[ SECRET POST #4908 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4908 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 59 secrets from Secret Submission Post #703.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

So I think that on its own would be justification for forthrightly rejecting her views: they are wrong.

I never said I don’t reject a lot of the views she expresses.That is not where I’m coming from at all.

I think that the kind of views she represents are part of a continuum with people who are quote-unquote actual hateful bigots

But everyone is part of that continuum. Trans activists are still part of that continuum of “attitudes towards trans people.”

If that’s our argument for why she should be equally condemned, it’s a bad argument.

I'm not sure that there is some kind of benign, acceptable, passive transphobia

You will note that I described JKR as “inadvertently hurtful” and “unfair to trans people.” Does that sound like I’m saying her views are benign or acceptable?

What I am saying is, when we declare that someone who doesn’t hate trans people does hate trans people, it alienates them because they know they don’t hate trans people. They are in their own head and they know for sure they don’t hate trans people. So a bunch of people associated with trans activism telling them what a horrible person they are for hating trans people makes all those people associated with that cause seem extremely aggressive and unreasonable to the accusee. Because the accusee knows for a fact they are being falsely accused of something.

Many of JKR’s views are insensitive and incorrect. Her views are based primarily on fear—not of trans people themselves I don’t think, but of how rampantly misogynistic the current socio-political climate is—and because of that they are alarmist. Her views are unnecessarily detrimental to the well-being of trans people. And I think they deserve to be criticized on these bases.

But to take someone whose views are so thoroughly MOR, and who is also saying things like, “I would march with trans people,” and “Trans people deserve protection,” and reduce their views to bigotry and hatred is bizarrely back-and-white to me.

[(Anonymous)]

JKR and anti-trans bigots have markedly similar views on trans people and JKR is largely adopting the rhetoric and reasoning of people who are very anti-trans. That's what I mean by talking about a continuum.

What I am saying is, when we declare that someone who doesn’t hate trans people does hate trans people, it alienates them because they know they don’t hate trans people. They are in their own head and they know for sure they don’t hate trans people... Because the accusee knows for a fact they are being falsely accused of something.

I strongly disagree with this.

People can very strongly believe that they are not bigoted, even while they are actively being bigoted and believe bigoted things. That someone believes in their heart of hearts that they are not a bigot does not prove that they're not a bigot. And where someone is actually a bigot, I don't think that there's much benefit in prevaricating about that.

Her views are based primarily on fear—not of trans people themselves I don’t think, but of how rampantly misogynistic the current socio-political climate is—and because of that they are alarmist.

I think this is extending the benefit of the doubt to Rowling to a degree that is unreasonable. She tries to make the argument that trans advocacy is anti-feminist, but the things that she says are unsupported or often don't even have any logic to them - she says that trans advocacy will threaten her work with MS patients, for example, and I don't know what you can even say about that. So if all of the reasons she cites for thinking that trans advocacy threatens feminist goals are unsupported if not silly, it's hard to take that part of her argument seriously. I think it's far more plausible that she has some kind of dislike for trans people and for "the trans agenda" as she understands it. I think it's a simpler explanation for the things that she says. And it explains why she is using the same arguments as people who are unambiguously anti-trans, and engages with those people again and again.

But to take someone whose views are so thoroughly MOR, and who is also saying things like, “I would march with trans people,” and “Trans people deserve protection,” and reduce their views to bigotry and hatred is bizarrely back-and-white to me.

Again, I disagree. I think that JKR's views are bigoted, and I think that saying things like "I would march with trans people" is paying lip service. She might accept the validity of some trans people but she clearly dismisses the validity of many or most others, she wants to view trans women as "secondary" women of lesser significance than "natal" women, she opposes legal protections for trans people, and she promotes a number of very familiar, well-worn, disproven and anti-trans canards. It wasn't a slip of the tongue; it was an essay she thought up and chose to write on her own initiative. I don't think that describing those views as bigoted is reductive; I think it's a factual statement. I don't think the few lines about "I would march with trans people" rebut that because I don't think they're sincere.

[tree_and_leaf]

she says that trans advocacy will threaten her work with MS patients, for example, and I don't know what you can even say about that.

She seems to think that, as MS typically manifests differently in men and women, and its course in women is understudied, research into how to help women with MS will be destroyed if we accept trans women as women, because scientists will have no way to differentiate between men and women, or between cis women and trans women. Which is absurd.

I get that the treatment of women with MS is a really important one to her, but if she's presenting that argument in good faith, then she's being completely irrational, and I don't know whether it's because she finds the whole concept of transgender, or of people transitioning, terrifying, or what, but an awful lot of this doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.