[Duncan campbell]

Just finished listening to the witch trials of JK Rowling which I thought was really good.

Really interesting from both sides, largely made me think that at all times you should try and understand the other point of view and act with humility towards people who hold different views.

Well worth a listen imo

[Droyd]

Whilst hopefully avoiding getting into any debate regarding trans issues and Rowling, it's worth pointing out that the Witch Trials podcast has been widely condemned for how unevenly it presents the two sides. Natalie Wynn, who features in the sixth episode as a 'trans voice', put out a video essay where she talks about regretting her involvement as well as the broad issue, comparing it to the women's lib and gay rights movements. One of her key arguments is that the whole 'let's all have a civil, respectful discussion about this issue' idea is appealing to people with no skin in the game but not all that easy for trans people in the context of being accused of being mentally ill and dangerous predators, as well as in relation to the wider erosion of transgender people's rights in both the US and the UK.

I'd really recommend it to anyone who takes a 'we should debate the ideas' position, as a large part of her schtick is communicating why these issues are so emotionally fraught to people with some distance from them:

[joel182]

Whilst hopefully avoiding getting into any debate regarding trans issues and Rowling, it's worth pointing out that the Witch Trials podcast has been widely condemned for how unevenly it presents the two sides. Natalie Wynn, who features in the sixth episode as a 'trans voice', put out a video essay where she talks about regretting her involvement as well as the broad issue, comparing it to the women's lib and gay rights movements.

Thanks for posting this, I had thought about sharing it to but didn't want to start doing ~~discourse~~

[Duncan campbell]

Whilst hopefully avoiding getting into any debate regarding trans issues and Rowling, it's worth pointing out that the Witch Trials podcast has been widely condemned for how unevenly it presents the two sides. Natalie Wynn, who features in the sixth episode as a 'trans voice', put out a video essay where she talks about regretting her involvement as well as the broad issue, comparing it to the women's lib and gay rights movements. One of her key arguments is that the whole 'let's all have a civil, respectful discussion about this issue' idea is appealing to people with no skin in the game but not all that easy for trans people in the context of being accused of being mentally ill and dangerous predators, as well as in relation to the wider erosion of transgender people's rights in both the US and the UK.

I'd really recommend it to anyone who takes a 'we should debate the ideas' position, as a large part of her schtick is communicating why these issues are so emotionally fraught to people with some distance from them:

That’s interesting- I’ll take a look

 Edit: Just typed out a bit more of a response then remembered you said you didn’t want to get into a debate. I certainly don’t know enough to get into a massive debate in this subject!

[Droyd]

Thanks Duncan - I definitely don't have the knowledge to get into a debate on the subject, so could only awkwardly regurgitate points made better by others. There's a lot in that video (including niche references and humour that may not be to everyone's taste) and it's nearly two hours long, so - while I'd recommend the whole thing - Chapter 3 (roughly 21 minutes in) deals with the criticism of the podcast and Chapter 5 (around 50:30) has the points she makes re. public debate.

[slab_happy]

I will as always throw in a rec for Shon Faye's outstanding "The Transgender Issue: An Argument For Justice" for people who'd like to learn more on this issue.

[lukeyboy]

I have to say, I also found Niall's interview with Taylor Parsons (previously Chris Webb Parsons) on Jam Crack one of the most informative and interesting things I've read or listened to on the subject of Trans.

[slab_happy]

I have to say, I also found Niall's interview with Taylor Parsons (previously Chris Webb Parsons) on Jam Crack one of the most informative and interesting things I've read or listened to on the subject of Trans.

Yeah, that was a fantastic and fascinating interview on all fronts, and I think if you don't know any trans people personally, it might do a lot to put a human face on the issue.

Transitioning isn't something people do for shits and giggles, or because they're too stupid to understand that you can be a man and wear a dress, or something that enough therapy would "cure" them of needing to do.

[seankenny]

If my understanding is correct then the vast majority of trans people don’t medically transition at all. Whether this is due to a lack of treatment facilities or for other reasons I wouldn’t know, but it’s pertinent to the debate.

[slab_happy]

If my understanding is correct then the vast majority of trans people don’t medically transition at all. Whether this is due to a lack of treatment facilities or for other reasons I wouldn’t know, but it’s pertinent to the debate.

Your understanding is incorrect.

If I recall correctly, there's a claim that sometimes gets thrown around about how "90% of trans women keep their penises!" or some such, which is used to reinforce the idea that trans women are mostly just pervy men dressing up because they get a sexual thrill out of using the women's loos or something.

However, this statistic is based on wilfully misusing comparisons between the number of people who actually get gender-affirming surgery in the UK or US per year and attempts to estimate the number of trans people that there might be in the entire population based on potential incidence rates -- not the people who are out as trans, or the people who ID as trans in the census, but including attempts to estimate the number of people who might be trans but have never come out or contacted services or done anything about it but might be out there.

Now, estimating the disparity between the number of people who get services and the potential number of people who might need them is a valid exercise, but it's being hideously misused to imply that most trans people don't want to medically transition.

Obviously there are people who are non-binary or have complicated genders who may not want to alter their bodies, or want to do so in some ways but not others, there are people who don't want to lose their fertility before they've had biological children, and phalloplasty is still not that great so what genital surgery you do or don't decide to have is a much trickier issue for trans men than for trans women. But broadly speaking, some kind of medical transition is a thing that most trans people do want, very much.

Also, for people who are out as trans, getting access to any services in the UK is an infamously long haul. Notoriously, waiting lists can be in the realm of five years or more just to get a first appointment at a GIC, with many further appointments before you might get hormone treatment and many more years after that before you can get surgery.

So yeah, there are a lot of trans women out there who still have their penises even though they desperately want not to, because they're still stuck on a waiting list. That doesn't mean they're not medically transitioning at all (frequently they'll be on hormones if they can get them) or that they don't want to do so.

In addition, getting access to hormones and then to surgery has always required you to prove that you're already living 100% in the gender you are transitioning to and have been doing so for several years (two years is the common minimum).

So "using women's spaces" like the women's loos before you medically transition in any way is not only normal, it's mandatory. And this has been the case since the '70s.

Also, both the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act have no requirement for people to have undergone any specific forms of medical transition in order to get a GRC or to have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (for a GRC, medical documentation of treatments you've had can be produced as part of the evidence that you're "really trans", but it's not required). Legally, that boat sailed decades ago.

[slab_happy]

Also, it shouldn't be assumed that transitioning socially but not medically is some sort of "easy option".

If anything, it can be harder, as many non-binary people (or binary trans people waiting to get access to medical transition) know, because without hormonal treatment it's usually harder to "pass", and you are therefore much more likely to be on the receiving end of harassment or violence.

The playwright Travis Alabanza, who's non-binary, has talked about experiencing pressure (both internal and external) to pursue hormonal treatment, electrolysis, etc., not because it's necessarily what they want for themselves, but because if you're seen as looking like a "man in a dress", you're at risk of being assaulted every time you go out in public.

[seankenny]

If my understanding is correct then the vast majority of trans people don’t medically transition at all. Whether this is due to a lack of treatment facilities or for other reasons I wouldn’t know, but it’s pertinent to the debate.

Your understanding is incorrect...

However, this statistic is based on wilfully misusing comparisons between the number of people who actually get gender-affirming surgery in the UK or US per year and attempts to estimate the number of trans people that there might be in the entire population based on potential incidence rates -- not the people who are out as trans, or the people who ID as trans in the census, but including attempts to estimate the number of people who might be trans but have never come out or contacted services or done anything about it but might be out there.

Now, estimating the disparity between the number of people who get services and the potential number of people who might need them is a valid exercise, but it's being hideously misused to imply that most trans people don't want to medically transition...

But broadly speaking, some kind of medical transition is a thing that most trans people do want, very much.

Fair enough, the stat is based on an estimate (not uncommon in social sciences where data can be hard to come by). But then the obvious question is - what is the percentage of trans people that don't medically transition? This after all was my claim, if it's not a "vast majority" then what proportion is it actually?

If I recall correctly, there's a claim that sometimes gets thrown around about how "90% of trans women keep their penises!" or some such, which is used to reinforce the idea that trans women are mostly just pervy men dressing up because they get a sexual thrill out of using the women's loos or something.

Sigh. This is what makes the trans "debate" so toxic. I don't think many* of those seriously holding gender critical views believe this, and it's certainly not the case from much of what I've read. Of course some people might think that, but it's perfectly possible not to believe this (I don't) and to be gender critical. It's a shame trans rights activists can't engage with the best arguments against their case.

Anyhow, since this unpleasant trope has been deployed at the first opportunity, I'm out.

[Droyd]

“I don't think many* of those seriously holding gender critical views believe this”

Sean, assuming that this is a response to slab_happy's “idea that trans women are mostly just pervy men dressing up because they get a sexual thrill out of using the women's loos or something” (correct me if I’m wrong on that please): Rowling wrote a book where the villain is a male serial killer who dresses up as a woman; she's tweeted things like “There are proportionately more trans-identified males in jail in the UK for sex offences than among male prisoners as a whole". Obviously nothing that she's written is clear evidence of bigotry, but she has inarguably spent a lot of time talking about instances of trans women committing violence and sexual assault, and focused a lot on how changes to the civil rights of transgender people affect how both real and hypothetical sex offenders who also happen to be transgender would be dealt with in terms of the legal and prison systems.

Thus it’s not the case that a trope has been ‘deployed’ against you and the discussion made toxic when it wasn’t before; the discussion is about Rowling’s views, and she clearly does believe this.

[Bradders]

So yeah, there are a lot of trans women out there who still have their penises even though they desperately want not to, because they're still stuck on a waiting list. That doesn't mean they're not medically transitioning at all (frequently they'll be on hormones if they can get them) or that they don't want to do so.

On that basis what Sean wrote is completely accurate if you change four words, as below:

If my understanding is correct then the vast majority of trans people don’t haven't medically transitioned at all. Whether this is due to a lack of treatment facilities or for other reasons I wouldn’t know, but it’s pertinent to the debate.

“I don't think many* of those seriously holding gender critical views believe this”

Sean, assuming that this is a response to slab_happy's “idea that trans women are mostly just pervy men dressing up because they get a sexual thrill out of using the women's loos or something” (correct me if I’m wrong on that please): Rowling wrote a book where the villain is a male serial killer who dresses up as a woman; she's tweeted things like “There are proportionately more trans-identified males in jail in the UK for sex offences than among male prisoners as a whole". Obviously nothing that she's written is clear evidence of bigotry, but she has inarguably spent a lot of time talking about instances of trans women committing violence and sexual assault, and focused a lot on how changes to the civil rights of transgender people affect how both real and hypothetical sex offenders who also happen to be transgender would be dealt with in terms of the legal and prison systems.

Thus it’s not the case that a trope has been ‘deployed’ against you and the discussion made toxic when it wasn’t before; the discussion is about Rowling’s views, and she clearly does believe this.

This is interesting because from listening to the podcast, and not having ever followed her on Twitter, I'd concluded that she very clearly does not believe that!

She is in her own words absolutely, painstakingly explicit in the podcast that she does not believe trans women are dangerous, quite the opposite. She is equally painstakingly explicit that her belief is that the problem is male violence and predatory men.

[slab_happy]

One of her key arguments is that the whole 'let's all have a civil, respectful discussion about this issue' idea is appealing to people with no skin in the game but not all that easy for trans people in the context of being accused of being mentally ill and dangerous predators, as well as in relation to the wider erosion of transgender people's rights in both the US and the UK.

It's also important to be clear that Rowling and her associates are now actively campaigning to remove some of trans people's existing legal rights, including demanding that the Equality Act be changed to do so.

Within a few years, they've escalated from "of course we don't want to remove anyone's rights, we're just concerned that gender recognition reform is going too far" (back when gender recognition reform was so uncontroversial it was official Tory policy under Theresa May) to demanding that trans women be banned from women's toilets.

(N.B. that trans women have been using the women's loos in the UK for at least half a century without problems. It has never been illegal, and was established as specifically legal many many years ago. If it was a problem, we would know by now.)

And they've got powerful people like Kemi Badenoch enthusiastically on their side, because the Tories think stirring up culture wars is their last hope for the next election.

There is currently a very well-funded lawsuit against the Survivors' Network (an excellent charity for survivors of sexual violence, who are explictly trans-inclusive and make that very clear) because they refused to throw a woman out of one of their support groups just because another woman thought she might be trans.

There are no legal grounds for the lawsuit, but rape crisis charities are extremely under-funded, and if you've got sufficiently deep pockets you can try to destroy a small organization or force them to back down because they can't afford the legal costs.

It's desperately disingenuous when the same people give their interviews to the Times and the Telegraph and the BBC and the Guardian (etc. etc. etc.) about how they're being SILENCED "just for saying that sex is real!" or "just for defending women's rights!"

Speaking as a cis woman who's been a a trans-inclusive feminist since the '90s, and remembers the previous iteration of this bullshit: not in my name they're not.

[slab_happy]

On that basis what Sean wrote is completely accurate if you change four words, as below:

If my understanding is correct then the vast majority of trans people don’t haven't medically transitioned at all. Whether this is due to a lack of treatment facilities or for other reasons I wouldn’t know, but it’s pertinent to the debate.

I mean, a lot of things are accurate if you change some of the words ...

"Don't" is very different from "haven't been able to".

In any case, even if you change those words, my statement isn't the same as his because (as I stated) trans women who still have their penises mostly are on hormones and thus are medically transitioning.

And I said nothing about "vast majority".

And it's still not "pertinent to the debate", because access to "women's spaces" like toilets and legal gender recognition in the UK has never been dependent on what medical treatments people have or haven't had, and the sky hasn't fallen in as a result.

This is interesting because from listening to the podcast, and not having ever followed her on Twitter, I'd concluded that she very clearly does not believe that!

She is in her own words absolutely, painstakingly explicit in the podcast that she does not believe trans women are dangerous, quite the opposite. She is equally painstakingly explicit that her belief is that the problem is male violence and predatory men.

She has explicitly endorsed and promoted a petition which calls for the Equality Act to be changed to remove some of trans women's existing legal rights and to make it even easier for single-sex services to exclude them (the law already allows single-sex services to exclude trans people, but it has to be a "proportionate means to a legitimate end"; you can't blanket-ban trans people from a service for no reason).

She's been extremely clear that she thinks it's a danger for trans women to be allowed to use women's spaces like toilets and changing rooms (which they have been doing completely legally for decades).

She's started up a rape survivors' service specifically to exclude trans women, because all the existing services in Scotland are trans-inclusive by choice (because the people on the ground actually doing the work have found it to be a non-problem) and she objects to that.

She's now referring to "trans-identified males", because even calling them "trans women" seems to be too much for her.

She has praised and endorsed people including Magdalen Berns (who called trans women "blackface actors" and "sick fucks"), Helen Joyce (who said that the number of trans people needs to be "reduced" because "every one of those people is a huge problem for a sane world", not to mention laundering wildly antisemitic theories about how transness is a plot funded by Jewish billionaires), and Get The L Out (who approvingly quote Janice Raymond's line that "all transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact").

Not to mention Posie Parker, who said that men with guns ought to go into the women's loos to protect women from the evil trans predators (and who also networks intensely with and promotes the far right, which is why she had actual Nazis showing up to her rally in New Zealand to support her, which has not stopped Rowling from holding her up as a heroine subsequent to that).

And that's just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head in five minutes.

(I've currently forgotten which of the folk at the LGB Alliance conference it was who claimed that a trans woman going to a shop while wearing a skirt was engaging in a sexual fetish and forcing bystanders to be involved in it and thus sexually assaulting them, so I can't Google to see if Rowling has endorsed them specifically.)

I don't care if she goes on a podcast and say "oh no, I don't have anything against trans women, I love trans women, I'm just worried about predatory men pretending to be trans women!" when her actions and her other statements make it very clear what she believes.

The "predatory men" line has been deployed endlessly by Rowling and others to explain how trans women all have to be punished and excluded because after all you can't tell who the real ones are.

And eventually the mask comes off and, as with the references to "trans identified males", and the claim that they're more likely to be in prison for sexual offences than cis men, it becomes clear that she thinks all trans women are men anyway, and specifically even more likely to be dangerous than cis men are.

So, you know, if you weren't aware of any of these things, I'm going to suggest that perhaps the podcast was not as balanced and "both sides" as it might have appeared.

[joel182]

I will as always throw in a rec for Shon Faye's outstanding "The Transgender Issue: An Argument For Justice" for people who'd like to learn more on this issue.

+1 on this. Really excellent book. Pretty uncompromisingly radical in its politics - and rightly so. Recommend it a lot for people who want to learn more about the subject - if anyone wants to read it but can't afford it/can't find it at your local library I would be happy to gift you my copy if you DM me.

[Bradders]

Scary stuff, thanks for the background.

She also is very clear in the podcast in saying something along the lines of "actions speak louder than words"; hoist on her own petard!

To be clear, I have literally just listened to the podcast and know almost nothing else about this topic.

[Droyd]

She is in her own words absolutely, painstakingly explicit in the podcast that she does not believe trans women are dangerous, quite the opposite. She is equally painstakingly explicit that her belief is that the problem is male violence and predatory men.

Person accused of being a bigot claims not to be a bigot and deflects - shocker. There’s a long history of bigotry being expressed as ‘legitimate concerns’; the video I linked to up-thread does a good job of linking the dissonance between what Rowling says and what her views demonstrably are into this idea that the person spouting hateful rhetoric is simply asking genuine questions and may even have the best interests of the marginalised group at heart. Rather than put my foot in my mouth with a clumsy, specific analogy I’ll simply ask: How many influential people who have argued for a specific group to have fewer rights in recent history have said or written anything that could be used as conclusive proof of their bigotry?

There seems to be this idea with Rowling that because she's never used slurs or gone absolutely unhinged and demanded the extermination of trans people, her views have been misrepresented by left-wing extremists looking for a bogeyman - that unstable people on Twitter have decided that she needs to be cancelled for going against the grain and that really she's done nothing but ask a few innocent questions, and that she’s not said anything ‘bad’. This and her claim that she's worried about men are nonsense for the reasons slab_happy has outlined.

[Bradders]

As I say I've literally just listened to the podcast and know nothing else about it, so was just relaying what she'd said and the message you get from listening to the podcast in isolation.

[Wellsy]

Well I think it could very much be the case that Rowling thinks that male violence is the problem, but she also considers most if not all trans women as basically men, thus kind of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where she thinks trans women are violent, dangerous etc

I find it interesting that trans women absolutely dominate the discourse on the topic of trans people, nobody really talks about trans men.

I definitely am on a particular side of this one and I am no fan of Rowling, in the interests of transparency. I find her victimisation of vulnerable people to be pretty disgusting.

[slab_happy]

As I say I've literally just listened to the podcast and know nothing else about it, so was just relaying what she'd said and the message you get from listening to the podcast in isolation.

Oh yeah, I think there's a HUGE problem with a lot of the reporting, which just doesn't mention this stuff, doesn't do its fact-checking or due diligence, and provides endless platforms for Rowling (and Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel and Joanna Cherry et. al.) without ever challenging them on their claims or bringing up other things they've said.

With the result that if you don't have any other knowledge of the topic, and if what you get is presenting itself as a "balanced" overview, of course people go "Wow, I can't believe people are calling Rowling transphobic just because she's worried about women's safety, when she's so clear she has nothing against trans women!", and then often conclude that it's those extremist trans rights activists making the debate"toxic".

Not saying you were saying that, but it's a conclusion many people seem to get led to -- rather understandably if you don't have any other source of info.

It's frightening to know some of the facts (for example, I'm involved in grant-making work with refuges and survivors' services so I actually do know a fair amount about trans inclusion in those contexts) and then watch how badly the journalism is failing, in the face of an active campaign to remove existing legal rights from an incredibly vulnerable group.

[slab_happy]

I find it interesting that trans women absolutely dominate the discourse on the topic of trans people, nobody really talks about trans men.

Rowling and some of the others do actually talk about trans men a fair amount, but it's not symmetrical - trans women are presented as the scary threats potentially invading "women's spaces", while trans men are treated as confused little girls who've gone astray, who were "meant" to be lesbians (even though plenty of trans men are gay and not attracted to women) and need to be rescued and brought back to the true path and taught to love their Womanly Bodies.

Not surprisingly, a lot of trans men find this creepy and patronizing as fuck.

[seankenny]

Where do the trans rights activists who want to “punch TERFS”,  say things like “suck on my lady dick” and attend rallies in black balaclavas fit into the taxonomy of disgust at vulnerable people being threatened?

By the way, can anyone answer my perfectly reasonable request for figures that I made a little further up the thread?

[Wellsy]

I find it interesting that trans women absolutely dominate the discourse on the topic of trans people, nobody really talks about trans men.

Rowling and some of the others do actually talk about trans men a fair amount, but it's not symmetrical - trans women are presented as the scary threats potentially invading "women's spaces", while trans men are treated as confused little girls who've gone astray, who were "meant" to be lesbians (even though plenty of trans men are gay and not attracted to women) and need to be rescued and brought back to the true path and taught to love their Womanly Bodies.

Not surprisingly, a lot of trans men find this creepy and patronizing as fuck.

Yeah I've heard about "Lost Lesbian Sisters" a few times. Seems pretty awful.