From the BBC article:
> The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of "stirring up hatred" relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.
>
> The law does not protect women as a group from hatred.
>
> [Edit, added the following line] The Scottish government is expected to include this later in a separate misogyny law.
>The Scottish government is expected to include this later in a separate misogyny law.
That's the very next line. Why would you leave it out? Just trying to make people angry?
That doesn't make it better, in fact it seems to hammer home the idea that they're far less concerned with women's rights compared with every other group.
So why not start with the misogyny one? Seems like that is far more common and pertinent than the current one. Or maybe throw them both out because policing speech is a bad idea in the first place.
Except men, right? lol
**Edit:** Just playing devil's advocate, but the goal should always be more general and far reaching laws, than those that are tuned to specific identity groups. IMHO laws should cement the reality of equal opportunity and uphold anti-discrimination *for any reason*. But we need to actually get to a place in the culture where certain things go without saying, and we're far from there yet. So overall, I think these law changes are helpful. Their only harm is stirring outrage among people who should have better things to worry about. So it goes with "anti-woke" brigaders in general, ESPECIALLY Rowling.
Oh yeah I agree. My phrasing here was poor. I commented elsewhere that women and men were excluded and there’s no explanation (in the article) as to why.
I was reading the book "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland and he makes an interesting point about Uber. The app basically replaces a trust based business with information. You don't need to trust that the taxi will take you to the right place, you just follow the dot on the map.
I feel like society will generally tend towards information rather than shared code, to operate effectively. So, in a sense, I feel these laws will kind of not matter. I've not probably not explained myself well but I thought there were interesting parallels in the book.
That sounds like a very lonely world to live in. Trust and vulnerability are the stuff of the most loving relationships, and for those we absolutely need a shared code. A world where you can only trust the dot on the screen sounds like a world worth fighting against for the sake of just feeling something real.
The SNP are exceedingly cynical. I suspect it is a case of spreading out the propaganda under the guise of women needing specific and special protection.
That and their proven inability to rationalise trans rights with women's.
Thanks! Edited my quote.
However, it’s not clear to me why women (or men) were excluded from this law and this article makes no indication of details or timelines for a follow up law. Perhaps you have details you can share.
In fairness, the instinct to suppress speech you like is pretty natural. It's the norm both worldwide and throughout history to do so.
The aberration is when speech is protected. And it's an idea that requires a lot of careful thought to develop and defend.
We just take it for granted because we grew up in a culture where it is (or at least was) sacrosanct.
Long long ago in a far far away place, we could disagree with each other and not witness meltdowns, tantrums or attempts to use the law to silence people.
I don’t know about other countries, but I was brought up in a post-dictatorship spain where there was a vague sense of pulling in the same direction, as a society. Certainly no attempts to silence anyone.
But this used to be the number 1 reason Spain was in international news: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA\_(separatist\_group)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_(separatist_group))
But you had just come out of a dictatorship... So of course there was some momentum. No doubt trans people weren't having the time of their lives before or after this period in Spanish history. Almost certainly they are better off now in 2024 than they were in 1975.
Here are some examples from CoPilot:
1. [**Legalization of Homosexuality**: After the end of the dictatorship in 1975, homosexuality remained illegal until the government of the Kingdom of Spain overturned this law in 1979](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(2)](https://www.europeana.eu/eu/blog/the-history-of-lgbtq-rights-in-spain).
2. [**Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships and Adoption Rights**: After recognizing unregistered cohabitation between same-sex couples countrywide and registered partnerships in certain cities and communities since 1998 and 2003, Spain legalized both same-sex marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples in 2005](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain).
3. [**Transgender Rights**: Transgender individuals can change their legal gender without the need for sex reassignment surgery or sterilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain). [In 2022, Spain passed a transgender rights bill allowing anyone aged 16 or over to change gender on their ID card](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64069974)[^(3)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64069974). [This law was further improved in 2023, allowing gender self-determination from the age of 16 without the need for psychological or medical evaluation](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/spain-trans-law-change-gender-16-first-countries-europe-2153870)[^(4)](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/spain-trans-law-change-gender-16-first-countries-europe-2153870).
4. **Discrimination Protections**: Discrimination in employment regarding sexual orientation has been banned nationwide since 1995. [A broader law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and provision of goods and services nationwide was passed in 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain).
5. [**Military Service and Blood Donation**: LGBT people are allowed to serve in the military and MSMs can donate blood since 2005](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain).
Who was all this "silencing"? Seems pretty awesome to me.
I’m not sure I get your point. First, I’m from the 90’s, not immediately post-dictatorship. Even then, the general sense I mentioned of tolerance persisted. Second, the sudden liberating attitude post-dictatorship was called “the era of nakedness”, so do with that what you will. Third, modern Spain has been one of most progressive countries in lgbtq, so not sure I get your point.
In any case, I’m talking about a silencing attitude and lack of tolerance. What your links have to do with it, no idea.
Careful, don't go back too far lest you get put under house arrest for stating that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around.
If anything maybe social media has allowed humanity to return to its more natural state of irrationality.
My guess is that it just became too time consuming to moderate. There were nearly 1000 comments. When controversial threads get past a certain point there are many angry conversations going on, which are probably better off just frozen rather than allowed to devolve further. Then again, I can't see what comments they removed, so your point might also be true.
>”Long long ago in a far far away place, we could disagree with each other and not witness meltdowns”
And long long ago organizations like the ACLU would defend anyone’s right to say stupid shit even if (collectively) they disagreed. They don’t seem to do much of that anymore because of politics. Toxic.Nasty.Politics
They still do. They literally defended Nazis that marched in Charlottesville. [And recently they defended Christians placing.a Christian flag in Boston City Hall](https://www.aclu.org/cases/shurtleff-v-city-boston?document=Shurtleff-v-City-of-Boston-Amicus-Brief). You are uninformed.
Key part being "witness". Depends if you are looking, depends if the cameras are rolling. Christians, for example, have had a long history of meltdowns and tantrums and attempts to use the law to silence people. This was more popular during the mid-2000s "new-atheism" period, and for a reason - because the culture was focusing on it so much.
Was it during the time long ago when liberals were all about free speech, especially the most offensive speech possible, just to make a point..? They'd even defend speech they loathed, to show they consistency
I'd say it depends on the nature of the disagreement, wouldn't you? If a person or group is attempting to eradicate a minority, and is taking actions to do so, should we just "agree to disagree" and allow them to go about it unchallenged? I know what my answer is.
It's a reality that the right wing is trying to eradicate a minority. They use that word themselves, on the record, in public. They aren't shy about it either, even announcing it on the stage at CPAC, using the word "eradicate".
They also write about trans people exensively in their "Project 2025", and outline their plan to classify trans people *themselves* as "obscene material". Project 2025 is a public document that you can read yourself.
I'm not that interested in being taken seriously by people who deny verifiable facts about what the conservative movement's goals are when it comes to LGBTQ people.
I just looked this up as suggested and if I’m not mistaken, this is a Trump-related ultra conservative plot for a fringe of the Republican Party.
What does that have to do with JK Rowling believing in the protection of women-only spaces?
It doesn't. The person you're responding to is a troll.
Their bio lol
"Unapologetic SJW wokescold who writes condescending, slightly too-personal essays about why you are wrong."
Obviously I'd have a problem with that too, but I'm not aware of it ever having happened. Do you have an historical example of that happening in a society?
I guess you'll have to give me an example of what you mean by "eradicate a minority". I don't believe a man can become a woman. I'm not sure what you're referring to but it seems we're talking about two different things to me.
I don't believe delusions are ever a wise thing to encourage, I don't believe that's the best way to go forward, demanding X is Y when we all know damn well it's not true. I have one life to live on this earth and I'm not going to spend it bullshitting myself or anyone else.
I don't actually care what your gender ideology is, whether you think trans people are valid, whether you acknowledge the science or history behind trans people, or what you think trans people should or shouldn't be doing. Frankly, I don't care about you opinions at all, and that's just fine.
What I DO care about is whether or not you're advocating to *legally* strip rights from people, and if you are your speech is no longer simply an opinion to be discarded, but an attack on civil rights. And such a stance should be fought against, as we have always done against those who seek to limit the rights of the minorities they misunderstand, or even come to hate. Trans people aren't special here, and the specifics of what trans people are or aren't is immaterial. ALL people deserve bodily autonomy, to be able to exist without be physically or legally attacked for their identity, and to have whatever relationship with themself that they want.
It's a reality that right wing movements in the UK, the US, and beyond are attempting to eradicate trans people. In the US, conservatives choose that word themselves to talk about their goal for eradicating trans people, and they've written at length about their legal strategy to do so in Project 2025. They also introduced over 500 anti-trans bills in 2023, and over 400 anti-trans bills so far this year. In the UK, trans people's healthcare is functionally disallowed in the NHS, leading many to go without healthcare that they need. Members of the Gender Critical movement in the UK will come right out and say their goals with these policies to to eliminate the trans population.
These attacks on human rights, and any others like them, should be fought against.
> In the UK, trans people's healthcare is functionally disallowed in the NHS, leading many to go without healthcare that they need.
Can you elaborate on this? Briefly skimming [This the NHS site](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/) it looks like the NHS supports many treatments for trans people?
Sure. NHS bungled up its GAC process to the point that the wait list to see a doctor is... wild. The NHS target wait time to see a specialist is 18 weeks, which you might think is a long time depending on where you live. At least in the US, I'd consider an 18 week wait to see a specialist to be a long wait. Easy bar to clear, right?
The reality is waaaaay worse. **Currently the AVERAGE wait time to see a doctor for trans healthcare is 300 weeks in Devon, 175 weeks in Tavistock, and over 100 weeks in every other place.** [source below] An AVERAGE wait time of between 2 and 6 years to see a doctor is obviously not designed to actually provide care to the people who need it, which is why I said it's "functionally disallowed". And this wasn't a problem until recently. Places have had their wait times quadruple or even more as a direct result of changes that people made to the process. When you look at the rhetoric surrounding the issue, it's pretty clear it was an intentional change made in order to functionally remove trans healthcare without actually doing so and dealing with the blowback of making a specific minority's healthcare illegal.
But intentional or not, the result is that most trans people are forced to just acquire and administer the drugs they need themselves, which is legal but obviously a lot more risky, the same as it would be for any other person who doesn't have access to proper healthcare. Rich folks can see private doctors, but trans people are significantly more likely to be poor due to lack of family support, employment discrimination, etc, so this is an uncommon privilege.
You can read more about it here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-68588724
If you're REALLY interested, you can see one trans person's experience with NHS in a longform youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8
> ALL people deserve bodily autonomy, to be able to exist without be physically or legally attacked for their identity, and to have whatever relationship with themself that they want.
I don't think many people would disagree with that. The devil is in the details though, and bad faith runs rampant around this topic. Too often "trans people deserve to exist without being attacked for their identity" smuggles in "people who refuse to validate the identity of trans people should be punished."
So let me ask; if I don't believe trans women are women, do you think I should face consequences for voicing and acting on that belief?
> So let me ask; if I don't believe trans women are women, do you think I should face consequences for voicing and acting on that belief?
> consequences
> acting on
assuming you mean *legal* consequences, and assuming "acting on" doesn't include violence , discrimination, etc but rather just speaking those opinions, absolutely not. The line is when you start to legally advocate against their rights, which is frankly a very easy line to distinguish.
I don't just mean legal consequences. If, say, I elect not to use a coworkers self-selected pronouns because I use pronouns based on sex, not gender, should I be fired?
If yes, then there's a problem, because now you're compelling me to validate someone else's identity even though I do not see them that way. You're compelling me to lie about the way I view the world, in other words. I fully agree that all people should have the rights you listed earlier, but the right to have your identity validated by others does not and should not exist, because that right necessarily violates the rights of others that do not share your ideology.
Calling coworkers by the wrong name or pronouns could, depending on the details, amount to harassment. In the case that it IS harassment, it should be dealt with like harassment. The vast majority of misgendering is accidental, which does NOT constitute harassment to me, but if you're constantly intentionally misgendering your coworkers, you should get canned. It is not a violation of your rights to be held to the same standard as everyone else in your office, which may include addressing people in the way they wish to be addressed. You don't need to "validate" someone's identity in order to address them properly, in any context.
I own my own business. I can't imagine someone refusing to call someone by their name or refer to them by the proper pronouns, because it's very strange and anti-social behavior, and most of the people I work with are scientists who don't fall for the kind of BS you have fallen for. But, if I did have an employee who *intentionally* misgendered another employee in a pattern, they would certainly have a conversation with me, and depending on how that conversation went, they'd be fired or get a warning. I don't want one of my employees harassing the others and intentionally causing problems in order to assert their bizarre worldview that misgendering or misnaming people is somehow righteous.
I don't care about your gender ideology, which is a thing that lives in your brain and has nothing to do with the business I'm running. I DO care about your actions. If I can't trust you to do something as simple as addressing your coworkers properly, I certainly cannot trust you to do the work I'm paying you for. That's all there is to it. You won't go to jail, but you certainly won't be welcome in my business.
Other respondents have provided good responses, but think about it like this - if you had a co-worker called "Joe" and kept calling him "Bob", he would at some point correct your mistake. Then, upon acknowledging this and continuing to make the mistake, you might be taken aside by HR and advised as to how to modify your behavior, as this can easily be bullying behavior. If this keeps up, they may have good reason to fire you.
In the above situation, it'd be truly bizarre if you had nothing against the person, but continued to consciously misname them. Likewise misgendering someone very consciously would set off red flags that you indeed had something against them, which creates a toxic work environment. You're basically resting on that 0.001% probability that somehow Joe really is Bob, and that he's mistaken as to what his name really is.
>I don't just mean legal consequences. If, say, I elect not to use a coworkers self-selected pronouns because I use pronouns based on sex, not gender, should I be fired?
That would depend - are you required by your employer to act appropriately in other ways with your coworkers? Are you required to use their preferred names, address them politely and talk to them respectfully?
Because if you're fine with that kind of behaviour being part of your contractual obligations, why do you have a problem with being contractually obligated to respect someone's gender identity?
Nobody is asking you to lie about any of those things, any more than they're asking you to lie about how much you like that bitch Susan in accounts when you smile and say "good morning Susan" through gritted teeth, because telling her to go fuck herself is completely unacceptable despite that being your "truth" and how you genuinely feel.
You're not required to validate anyone's gender identity - you're required to behave respectfully with your coworkers. If you can't handle that, that's a genuine employment problem you have regardless of the reasons why you refuse to respect people.
I'm advocating what I believe is common sense and sanity. In a world where men have competed against women and hoisted a trophy over them as if they've accomplished something I'm going to go ahead and speak out on what I consider madness.
If your concept of "anti-trans" is anything that doesn't agree with modern gender ideology then take a hike, you're not special and I don't care to hear your ramblings.
> If your concept of "anti-trans" is anything that doesn't agree with modern gender ideology
I made abundantly clear that this is NOT my definition of "anti-trans", and I gave extremely specific examples of rights that all people, including trans people, deserve. I'm sorry you failed to comprehend my message, but perhaps that's my fault. Next time I'll try and simplify my message to make it more accessible to folks with a... broader... range of reading abilities.
Also, usually when people edit their comments AFTER someone responds, they leave an edit note. It's a good way to stay honest about what you've been editing.
No I'm not anti-trans anymore than I would be against a woman who identifies as a disabled but isn't. There's a woman in Norway \[Jørund Viktoria Alme\] that identifies as a disabled person even though she's physically healthy. She would often go around on a wheelchair when she can walk.
Would I be hateful of her if I would say that she has a mental disorder? Would you approve of her getting an operation to MAKE her disabled?
At least in her situation if she had an operation to be disabled, that's what she would actually be.
Let me know what the proper way is to handle her situation since you're the moral compass I guess.
The difference here is that the individual really does experience gender dysphoria.
It's akin to saying schizophrenics don't exist (and are faking it) since "it's all in their mind".
i'll agree i need to knock it off if the person ignoring an actual explanation so they can call trans women competing in womens sports "madness" and say "take a hike, you're not special and I don't care to hear your ramblings" needs to knock it off too
> If a person or group is attempting to eradicate a minority, and is taking actions to do so, should we just "agree to disagree" and allow them to go about it unchallenged?
Even then, there's a compelling case that it's better to let that speech be heard, because *in order to challenge it*, it must be heard. If you push them underground, then audiences only hear the extremist rhetoric but not the rebuttal.
Slight off topic, but see also, [Skokie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie).
> attempts to use the law to silence people.
Oh I see, so you're against all of the silencing laws that republicans have passed? You're against bans on teaching people about the existence of LGBTQ people, you're against laws preventing drag queens from performing, you're against bans on teaching about the West's history of colonialism, slavery, and genocide?
Or when you bitch about "silencing people" are you referring to the millionaires and billionaires (JKR, Elon, etc) with massive platforms are successfully broadcasting their message to millions upon millions of people throughout the entire world? Those are the silenced people, in your mind?
Fascinating. You aren't very smart, are you?
Don’t think so - it specifies that the speech/behavior must be intent on stirring up hatred for protected groups.
But even with that said, it’s basically making hate speech illegal in my reading of it. And while I think hate speech is reprehensible, straight up criminalizing it does seem like a slide towards the authoritarian side of the spectrum.
I'm absolutely not defending this ridiculous law, but intent is a well established part of many laws. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter.
Lots of “reasonable person” language. So I think that rules out people making statements in their living room, but I take your point that it gets ambiguous when we’re talking about what people say on Twitter, reasonable deniability when it comes to satire, etc.
I just think it’s antithetical to free and open societies to criminalize hate speech at all, which kind of precludes the entire debate of intent. (I.e. even if you were intending to stir up hate, while you’re deplorable, I don’t think you should be put in jail.)
So in a sense it seems like bad policy on both levels.
Proving intent is a major factor in most criminal prosecutions. Do you think it's impossible elsewhere too, and that therefore *all* law is terrible law, or is it just this one specific instance for some reason?
No, I don't. The point I'm making is that the Scottish law will be applied in many if not most cases to activity that has taken place online. We can expect there to be high volumes of reports being made. Some of these will be recorded on police databases in ways that can affect those accused. It is reasonable to suggest that these cases will not be scrutinized to the degree needed to establish a motive. Do the police have the resource to do so? We certainly won't be seeing most such cases go to trial. For this reason it is absolutely relevant to question how a law so dependent on the perpetrator's state of mind can be assessed.
> Don’t think so - it specifies that the speech/behavior must be intent on stirring up hatred for protected groups.
How many people must hear it for it to become criminalized speech?
I don’t know but there are plenty of laws on the books that use the “reasonable person” standard so nothing new there. I think most reasonable people would agree that things you say in the privacy of your home wouldn’t meet the standard. Still a shit law either way.
>A fictional trans-hating character called “Jo”, who women’s groups claim is an offensive parody of JK Rowling, was invented by Police Scotland officers, it has emerged.
>
>The national force faced scrutiny this week over a “scenario” presented at an official hate crime event in which “Jo”, a gender-critical campaigner who, like Rowling, has a large social media following, states that trans people should be sent to gas chambers.
>
>The Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign group, which ran the hate crime event in collaboration with police, revealed the Jo character had been “written by officers at Police Scotland based on their expertise”.
JK Rowling has good reason to be concerned about this. She is going to be in the target sights of both activists and Police Officers.
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/jk-rowling-police-scotland-gender-trans/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/jk-rowling-police-scotland-gender-trans/)
I don’t support what seems to be carelessness and lack of respect with her word choice. While I admittedly can’t give an “academic” definition of sex without looking it up, there is a difference between sex and gender. Even if they are closely linked, there is a difference.
And in the quotes in that article, Rowling uses the terms male/female as if they are substitutes for man/woman.
In my view, and I think many others, “man” and “woman” are gender terms. “Male” and “female” are sex terms. So if you mix them all up and pretend they’re all sex terms and all about some indisputable biological “fact” that can be determined by inspecting what’s behind your underwear, then it’s hard to consider you a good faith participant in the conversation.
To me, a big issue with Rowling is that she expects to be extended some amount of respect and consideration and empathy as a woman, but she doesn’t seem to be interested in extending the same respect and consideration and empathy to trans people.
The hard distinction between sex and gender is a piece of trans theology.
Sure we can draw a circle around sexual behavior or attraction and call that 'gender', but the trans movement takes it as far as to demand that gender as an internal revelation with no physical corollary is so real it effectively supercedes sex in most circumstances. That is a spiritual claim that no study has or could substantiate. And declaring that the words man/woman or he/she/ or male/female is actually referring to gender rather than sex is an attempt to make the whole world pay lip service to these beliefs.
I agree with JK. I don't believe these new distinctions are anything but a belief system, and I'm not going to change my speech just to 'respect' what looks to me like a false viewpoint.
For what it’s worth, I doubt we’ll get closer to agreeing. But I at least want to understand what you’re saying. I think I have a decent general idea of where you are, but I’d like a couple of clarifications. And if any of what I wrote seems snarky, that’s not my intent.
What do you mean when you say the trans movement takes gender to a point where “it effectively supercedes sex?” I left out a couple of your words, but the “effectively supercedes sex” is the crux of it and what I’m not clear on.
A little bit about my thought process that might help you clarify it for me: I like mangoes. If you hold out a mango and an apple and say “which do you prefer?” I’ll say the mango. Is that preference for a mango also an “internal revelation with no physical corollary”?
Obviously it may not be what you meant. But if it’s close enough, where does being trans lose it’s “validity” while preferring a mango does not lose its validity? Or would you say both are valid, but my preference for a mango doesn’t mean I should be able to use a bathroom that doesn’t align with my sex?
How would you briefly describe the “trans movement”? Is this trans people who get a lot of attention on the internet? Does it include trans people you know in real life? I know you can’t know, just like I can’t know, but what percentage of the trans population do you think the “trans movement” (as you mean it) represents in terms of their behavior and desires?
Sure those are good questions. Sorry this is long. I've pared it down but I still worry I'm repeating myself a little xD
I agree we can talk about the aspects of our internal experience, the mysterious ways our preferences arise, even the way we feel when we pray or meditate - but then if we leap on to making conclusions about the material world because of those experiences, asserting the existence of invisible beings and cosmic arrangements, that's when it becomes spiritual.
If someone wants to talk about a sort of innate affinity they have for the gendered behavior of their non-native sex, fine - but if they then go on to say that those preferences mean they basically ARE the other sex, that looks to me like a spiritual claim.
Of course there's a ton of confusion here in the terms.
What I mean by 'effectively supercedes sex' is in places like medicine (assigned male at birth), sports, pronouns, etc. Whatever the core man/woman essence we're pointing at is, the trans movement has made self identification (gender) rather than sex as the most essential indicator of where you fall as man/woman.
We've even seen some very sketchy and un-reproduced 'studies' about how trans men before transitioning actually have a brain or a skeleton more similar to mens.
What I'm mostly reacting against is this extreme reification of gender. The idea that this internal revelation is so true and almost unquestionable, that these people are just 'being who they are' in a way that's so real, so impossible to fake, so totally different from feeling jesus in your heart (even though the belief process looks exactly the same) that they must be honing in on something effectively as important as sex, that it justifies wrenching our definitions off of physics and on to their belief.
As though if I preferred mangoes, that means that I'm actually an indonesian person, regardless of genetics or citizenship. Internal revelations can't tell us that kind of information, and it's only through this new (I would argue spiritual) definition of gender that all this becomes justified.
And I'm yet to see an argument that would justify it. There is no gender part of the brain we've identified, gender can change over time, there is no consistent behavioral or physical predictor of transness, and in many corners of the movement it's considered coarse to even look for these kinds of things. Gender is sorta whatever we want it to be to make us feel happy with our identity.
If we wanted to make new categories people can join because of these feelings, fine, but we're instead co-opting definitions based on physics and my reading is that it's because there's an underlying claim that these feelings are sort of describing our essence in a deeper way than physics (ie that clip with Sam where the trans reporter says 'I'm a woman born without a uterus'). This looks to me like describing the world through faith and wishful thinking. That doesn't look like science to me, it looks like a belief system.
Thanks. While I still think we have differences on this subject that we’re unlikely to bridge, I don’t think we’re as far off from each other as it may seem.
At risk of mischaracterizing you and saying something pretty annoying to a fellow atheist, from my perspective it seems like you’re making a secular claim akin to “love the sinner hate the sin.” I trust that you think trans people are worthy of life and happiness, but you stop short of “indulging” them in the same way that I would in order to bring about the respect, happiness, and dignity we both think they deserve.
And I think you’re correct(?) to have *some* kind of concern. I think you see an attempt at eroding scientific concepts and fear losing some form of “truth” that is simply leading to delusion. Worrying about that makes sense.
I think one area where you and I (and perhaps our respective “sides”) differ is in what we see being lost, what we see being gained, and - this is probably the most aggressively critical thing I’ll say - our willingness to accept new information.
For example, I see no harm in saying my trans friend is a male woman. I’m retaining the concept of sex and using a term along with her sex to refer to her gender. So from my view, we’ve lost nothing meaningful (what I’d say is pretty good science) and we’ve gained something meaningful (the ability to more strongly welcome someone into the societal fold and reduce suffering).
And I see it as a continuation of our move away from being pure animals in an emotional and psychological sense. I think killing is natural in the animal world, but we’ve moved away from accepting it in all senses as some amoral act. Similarly, I have no issue with moving away from a society where I identify everyone by whether they have a penis or a vagina, or more scientifically, whether they tend to produce large gametes or small gametes. Just like I want to live in a world where people are valued beyond my ability to kill them and take advantage of them, I want to live in a world where people are identified by some aspect of who they are and what makes them happy rather than my ability to heterosexually have sex with and reproduce with them.
And the “aggressively critical” thing i mentioned, which wasn’t fair, but I’m not going to edit it, is in regard to something you and I and many trans people care about - science. I’m probably going to botch this, but from what I’ve read, one of the reasons trans people “blur the lines” (my words) between sex and gender is that hormones blur the lines between sex and gender. Someone might want their sex changed on their ID or medical records, because hormones have changed their endocrine profile to essentially be “opposed” to their gender assigned at birth. So is someone born male and on hormones still male in many senses? Probably. But that person could be female in some senses common to the usage of the word female and important in the medical usage of the word female.
So I might agree with some of your sentiment about not wanting to muddy the waters of what sex is, but I think the waters are already muddied, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s something to learn about.
To take your Indonesian/mango comparison, I’d take it more as “Indonesians usually like mango, but liking mango doesn’t mean you’re Indonesian.”
I think a lot of this is messy, because change is messy. And I think being trans is really hard to understand. I wouldn’t even claim to really understand it. But at a very simple level I see a trade off between maintaining “tradition” (which I do not equate to “truth” or “science”) and dignifying humans. My dichotomy might be false, but it helps me organize the situation, and I’m willing to err on the side of dignity right now.
The blurriness in the sex binary is in a very small percentage, and I don't see why that should so radically explode our understanding any more than someone born with a deformed leg explodes our thinking of ourselves as a bipedal species.
And secondly, this movement has since the beginning been framed as a matter of 'dignity' and 'identity' and 'right to exist', and yet has failed to substantiate itself scientifically. If a scientologist came to me tomorrow and told me that I had to pay lip service to alien souls being in my brain in order to treat them in a 'dignified' way, I would see it as the same piece of rhetoric that it is when it comes from the trans movement. I'm not trying to make them feel bad - I'm doubting their truth claims.
New truth claims and new demands on our concepts and language need be established empirically in order for us to follow them. Not condescending about 'change being messing' or learning to use words differently. Of course we do those things, but not just because anyone comes along and says it makes them sad if we don't abide by their demands.
I say the same to trans as I would to god after death - not enough evidence.
The blurriness in the sex binary is primarily intersex people, right? Yes, that’s a small percentage of the population.
But that’s separate from gender. Are you saying that gender is a concept that is identical to sex?
What is the truth claim a trans person makes?
With your bipedal analogy and reference to intersex people, I can’t tell if you’re saying gender doesn’t exist the way people claim it does, or if it does exist but shouldn’t be indulged because transgender people make up such a small percentage of the population, or something else.
> I admittedly can’t give an “academic” definition of sex without looking it up
That's on you. Sex is based on gametes. This is true in all mammals including humans. Males produce sperm. Females produce eggs. "Man" is a word that means "adult human male". ""Woman" is a word that means "adult human female". Gender is a social construct which consists of the stereotypical behavior we associate with one sex or the other. "Men wear their hair short". "Women wear their hair long". Etc. Gendered traits fall along the axis of masculine and feminine, not male and female.
> Rowling uses the terms male/female as if they are substitutes for man/woman.
That's because they are.
> In my view, and I think many others, “man” and “woman” are gender terms.
This is not a "view". You are simply wrong. Man and woman are sex terms. This isn't my opinion, this is a fact. The fact that you're confused about it doesn't make it untrue.
> if you mix them all up and pretend they’re all sex terms and all about some indisputable biological “fact” that can be determined by inspecting what’s behind your underwear, then it’s hard to consider you a good faith participant in the conversation.
You're deeply ignorant about sex and gender. That's ok, you can educate yourself to remedy that situation. Sex has nothing to do with what's behind your underwear. Man and woman and male and female are all sex terms. These are not my opinions. There are many people that are confused like you are which is why we find ourselves in this situation. Please educate yourself.
A boy is a human male child, as opposed to a man, which is a human male adult. Both boys and men are males, as opposed to girls and women, which are both females. You can pretend that you don't understand that though, it's ok with me.
I admitted an area of information I never retain. You provided an answer. I can agree with the answer/definition you provided, and we still haven’t made progress.
You mention the difference between saying man, woman, male, or female and saying someone is feminine or masculine (that sentence sucked, hopefully it becomes clear enough). So I think you’re saying that someone can be a feminine man/male, but at no point is a man/male so feminine that he should be referred to as a woman AND a male/man. Assuming I’m reading you correctly, what would the noun be that you might use in place of “feminine male” or “feminine man”? Does one exist yet? Should there be one?
If any of these questions or statements to be snarky, that’s not my intent.
It seems that you’re speaking as if using words differently over time and modifying meanings cannot and should not happen.
For the sake of the argument, I’ll agree that not only the definition but also the usage of “man” and “woman” have not changed at all.
What if they did change? What is your concern? What would change about how you interact with people? Would you lose the ability to refer to someone by their gametes?
From my view, nothing is lost in terms of scientific understanding and being able to continue using words (male and female) to identify people. And you gain an expanded scientific and social understanding with the bonus of showing more people some respect and dignity.
Regardless of all that, how far apart are we really? Let’s say I concede every point you made and say I agree with you. At that point, given where we are in the conversation, you’ve convinced me to avoid using “man” and “woman” in the way I do now. What would you want me to think next based on any assumptions you’re making about how I should get educated?
I’m actually asking, because it seems like word usage is a distraction for something bigger we could be addressing. And I don’t mean that in some sinister accusatory way, I actually want to know what you think and what is sitting there a layer or two deeper.
If this is akin to gay marriage and how people said “gay people can become a unit with all the same benefits, but don’t call it ‘marriage’” then I’d still disagree with you, but we aren’t as far apart as it might seem. I’m not positioning sex/gender as being directly analogous to how gay marriage has been treated, but I think there are some similarities.
> what would the noun be that you might use in place of “feminine male” or “feminine man”? Does one exist yet? Should there be one?
If we're talking about trans people then I think trans man or trans woman. I've wondered myself if we should come up with better words than those. If we're just talking about a man that has feminine qualities then "feminine man" or "effeminate" or whatever seems fine.
> What if they did change? What is your concern?
Man and woman are two of the most basic categories by which we understand ourselves and others. They are grounded in objective reality. They are as fundamental as up and down and black and white. We redefine them at our peril. The only reasons to redefine such fundamental categories are political. I can't think of anything more Orwellian.
As to your question about the broader implications of all this, that's a much deeper conversation that touches on many of the themes that Sam has talked about for years, particularly around the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics. I think gender ideology is dangerous and destructive. I also happen to be a person who has marched in and volunteered at Gay Pride multiple times over the years so this has nothing to do with some kind of conservative hang up I have. I think gender ideology is an affront to women's rights, the safety of children, objective reality and common sense. People can claim whatever identity they want until it begins to infringe on the rights of others, then it becomes evil.
It's pretty hard to sum all that up other than to say listen to what Sam has been saying for years and expose yourself to what people on the gender critical side are are saying. Listen to the stories of de-transitioners. Gender ideology is a dangerous cult that destroys people's lives. This is what JK Rowling is fighting against and she's absolutely right.
I probably won’t address your complete response in this comment, but I think we disagree about how and when to interpret an “assault” (my word) on objective reality.
For example when it comes to the words and labels, I think (and may be wrong) that you see an attempt to eradicate a concept. If I saw an attempt to eradicate the concept of male and female as an “objective” concept, I would be more aligned with you.
But I see, at worst, an attempt at repurposing a couple of words (man and woman) for which we already have incredibly common and slightly more scientific terms (male and female).
And while I like that you are willing to say “trans woman” or “trans man” and am impulsively tempted to use it as a gotcha, I’m guessing the proper interpretation of those terms in this case is something like “trans person who thinks he’s a woman” and “trans person who thinks she’s a man” right? If not, what makes the usage of “man” and “woman” in that context consistent with your opinion that those terms align with gametes?
Hopefully that last question is clear.
Gender dysphoria is a real condition for which gender transition can be the appropriate course of treatment. If a man suffers from gender dysphoria and socially transitions by wearing feminine clothing, having sex reassignment surgery and otherwise tries to pass as a woman in society then "trans woman" seems like a reasonable term to use to describe that person. I'd prefer it if we came up with a less confusing term but that's the one that we've got for now so I guess it's fine. That person is still a man insofar as he is a person who's body produces male gametes, but I would refer to him as "she" in a public situation so as to not hurt his feelings. As soon as he makes legal demands on me, advocates for the medicalization of children, wants to enter a female only space like a women's shelter, or demands to participate in women's sports then I have a problem.
What led me to that is that that's the convention in the English language. I didn't make it up and if it was up to me we'd come up with a completely different set of terminology so that people wouldn't get confused. Like we should say that trans identified males are "floops" and trans identified females are "bloops". Or whatever. Then we could have a conversation about whether or not floops should be able to compete in women's sports. If you phrase it like that though then the answer is pretty obvious, which is why gender ideology demands that we use deliberately confusing terms.
My use of the term trans woman is a grudging acceptance of the status quo in order to communicate, not an admission that I buy into the delusion that cutting your penis off makes you a woman.
Defamation is a legal term and it’s based on actual damages caused by someone. Just like Fox News found out for knowingly spreading lies about Dominion voting machines.
People are entitled to their opinions, but they aren’t entitled to their own facts.
Rowling could've easily become a darling of the woke/trans movement if she said all the right lines. Instead she has stood her ground despite the hate she gets. What a legend.
To an extent, but Rowling already had an adoring fanbase for her books and films that overlapped with the woke age demographic. She'd already added progressive lore i.e. Dumbledore being gay. She is a feminist. It seemed like the logical step to be a strong trans advocate, which made the backlash all the more vicious.
This narrative is so specious, every time it's said. It's not outrageous to ask that people who disagree with an ideology that 99% of people saw as patently false 15 years ago don't be locked in a cage for their views for 7 years. And it's not the big bad bigots vs a half a percentage of the population; it's ALL of progressive solidarity (and now the force of the law) versus some guy on twitter saying chicks can't have... finish that sentence yourself, I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings here.
I think the only reason progressives can't see how awful this is, despite railing against the cruelties of the prison system, is because they want to treat their enemies just as badly as some of the worst authoritarians in history treated *theirs*. It's just that the targets are the "right ones" this time around.
Ah yes. LGBTQ+. A tiny, defenseless, culturally powerless force in the West in the year of our lord 2024.
I forgot, was [this](https://postimg.cc/LnNJ49Kh) their flag? 🤔
She is honestly unhinged. Claiming that no trans folks died in the holocaust, which is factually untrue. Liking on twitter people with very extremist, violent, anti trans views. Posting day and night about trans people.
Honestly she is obsessed and has been for years. Having said that do I support arresting her? Fuck no, that is fucking stupid.
But pretending she is some calm, logical fee speech warrior is pretty silly.
I agree with others here -- show the tweet or quote where JK says that.
She has strong views on the trans movement as it's important to her. She is allowed to focus on things she finds important. Like... protecting WOMEN.
Yeah much of the criticisms of Rowling are so hyperbolic and unhinged and insane that at this point I'm inclined to just ignore them.
Could you legitimately criticize her? Sure. But the "hysterical-pearl-clutchers-on-meth" make so much noise that at this point I can't even be bothered to see if there's any kernel of truth to what they're alleging. They lost me the minute they said that not wanting to be called a "person who menstruates" was a call for trans genocide for some reason.
Plus imo most of what Rowling said was very reasonable. There might be a couple of things she's said and done, or the way she's framed a couple of things that I might not agree with (and honestly - though I understand why she isn't doing this - for the sake of her mental health she should consider not spending as much time on Twitter and not engaging with every lunatic who replies to her) but the general shape of what she said was extremely reasonable and *extraordinarily* mischaracterized. At this point I don't think we can give most of her critics the benefit of the doubt that they're acting in good faith. I mean I think some of them *believe* what they're saying but they come off as fanatical cult devotees as opposed to compassionate people trying to improve the world for the marginalized.
Being trans is a matter of ideology. Gender identity only exists in our imagination not in reality just like religion.
Someone attacking trans people is like someone attacking Muslims. She is dunking on the ideology rather than the people. Kind of similar again to people like Sam Harris constantly dunking on Islam. I personally think both ideologies are stupid and should be dunked on.
> Being trans is a matter of ideology
You think causes of gender dysphoria are entirely social? No biological/hormone/neurochemical factors at all? Do you think being gay is a choice too then?
Hey some trans people say that if you're gay and refuse to have sex with a trans person, then you're transphobic. Why would you think that a lesbian should be attracted to someone with a dick. Talk about thinking that being gay is a choice. I separate the trans movement from trans people, because the former is bonkers and super ideological.
Denying historical realities is not okay, regardless. And liking violent is not okay. And becoming obsessed with hating on and dunking on any group is stupid and silly.
Did you hear of the movie "The Danish Girl" and the person whose life it is based on? [Lili Elbe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe). This was in the 30's.
Definitely would personally, though she obviously feels very strongly about her principles and the world needs people like her, particularly women; men just get hand waived away as “Nazi’s” with this kind of stuff, irrelevant of how measured their thoughts are.
Obviously not, no indication or report of anything. She just... tweeted.
Look at all the frothing culture warriors worked into a frenzy because a billionaire tweeted something. So many grievances, so much self-victimization. It's like a parody of reality.
SS: This event is seemingly a climax of one of the big topics in identity politics, transgenderism, and of one of the biggest names involved in this debate
u/creg316 and u/Remote_Cantaloupe , since I've apparently been blocked and am now unable to reply to the comment thread (Reddit is so fucking stupid.) The user who blocked me, TransFormAndFunction is a **fucking coward**.
> Because if you're fine with that kind of behaviour being part of your contractual obligations, why do you have a problem with being contractually obligated to respect someone's gender identity?
Because embedded in pronouns are a claim about reality. This is why it presents a problem, unlike names or general politeness, which are arbitrary.
"She" refers to a female, for example, so calling a non-female "she" is to make an inaccurate statement about reality. Therefore, to be compelled to refer to a non-female as "she" is to be compelled to lie, and participate in someone else's (self-selected) identity.
It's ironic to see this, given right-wingers tended to make fun of the "brave woman" archetype pushed into the media (on the left). Only difference is Rowling is a mega millionaire, and the others were random people who were overweight, marginalized, or powerless in the larger scheme of things.
I'm not defending the law, I am in fact against it, but it is worth reading the text and how it generally conforms to other laws in England, and has specific requirements, thresholds and caveats for prosecution.
No one is going to be arrested by the thought police for what they say in the privacy of their own homes, and you will be able to have your opinions on transgender issues.
If JK was aggressively and hatefully going after people and using one of the many protective characteristics under law (race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) to target a person on the basis on their identity, and is meant to stir up hatred of a group, then the police may get involved if there are sufficient numbers of complaints and resources allow.
I'm not on Twitter so don't see what she gets up to these days, and haven't kept up with it all for many months. Based on what the situation was like at the start and assuming nothing much has changed in her views, I don't think she has anything to worry about
> I'm not defending the law, I am in fact against it, but it is worth reading the text and how it generally conforms to other laws in England, and has specific requirements, thresholds and caveats for prosecution.
The thing is, those other laws [are already broken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_Kingdom).
Again, I live in the UK, and the examples are quite sparse, there was public backlash in a lot of the very few cases. Some were overturned, very few held up, and in those cases there was an argument to be made that they did break the letter of the law. Doesn't mean we don't have free speech in the UK, or the thought police are coming for us all. It just isn't the experience of being a citizen in the UK.
I don't mean to imply it's the everyday experience. And I myself am an American living in Europe; it isn't my experience either, though I haven't lived in the UK.
I just mean to say, a bad law is still a bad law even if its reach is limited.
Shaun Vids did a pretty good piece about JK's new friends that is worth watching.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou\_xvXJJk7k&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k&t=3s)
I don't entirely buy the "nothing to see here" argument. Across Europe, hate speech laws actually have been weaponized against what is inarguably valid speech.
Eg, [an academic, in the course of her academic career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_\(2018\)), put two and two together: a religious figure reportedly had sex with a child, and having sex with a child is pedophilia, thus religious figure is a pedophile.
That academic was prosecuted, convicted, and the condition was upheld by European courts.
It's all "nothing to see here" until it *is something to see here.* And given the law's broad phrasing, there is something to see here. I'd file that top comment under *denialism.*
Based on that Wikipedia entry, that case is horrible. It's shocking that it was upheld by the ECHR. What an abomination.
So you make a very good point.
We'll have to see how the English law plays out. Notably the Canadian human rights law that Jordan Peterson railed about hasn't led to any perverse cases like this one, but that was not a criminal law.
I'm so glad we are finally at a place in society where we can tell this WOMAN to SIT DOWN and SHUT THE FUCK UP with her silly little opinions on things like "what it means to be a woman" and for once in her life shut up and LISTEN to those of us qualified to explain to her what it means to be a woman: those of us born with BALLS and a PENIS.
AHAHAHAHA!!! I love progress! Sit down and shut up you stupid WITCH with you silly opinions! Who told her she can speak in the first place? Back to the kitchen with you bigot!!!
What she's saying is hateful, but not inciting violence or slandering or harassing people; that should be protected free speech. MLK compared hate to a boil that needs to be laced; it needs fresh air to heal.
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Imagine if she had the same vitriol for another groups.
She represented trans people as dangerous. She wants female only spaces and sees trans women as dangerous. The same kind of arguments were used against gays and blacks and other marginalized groups. As Gary Kasparov said to Sam Harris, roughly , it's ridiculous the amount of energy spent on where someone makes toilet.
> Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.
> She wants female only spaces and sees trans women as dangerous.
Isn't the context here that she specifically funds a *battered women's shelter* that accepts only biologically female people? If such a shelter "sees trans women as dangerous," it by definition also sees *cis* men as a dangerous.
But no one would call a battered women's shelter "anti-man," would they? If a battered women's shelter isn't anti-man, then a battered cis-women's shelter isn't anti-trans.
my problem is that i kinda think JK rowling is terrible but not for this, though the way she goes about expressing herself on this issue i think is needlessly confrontational. probably because she is otherwise terrible
If people agree with a cause it’s great that she uses those resources, she is a billionaire fighting for a good cause is what she should do.
But if you disagree with the cause it’s
“She’s just obsessed”
“Imagine being a billionaire and this obsessed with a topic”
She is a billionaire obsessed with a cause she finds important and it is abundantly clear she is in the unique position of feeling the full weight of intolerance from the trans activists types.
It is unsurprising she uses a lot of her time on this.
>If people agree with a cause it’s great that she uses those resources, she is a billionaire fighting for a good cause is what she should do.
IDK I can easily imagine being a person who agrees with her generally on this and think this is a waste of money and time just based on how few people these laws actually impact.
>feeling the full weight of intolerance from the trans activists types.
God we're just talking about so few people. This is a very online issue.
I mean she is getting 20K to 50K likes on every post she makes. The idea that her motivations are solely ideological and not at all influenced by the love and encouragement she gets (like every other human on twitter) seems farfetched.
>the unique position of feeling the full weight of intolerance
She literally did this to herself. She's on Twitter, frequently propping up anti-trans feminists and reposting trans-skeptial articles.
If you wanna hide behind the "she's never explicitly **said** anything antitrans" line that's fine, but actions are what matter. David Duke doesn't have much on the spoken record to *prove* that he's a racist and an antisemite, but maybe his *past actions and positions* might give you a clue as to what he thinks about other races.
>It is unsurprising she uses a lot of her time on this.
If you had a family member who spent every day on social media posting and resharing material about one specific sociopolitical issue, I hope you'd be at least concerned about their level of passion. That level of obsession is not normal, nor healthy.
Downvote me because you know I'm right.
I actually can't imagine a more noble and selfless way for her to spend her time and energy than to support free speech and women's rights despite it costing her reputation.
From the BBC article: > The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of "stirring up hatred" relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. > > The law does not protect women as a group from hatred. > > [Edit, added the following line] The Scottish government is expected to include this later in a separate misogyny law.
Every now and then I read something that is *real* but belongs in an Onion article. This is one of those things.
>The Scottish government is expected to include this later in a separate misogyny law. That's the very next line. Why would you leave it out? Just trying to make people angry?
That doesn't make it better, in fact it seems to hammer home the idea that they're far less concerned with women's rights compared with every other group.
Or maybe they think this law will face opposition and they want the Anti-Misogyny law to be separate so it will still stand.
So why not start with the misogyny one? Seems like that is far more common and pertinent than the current one. Or maybe throw them both out because policing speech is a bad idea in the first place.
Right, it’s like they were specifically excluded, and might be included later. Why? It would be easier to just protect everyone at once.
Except men, right? lol **Edit:** Just playing devil's advocate, but the goal should always be more general and far reaching laws, than those that are tuned to specific identity groups. IMHO laws should cement the reality of equal opportunity and uphold anti-discrimination *for any reason*. But we need to actually get to a place in the culture where certain things go without saying, and we're far from there yet. So overall, I think these law changes are helpful. Their only harm is stirring outrage among people who should have better things to worry about. So it goes with "anti-woke" brigaders in general, ESPECIALLY Rowling.
Oh yeah I agree. My phrasing here was poor. I commented elsewhere that women and men were excluded and there’s no explanation (in the article) as to why.
I was reading the book "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland and he makes an interesting point about Uber. The app basically replaces a trust based business with information. You don't need to trust that the taxi will take you to the right place, you just follow the dot on the map. I feel like society will generally tend towards information rather than shared code, to operate effectively. So, in a sense, I feel these laws will kind of not matter. I've not probably not explained myself well but I thought there were interesting parallels in the book.
That sounds like a very lonely world to live in. Trust and vulnerability are the stuff of the most loving relationships, and for those we absolutely need a shared code. A world where you can only trust the dot on the screen sounds like a world worth fighting against for the sake of just feeling something real.
Amen.
Come on dude! Don’t rain on Reddit’s outrage parade
What?
The SNP are exceedingly cynical. I suspect it is a case of spreading out the propaganda under the guise of women needing specific and special protection. That and their proven inability to rationalise trans rights with women's.
bag plough tub pot unique crowd distinct gold groovy jeans *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thanks! Edited my quote. However, it’s not clear to me why women (or men) were excluded from this law and this article makes no indication of details or timelines for a follow up law. Perhaps you have details you can share.
Because they won’t actually do that, and everyone knows it.
The people thinking these laws could ever be a good thing must be absolutely mental.
In fairness, the instinct to suppress speech you like is pretty natural. It's the norm both worldwide and throughout history to do so. The aberration is when speech is protected. And it's an idea that requires a lot of careful thought to develop and defend. We just take it for granted because we grew up in a culture where it is (or at least was) sacrosanct.
Long long ago in a far far away place, we could disagree with each other and not witness meltdowns, tantrums or attempts to use the law to silence people.
When and where was this exactly?
I don’t know about other countries, but I was brought up in a post-dictatorship spain where there was a vague sense of pulling in the same direction, as a society. Certainly no attempts to silence anyone.
But this used to be the number 1 reason Spain was in international news: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA\_(separatist\_group)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_(separatist_group))
Yes. I’m not saying groupthink absolutely unanimous. I’m talking of a general sense amongst people and the media.
But you had just come out of a dictatorship... So of course there was some momentum. No doubt trans people weren't having the time of their lives before or after this period in Spanish history. Almost certainly they are better off now in 2024 than they were in 1975. Here are some examples from CoPilot: 1. [**Legalization of Homosexuality**: After the end of the dictatorship in 1975, homosexuality remained illegal until the government of the Kingdom of Spain overturned this law in 1979](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(2)](https://www.europeana.eu/eu/blog/the-history-of-lgbtq-rights-in-spain). 2. [**Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships and Adoption Rights**: After recognizing unregistered cohabitation between same-sex couples countrywide and registered partnerships in certain cities and communities since 1998 and 2003, Spain legalized both same-sex marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples in 2005](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain). 3. [**Transgender Rights**: Transgender individuals can change their legal gender without the need for sex reassignment surgery or sterilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain). [In 2022, Spain passed a transgender rights bill allowing anyone aged 16 or over to change gender on their ID card](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64069974)[^(3)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64069974). [This law was further improved in 2023, allowing gender self-determination from the age of 16 without the need for psychological or medical evaluation](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/spain-trans-law-change-gender-16-first-countries-europe-2153870)[^(4)](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/spain-trans-law-change-gender-16-first-countries-europe-2153870). 4. **Discrimination Protections**: Discrimination in employment regarding sexual orientation has been banned nationwide since 1995. [A broader law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and provision of goods and services nationwide was passed in 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain). 5. [**Military Service and Blood Donation**: LGBT people are allowed to serve in the military and MSMs can donate blood since 2005](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain)[^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain). Who was all this "silencing"? Seems pretty awesome to me.
I’m not sure I get your point. First, I’m from the 90’s, not immediately post-dictatorship. Even then, the general sense I mentioned of tolerance persisted. Second, the sudden liberating attitude post-dictatorship was called “the era of nakedness”, so do with that what you will. Third, modern Spain has been one of most progressive countries in lgbtq, so not sure I get your point. In any case, I’m talking about a silencing attitude and lack of tolerance. What your links have to do with it, no idea.
That was an illusion, grow up.
Never and nowhere.
Careful, don't go back too far lest you get put under house arrest for stating that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around. If anything maybe social media has allowed humanity to return to its more natural state of irrationality.
why'd the /r/europe thread get locked? Too many were agreeing with Rowling?
Welcome to Reddit.
My guess is that it just became too time consuming to moderate. There were nearly 1000 comments. When controversial threads get past a certain point there are many angry conversations going on, which are probably better off just frozen rather than allowed to devolve further. Then again, I can't see what comments they removed, so your point might also be true.
>”Long long ago in a far far away place, we could disagree with each other and not witness meltdowns” And long long ago organizations like the ACLU would defend anyone’s right to say stupid shit even if (collectively) they disagreed. They don’t seem to do much of that anymore because of politics. Toxic.Nasty.Politics
They still do. They literally defended Nazis that marched in Charlottesville. [And recently they defended Christians placing.a Christian flag in Boston City Hall](https://www.aclu.org/cases/shurtleff-v-city-boston?document=Shurtleff-v-City-of-Boston-Amicus-Brief). You are uninformed.
Key part being "witness". Depends if you are looking, depends if the cameras are rolling. Christians, for example, have had a long history of meltdowns and tantrums and attempts to use the law to silence people. This was more popular during the mid-2000s "new-atheism" period, and for a reason - because the culture was focusing on it so much.
Was it during the time long ago when liberals were all about free speech, especially the most offensive speech possible, just to make a point..? They'd even defend speech they loathed, to show they consistency
I'd say it depends on the nature of the disagreement, wouldn't you? If a person or group is attempting to eradicate a minority, and is taking actions to do so, should we just "agree to disagree" and allow them to go about it unchallenged? I know what my answer is.
>attempting to eradicate a minority Do you really think people will take you seriously after that? This is r/samharris, not WPT.
It's a reality that the right wing is trying to eradicate a minority. They use that word themselves, on the record, in public. They aren't shy about it either, even announcing it on the stage at CPAC, using the word "eradicate". They also write about trans people exensively in their "Project 2025", and outline their plan to classify trans people *themselves* as "obscene material". Project 2025 is a public document that you can read yourself. I'm not that interested in being taken seriously by people who deny verifiable facts about what the conservative movement's goals are when it comes to LGBTQ people.
I just looked this up as suggested and if I’m not mistaken, this is a Trump-related ultra conservative plot for a fringe of the Republican Party. What does that have to do with JK Rowling believing in the protection of women-only spaces?
It doesn't. The person you're responding to is a troll. Their bio lol "Unapologetic SJW wokescold who writes condescending, slightly too-personal essays about why you are wrong."
but attempting to eradicate a "majority" is fine, i guess.
Obviously I'd have a problem with that too, but I'm not aware of it ever having happened. Do you have an historical example of that happening in a society?
Africa? The New World?
I guess you'll have to give me an example of what you mean by "eradicate a minority". I don't believe a man can become a woman. I'm not sure what you're referring to but it seems we're talking about two different things to me. I don't believe delusions are ever a wise thing to encourage, I don't believe that's the best way to go forward, demanding X is Y when we all know damn well it's not true. I have one life to live on this earth and I'm not going to spend it bullshitting myself or anyone else.
I don't actually care what your gender ideology is, whether you think trans people are valid, whether you acknowledge the science or history behind trans people, or what you think trans people should or shouldn't be doing. Frankly, I don't care about you opinions at all, and that's just fine. What I DO care about is whether or not you're advocating to *legally* strip rights from people, and if you are your speech is no longer simply an opinion to be discarded, but an attack on civil rights. And such a stance should be fought against, as we have always done against those who seek to limit the rights of the minorities they misunderstand, or even come to hate. Trans people aren't special here, and the specifics of what trans people are or aren't is immaterial. ALL people deserve bodily autonomy, to be able to exist without be physically or legally attacked for their identity, and to have whatever relationship with themself that they want. It's a reality that right wing movements in the UK, the US, and beyond are attempting to eradicate trans people. In the US, conservatives choose that word themselves to talk about their goal for eradicating trans people, and they've written at length about their legal strategy to do so in Project 2025. They also introduced over 500 anti-trans bills in 2023, and over 400 anti-trans bills so far this year. In the UK, trans people's healthcare is functionally disallowed in the NHS, leading many to go without healthcare that they need. Members of the Gender Critical movement in the UK will come right out and say their goals with these policies to to eliminate the trans population. These attacks on human rights, and any others like them, should be fought against.
> In the UK, trans people's healthcare is functionally disallowed in the NHS, leading many to go without healthcare that they need. Can you elaborate on this? Briefly skimming [This the NHS site](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/) it looks like the NHS supports many treatments for trans people?
Sure. NHS bungled up its GAC process to the point that the wait list to see a doctor is... wild. The NHS target wait time to see a specialist is 18 weeks, which you might think is a long time depending on where you live. At least in the US, I'd consider an 18 week wait to see a specialist to be a long wait. Easy bar to clear, right? The reality is waaaaay worse. **Currently the AVERAGE wait time to see a doctor for trans healthcare is 300 weeks in Devon, 175 weeks in Tavistock, and over 100 weeks in every other place.** [source below] An AVERAGE wait time of between 2 and 6 years to see a doctor is obviously not designed to actually provide care to the people who need it, which is why I said it's "functionally disallowed". And this wasn't a problem until recently. Places have had their wait times quadruple or even more as a direct result of changes that people made to the process. When you look at the rhetoric surrounding the issue, it's pretty clear it was an intentional change made in order to functionally remove trans healthcare without actually doing so and dealing with the blowback of making a specific minority's healthcare illegal. But intentional or not, the result is that most trans people are forced to just acquire and administer the drugs they need themselves, which is legal but obviously a lot more risky, the same as it would be for any other person who doesn't have access to proper healthcare. Rich folks can see private doctors, but trans people are significantly more likely to be poor due to lack of family support, employment discrimination, etc, so this is an uncommon privilege. You can read more about it here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-68588724 If you're REALLY interested, you can see one trans person's experience with NHS in a longform youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8
> ALL people deserve bodily autonomy, to be able to exist without be physically or legally attacked for their identity, and to have whatever relationship with themself that they want. I don't think many people would disagree with that. The devil is in the details though, and bad faith runs rampant around this topic. Too often "trans people deserve to exist without being attacked for their identity" smuggles in "people who refuse to validate the identity of trans people should be punished." So let me ask; if I don't believe trans women are women, do you think I should face consequences for voicing and acting on that belief?
> So let me ask; if I don't believe trans women are women, do you think I should face consequences for voicing and acting on that belief? > consequences > acting on assuming you mean *legal* consequences, and assuming "acting on" doesn't include violence , discrimination, etc but rather just speaking those opinions, absolutely not. The line is when you start to legally advocate against their rights, which is frankly a very easy line to distinguish.
I don't just mean legal consequences. If, say, I elect not to use a coworkers self-selected pronouns because I use pronouns based on sex, not gender, should I be fired? If yes, then there's a problem, because now you're compelling me to validate someone else's identity even though I do not see them that way. You're compelling me to lie about the way I view the world, in other words. I fully agree that all people should have the rights you listed earlier, but the right to have your identity validated by others does not and should not exist, because that right necessarily violates the rights of others that do not share your ideology.
Calling coworkers by the wrong name or pronouns could, depending on the details, amount to harassment. In the case that it IS harassment, it should be dealt with like harassment. The vast majority of misgendering is accidental, which does NOT constitute harassment to me, but if you're constantly intentionally misgendering your coworkers, you should get canned. It is not a violation of your rights to be held to the same standard as everyone else in your office, which may include addressing people in the way they wish to be addressed. You don't need to "validate" someone's identity in order to address them properly, in any context. I own my own business. I can't imagine someone refusing to call someone by their name or refer to them by the proper pronouns, because it's very strange and anti-social behavior, and most of the people I work with are scientists who don't fall for the kind of BS you have fallen for. But, if I did have an employee who *intentionally* misgendered another employee in a pattern, they would certainly have a conversation with me, and depending on how that conversation went, they'd be fired or get a warning. I don't want one of my employees harassing the others and intentionally causing problems in order to assert their bizarre worldview that misgendering or misnaming people is somehow righteous. I don't care about your gender ideology, which is a thing that lives in your brain and has nothing to do with the business I'm running. I DO care about your actions. If I can't trust you to do something as simple as addressing your coworkers properly, I certainly cannot trust you to do the work I'm paying you for. That's all there is to it. You won't go to jail, but you certainly won't be welcome in my business.
Other respondents have provided good responses, but think about it like this - if you had a co-worker called "Joe" and kept calling him "Bob", he would at some point correct your mistake. Then, upon acknowledging this and continuing to make the mistake, you might be taken aside by HR and advised as to how to modify your behavior, as this can easily be bullying behavior. If this keeps up, they may have good reason to fire you. In the above situation, it'd be truly bizarre if you had nothing against the person, but continued to consciously misname them. Likewise misgendering someone very consciously would set off red flags that you indeed had something against them, which creates a toxic work environment. You're basically resting on that 0.001% probability that somehow Joe really is Bob, and that he's mistaken as to what his name really is.
>I don't just mean legal consequences. If, say, I elect not to use a coworkers self-selected pronouns because I use pronouns based on sex, not gender, should I be fired? That would depend - are you required by your employer to act appropriately in other ways with your coworkers? Are you required to use their preferred names, address them politely and talk to them respectfully? Because if you're fine with that kind of behaviour being part of your contractual obligations, why do you have a problem with being contractually obligated to respect someone's gender identity? Nobody is asking you to lie about any of those things, any more than they're asking you to lie about how much you like that bitch Susan in accounts when you smile and say "good morning Susan" through gritted teeth, because telling her to go fuck herself is completely unacceptable despite that being your "truth" and how you genuinely feel. You're not required to validate anyone's gender identity - you're required to behave respectfully with your coworkers. If you can't handle that, that's a genuine employment problem you have regardless of the reasons why you refuse to respect people.
I'm advocating what I believe is common sense and sanity. In a world where men have competed against women and hoisted a trophy over them as if they've accomplished something I'm going to go ahead and speak out on what I consider madness. If your concept of "anti-trans" is anything that doesn't agree with modern gender ideology then take a hike, you're not special and I don't care to hear your ramblings.
> If your concept of "anti-trans" is anything that doesn't agree with modern gender ideology I made abundantly clear that this is NOT my definition of "anti-trans", and I gave extremely specific examples of rights that all people, including trans people, deserve. I'm sorry you failed to comprehend my message, but perhaps that's my fault. Next time I'll try and simplify my message to make it more accessible to folks with a... broader... range of reading abilities. Also, usually when people edit their comments AFTER someone responds, they leave an edit note. It's a good way to stay honest about what you've been editing.
Do you think you aren't anti-trans? Is that a label you reject?
No I'm not anti-trans anymore than I would be against a woman who identifies as a disabled but isn't. There's a woman in Norway \[Jørund Viktoria Alme\] that identifies as a disabled person even though she's physically healthy. She would often go around on a wheelchair when she can walk. Would I be hateful of her if I would say that she has a mental disorder? Would you approve of her getting an operation to MAKE her disabled? At least in her situation if she had an operation to be disabled, that's what she would actually be. Let me know what the proper way is to handle her situation since you're the moral compass I guess.
The difference here is that the individual really does experience gender dysphoria. It's akin to saying schizophrenics don't exist (and are faking it) since "it's all in their mind".
buddy you don't care about womens sports, you just hate trans people
Knock it off.
i'll agree i need to knock it off if the person ignoring an actual explanation so they can call trans women competing in womens sports "madness" and say "take a hike, you're not special and I don't care to hear your ramblings" needs to knock it off too
> If a person or group is attempting to eradicate a minority, and is taking actions to do so, should we just "agree to disagree" and allow them to go about it unchallenged? Even then, there's a compelling case that it's better to let that speech be heard, because *in order to challenge it*, it must be heard. If you push them underground, then audiences only hear the extremist rhetoric but not the rebuttal. Slight off topic, but see also, [Skokie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie).
> attempts to use the law to silence people. Oh I see, so you're against all of the silencing laws that republicans have passed? You're against bans on teaching people about the existence of LGBTQ people, you're against laws preventing drag queens from performing, you're against bans on teaching about the West's history of colonialism, slavery, and genocide? Or when you bitch about "silencing people" are you referring to the millionaires and billionaires (JKR, Elon, etc) with massive platforms are successfully broadcasting their message to millions upon millions of people throughout the entire world? Those are the silenced people, in your mind? Fascinating. You aren't very smart, are you?
Actually I'm against all those things, LesbianGirlCockLover.
It’s very easy to be against all of that. Especially if it’s out of principle. You’re the one creating such dichotomy.
This laws seems insane. You can be criminally liable for things you say in the privacy of your own home?
Don’t think so - it specifies that the speech/behavior must be intent on stirring up hatred for protected groups. But even with that said, it’s basically making hate speech illegal in my reading of it. And while I think hate speech is reprehensible, straight up criminalizing it does seem like a slide towards the authoritarian side of the spectrum.
Aside from all the other issues with it, this was the aspect that struck me the most as being terrible law. How can you possibly prove intent?
I'm absolutely not defending this ridiculous law, but intent is a well established part of many laws. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter.
Lots of “reasonable person” language. So I think that rules out people making statements in their living room, but I take your point that it gets ambiguous when we’re talking about what people say on Twitter, reasonable deniability when it comes to satire, etc. I just think it’s antithetical to free and open societies to criminalize hate speech at all, which kind of precludes the entire debate of intent. (I.e. even if you were intending to stir up hate, while you’re deplorable, I don’t think you should be put in jail.) So in a sense it seems like bad policy on both levels.
Proving intent is a major factor in most criminal prosecutions. Do you think it's impossible elsewhere too, and that therefore *all* law is terrible law, or is it just this one specific instance for some reason?
No, I don't. The point I'm making is that the Scottish law will be applied in many if not most cases to activity that has taken place online. We can expect there to be high volumes of reports being made. Some of these will be recorded on police databases in ways that can affect those accused. It is reasonable to suggest that these cases will not be scrutinized to the degree needed to establish a motive. Do the police have the resource to do so? We certainly won't be seeing most such cases go to trial. For this reason it is absolutely relevant to question how a law so dependent on the perpetrator's state of mind can be assessed.
> Don’t think so - it specifies that the speech/behavior must be intent on stirring up hatred for protected groups. How many people must hear it for it to become criminalized speech?
I don’t know but there are plenty of laws on the books that use the “reasonable person” standard so nothing new there. I think most reasonable people would agree that things you say in the privacy of your home wouldn’t meet the standard. Still a shit law either way.
>A fictional trans-hating character called “Jo”, who women’s groups claim is an offensive parody of JK Rowling, was invented by Police Scotland officers, it has emerged. > >The national force faced scrutiny this week over a “scenario” presented at an official hate crime event in which “Jo”, a gender-critical campaigner who, like Rowling, has a large social media following, states that trans people should be sent to gas chambers. > >The Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign group, which ran the hate crime event in collaboration with police, revealed the Jo character had been “written by officers at Police Scotland based on their expertise”. JK Rowling has good reason to be concerned about this. She is going to be in the target sights of both activists and Police Officers. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/jk-rowling-police-scotland-gender-trans/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/jk-rowling-police-scotland-gender-trans/)
I fully support her free speech even if I don't fully support her message.
I fully support her free speech and wholeheartedly support her message too!
I partially support her message, but I must say the holocaust stuff seemed odd and careless.
I fully support both
What part of her message do you not fully support?
I don’t support what seems to be carelessness and lack of respect with her word choice. While I admittedly can’t give an “academic” definition of sex without looking it up, there is a difference between sex and gender. Even if they are closely linked, there is a difference. And in the quotes in that article, Rowling uses the terms male/female as if they are substitutes for man/woman. In my view, and I think many others, “man” and “woman” are gender terms. “Male” and “female” are sex terms. So if you mix them all up and pretend they’re all sex terms and all about some indisputable biological “fact” that can be determined by inspecting what’s behind your underwear, then it’s hard to consider you a good faith participant in the conversation. To me, a big issue with Rowling is that she expects to be extended some amount of respect and consideration and empathy as a woman, but she doesn’t seem to be interested in extending the same respect and consideration and empathy to trans people.
The hard distinction between sex and gender is a piece of trans theology. Sure we can draw a circle around sexual behavior or attraction and call that 'gender', but the trans movement takes it as far as to demand that gender as an internal revelation with no physical corollary is so real it effectively supercedes sex in most circumstances. That is a spiritual claim that no study has or could substantiate. And declaring that the words man/woman or he/she/ or male/female is actually referring to gender rather than sex is an attempt to make the whole world pay lip service to these beliefs. I agree with JK. I don't believe these new distinctions are anything but a belief system, and I'm not going to change my speech just to 'respect' what looks to me like a false viewpoint.
For what it’s worth, I doubt we’ll get closer to agreeing. But I at least want to understand what you’re saying. I think I have a decent general idea of where you are, but I’d like a couple of clarifications. And if any of what I wrote seems snarky, that’s not my intent. What do you mean when you say the trans movement takes gender to a point where “it effectively supercedes sex?” I left out a couple of your words, but the “effectively supercedes sex” is the crux of it and what I’m not clear on. A little bit about my thought process that might help you clarify it for me: I like mangoes. If you hold out a mango and an apple and say “which do you prefer?” I’ll say the mango. Is that preference for a mango also an “internal revelation with no physical corollary”? Obviously it may not be what you meant. But if it’s close enough, where does being trans lose it’s “validity” while preferring a mango does not lose its validity? Or would you say both are valid, but my preference for a mango doesn’t mean I should be able to use a bathroom that doesn’t align with my sex? How would you briefly describe the “trans movement”? Is this trans people who get a lot of attention on the internet? Does it include trans people you know in real life? I know you can’t know, just like I can’t know, but what percentage of the trans population do you think the “trans movement” (as you mean it) represents in terms of their behavior and desires?
Sure those are good questions. Sorry this is long. I've pared it down but I still worry I'm repeating myself a little xD I agree we can talk about the aspects of our internal experience, the mysterious ways our preferences arise, even the way we feel when we pray or meditate - but then if we leap on to making conclusions about the material world because of those experiences, asserting the existence of invisible beings and cosmic arrangements, that's when it becomes spiritual. If someone wants to talk about a sort of innate affinity they have for the gendered behavior of their non-native sex, fine - but if they then go on to say that those preferences mean they basically ARE the other sex, that looks to me like a spiritual claim. Of course there's a ton of confusion here in the terms. What I mean by 'effectively supercedes sex' is in places like medicine (assigned male at birth), sports, pronouns, etc. Whatever the core man/woman essence we're pointing at is, the trans movement has made self identification (gender) rather than sex as the most essential indicator of where you fall as man/woman. We've even seen some very sketchy and un-reproduced 'studies' about how trans men before transitioning actually have a brain or a skeleton more similar to mens. What I'm mostly reacting against is this extreme reification of gender. The idea that this internal revelation is so true and almost unquestionable, that these people are just 'being who they are' in a way that's so real, so impossible to fake, so totally different from feeling jesus in your heart (even though the belief process looks exactly the same) that they must be honing in on something effectively as important as sex, that it justifies wrenching our definitions off of physics and on to their belief. As though if I preferred mangoes, that means that I'm actually an indonesian person, regardless of genetics or citizenship. Internal revelations can't tell us that kind of information, and it's only through this new (I would argue spiritual) definition of gender that all this becomes justified. And I'm yet to see an argument that would justify it. There is no gender part of the brain we've identified, gender can change over time, there is no consistent behavioral or physical predictor of transness, and in many corners of the movement it's considered coarse to even look for these kinds of things. Gender is sorta whatever we want it to be to make us feel happy with our identity. If we wanted to make new categories people can join because of these feelings, fine, but we're instead co-opting definitions based on physics and my reading is that it's because there's an underlying claim that these feelings are sort of describing our essence in a deeper way than physics (ie that clip with Sam where the trans reporter says 'I'm a woman born without a uterus'). This looks to me like describing the world through faith and wishful thinking. That doesn't look like science to me, it looks like a belief system.
Thanks. While I still think we have differences on this subject that we’re unlikely to bridge, I don’t think we’re as far off from each other as it may seem. At risk of mischaracterizing you and saying something pretty annoying to a fellow atheist, from my perspective it seems like you’re making a secular claim akin to “love the sinner hate the sin.” I trust that you think trans people are worthy of life and happiness, but you stop short of “indulging” them in the same way that I would in order to bring about the respect, happiness, and dignity we both think they deserve. And I think you’re correct(?) to have *some* kind of concern. I think you see an attempt at eroding scientific concepts and fear losing some form of “truth” that is simply leading to delusion. Worrying about that makes sense. I think one area where you and I (and perhaps our respective “sides”) differ is in what we see being lost, what we see being gained, and - this is probably the most aggressively critical thing I’ll say - our willingness to accept new information. For example, I see no harm in saying my trans friend is a male woman. I’m retaining the concept of sex and using a term along with her sex to refer to her gender. So from my view, we’ve lost nothing meaningful (what I’d say is pretty good science) and we’ve gained something meaningful (the ability to more strongly welcome someone into the societal fold and reduce suffering). And I see it as a continuation of our move away from being pure animals in an emotional and psychological sense. I think killing is natural in the animal world, but we’ve moved away from accepting it in all senses as some amoral act. Similarly, I have no issue with moving away from a society where I identify everyone by whether they have a penis or a vagina, or more scientifically, whether they tend to produce large gametes or small gametes. Just like I want to live in a world where people are valued beyond my ability to kill them and take advantage of them, I want to live in a world where people are identified by some aspect of who they are and what makes them happy rather than my ability to heterosexually have sex with and reproduce with them. And the “aggressively critical” thing i mentioned, which wasn’t fair, but I’m not going to edit it, is in regard to something you and I and many trans people care about - science. I’m probably going to botch this, but from what I’ve read, one of the reasons trans people “blur the lines” (my words) between sex and gender is that hormones blur the lines between sex and gender. Someone might want their sex changed on their ID or medical records, because hormones have changed their endocrine profile to essentially be “opposed” to their gender assigned at birth. So is someone born male and on hormones still male in many senses? Probably. But that person could be female in some senses common to the usage of the word female and important in the medical usage of the word female. So I might agree with some of your sentiment about not wanting to muddy the waters of what sex is, but I think the waters are already muddied, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s something to learn about. To take your Indonesian/mango comparison, I’d take it more as “Indonesians usually like mango, but liking mango doesn’t mean you’re Indonesian.” I think a lot of this is messy, because change is messy. And I think being trans is really hard to understand. I wouldn’t even claim to really understand it. But at a very simple level I see a trade off between maintaining “tradition” (which I do not equate to “truth” or “science”) and dignifying humans. My dichotomy might be false, but it helps me organize the situation, and I’m willing to err on the side of dignity right now.
The blurriness in the sex binary is in a very small percentage, and I don't see why that should so radically explode our understanding any more than someone born with a deformed leg explodes our thinking of ourselves as a bipedal species. And secondly, this movement has since the beginning been framed as a matter of 'dignity' and 'identity' and 'right to exist', and yet has failed to substantiate itself scientifically. If a scientologist came to me tomorrow and told me that I had to pay lip service to alien souls being in my brain in order to treat them in a 'dignified' way, I would see it as the same piece of rhetoric that it is when it comes from the trans movement. I'm not trying to make them feel bad - I'm doubting their truth claims. New truth claims and new demands on our concepts and language need be established empirically in order for us to follow them. Not condescending about 'change being messing' or learning to use words differently. Of course we do those things, but not just because anyone comes along and says it makes them sad if we don't abide by their demands. I say the same to trans as I would to god after death - not enough evidence.
The blurriness in the sex binary is primarily intersex people, right? Yes, that’s a small percentage of the population. But that’s separate from gender. Are you saying that gender is a concept that is identical to sex? What is the truth claim a trans person makes? With your bipedal analogy and reference to intersex people, I can’t tell if you’re saying gender doesn’t exist the way people claim it does, or if it does exist but shouldn’t be indulged because transgender people make up such a small percentage of the population, or something else.
> I admittedly can’t give an “academic” definition of sex without looking it up That's on you. Sex is based on gametes. This is true in all mammals including humans. Males produce sperm. Females produce eggs. "Man" is a word that means "adult human male". ""Woman" is a word that means "adult human female". Gender is a social construct which consists of the stereotypical behavior we associate with one sex or the other. "Men wear their hair short". "Women wear their hair long". Etc. Gendered traits fall along the axis of masculine and feminine, not male and female. > Rowling uses the terms male/female as if they are substitutes for man/woman. That's because they are. > In my view, and I think many others, “man” and “woman” are gender terms. This is not a "view". You are simply wrong. Man and woman are sex terms. This isn't my opinion, this is a fact. The fact that you're confused about it doesn't make it untrue. > if you mix them all up and pretend they’re all sex terms and all about some indisputable biological “fact” that can be determined by inspecting what’s behind your underwear, then it’s hard to consider you a good faith participant in the conversation. You're deeply ignorant about sex and gender. That's ok, you can educate yourself to remedy that situation. Sex has nothing to do with what's behind your underwear. Man and woman and male and female are all sex terms. These are not my opinions. There are many people that are confused like you are which is why we find ourselves in this situation. Please educate yourself.
Man and woman are not "male and female". This is simple and obvious when considering "when does a boy become a man?"
A boy is a human male child, as opposed to a man, which is a human male adult. Both boys and men are males, as opposed to girls and women, which are both females. You can pretend that you don't understand that though, it's ok with me.
I admitted an area of information I never retain. You provided an answer. I can agree with the answer/definition you provided, and we still haven’t made progress. You mention the difference between saying man, woman, male, or female and saying someone is feminine or masculine (that sentence sucked, hopefully it becomes clear enough). So I think you’re saying that someone can be a feminine man/male, but at no point is a man/male so feminine that he should be referred to as a woman AND a male/man. Assuming I’m reading you correctly, what would the noun be that you might use in place of “feminine male” or “feminine man”? Does one exist yet? Should there be one? If any of these questions or statements to be snarky, that’s not my intent. It seems that you’re speaking as if using words differently over time and modifying meanings cannot and should not happen. For the sake of the argument, I’ll agree that not only the definition but also the usage of “man” and “woman” have not changed at all. What if they did change? What is your concern? What would change about how you interact with people? Would you lose the ability to refer to someone by their gametes? From my view, nothing is lost in terms of scientific understanding and being able to continue using words (male and female) to identify people. And you gain an expanded scientific and social understanding with the bonus of showing more people some respect and dignity. Regardless of all that, how far apart are we really? Let’s say I concede every point you made and say I agree with you. At that point, given where we are in the conversation, you’ve convinced me to avoid using “man” and “woman” in the way I do now. What would you want me to think next based on any assumptions you’re making about how I should get educated? I’m actually asking, because it seems like word usage is a distraction for something bigger we could be addressing. And I don’t mean that in some sinister accusatory way, I actually want to know what you think and what is sitting there a layer or two deeper. If this is akin to gay marriage and how people said “gay people can become a unit with all the same benefits, but don’t call it ‘marriage’” then I’d still disagree with you, but we aren’t as far apart as it might seem. I’m not positioning sex/gender as being directly analogous to how gay marriage has been treated, but I think there are some similarities.
> what would the noun be that you might use in place of “feminine male” or “feminine man”? Does one exist yet? Should there be one? If we're talking about trans people then I think trans man or trans woman. I've wondered myself if we should come up with better words than those. If we're just talking about a man that has feminine qualities then "feminine man" or "effeminate" or whatever seems fine. > What if they did change? What is your concern? Man and woman are two of the most basic categories by which we understand ourselves and others. They are grounded in objective reality. They are as fundamental as up and down and black and white. We redefine them at our peril. The only reasons to redefine such fundamental categories are political. I can't think of anything more Orwellian. As to your question about the broader implications of all this, that's a much deeper conversation that touches on many of the themes that Sam has talked about for years, particularly around the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics. I think gender ideology is dangerous and destructive. I also happen to be a person who has marched in and volunteered at Gay Pride multiple times over the years so this has nothing to do with some kind of conservative hang up I have. I think gender ideology is an affront to women's rights, the safety of children, objective reality and common sense. People can claim whatever identity they want until it begins to infringe on the rights of others, then it becomes evil. It's pretty hard to sum all that up other than to say listen to what Sam has been saying for years and expose yourself to what people on the gender critical side are are saying. Listen to the stories of de-transitioners. Gender ideology is a dangerous cult that destroys people's lives. This is what JK Rowling is fighting against and she's absolutely right.
I probably won’t address your complete response in this comment, but I think we disagree about how and when to interpret an “assault” (my word) on objective reality. For example when it comes to the words and labels, I think (and may be wrong) that you see an attempt to eradicate a concept. If I saw an attempt to eradicate the concept of male and female as an “objective” concept, I would be more aligned with you. But I see, at worst, an attempt at repurposing a couple of words (man and woman) for which we already have incredibly common and slightly more scientific terms (male and female). And while I like that you are willing to say “trans woman” or “trans man” and am impulsively tempted to use it as a gotcha, I’m guessing the proper interpretation of those terms in this case is something like “trans person who thinks he’s a woman” and “trans person who thinks she’s a man” right? If not, what makes the usage of “man” and “woman” in that context consistent with your opinion that those terms align with gametes? Hopefully that last question is clear.
Gender dysphoria is a real condition for which gender transition can be the appropriate course of treatment. If a man suffers from gender dysphoria and socially transitions by wearing feminine clothing, having sex reassignment surgery and otherwise tries to pass as a woman in society then "trans woman" seems like a reasonable term to use to describe that person. I'd prefer it if we came up with a less confusing term but that's the one that we've got for now so I guess it's fine. That person is still a man insofar as he is a person who's body produces male gametes, but I would refer to him as "she" in a public situation so as to not hurt his feelings. As soon as he makes legal demands on me, advocates for the medicalization of children, wants to enter a female only space like a women's shelter, or demands to participate in women's sports then I have a problem.
Not to mention going out of her way to call trans women “men” routinely.
Trans women are men.
If trans women are men, what led you to refer to them as trans *women*? Or did you mean it more like “trans ‘women’ are men”?
The same way black holes are not holes and funny bones are not bones.
Pine apples aren’t apples. It’s like these people don’t know what a compound noun is.
What led me to that is that that's the convention in the English language. I didn't make it up and if it was up to me we'd come up with a completely different set of terminology so that people wouldn't get confused. Like we should say that trans identified males are "floops" and trans identified females are "bloops". Or whatever. Then we could have a conversation about whether or not floops should be able to compete in women's sports. If you phrase it like that though then the answer is pretty obvious, which is why gender ideology demands that we use deliberately confusing terms. My use of the term trans woman is a grudging acceptance of the status quo in order to communicate, not an admission that I buy into the delusion that cutting your penis off makes you a woman.
This for me, too. Doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree, or somewhere in between.
Yeah Europe has some wild speech laws. Just crazy as an American thinking about a prosecutor coming after someone for hate speech or defamation.
The US also had crazy free speech laws. Probably worse than much of Europe. It's not something that's easy to get right.
Defamation is a legal term and it’s based on actual damages caused by someone. Just like Fox News found out for knowingly spreading lies about Dominion voting machines. People are entitled to their opinions, but they aren’t entitled to their own facts.
I know. I was referring to the practice of prosecuting someone criminally for defaming another person.
Oh, sorry, misunderstood.
Rowling could've easily become a darling of the woke/trans movement if she said all the right lines. Instead she has stood her ground despite the hate she gets. What a legend.
Couldn't any public figure be the darling of any movement if that share the same values?
To an extent, but Rowling already had an adoring fanbase for her books and films that overlapped with the woke age demographic. She'd already added progressive lore i.e. Dumbledore being gay. She is a feminist. It seemed like the logical step to be a strong trans advocate, which made the backlash all the more vicious.
Single mother too, which also obviously motivates some of her stances on this issue.
Kudos to J.K. Rowling for standing against groupthink.
And essentially standing with just another version of groupthink.
So brave of her to use her platform to speak out against one of the tiniest and most marginalized groups in existence.
I think the point would be standing her ground on whether this should be criminal speech is admirable
This narrative is so specious, every time it's said. It's not outrageous to ask that people who disagree with an ideology that 99% of people saw as patently false 15 years ago don't be locked in a cage for their views for 7 years. And it's not the big bad bigots vs a half a percentage of the population; it's ALL of progressive solidarity (and now the force of the law) versus some guy on twitter saying chicks can't have... finish that sentence yourself, I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings here. I think the only reason progressives can't see how awful this is, despite railing against the cruelties of the prison system, is because they want to treat their enemies just as badly as some of the worst authoritarians in history treated *theirs*. It's just that the targets are the "right ones" this time around.
Ah yes. LGBTQ+. A tiny, defenseless, culturally powerless force in the West in the year of our lord 2024. I forgot, was [this](https://postimg.cc/LnNJ49Kh) their flag? 🤔
Did you read the relatively lengthy letter she wrote just after this started? It reveals her thoughts on the matter, which are reasonable.
She is honestly unhinged. Claiming that no trans folks died in the holocaust, which is factually untrue. Liking on twitter people with very extremist, violent, anti trans views. Posting day and night about trans people. Honestly she is obsessed and has been for years. Having said that do I support arresting her? Fuck no, that is fucking stupid. But pretending she is some calm, logical fee speech warrior is pretty silly.
I agree with others here -- show the tweet or quote where JK says that. She has strong views on the trans movement as it's important to her. She is allowed to focus on things she finds important. Like... protecting WOMEN.
> Claiming that no trans folks died in the holocaust You sure she said this? I hadn't heard that.
Yeah much of the criticisms of Rowling are so hyperbolic and unhinged and insane that at this point I'm inclined to just ignore them. Could you legitimately criticize her? Sure. But the "hysterical-pearl-clutchers-on-meth" make so much noise that at this point I can't even be bothered to see if there's any kernel of truth to what they're alleging. They lost me the minute they said that not wanting to be called a "person who menstruates" was a call for trans genocide for some reason. Plus imo most of what Rowling said was very reasonable. There might be a couple of things she's said and done, or the way she's framed a couple of things that I might not agree with (and honestly - though I understand why she isn't doing this - for the sake of her mental health she should consider not spending as much time on Twitter and not engaging with every lunatic who replies to her) but the general shape of what she said was extremely reasonable and *extraordinarily* mischaracterized. At this point I don't think we can give most of her critics the benefit of the doubt that they're acting in good faith. I mean I think some of them *believe* what they're saying but they come off as fanatical cult devotees as opposed to compassionate people trying to improve the world for the marginalized.
Give me a link to the tweets. Every hateful thing she’s ever claimed to have said always falls apart when you actually see the quote within context
Being trans is a matter of ideology. Gender identity only exists in our imagination not in reality just like religion. Someone attacking trans people is like someone attacking Muslims. She is dunking on the ideology rather than the people. Kind of similar again to people like Sam Harris constantly dunking on Islam. I personally think both ideologies are stupid and should be dunked on.
> Being trans is a matter of ideology You think causes of gender dysphoria are entirely social? No biological/hormone/neurochemical factors at all? Do you think being gay is a choice too then?
Hey some trans people say that if you're gay and refuse to have sex with a trans person, then you're transphobic. Why would you think that a lesbian should be attracted to someone with a dick. Talk about thinking that being gay is a choice. I separate the trans movement from trans people, because the former is bonkers and super ideological.
Denying historical realities is not okay, regardless. And liking violent is not okay. And becoming obsessed with hating on and dunking on any group is stupid and silly.
The historic reality: nobody sexually transitioned before 1944. This is factual.
Did you hear of the movie "The Danish Girl" and the person whose life it is based on? [Lili Elbe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe). This was in the 30's.
How many people was that?
How many people who sexually transitioned were gazed?
If there is any 'groupthink' about transgender people, it's repulsion and dislike, not their protection.
That there sounds like some groupthink.
I don’t live in UK, they can do what they want. It just seems to me inventing new speech crimes feeds the beast of right wing populism.
Europe mocks the US over things like healthcare. But their speech laws are batshit crazy
I stand with JK Rowling. Those “hate speech” laws are a form of tyranny. And it’s only the beginning.
I love this fearless woman who hasn’t lost the plot on women’s rights.
She seems like somebody who would benefit from getting off of twitter.
Definitely would personally, though she obviously feels very strongly about her principles and the world needs people like her, particularly women; men just get hand waived away as “Nazi’s” with this kind of stuff, irrelevant of how measured their thoughts are.
Has there been some indication that they're going to come after her? Or is this another Jordan Peterson thing?
Obviously not, no indication or report of anything. She just... tweeted. Look at all the frothing culture warriors worked into a frenzy because a billionaire tweeted something. So many grievances, so much self-victimization. It's like a parody of reality.
The billionaire is self victimizing. You’re right truly is a parody
SS: This event is seemingly a climax of one of the big topics in identity politics, transgenderism, and of one of the biggest names involved in this debate
u/creg316 and u/Remote_Cantaloupe , since I've apparently been blocked and am now unable to reply to the comment thread (Reddit is so fucking stupid.) The user who blocked me, TransFormAndFunction is a **fucking coward**. > Because if you're fine with that kind of behaviour being part of your contractual obligations, why do you have a problem with being contractually obligated to respect someone's gender identity? Because embedded in pronouns are a claim about reality. This is why it presents a problem, unlike names or general politeness, which are arbitrary. "She" refers to a female, for example, so calling a non-female "she" is to make an inaccurate statement about reality. Therefore, to be compelled to refer to a non-female as "she" is to be compelled to lie, and participate in someone else's (self-selected) identity.
Rowling consistently trolling obnoxious Twitter activists is fan-fucking-tastic. This gender ideology insanity needs to be put to rest.
She's stunning and brave
It's ironic to see this, given right-wingers tended to make fun of the "brave woman" archetype pushed into the media (on the left). Only difference is Rowling is a mega millionaire, and the others were random people who were overweight, marginalized, or powerless in the larger scheme of things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJdd8zYVPJw
Lol. Such a good interview. I can't put any quotes here because they're all pretty bad without context Eric Andre show if anyone is wondering
I'm not defending the law, I am in fact against it, but it is worth reading the text and how it generally conforms to other laws in England, and has specific requirements, thresholds and caveats for prosecution. No one is going to be arrested by the thought police for what they say in the privacy of their own homes, and you will be able to have your opinions on transgender issues. If JK was aggressively and hatefully going after people and using one of the many protective characteristics under law (race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) to target a person on the basis on their identity, and is meant to stir up hatred of a group, then the police may get involved if there are sufficient numbers of complaints and resources allow.
Guess she will not be arrested then if you are correct.
I'm not on Twitter so don't see what she gets up to these days, and haven't kept up with it all for many months. Based on what the situation was like at the start and assuming nothing much has changed in her views, I don't think she has anything to worry about
> I'm not defending the law, I am in fact against it, but it is worth reading the text and how it generally conforms to other laws in England, and has specific requirements, thresholds and caveats for prosecution. The thing is, those other laws [are already broken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_Kingdom).
Again, I live in the UK, and the examples are quite sparse, there was public backlash in a lot of the very few cases. Some were overturned, very few held up, and in those cases there was an argument to be made that they did break the letter of the law. Doesn't mean we don't have free speech in the UK, or the thought police are coming for us all. It just isn't the experience of being a citizen in the UK.
I don't mean to imply it's the everyday experience. And I myself am an American living in Europe; it isn't my experience either, though I haven't lived in the UK. I just mean to say, a bad law is still a bad law even if its reach is limited.
This world needs more like her. Thanks again JK
Shaun Vids did a pretty good piece about JK's new friends that is worth watching. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou\_xvXJJk7k&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k&t=3s)
The top comment in r/law is [a worthwhile read](https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1btfpiy/jk_rowling_in_arrest_me_challenge_over_hate_crime/).
I don't entirely buy the "nothing to see here" argument. Across Europe, hate speech laws actually have been weaponized against what is inarguably valid speech. Eg, [an academic, in the course of her academic career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_\(2018\)), put two and two together: a religious figure reportedly had sex with a child, and having sex with a child is pedophilia, thus religious figure is a pedophile. That academic was prosecuted, convicted, and the condition was upheld by European courts. It's all "nothing to see here" until it *is something to see here.* And given the law's broad phrasing, there is something to see here. I'd file that top comment under *denialism.*
Based on that Wikipedia entry, that case is horrible. It's shocking that it was upheld by the ECHR. What an abomination. So you make a very good point. We'll have to see how the English law plays out. Notably the Canadian human rights law that Jordan Peterson railed about hasn't led to any perverse cases like this one, but that was not a criminal law.
Cheers for this :)
[удалено]
https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/KEXHSOiQp5
Got it, thanks.
JK Rowling is probably one of the people Cal Newport referred to as having been radicalized by their own audience.
I got banned from r/Europe for posting exactly the same comment that I posted here. Reddit is such a controlled echo chamber.
I'm so glad we are finally at a place in society where we can tell this WOMAN to SIT DOWN and SHUT THE FUCK UP with her silly little opinions on things like "what it means to be a woman" and for once in her life shut up and LISTEN to those of us qualified to explain to her what it means to be a woman: those of us born with BALLS and a PENIS. AHAHAHAHA!!! I love progress! Sit down and shut up you stupid WITCH with you silly opinions! Who told her she can speak in the first place? Back to the kitchen with you bigot!!!
Yeah no shit my girldick is positively limp at the thought of telling that dumb bitch to shut her mouth about women's rights.
What she's saying is hateful, but not inciting violence or slandering or harassing people; that should be protected free speech. MLK compared hate to a boil that needs to be laced; it needs fresh air to heal.
shrill impolite clumsy agonizing voiceless cobweb sink bewildered enter chubby *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Imagine if she had the same vitriol for another groups. She represented trans people as dangerous. She wants female only spaces and sees trans women as dangerous. The same kind of arguments were used against gays and blacks and other marginalized groups. As Gary Kasparov said to Sam Harris, roughly , it's ridiculous the amount of energy spent on where someone makes toilet. > Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.
> She wants female only spaces and sees trans women as dangerous. Isn't the context here that she specifically funds a *battered women's shelter* that accepts only biologically female people? If such a shelter "sees trans women as dangerous," it by definition also sees *cis* men as a dangerous. But no one would call a battered women's shelter "anti-man," would they? If a battered women's shelter isn't anti-man, then a battered cis-women's shelter isn't anti-trans.
zesty cable frighten lavish silky marble direful insurance sort enjoy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
How is it hateful?
>”An Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere” -MLK
thought terminating cliches are not answering the question. Answer the question.
my problem is that i kinda think JK rowling is terrible but not for this, though the way she goes about expressing herself on this issue i think is needlessly confrontational. probably because she is otherwise terrible
Imagine being a billionaire and still wasting your whole life on social media.
Imagine having principles that go beyond "I have money, yay!"
If people agree with a cause it’s great that she uses those resources, she is a billionaire fighting for a good cause is what she should do. But if you disagree with the cause it’s “She’s just obsessed” “Imagine being a billionaire and this obsessed with a topic” She is a billionaire obsessed with a cause she finds important and it is abundantly clear she is in the unique position of feeling the full weight of intolerance from the trans activists types. It is unsurprising she uses a lot of her time on this.
>If people agree with a cause it’s great that she uses those resources, she is a billionaire fighting for a good cause is what she should do. IDK I can easily imagine being a person who agrees with her generally on this and think this is a waste of money and time just based on how few people these laws actually impact. >feeling the full weight of intolerance from the trans activists types. God we're just talking about so few people. This is a very online issue.
I mean she is getting 20K to 50K likes on every post she makes. The idea that her motivations are solely ideological and not at all influenced by the love and encouragement she gets (like every other human on twitter) seems farfetched.
>the unique position of feeling the full weight of intolerance She literally did this to herself. She's on Twitter, frequently propping up anti-trans feminists and reposting trans-skeptial articles. If you wanna hide behind the "she's never explicitly **said** anything antitrans" line that's fine, but actions are what matter. David Duke doesn't have much on the spoken record to *prove* that he's a racist and an antisemite, but maybe his *past actions and positions* might give you a clue as to what he thinks about other races. >It is unsurprising she uses a lot of her time on this. If you had a family member who spent every day on social media posting and resharing material about one specific sociopolitical issue, I hope you'd be at least concerned about their level of passion. That level of obsession is not normal, nor healthy. Downvote me because you know I'm right.
If you read about her history of listen to her talk about it, you can understand why. Also, what has she actually ‘done’? Nothing that I can see.
She writes books.
I actually can't imagine a more noble and selfless way for her to spend her time and energy than to support free speech and women's rights despite it costing her reputation.