There are true statements that are rightly unacceptable because placed in certain rhetorical contexts, there's an implied argument that they're making which has been rejected by society.
For example, JK Rowling's statement that "there used to be a word for people who menstruate" was essentially true (menopause aside), but had a hefty implied message about the legitimacy of transgender women, one which is rightly considered offensive to most of modern society.
Edit: Since people are nitpicking, here's an even starker example: Can you imagine contexts where it would be rightly offensive for an African-American to be told the true statement "My ancestors used to enslave people like you"?
What does this even mean? Like, how can someone not be "legitimate"? Does it mean "illegal" as in illegal alien? Is anyone claiming that trans citizens should be deported? Or does it mean "imaginary"? Trans people obviously exist.
JKRowling is simply pointing out that the word "woman", which used to have the clear and simple meaning of "female human" (or sometimes "adult female human"), was now not only redefined & politicized to basically mean "opinion" (or "a woman is someone who thinks they're a woman" which is a clearly nonsensical recursive definition) and is used for Orwellian speech control.
Maybe, but it appropriates the word "woman" for political purposes. Could just as easily have been "a blurb is someone who thinks they're a blurb" if the intention wasn't a sneaky subjugation of people's existing speech & thought patterns (basically a real-life "dark pattern"). That itself is reason enough to oppose it, IMO.
You could claim that the word "woman" was chosen because it represents an existing concept that some people want to approximate because of their feelings, but a more appropriate response would be to point out that these feelings are factually incorrect. Maybe it's easier to see the absurdity if you consider a non-politicized version "a tree is someone who thinks they're a tree" (laughably wrong) or differently-politicized "a Jew is someone who thinks they're a Jew" (this is somewhat less incorrect, because it's referring to a social "fact" that can change, not a physical fact).
That's how most things work though? You can't "appropriate" a word for political purposes, when the root word is political in the first place.
A conservative is someone who thinks they're a conservative, a centrist is someone who thinks they are a centrist. Other people can try to label you one way or another, but ultimately, you decide what you are. It's inherently self-referential.
> "a Jew is someone who thinks they're a Jew" (this is somewhat less incorrect)
But that's not incorrect at all, that is exactly how it works in real life. "A Christian is someone who believes they're a Christian", is a wholly true statement. Just as, "an atheist is someone who believes they are an atheist".
There's a bunch of these statements of identity that are, effectively, 100% self referential. No one can tell you who you are, ultimately you have to decide that for yourself.
> Maybe it's easier to see the absurdity if you consider a non-politicized version
It's not. Even in a non-political, meaningless context, it's 100% equally as self-referential.
Rowling's statement wasn't even explicitly true before the rise of transgender visibility. It excludes women who don't conform. I've lived with pre-menopausal women who didn't menstruate regularly and felt that they were "wrong" somehow because of it (some had underlying medical issues, some did not). To use Graham's analogy, even ignoring transgender issues, the orthodoxy there was privileged against the multitude of female experience.
Rowling's statement is true if your experience leads you to prioritize the orthodox. It's patently false if your experience deviates from the experiences that created it. The struggle in the conservation of orthodox values (e.g. sisterhood of women) and the visibility of heterodox experience (e.g transgender issues & the lived experience of women who's bodies don't conform to the stereotypes being used) has a lot of truth on both sides.
I'm not here to argue the merits of JK Rowlings' statement but I do think you're vastly overestimating your group if you think "most of modern society" is on your side in this subject.
I've read (one of) JK Rowlings' latest blog entries, and while I don't personally agree with her statements they seemed far, far more reasonable and debatable than what the internet made of it.
The internet made it seem like she was going to war against transgenders...
Often times when I have any kind of nuanced debate, this kind of tribalism comes to the surface. If you disagree on some small point you're obviously the opposition in it's entirety. The other side of the debate comes up with an entire fiction in their mind that has no bearing on reality and nothing to do with any stated phrase or real position. I have had people tell me I'm against marijuana legalization because I support lowering the fees for concealed carry licenses.
You can't accurately construct a message about someone elses mental state without talking to them at length. When you assume people imply things, you're actually sharing YOUR mental state. When you take a message to mean significantly more than what the words themselves mean, you're not filling in the gaps with reality but your perception of reality.
I consider the question of how far language should adapt for transgender people to be a reasonable one. Transgender proportion of population is on the same order as blindness. Many would consider it excessive to remove all non-eyesight uses of "vision", analogies like "I see what you mean", etc from our discourse.
It's absolutely fine that you disagree with JK Rowling. It's also fine that she disagrees with you. Talk about it! Don't throw slurs at each other. Don't make personal attacks.
I like how brush under the rug menopause, as if making your point where you say "except for this obvious exception that makes this statement unequivocally false!"
The word "women" has always referred to female assigned sex, there is nothing wrong with that inherently but it wasn't entertaining some deeper truth about the world.
It is assigned. I wouldn't expect the right-leaning HN crowed to understand the basics behind the science, but when a person is intersex and is magically assigned male that is not an observation.
Moreover, what you're really saying is that transgender people don't exist, so you've leaked your power level already.
It is neither 'assigned' nor 'observed'. There are countless number of animals born every day that have well-defined sex, although nobody assign or observe that. Humans are just subset of animals, so same definitions apply.
> Moreover, what you're really saying is that transgender people don't exist
This subthread is about sex, not gender. AFAIK, transgender people just have different gender that one associated with their biological sex.
You're trying to argue your position based on the 0.018% of the population that is intersex. If a baby is born with a perfectly normal penis, you're saying the doctor has a choice as to whether select male or female?
Unfortunately, I studied engineering at school, not sociology so I have no idea what a "leaking a power level" is unless it has something to do with batteries.
> Unfortunately, I studied engineering at school, not sociology so I have no idea what a "leaking a power level" is unless it has something to do with batteries.
Snrk. That's an amusing interpretation of the phrase. I shall steal it for future use.
It's an internet meme. To hide one's power level means to conceal details of oneself, hobbies, skills, affiliations, etc[1]. Conversely, if one is leaking their power level, they are letting slip details about themselves. Consider that if you interrupted an argument amongst co-worker to correct their misconceptions about furries, what that might reveal about your interests when your co-workers don't know you're a furry.
Given the context, GP is accusing you of being transphobic, and that such is betraying your affiliation with the alt-right.
Thank you for the explanation. I think quite a large number of people would share the view I espoused (EG JK Rowling) and would not readily be categorised as alt-right.
> a hefty implied message about the legitimacy of transgender women, one which is rightly considered offensive to most of modern society.
Based on Pew polling, most Americans agree with Rowling[0].
>Overall, roughly half of Americans (54%) say that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth, while 44% say someone can be a man or a woman even if that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Any ideology that considers truth to be unacceptable is a menace. Feelings cannot matter more than facts. Anyone who tries to tell you different should be immediately and permanently suspect.
Many people would, out of habit or expedience, refer to "women" instead of "people who menstruate." However, in this specific context, Rowling's implication is that trans women are not women. "Most of modern society" would probably be disturbed by that implication.
Most of modern society freely says things like "women menstruate", and would be hopelessly confused by the idea that such a banal statement has transphobic implications.
Absolutely. But the question isn't how ordinary people would perceive it; it was how Rowling intended it. Rowling's goal was to say that trans women are not women. She used a dogwhistle instead of saying that directly. But what other purpose could she have been trying to accomplish there?
She explained her purpose in a longer blog post (https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...). She thinks (and I tend to agree) that phrases like "people who menstruate" are terribly degrading, and emphasizes at length that "trans rights are human rights".
She does also have some concerns about trans women in women-only spaces, but depending on which polls you read, either a slim majority or large plurality of people agree with her concerns.
I have read that article. She argues obliquely that trans women are not women[1], and she suggests that trans women are often dangerous predators[2]. Her statement that "trans rights are human rights" is an intentional dismissal of that opinion as a form of virtue signaling[3]. She may believe that some trans women are women, but in general she believes that there is a "material difference" between trans women and women.
As for the term "people who menstruate," I could see how that could be true. I could also see a term that's designed to specify a subset of women (pre-menopausal cis women who menstruate) as well as a subset of trans men. It is not being used as a general replacement for "women"; it is specifying the relevant people more precisely than the word "women" would. Isn't that specificity and accuracy what we want to see?
[1] "I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria."
[2] ", I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside."
[3] "It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow."
I think your assessment of her opinions is correct, but again, I think this is something that most people believe. It's widely acknowledged that it's rude to go up to a trans woman and say "hey you are not a woman", but the idea that there's no material difference between trans women and cis women is not widely accepted.
> I think this is something that most people believe
I think it's about 50/50. The one good, recent poll I found on the issue seems to suggest that (I mentioned it at more length in the other subthread here). So I definitely don't think that there's an overwhelming consensus, but I do think that it's a pretty standard opinion.
As for the "material difference" thing, sure. I think almost everyone would agree with that. My problem is that I believe Rowling is using it as a dogwhistle to argue that (most) trans women are not meaningfully women.
Look, there are not a lot of great polls about people's opinion on whether sex and gender are different. PRRI has a poll on general support for trans people (https://www.prri.org/research/americas-growing-support-for-t...), which suggests that 62% of Americans support letting trans people serve in the military and a plurality oppose bathroom bills. It also shows that a majority of Americans believe that there are only two genders, but only 43% of Americans believe that "strongly," and of course you could believe that sex and gender are different while also believing in only two genders. I don't see clear proof one way or another, but this poll suggests that probably about half of Americans believe that gender can differ from sex. (I'll admit that for non-Americans, it's probably much lower.)
For example, JK Rowling's statement that "there used to be a word for people who menstruate" was essentially true (menopause aside), but had a hefty implied message about the legitimacy of transgender women, one which is rightly considered offensive to most of modern society.
Edit: Since people are nitpicking, here's an even starker example: Can you imagine contexts where it would be rightly offensive for an African-American to be told the true statement "My ancestors used to enslave people like you"?