Discussion: Transwomen are not women (Part 7)

[Meadmaker]

I think that every single one of your ancestors produced either sperm or ova, and that's what I'd call a binary. I also think we need a separate thread for this oft-recurring derail.

I think your callous disregard for cyanobacteria shows that you are a truly deplorable person. Go ahead. Pretend that they don't exist, but modern science proves that being blue-green is a valid lived condition.

 

[d4m10n]

I think your callous disregard for cyanobacteria shows that you are a truly deplorable person.

LOL.

Have to admit that when I picture "ancestors," I'm thinking of hominids; will try to be more explicit about that next time.

 

[theprestige]

Well **** I read this just after making the intersex thread.

I suppose we'll let the marketplace of ideas decide.

The most important thing about intersex is that trans-activism isn't about intersex oppression or rights at all.

 

[theprestige]

Gonna dox her mansion right here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killiechassie

Pretty weak tea to complain that people know the address of a property so famous it has its own wikipedia page. Gonna dox the White House next and Buckingham palace before the mods get me.

Takes a lot of work to dox the many mansions of the ultra wealthy.

Do you think that people in Edinbourgh don't know where Rowling's house is? The idea that a celebrity such as Rowling can be "doxxed" is nonsensical on its face. Is it doxxing when tour buses drive through fancy neighborhoods in Hollywood pointing out where all the rich actors live?



Here's a story about the city having to order her to trim massive hedges surrounding the large property.

The idea that Rowling was living in obscurity until "doxxed" is laughable. The idea that this information was private until now is absurd.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7252275/Council-demands-JK-Rowling-cut-30ft-Leylandii-trees-Edinburgh-mansion.html

Edit: an especially desperate example of the false victimhood that TERFs like Rowling frequently employ. A handful of people protested on the sidewalk outside the gate of her swanky mansion and she's the victim of doxxing. What a joke.

Cool. Now do the rape threats.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Cool. Now do the rape threats.

JK Rowling only reported to the police that some people stood on the sidewalk and took a picture. Tales of threats of violent threats are attributed to others.

To your eye, is standing on the sidewalk outside a famous person's house with a paper protest sign a criminal matter? Are these people "doxxing" Rowling?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

On the theme of false victimhood, an exploration of Chapelle's tale of a trans friend who killed herself because of being bullied for supporting Chapelle's transphobic jokes finds that this story seems to be entirely fraudulent.

The original social media posts that the woman made got very little engagement, positive or negative, at the time.

Where’s The Evidence of An Online Mob?
Chappelle is making a serious accusation. Blaming a specific person or group for “hounding” someone into suicide amounts to a charge of murder. Given the complex nature of mental illness and self-harm, cases where the facts warrant such an accusation are extremely rare.

So what’s the evidence that online bullying from trans people led Daphne Dorman to take her own life?

None. There is none.



Chappelle’s wording implies that Dorman’s suicide happened shortly after she sent the tweet supporting him, but her post is from August 2019 and she killed herself in mid-October, nearly six weeks later. In the interim period, I could find no trace of online harassment or abuse.

Her tweet currently has hundreds of replies, but they’re almost universally from Chappelle’s fans after The Closer came out.

Back in 2019, according to archive.org, the tweet had just 12 replies. Another, jokier tweet about supporting Chappelle, had 9.

It’s like this across the internet. The Instagram post in which she declared her friendship with Chappelle doesn’t have any critical replies. Comments on her Facebook post announcing that she was opening for Chappelle are uniformly positive; so are the ones on Reddit after she posted about it there. She doesn’t appear to have said anything on Twitter or Facebook about receiving abuse. Her suicide note doesn’t mention bullying; nor do any of the obituaries written after her suicide.

Seems like this woman killed herself for unrelated reasons and Chapelle decided to make up a story about pro-trans bullies out of whole cloth. Pretty gross.

Friends and family dispute that online bullying by trans advocates played a role in the suicide, instead citing that the woman had long suffered from mental health issues, had lost a job, and more importantly, lost a child custody dispute. The woman's suicide note mentions her child explicitly and makes no comment of bullying.

Her friend and former roommate says Dorman had battled suicidal thoughts for years. “The final blow,” she wrote in a Facebook post, “was a combination of her losing custody of her daughter, losing her job, and dealing with a lot of transphobic harassment on the streets of San Francisco.”

Why are these anecdotes of bad behavior by nobodies so important to the anti-trans activists:

This is a classic tactic of reactionary backlash: Guide the debate away from the core issue (do trans people deserve equal treatment and protection under the law?) into irrelevant cul-de-sacs about “civility,” strategy and linguistics.

I don’t think this is operating at a conscious level. Few members of the JAQ-brigade would admit to believing trans people should be denied rights because some of them are mean on Twitter. But there is a reason this irrelevant accusation comes up so frequently in the trans “debate” — and why it came up during the Civil Rights Movement and Stonewall and women’s suffrage and every other struggle for minority rights.

“What if we give this group equality,” the majority population cries whenever a stigmatized group demands recognition, “and they don’t deserve it?!”

https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/dave-chappelles-some-of-my-best-friends

One hell of a way to honor a friendship, by whipping up a reactionary mob explicitly hostile to trans people.

 

[The Atheist]

Tales of threats of violent threats are attributed to others.

Nice dodge.

And wrong.

Now, please address the threats of rape and murder, as evinced here. You can look at this one too: link.

 

[Paul2]

The most important thing about intersex is that trans-activism isn't about intersex oppression or rights at all.

I think the corollary of this is even more important: for the purposes of trans rights, biological sex is a binary. That does not include gender, however.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Nice dodge.

And wrong.

Now, please address the threats of rape and murder, as evinced here. You can look at this one too: link.

People are talking tough on the internet, stop the presses.

Trolls and criminals abound online. Trans people have no special patent on unhinged lunatics threatening violence to celebrities they don't like.

What is interesting is that transphobes seem insistent that the existence of bad trans people is some kind of compelling reason to deny entire classes of people their rights. The post about Chapelle's claims about bad trans people goes into this directly. Rather than discuss the substance of the issue of trans rights, the reactionary right and TERFs (but I repeat myself) would rather focus on anecdotes of bad actors. It's not meaningfully different than stormfront users spamming black crime horror stories, though the TERFs seem very upset when people rightly point out that they are increasingly outing themselves as unhinged bigots.

 

[Meadmaker]

JK Rowling only reported to the police that some people stood on the sidewalk and took a picture. Tales of threats of violent threats are attributed to others.

To your eye, is standing on the sidewalk outside a famous person's house with a paper protest sign a criminal matter? Are these people "doxxing" Rowling?

But......why should they be doing anything at all?


This is one of those cases where.

1. People do awful things.
2. Other people exaggerate how awful those things are.
3. The supporters of the first group say that those things aren't very awful,
4. Which somehoe means we should not worry about the awful things.




J. K. Rowling is an author of children's books. People shouldn't be standing outside her house because they don't like something she said. People really shouldn't even pay attention to what she says, unless she is talking about some sort of sequel to Harry Potter. She is insignificant. Her views do not matter; Get off her lawn, and her sidewalk, and I don't care if they have a right to be there. They still shouldn't be there.

It's bad. All by itself. Never mind the worst of the worst Twitter comments. People shouldn't stand outside other people's houses holding signs saying that the people inside are bad. i don't think that should ever be done, ever.

ETA: And with the possible exception of noting that putting up with such morons is the price we pay for living in a free country, people shouldn't defend people who stand outside people's houses with signs.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

But......why should they be doing anything at all?


This is one of those cases where.

1. People do awful things.
2. Other people exaggerate how awful those things are.
3. The supporters of the first group say that those things aren't very awful,
4. Which somehoe means we should not worry about the awful things.




J. K. Rowling is an author of children's books. People shouldn't be standing outside her house because they don't like something she said. People really shouldn't even pay attention to what she says, unless she is talking about some sort of sequel to Harry Potter. She is insignificant. Her views do not matter; Get off her lawn, and her sidewalk, and I don't care if they have a right to be there. They still shouldn't be there.

It's bad. All by itself. Never mind the worst of the worst Twitter comments. People shouldn't stand outside other people's houses holding signs saying that the people inside are bad. i don't think that should ever be done, ever.

People protest Rowling for the same reason that Rowling's anti-trans screeds regularly are considered newsworthy. For better or worse her success as a children's author means she can command a lot of public attention. Someone who engages in the public discourse in such a central way (rightly or wrongly) should expect criticism. Standing out on the sidewalk in front of her massive estate seems par for the course. Trying to portray this innocuous act as "doxxing" smacks of bad faith.

It is curious that she has decided this is a hill to die on. Rather than being remembered fondly as an author of a very popular book series that has nothing to do with trans rights, she's decided to go all-in on being a TERF. Shades of Graham Linehan.

 

[Matthew Best]

I can understand disagreeing with J K Rowling about this, or any other, matter. But deciding that your disagreement means that she is an "unhinged bigot" seems like a strategy that will fail to convince.

 

[Meadmaker]

What is interesting is that transphobes seem insistent that the existence of bad trans people is some kind of compelling reason to deny entire classes of people their rights. The post about Chapelle's claims about bad trans people goes into this directly. Rather than discuss the substance of the issue of trans rights,....

The substance?

I would think that would start with what rights we are talking about. That sounds like the substance to me.


I think that question has been asked before.

Darned if I can remember what the answer was, though.

 

[Matthew Best]

Ditto referring to her "anti-trans screeds", when people can actually read what she wrote.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I can understand disagreeing with J K Rowling about this, or any other, matter. But deciding that your disagreement means that she is an "unhinged bigot" seems like a strategy that will fail to convince.

I would agree that Rowling's (or any other rich weirdo) views on the subject probably isn't really that important, but the TERFs have decided that every mean tweet about her is the most pressing news of the day.

Seems to be almost entirely a case of diseased British minds. Over in the US the Harry Potter machine has politely ignored Rowling's transformation into the insane aunt everyone tries to avoid at family gatherings. The 20 year anniversary of the first film is set to go with a big reunion special of the cast and crew, with Rowling notably absent.

 

[Meadmaker]

People protest Rowling for the same reason that Rowling's anti-trans screeds regularly are considered newsworthy. For better or worse her success as a children's author means she can command a lot of public attention. Someone who engages in the public discourse in such a central way (rightly or wrongly) should expect criticism. Standing out on the sidewalk in front of her massive estate seems par for the course. Trying to portray this innocuous act as "doxxing" smacks of bad faith.

It is curious that she has decided this is a hill to die on. Rather than being remembered fondly as an author of a very popular book series that has nothing to do with trans rights, she's decided to go all-in on being a TERF. Shades of Graham Linehan.

It is par for the course. And she has a right to say what she says, and they have a right to hold signs.


And I have a right to call the sign holders idiots and bad people. Go home.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

It is par for the course. And she has a right to say what she says, and they have a right to hold signs.


And I have a right to call the sign holders idiots and bad people. Go home.

Sure, I really doubt these protests have much impact and time could be spent doing just about anything else.

But crying "doxxing", come on now. Would you agree this claim is a bit ridiculous?

 

[Paul2]

I would agree that Rowling's (or any other rich weirdo) views on the subject probably isn't really that important, but the TERFs have decided that every mean tweet about her is the most pressing news of the day.

Seems to be almost entirely a case of diseased British minds. Over in the US the Harry Potter machine has politely ignored Rowling's transformation into the insane aunt everyone tries to avoid at family gatherings. The 20 year anniversary of the first film is set to go with a big reunion special of the cast and crew, with Rowling notably absent.

ST (or anyone else, actually), if you consider JKR a bigot towards trans folk, would you say there is anything bigoted in her June 2020 blog post? If so, please quote specific sentences.

I think specifics are a necessary step in discussing things like this.

 

[Meadmaker]

Sure, I really doubt these protests have much impact and time could be spent doing just about anything else.

But crying "doxxing", come on now. Would you agree this claim is a bit ridiculous?

One of the absurdities of modern political discourse is that people spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to see whether a given label applies.

When they put out information about her address, that was bad.

Was it doxxing? I don't care. That's just a label. Whatever you label it, they shouldn't have done it.


When Rowling called it "doxxing", that could create a false impression of what was happening. I suppose that's bad. Kind of. It's not exactly really bad, but I guess it's a little bit bad.

By putting out that information, the so called doxxers made a certain amount of private information available that shouldn't be available, which is doxxing, except that interested parties could easily already find that information, so it isn't really doxxing. So.....dang it....I can't decide on a label. And if I can't be sure about whether or not the label applies, I can't be sure whether to call what Rowling did misrepresentation. This is confusing.

How about if, instead, we just say that people ought to leave her address out of their Twitter stuff, even if a lot of people already know it. No good can come out of publishing it.

And the death threats and rape stuff? That just totally sucks and those people should be ashamed of themselves. And her thoughts on trans issues? She is no more significant than you or I. She wrote a few pretty good children's books. (In my opinion, maybe as many as 5. By the end of the Harry Potter series, her writing was getting really stale. It was never great literature, but the first several books had a certain charm.) That doesn't make her significant on political or social issues. It's a pity that we live in a society that pays attention to what celebrities say about politics.

 

[lionking]

I can understand disagreeing with J K Rowling about this, or any other, matter. But deciding that your disagreement means that she is an "unhinged bigot" seems like a strategy that will fail to convince.

The faux outrage at JK by trans activists prompted me to buy all her detective books. They were all good reads, and I’ll bet there were a lot of people like me who helped enrich her after such ridiculous criticism.