never really associated strongly with the left. I mean, I’m a bit of an old lefty, there’s no doubt about that, but I don’t feel betrayed or politically homeless because of the current horror show like a lot of people do. Just….disappointed and frustrated.
He does accept that real women (he calls them “cisgender, fertile women”) have a useful role to play in making the world a better place:
ACB@15
What, no inclusion of transmen? This Howard fella sounds awfully transphobic.
Right. Surely if a trans man got together with a trans woman (or even with a real man) they could produce a baby?
Once again, women are reduced to incubators. Have babies for men who want them. Risk your own health, give your life over to a fetus for all those months, forgo wine (?!?), and then go through incredible, mind-jarring pain to thrust a baby out through a hole too small to accommodate it…then smilingly hand it over to the two men who wanted a baby bad enough to use someone else to do it.
Nasty.
Good god.
Also – I wonder what he means by the scare quote on “have babies”…
Huh. From a very quick look, he seems to give level-headed advice in that post.
latsot @# 14:
A presumption too far there. Who said ‘offensive’? And how is the dichotomy ‘false’? I repeat: self-defence when attacked is perfectly legal. Everywhere, as far as I know.
False dichotomy:
But I’m not arguing about this any more. It’s as tedious to me as I’m sure it is to everyone else. Go ahead and arm people if you like. I advise against it but I don’t expect anyone to take my advice.
Your egregious assumption is noted. What I advocate is not the slightest bit of what you apparently think it is.
But never mind. Go your own bloody-minded way.
I’m responding only to your own words. Omar. You gave someone a weapon. That’s – by definition – arming them, so hardly an assumption, egregious or otherwise.
Honestly, I don’t know why you’re getting so shirty about this. I thought it was worth pointing out that your beliefs about the legality and safety of carrying a weapon might not be quite accurate. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble or hurt themslef. It’s not personal. I have no axe to grind. And I have no bloody-minded way to go.
This thread began as a discussion of the thoughts and other profundities of an advocacy of violence against women. “So he gets that gay men need safe spaces, but he [Ken Howard] wants to see Rowling get a traumatic injury in the vagina for saying the same about women.
“Unpleasant fella.”
To which I responded by making the observation that Rowling and other women who might be threatened with violence can fairly easily enhance their capacity for self-defence: specifically by arming themselves with a readily obtainable, easily concealed one-shot weapon which cannot easily be captured and turned against them; and which, I might add, can be quite legitimately carried. However, although I read about it originally in a martial arts magazine, I am not prepared to put anything further about it on the Internet; for reasons which should be fairly obvious.
If she agrees, I am prepared to reveal it to Ophelia, as owner of this site, leaving her to pass it on as she sees fit. End of story.
.
(Also relevant: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/media/2020/11/bookworms-and-blowhards/ )
Fine, Omar. There’s no need to get arsey about it. I’m not your enemy.
Hopefully we can leave it at that.
I wondered that as well, and whether I should treat “produce a baby” in the same style. Maybe he thinks that thinks that all the biological details about “having babies” are too yucky to be mentioned in polite society.
Typically violent, abusive, incendiary rhetoric from you, Ophelia!
“It’s satire!”
Omar @ 26 – for the record, your comment @ 6 definitely was a derail. I saw it as a derail at the time but didn’t say anything because I’m SO NICE that way. But yes, weapons advice on a post about social media bullying is a complete derail, and a missing of the point as well. (And no, don’t tell me anything about the weapon.)
OB at #31:
With all due respect, the ‘derail occurred at #3, where the subject of male violence against women was introduced to the thread. Nothing wrong with iknklast doing that. But it was a fork in the road.
Going down one arm of the fork, we throw up our hands in horror, discuss how vile it is, agonize over the way patriarchy encourages it, over the terrible effect it has on women and children, and over etc, etc, etc.
It becomes a ‘rape culture’ deja vu all over again; been there, done that, through it all before.
On the other arm, we perhaps discuss what measures can be taken to assist women to exercise their right to walk unmolested out in public. More cops out on the beat? Yeah, right. More handwringing? If you feel it achieves something, go for it.
And I will respect your stated wish to be not told about the weapon.
What? Why wasn’t it you who “introduced” physical violence to the thread in comment #1?
At any rate…yes, “we discuss how vile it is, agonize over the way patriarchy encourages it,” etc etc etc. If it bores you you can always move to a different post. But no I really don’t want “try this weapon” advice on posts about systemic violence against women. It wholly misses the point.
OB: As you wish. BUT::
was in the threadstarter.
Violence was in there right at the get-go, just as Original Sin was in the Garden of Eden. (No snakes around here, though.)
Omar, I know, but it was violence at a remove, or maybe two removes. The “therapist”‘s disgusting comments don’t disgust me primarily because they might directly spark violence against Rowling, but because they are disgusting. Yes, broadly speaking and over the long haul I do think talking about people that way encourages violence against them, and history and contemporary journalism offer plenty of examples, but I also think it matters in itself. The in itself part is much more the point of this post than advice on self-defense is.
OK. Notred.
As in noted.
I kind of like “notred.” Has a whiff of the notary about it.
Indeed ‘noted’ has. I originally got it through correspondence with a lawyer over an issue; = ‘neither agree nor disagree’.
But ‘notred’ would have to mean ‘have made it ours’; or ‘agreed and adopted’, say after the Norman French, notre as in Notre Dame. However, it is not in my 2051 pp Macquarie dictionary. So it’s a brand new word.
Accidents will happen.
Sigh. So you had to make sure I get that you’re still being hostile. Ok, job done. I get it. You’re still being hostile because I would rather you didn’t hijack a thread about men spewing disgusting fantasy-threats at women into a thread about defensive weapons. Point taken.
It won’t change anything though. I still would rather you didn’t hijack a thread about men spewing disgusting fantasy-threats at women into a thread about defensive weapons. For that matter I also wish you would stop picking fights.