J.K. Rowling is a disgusting TERF

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She's entitled to her opinion. I may not agree with it, but she's perfectly entitled to it. The reason she was sacked, was that she insisted on her right to make a hostile, humiliating, and threatening atmosphere for trans colleagues.

Imagine going to work every day, and bullies are deadnaming you and misgendering you.

Does 'basic dignity' depend on which demographic you are in your world? Would you support a colleague who makes monkey noises at black people?

Have you any idea how hard it is to face this prejudiced world as a trans person, and what the suicide rates are within the trans community?

I get the impression you don't really care.

Hope nobody gets mad--someone probably will, but that's not my intention. I'm very much out of the loop on this whole subject. I get that people feel they're the wrong sex and then they decide to live as the opposite or something in between, but what confuses me is the outrage directed at anyone who doesn't go along with it.

How is this a denial of basic human dignity when people are born with a particular sex?

Also, I thought gender dysphoria in the DSM-5 is a mental disorder (whereas gender nonconformity is not a diagnosable condition.) Most of us on this forum here have autism spectrum disorders. Order is a good thing. Disorder is a lack of order. Evil is an absence of good (philosophical sense, not some puritanical B.S.) So it's better to try to remedy disorder.

Why do we not only celebrate gender dysphoria or identity disorders, but force everyone else to pretend to recognize it? I'm actually a little surprised that everyone is going along with this and saying we can just treat people as whatever they want to be treated as. I mean, even if I feel a very strong kinship with historical personages, I can't say I'm trans-historical and that I was actually born in 1895 and that the present year is 1917. (Though my lifestyle might make you think that that is the case.) Just because I feel lost in the 21st century, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole past a kaleidoscopic hell of updated horrors, doesn't mean I get to live in the Edwardian period. But I don't die in the Great War either, which is nice.

It's weird but I kind of think this might be the first time I ever agreed with Ms. Rowling, mainly because I stand by objective reality AKA the facts of life. The attack against "Terfs" sounds a lot like Sharia law, right down to the mutilation of the body in the case of "gender reassignment surgery."

Has anyone treated this subject? I'm actually kind of curious.

You got that right.

TERFs are scummy people, that just have to discriminate against an even weaker class of women.

Sane people do not seriously identify as a historical figure (or god forbid a helicopter), they identify as a gender, a social construct. First on your and a number of other people's points, there is a difference between sex and gender, I will link a picture of genderbread person as an aid. Sex is made up of several factors such as primary sex characteristics (gentiles), secondary sex characteristics (breasts), hormones and chromosomes, and these can exist on a scale, especially with regards to things like intersex people that is currently estimated at 1.7 percent. Gender can be different, and is more along the lines of what is in the mind/brain, and can generally be with how they perform gender like in presentation, that is more in line of how we interact with each other. You do not know someone's gentiles or chromosomes when you are just talking to them.





You don't get "gender reassignment surgery" you silly, you don't just change gender by turning the penis inside out, or taking skin for the forearm to make a penis. That is their sex, and is not, or should not, be a requirement for one to be their identified gender. Chicks can have dicks, and dudes.... I can't think of a rhyming word for a vagina. Many just take hormones and are happy with the result, or other trans people don't even need that. Discriminating on someone because their gender does not match their sex, is not cool, and this is what causes the suicide rate to be so high in the trans community.

Calling for violence against TERF is not the right thing to do, but one must also see how much TERFs hurt people.

Good explanation of what we are talking about.
One remark I would llike to add is that gender is culturally defined, so it's not an attribute of a person themself but it's an attribute of a person within a given society.
A number of people identifying as trans may be strongly influenced by rigidity of gender expression in given culture.

The 1.7% figure for intersex is extremely inclusive, based on medical reports, symptomatic intersex conditions happen in 0.07–0.05% births. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex# ... on_figures
Of course, intersex people deserve all the recognition and acceptance regardless of the number.

I had to google "terf" so I'm probably out of the loop too.

Sure the woman is entitled to her opinion, but wtf was she doing talking about that kind of stuff at work?! I thought it's not only highly unprofessional but also basic common sense not to discuss such controversial subjects at work

Sex reassignment surgery is AKA gender reassignment surgery, so that wasn't silly. I agree the terms are kinda confusing to describe the same thing.

I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean a person can change their sex by having this surgery? Yes I know the difference between sex and gender, it's part of why I've become confused in this thread because I don't know which Rowling, Forstater and people on this thread are referring to.

"Chicks" can't have dicks, unless they're born with an over-enlarged clitoris.

Forstater and Rowling were talking about biological sex / biological gender. They're saying that we can't really change the biological sex we're born with.

And while I can't agree with the absolutist views and deliberate mis-gendering reportedly practiced by Forstater (and I certainly don't want to cause further problems for trans folks, who get a pretty raw deal), I do think she and Rowling in her tweet are saying something important. I think of it this way:

If society were truly accepting, would it not accept a person with male genitalia wishing to act and dress and identify as female gender?

If society were truly accepting of that, maybe some would not feel the need for gender reassignment surgery at all, because they would feel completely accepted in their chosen gender identification?

Is it possible that modern medical practice itself is absolutist and intolerant of non-binary genders, in the way a desire to change gender identity is so readily conflated with a need to change biological sex characteristics?

Why do so many nations only accept a gender change as legal once gender reassignment surgery has been undertaken? Why have they mixed up the 3 gingerbread-man gender meanings in this way? Isn't that the true intolerance?

I for one really think we should be allowed to talk about these things openly rather than being labelled as "TERF" or trans exclusive or even trans-phobic, all of which are now being thrown at Rowling.

MrsPeel (or anyone else who knows) - since you seem more informed and the articles I've seen aren't very clear: did Forstater made the comments at work or online?

This is what I found:

"Maya Forstater, 45, did not have her contract renewed after posting a series of tweets questioning government plans to let people declare their own gender.

Ms Forstater believes trans women holding certificates that recognise their transgender identity cannot describe themselves as women."

I definitely wouldn't agree that she created a hostile work environment if she didn't make these comments at work, but it also seems that she wasn't exactly fired for it either

Sorry, this is quite confusing and I agree that it would be better if we could discuss such issues in a civilised manner - for the record I have nothing against the government allowing people to officially change their gender.

I'm not sure on the details, I read that her comments were in tweets (which would imply not work-related).
For instance, she tweeted an opinion that transwomen should not compete in womens sports. That kind of thing.

But in the judgement I think they said she had been intolerant to an individual at work by deliberatley mis-gendering them, which caused them to feel denigrated. That was the action which caused her to lose the case.

Edited to add, in case I wasn't clear before, I don't condone her actions or share all her views. However, I do think open discussion of the issues is preferable to shutting people down with labels like TERF.

That sounds sensible.

Deliberate misgendering a collegue at work is simply rude and being consistently rude to a coworker is a legitimate reason to lose a job - quite unlike criticizing one's government's plans on Twitter.

I do agree with opinion that open and bilaterally respectful discussion would be a preferred way of dealing with sensitive topics. Throwing offensive labels at one's opponents only makes the conflict worse and leaves actual problems unsolved.

Last edited by magz on 20 Dec 2019, 6:24 am, edited 2 times in total.

Thank you, the BBC articles didn't mention that and it would make the claim of creating a hostile work environment valid.

I don't use Twitter and I can't form an opinion if I don't have the facts. Yeah, I'd rather ask even if I come across as some ignorant old fart (I also see much younger people here as lost as I am) and I certainly appreciate when people answer in a civilised fashion. I think a civilised exchange would be much more conducive to helping the rest of us understand what's going on than throwing insults while barely giving any context or at least a summary of the events.

The type of people that get TERF thrown at them tend to conflate sex and gender together, using it interchangeably and saying those who had one sex cannot have the other corresponding gender.

And yeah, girls can have penises. It is not like you would meet a woman, who was entirely feminine except for having something between her legs, so you would have to instead refer to her as a man. It might sound incredibly foreign to the simplified biology you get taught in primary school, but if you listen to some women that still have their bits, you would see that the assumption is silly.

I don't think Rowling was confusing sex and gender at all, quite the opposite.
Here are the words of her tweet:

"Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?"

From context she is referring to biological sex being a real, objective fact, whereas all other aspects of gender are subjective and can be open to individual choice. I know this is not a very acceptable stance at the moment but I tend to agree.

More likely the confusion between gender and sex is on the part of her accusers, in my opinion.

She was standing in solidarity with somebody who advocates making the lives of trans people a misery. Opinions about sex and gender don't come into this.

"Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you."

Am I the only one who sees the viciousness behind these words?

Yes?