I’m a big Sci Fi fan, but won’t touch any of Orson Scott Card’s garbage, regardless of how many times people harp on about how I Absolutely have to read…
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No, you’ve summed up the problem pretty accurately there.
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The way things are going right now I expect her to announce that Dolores Umbridge is a trans woman, just to make sure she is rid of the transgender fans who see similarities between their upbringing and Harry Potter’s.
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Now I’m imagining “LOL, JK” becoming a Rowling-specific version of “Ok, Boomer”.
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I will fully own up to virtue signaling. I made specific linguistic choices in writing this post, with the intention of sending a very clear fucking signal that the inherent humanity of my family and friends (and, by extension, every other fucking homo sapien) is not up for debate. Everyone is deserving of basic dignity, regardless of their physical or biochemical traits. That is a virtue on which I will not budge. It is intrinsic to my every conscious action and decision, and I will proudly signal that so it’s loud and fucking clear.
I love to debate, I love to be challenged with new ideas, and I am very willing to acknowledge when ethical or philosophical situations get uncomfortably muddy, perhaps to a fault. But that is not what Rowling’s post was about. She cherry-picked anecdotal evidence — most of which has already been sufficiently undermined or disproven, if she would have taken the time to examine the full body of available research — and used those tiny moments, stripped of context and truth, to make a dehumanizing point. Swap trans people for Black people, or women, or gay or bisexual people, or fucking disabled people, and her response would be just as shameful and disgusting.
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In the way you say, yes. But the more common understanding of virtue signalling is meant to say someone is signaling what they believe others will find virtuous, not what they themselves find virtuous as you use it. In the latter, it’s a compliment, but most people who use the term clearly don’t intend it as a compliment.
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My first real experience with trans-ness actually involved my best friend’s mom. He never knew his dad, grew up in poverty with just his mom, and he waited until we were almost done with college before transitioning.
I remember shortly before my wedding (best friend was my best man), my mom started asking about his mom, trying to understand. My mom asked “Well does his mom have a penis, or…?”
I stopped her right now and said, “Mom, I have never, ever, ever discussed your genitals with any friends, and I never, ever plan on doing so. I don’t even want to say that sentence. So no, I don’t know anything about what’s in Walker’s mom’s pants. And frankly, don’t care, because he’s my best friend’s mom, and that’s the end of it.”
My mom seemed to understand that.
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I’m just reeling that the site where I buy and sell Magic the Gathering cards is at the forefront of the defense here! There’s been lots of discussion about trans people over in the magic community lately. There’s at least one officially trans person on a card (Alesha, Who Smiles At Death), however when pro player Autumn Burchett (who is nonbinary) wrote “No TERF’s on Gruul Turf!” (Gruul is a guild in the game) on cards with art by Therese Nielsen (a gay woman, who may or may not be a Trump supporting TERF) she was instructed by judges to remove the cards.
Just saw an opportunity to share some of the useless knowledge that I’ve accumulated.
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Reupping from another post:
There is no excuse for not treating trans, Enby, or other genderqueer people as anything other than who they ask to be treated as. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. If someone gives you their pronouns, use 'em. It doesn’t matter what someone who wasn’t them decided when they were an infant. End of story.
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Probably a good response right there and glad your mom accepted that.
While I have had a curiosity about transition surgery and what goes on I would never ask my trans friends about the state of their genitals. It also seems really damn rude to ask and that is even to the closer friend that would probably laugh and take it in stride but I kinda felt it was better to just those friends be and just give them space to just be what they are without stupid really personal questions.
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What, who and how.
Not hard to let people be, is it?
It’s a shame more people don’t understand just how simple that is.
Instead we have TERFs dominating the conversation demonizing people that want little more than a bit of peace and respect.
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I’m pretty sure it was going for Progressive Allie cookies. She was getting flack for not having a gay character, so she retconned one. Then when Dumbledore’s youth was explored in Fantastic Beasts, she made sure that he wasn’t openly gay. I think she has issues non-conforming sexuality and gender, but realizes that many of her readers find that offensive. So she picked the easy way out.
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How hard is it to just not be a dick? If you know somebody that is trans you just let them be and if they want to talk about their experiences just let them lead and don’t pry. It was hard for me at first to re-write shit about people in my head like pronouns but if you put in a good faith effort I found was appreciated. I do find my language ended up more neutral towards gender.
The whole furry community is doing a lot of work in this these days. One thing that is kinda cool is at cons they will have ribbons you can pick up at reg with preferred gender pronouns for your con-badge. At further confusion the bathrooms were re-marked as all gender and people just did their business and were generally cool to each-other.
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I have just been re-reading about Sandy Stone and her experience of TERFs in the 1970s
TERFs have been toxic for 50 years, they send death threats to trans people and harrass allies, then claim to be the victims when people stand up to them.
Anyway, we had organized this tour and we had gotten a letter telling us that when we got to Seattle that there was a separatist paramilitary group called the Gorgons. The Gorgons was a group of women who wore camo gear, shaved their heads and carried live weapons. We were told that when we got to town, they were going to kill me.
Cristan: Wait, they said that they were going to KILL you if you came to Seattle?
Sandy: Yes, but we kind of laughed about it. We thought that was just talk, but then we heard it was actually true. So, we began checking this out and the women who had booked the hall for us said, “Yes! These people are real and you guys had better do something about this because they’re serious!”
We did, in fact, go to Seattle, but we went as probably the only women’s music tour that was ever done with serious muscle security. They were very alert for weapons and, in fact, Gorgons did come and they did have guns taken away from them.
I was pants-wetting scared at that event. I was terrified. During a break between a musical number someone shouted out “GORGONS!” and I made it from my seat at the console to under the table the console was on at something like superluminal speed. I stayed under there until it was clear that I wasn’t about to be shot… Not that it would have done me any good to be under there.
Can you imagine the outrage if there was a group who claimed to be a paramilitary organisation who wanted to kill TERFs?
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You know that JK is full of shit when she says she isn’t an anti trans women bigot and would march with them if they had ever experienced discrimination- but in her 54 years has never marched with them.
Because she thinks the obvious discrimination trans women face isn’t discrimination when it happens to trans women. Just when it happens to anyone else.
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Slight tangent:
Some of the suffragists were racist AF, and wanted to “hurry up and get the vote before the black men did.” @_@
Exclusionist, TERFed-out feminists aren’t feminists. They’re fascists.
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I read something or other by Rowling and got the impression she thinks that the existence of trans women somehow threatens her own femininity. And I just cant wrap my head around that. How?! Why?! I just cannot fathom why a trans woman would be a threat to my own feminity.
I haven’t studied feminism, but i thought a big part of it was breaking away from how being female was defined as not-male. Not strong, not assertive, not capable. To be female was to not be male. I thought we were fighting to make our own definitions of feminity. Not as some collective group or list of traits, but for every woman to have the right to define herself. Why are we, why is anyone, moving away from that? I couldn’t explain what makes me feel female. What right do I have to demand anyone else explain themselves?
The history of feminism excluding women of color and lesbians is shameful. We should have learned our lesson.
It really pisses me off that Rowling has all this money and power and this is how she uses it. She has a voice so many women will never have and she uses it to tear down and hurt other women.
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Maybe tell them to stop worrying about what body parts are under someone else’s clothes? Or that everyone in that shelter is there for a reason, they need help. And thats what matters.
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