Discussion: Transwomen are not women (Part 7)

[TurkeysGhost]

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.

It's really stretching credibility that this information was "private" in any way. Rowling is probably the wealthiest and most famous person living in Edinburgh. I would be surprised if "Harry Potter" tour buses don't periodically drive by the place so people can take pictures. It really beggars belief that this information was private in any way prior to this incident.

There's really nothing to support Rowling's claims that these people holding posterboard signs were attempting to "dox" her in any way, but were rather showing off that they were protesting.

Conflating perfectly orderly protestors with doxxing and violent threats is intellectually dishonest and a pretty good example of the general reactionary anti-trans tactics routinely employed by TERFs.

 

[Matthew Best]

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.

I had to read some of her Harry Potter books aloud to my daughter at bedtime. I thought they were dreadful, but my daughter thinks they are the pinnacle of English literature, along with Rick Riordan and whoever it is that writes "My Hero Academia".

 

[Meadmaker]

Conflating perfectly orderly protestors with doxxing and violent threats is intellectually dishonest and a pretty good example of the general reactionary anti-trans tactics routinely employed by TERFs.

They are standing outside of her house holding signs......and your complaint is that she is calling it "doxxing".


And calling it "doxxing", when really all it is is standing outside of her house holding up signs calling her a bad person is, according to you, "a pretty good example of the general reactionary anti-trans tactics routinely employed by TERFs."

Nothing you are saying makes sense. It's just "My team good. Your team bad."

 

[ponderingturtle]

They are standing outside of her house holding signs......and your complaint is that she is calling it "doxxing".


And calling it "doxxing", when really all it is is standing outside of her house holding up signs calling her a bad person is, according to you, "a pretty good example of the general reactionary anti-trans tactics routinely employed by TERFs."

Nothing you are saying makes sense. It's just "My team good. Your team bad."

Yep they are clearly as bad as those people who bought the house across the street from westboro baptist church and made it super gay. That kind of behavior is not tolerated in civilized society. I mean protesting is right out.

 

[Olmstead]

Yep they are clearly as bad as those people who bought the house across the street from westboro baptist church and made it super gay. That kind of behavior is not tolerated in civilized society. I mean protesting is right out.

Rowling isn't an organisation. She's an individual.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

They are standing outside of her house holding signs......and your complaint is that she is calling it "doxxing".


And calling it "doxxing", when really all it is is standing outside of her house holding up signs calling her a bad person is, according to you, "a pretty good example of the general reactionary anti-trans tactics routinely employed by TERFs."

Nothing you are saying makes sense. It's just "My team good. Your team bad."

That was her complaint, that they "doxxed" her by taking a photo in front of house showing the address that could have been found with a quick google search.

 

[Matthew Best]

That was her complaint, that they "doxxed" her by taking a photo in front of house showing the address that could have been found with a quick google search.

This was her complaint:

"I have to assume that @IAmGeorgiaFrost, @hollywstars and @Richard_Energy_ thought doxxing me would intimidate me out of speaking up for women’s sex-based rights," Rowling wrote. "They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out.

Perhaps — and I’m just throwing this out there — the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us."

 

[Meadmaker]

Yep they are clearly as bad as those people who bought the house across the street from westboro baptist church and made it super gay. That kind of behavior is not tolerated in civilized society. I mean protesting is right out.

I hadn't heard of that. That's kind of cute.


Say, were those gay decorators on their own property? It sounds kind of like they were. Also.....the Westboro Baptist Church had a habit of going places and holding up signs bothering people who were going about their own business. I don't recall them going to private residences, but harassing people who are just carrying on normal functions, and even more so, funerals, is really bad behavior. WBC sounds like a bunch of ******** to me.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

This was her complaint:

"I have to assume that @IAmGeorgiaFrost, @hollywstars and @Richard_Energy_ thought doxxing me would intimidate me out of speaking up for women’s sex-based rights," Rowling wrote. "They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out.

Perhaps — and I’m just throwing this out there — the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us."

Yes, that's exactly the kind of bad-faith conflation that is the trademark of TERFs and other transphobes.

It's wild how Rowling tries to conflate people standing on the sidewalk with posterboard protest signs with the people sending violent threats.

Nothing these three protestors did could be reasonably construed as a threat or calling for a threat. It's gross for Rowling to try to smear innocuous criticism as a call for violence.

 

[Meadmaker]

This was her complaint:

"I have to assume that @IAmGeorgiaFrost, @hollywstars and @Richard_Energy_ thought doxxing me would intimidate me out of speaking up for women’s sex-based rights," Rowling wrote. "They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out.

Perhaps — and I’m just throwing this out there — the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us."

Yeah. They're standing outside her house with signs. They're publishing photos of her house. Some people are sending death threats and all sorts of internet nastygrams.

And the reaction is, "That bitch is saying we're doxxing her!" (Not a direct quote.)

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Yeah. They're standing outside her house with signs. They're publishing photos of her house. Some people are sending death threats and all sorts of internet nastygrams.

And the reaction is, "That bitch is saying we're doxxing her!" (Not a direct quote.)

Do you think Rowling is getting death threats because of the photo? Even she doesn't claim that.

 

[Elaedith]

I see. Thanks for your critique of my understanding of academia*. You won't be able to guess just how valid, accurate and valuable I found it to be.


So.....

Do you think academics should have the freedom to, for example, argue that black people are inherently stupid and lazy?

(A simple yes or no answer is preferable - but I doubt I'll get one.)

'Black people are inherently stupid and lazy' is not an argument, it's an assertion. Obviously, nobody is going to make a ridiculous assertion that can be debunked in five seconds by pointing out examples of black people who are intelligent and hard working. Making derogatory assertions about groups of people implies discriminatory attitudes, which would constitute misconduct.

Academics should have the freedom to make an argument about any empirical claim they feel is backed by evidence, and if their argument and evidence are nonsense then others have the right to point this out by critique of the arguments and evidence.

Arguing that there is evidence for statistical differences between groups of people should absolutely be allowed. This has already been discussed previously in this thread in relation to postmodern attacks on objective knowledge, which I am guessing you missed. For example, if somebody makes an argument that there are cognitive differences based on race, and their argument is rubbish, you need to show that their methodology is flawed and their conclusions inaccurate first, then you can consider how racist attitudes may have contributed to the conclusions. You cannot decide that their conclusions must be wrong and not allowed for political, emotional or social reasons, and then work backwards to distort arguments and evidence to fit pre-determined preferred conclusion. If you do, you are no different to the racist who distorts evidence to fit what *they* consider to be a socially desirable conclusion. You have lost the ability to say that one theory or argument is better than another based on truth or accuracy, and can only try to impose your preferred ideology on others by propaganda, lies and using intimidation to silence critics (which is exactly what happens with gender identity theory – funny that).

* And by the way, your entire post here was completely beside the point wrt my post to which you were responding. Mine was about unpleasant and objectionable work colleagues - something which is precisely as relevant in academia as it is in any other profession or walk of life.

There was no ‘unpleasant or objectionable’ work behaviour. You made that up out of whole cloth.

 

[Matthew Best]

It's wild how Rowling tries to conflate people standing on the sidewalk with posterboard protest signs with the people sending violent threats.

Nothing these three protestors did could be reasonably construed as a threat or calling for a threat. It's gross for Rowling to try to smear innocuous criticism as a call for violence.

What was the reason for standing outside her house doing whatever it was that they did? (I'm afraid I don't know what they posted because all three of their Twitter accounts have vanished for some reason.)

 

[Elaedith]

Oh and I guess a large chunk of academia wasn't playing by your portentous rulebook either, when they collectively disowned David Starkey over the views he professed in an interview with Darren Grimes around 18 months ago.

Academics did not 'collectively shun' Starkey. This type of decision (withdrawing a award) is made largely by management. Personally I don't agree that an award given for scholarship should ever be withdrawn except for later discovery that the scholarship was poor (e.g. fraud).

Surely Starkey was (in your view) simply engaging with his fellow academics, who should have (in your view) "addressed (their) disagreements over controversial issues (here, Starkey's racist statements) by producing verbal and written critiques of Starkey's arguments". Starkey was (in your view, presumably) doing nothing whatsoever wrong in an academic sense, and he should have been embraced and challenged academically over his views rather than shunned. Right?

What Starkey did wrong in a academic sense was to use inappropriate language and bad argument. His logic was ridiculous and should indeed have been addressed by pointing this out rather than ridiculous performative moral grandstanding.

 

[Elaedith]

Many people within academia are clueless about this as well.

Well, yes. Those people tend to be attracted to ideas that deny the possibility of objective truth, because they don't want the possibility of being shown to be wrong. Strangely the gender identity theories also originate from those parts of academia.

 

[The Atheist]

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.

Beautiful.

Handwave away rape and death threats and go back to "TERFs are more evil".

You have become a parody of yourself.

 

[Elaedith]

Interesting study passed along by a transwoman friend of mine.

Structural connections in the brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation

It's a pretty technical paper, and there are several terms I don't understand. But I can follow the gist. It seems to be a very well-defined study. They compared both heterosexual and homosexual people of both sexes to transgender people of both sexes using brain scans. They controlled for sexual orientation and a couple of other elements.

The important element is that they're looking at the brains of people with a clear diagnosis of gender dysphoria, who are not nor have ever taken hormones. They exclude people with Autism disorders, or who are taking any neuroactive or psychoactive drugs. It's as clean a study as it's possible to get, even though it's still relatively small sample sizes.

The conclusion is that some parts of the brains of truly transgender people are materially more like that of a person of the opposite sex than their natal sex.
This is pretty strong confirmation for the existence of innate dysphoria. But it also does NOT necessarily apply to anyone who is self-declared as transgender. The limitations on inclusion were pretty strict.

I've only had time to take a quick look at this, but I'm not sure the highlighted conclusion accurately conveys the main finding.

Most brain research in this area has confounded GD/trans identity with sexual orientation, which is correlated in the case of early-onset GD.

This was discussed by Cantor in his analysis of a Scientific American article. "Biological males and females differ from each other on certain subtle, non-learned features of the brain and body, and some samples of transsexuals are in-between on these features. That is, they were shifted away from what is typical for their sex-at-birth and towards the other sex." However, these shifts, such as 'click-evoked otoacoustic emissions' are also seen in association with sexual orientation which was confounded in the research.

The current study you linked states 'After controlling for sexual orientation, the transgender groups showed sex-typical FA-values.'. In other words, the study did control for sexual orientation and found that after doing so there was only one brain circuit that distinguished the transgender groups. This circuit is one that relates to self-perception and body perception (and is also implicated in conditions such as body integrity dysphoria/body dysmorphia). At least one other recent study that addressed the confound with sexual orientation also found this.

 

[Elaedith]

How do intersex people fit into your reckoning?

Intersex people are not other sexes.

 

[Olmstead]

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.

Eh, it will be fine. Logically and scientifically consistent views eventually end up on the right side of history.

 

[d4m10n]

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.

Did you happen to notice the stabby trans woman in book two? Feels like...trolling.