Topic: Thread for Discussion on Trans Rights (*)

[TepidT2O]

So, if they are women, why can’t they compete in women’s sports?

Because the two seem incompatible otherwise.

Which does society go with?

[killer-heels]

So, if they are women, why can’t they compete in women’s sports?

Because the two seem incompatible otherwise.

Which does society go with?

They are women and can identify as women but not female. The sports are just going to have to be rebranded.

[Dench57]

From the BBC:

Daniel's always seemed like a good lad

[TepidT2O]

They are women and can identify as women but not female. The sports are just going to have to be rebranded.

Look maybe I’m getting confused here.  Isn’t a woman just an adult female human?  Are we defining them differently now?

As you can see, for me there is an illogicality here. 

There must be a more logical solution?

[Snail]

Daniel's always seemed like a good lad

Yeah he's always been sound, good to see him speak up. Katie Leung (who played Cho Chang in the movies) also tweeted this the other day

https://twitter.com/Kt_Leung/status/1269574865733988356

[Dench57]

Yeah he's always been sound, good to see him speak up. Katie Leung (who played Cho Chang in the movies) also tweeted this the other day

https://twitter.com/Kt_Leung/status/1269574865733988356

hah, class 

[Elmo!]

Look maybe I’m getting confused here.  Isn’t a woman just an adult female human?  Are we defining them differently now?

As you can see, for me there is an illogicality here. 

There must be a more logical solution?

I thought you said you understood the sex/gender thing? As I've said previously, it is unfortunate that there isn't a consensus on exact terminology to use when referring to sex and genders. I would normally go with man/woman for gender and male/female for sex, but people mix and match the terms, understandably.

[killer-heels]

Look maybe I’m getting confused here.  Isn’t a woman just an adult female human?  Are we defining them differently now?

As you can see, for me there is an illogicality here. 

There must be a more logical solution?

Its the whole gender, sex thing though isn't it?

Women sports stars can still be biologically female and transgender so everything can be marketed the same. But when it comes to competing then sports will have to remain female only until we are sure that a transgender person that has transitioned has no biological advantage.

Its going to take a long time and many transgender athletes may miss out and may never get the opportunity, but unfortunately there is nothing that can be done, especially as the pool of transgender athletes isn't big enough to have their own classification at the moment.

[Red_Bear]

As far as women's sport is concerned, I did touch on this in a previous post, so I'll quote myself here:

As far as trans women competing in sports is concerned, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has had trans inclusion policies since 2003 - the Stockholm Consensus, and many other sports follow these rules also. Since then, there have been 4 Olympic Games - so if it really was a massive advantage in being a trans woman competing in women's sport then don't you think that at least one medal would have been won by a trans woman?!

The rules for competing in the Olympics were modified in 2015, and now require

that trans woman athletes declare their gender and not change that assertion for four years, and demonstrate a testosterone level of less than 10 nanomoles/liter for at least one year prior to competition and throughout the period of eligibility. Athletes who transitioned from female to male were allowed to compete without restriction. These guidelines were in effect for the 2016 Rio Olympics, although no openly transgender athletes competed.

(from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports#Olympics)

Many other sport governing bodies take their guidance from the IOC standards. Trans women already play and compete in many sports at amateur level, and there is nothing that shows that they have an advantage due to being trans.

Also, most trans women will identify as woman and female and trans men will identify as man and male. Obviously, non binary people will identify differently.

[LovelyCushionedHeader]

Trans women already play and compete in many sports at amateur level, and there is nothing that shows that they have an advantage due to being trans.

As far as athletics goes, isn't it more that they could have a biological advantage but are made to take medication in order to suppress it? I know Semenya isn't trans, but when she was made to lower her testosterone levels, her performance level significantly dropped.

Being asked to take substances to compete when said substances would otherwise be very much banned opens up a whole new can of worms - but I don't know enough about the subject. Would someone in transition be lowering their testosterone levels to an acceptable level regardless of whether or not they were an elite athlete? I guess some would and some wouldn't?

 

[Red_Bear]

As far as athletics goes, isn't it more that they could have a biological advantage but are made to take medication in order to suppress it? I know Semenya isn't trans, but when she was made to lower her testosterone levels, her performance level significantly dropped.

Being asked to take substances to compete when said substances would otherwise be very much banned opens up a whole new can of worms - but I don't know enough about the subject. Would someone in transition be lowering their testosterone levels to an acceptable level regardless of whether or not they were an elite athlete? I guess some would and some wouldn't?

 

Most (but not all, some can't or don't want to)  trans women will take oestrogen, in the same format that cis women may take post-menopause. These aren't banned in any way, and once the trans woman has consistent levels that are the same as a cis woman they have no competitive advantage due to being trans. They do suppress testosterone levels, and generally would cause a loss of muscle mass and a lowering of performance levels - as affected Semenya.

No one would be "made" to take substances - which wouldn't otherwise be banned anyway - but if a trans woman wants to compete in the Olympics (and many other sports which use the IOC guidance) they have to show that their levels have been at the same levels as a cis woman for at least a year prior to competing and throughout the period that they are competing.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that trans athletes have been allowed to participate in the last 4 Olympic games but there hasn't suddenly been a glut of trans women winning all the medals (in fact, not even a single one) shows that the rules don't disadvantage cis women athletes in any way.

[Elmo!]

Most (but not all, some can't or don't want to)  trans women will take oestrogen, in the same format that cis women may take post-menopause. These aren't banned in any way, and once the trans woman has consistent levels that are the same as a cis woman they have no competitive advantage due to being trans. They do suppress testosterone levels, and generally would cause a loss of muscle mass and a lowering of performance levels - as affected Semenya.

No one would be "made" to take substances - which wouldn't otherwise be banned anyway - but if a trans woman wants to compete in the Olympics (and many other sports which use the IOC guidance) they have to show that their levels have been at the same levels as a cis woman for at least a year prior to competing and throughout the period that they are competing.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that trans athletes have been allowed to participate in the last 4 Olympic games but there hasn't suddenly been a glut of trans women winning all the medals (in fact, not even a single one) shows that the rules don't disadvantage cis women athletes in any way.

I am absolutely no expert on this topic at all, so take with a large pinch of salt.

Regardless of whether someone has been taking oestrogen or testosterone for 12 months or whatever, does it not make a huge difference to someones physique going through puberty in a certain sex, which no amount of oestrogen or testosterone will overcome.

From following this debate in rugby, I've read many people say that a biological woman who has gone through puberty as a female, no matter if they have taken testosterone, will be able to complete safely in rugby playing with men, and in fact it would be irresponsibly dangerous to allow them to do so. The same would apply in reverse, where a biological man took  oestrogen and played with females would have a dangerous advantage.

[killer-heels]

Most (but not all, some can't or don't want to)  trans women will take oestrogen, in the same format that cis women may take post-menopause. These aren't banned in any way, and once the trans woman has consistent levels that are the same as a cis woman they have no competitive advantage due to being trans. They do suppress testosterone levels, and generally would cause a loss of muscle mass and a lowering of performance levels - as affected Semenya.

No one would be "made" to take substances - which wouldn't otherwise be banned anyway - but if a trans woman wants to compete in the Olympics (and many other sports which use the IOC guidance) they have to show that their levels have been at the same levels as a cis woman for at least a year prior to competing and throughout the period that they are competing.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that trans athletes have been allowed to participate in the last 4 Olympic games but there hasn't suddenly been a glut of trans women winning all the medals (in fact, not even a single one) shows that the rules don't disadvantage cis women athletes in any way.

Is this definitely proven and a common consensus? Sorry but there were still questions about whether the drugs Gatlin took was still swirling around in his system years after his ban and that debate wasnt fully settled.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

I am absolutely no expert on this topic at all, so take with a large pinch of salt.

Regardless of whether someone has been taking oestrogen or testosterone for 12 months or whatever, does it not make a huge difference to someones physique going through puberty in a certain sex, which no amount of oestrogen or testosterone will overcome.

From following this debate in rugby, I've read many people say that a biological woman who has gone through puberty as a female, no matter if they have taken testosterone, will be able to complete safely in rugby playing with men, and in fact it would be irresponsibly dangerous to allow them to do so. The same would apply in reverse, where a biological man took  oestrogen and played with females would have a dangerous advantage.

I think that there will be differences between sports, which is why a one size fits all approach doesn't work.

Similar to you I'm not an expert. But I would guess that the primary enduring physical characteristic post transition would be skeletal structure. That would be a reason why there might be more of a problem with trans people taking part in heavy contact sports. If you look at the contrast between male and female skulls you can intuitively see the risks that might come from head collisions.

With athletics I'd imagine that a heavier skeletal structure would actually be a disadvantage that might mitigate against other advantages that there might be in terms of residual muscular performance.

[Red_Bear]

Is this definitely proven and a common consensus? Sorry but there were still questions about whether the drugs Gatlin took was still swirling around in his system years after his ban and that debate wasnt fully settled.

Is what proven and a common consensus? I doubt the IOC (International Olympic Committee, just for avoidance of doubt) would allow trans women to compete if it wasn't proven to level the playing field. It's definitely true that trans athletes have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2003 (so since the 2004 Olympic Games) and that there has never been a trans woman who has won a medal - in fact, I'm not sure if there ever have been any competitors, there definitely weren't in 2016 but I've not gone back and double checked all the other years. I can't think of any off hand though, and I'm pretty sure a story like that would be splashed all over the papers!

I'm not sure what relevance Gatlin's drug taking has. Trans women don't take any substances (legal or illegal) that could be still in their system.

[Red_Bear]

I think that there will be differences between sports, which is why a one size fits all approach doesn't work.

Similar to you I'm not an expert. But I would guess that the primary enduring physical characteristic post transition would be skeletal structure. That would be a reason why there might be more of a problem with trans people taking part in heavy contact sports. If you look at the contrast between male and female skulls you can intuitively see the risks that might come from head collisions.

With athletics I'd imagine that a heavier skeletal structure would actually be a disadvantage that might mitigate against other advantages that there might be in terms of residual muscular performance.

The thing about competitive sport is that all sorts of different things give different people an advantage. For instance, if you're a goal keeper, it obviously helps to be tall and agile. In some sports, upper body strength is vital, in others, lung capacity is key, or stamina, or strength. We don't consider it unfair that one team has a taller 'keeper than another. Michael Phelps, one of the greatest swimmers ever, has double jointed ankles which give him a better kick, and produces half the lactic acid, which causes fatigue, of other people. We don't try to level the playing field there by forcing him to have surgery on his ankles, or take drugs to increase his lactic acid, we just say how amazing it is that he has these natural quirks that give him the ability to be a great athlete.

There also seems to be a stereotype here that all trans women are 6 foot 6 tall with broad shoulders, hence they won, for instance, a women's contact sport such as rugby. That's not the case at all - and, as I've already mentioned, the taking of oestrogen causes a great deal of muscle wastage, regardless of the type of puberty that someone went through.

I'd be interested to know who the many people saying it would be dangerous to allow trans men to play rugby with cis men are - which I assume is what you're referring JustElmo? - are they experts or are they people who have just decided that based on their own feelings and prejudices without any actual evidence?

[Elmo!]

are they experts or are they people who have just decided that based on their own feelings and prejudices without any actual evidence?

I don't think that needs to be a binary choice (pun not intended).

Someone doesn't need to be an expert in a field to be able to make an argument with some evidence to back it up.

In answer to your question though, I'm just talking about debates I have read online, with some people who at least sound like they know what they are talking about, and certainly not coming across as people who have an anti-trans agenda.

[Red_Bear]

I don't think that needs to be a binary choice (pun not intended).

Someone doesn't need to be an expert in a field to be able to make an argument with some evidence to back it up.

In answer to your question though, I'm just talking about debates I have read online, with some people who at least sound like they know what they are talking about, and certainly not coming across as people who have an anti-trans agenda.

Yes, I agree that you don't have to be an expert to make the argument with some evidence - however, I do know some experts, from the organisation Pride Sports, and from LGBT+ rugby teams, and none of them have ever expressed that view to me.

Also, when I said "prejudices", I didn't mean it as them having an anti-trans agenda - perhaps "biases", or even "unconscious biases" would have been a better choice of wording; apologies for not being clear.

[Cpt_Reina]

The professional sports framing of the discussion on trans rights is borderline obstructive.

Its a non-issue.

Trans people already due to feeling like they're in the wrong body have enough distress in their lives without non-trans people cheapening their plight with "yeah but what about the commonweath games?".

What happens with professional sports? It doesn't fucking matter. Figure it out if it ever arises.

Trans women are not spending years growing up in a society which doesn't understand them and in most cases doesn't even want to understand them, afraid for their safety in private and public, going through the trauma of transitioning so that they can turn out in the 100m and win a gold medal.

Imagine growing up feeling like you were in the wrong body, like an alien inside your own skin and then having the courage to transition and hope to be accepted and identify as a woman only for someone to parrot on about the integrity of a sporting environment which isnt even under 'threat'.

Almost half (48 per cent) of trans people in Britain have attempted suicide at
least once; 84 per cent have thought about it. More than half (55 per cent)
have been diagnosed with depression at some point.
(Trans Mental Health Survey 2012, sample size = 889)

More than half (54 per cent) of trans people reported that they have been told
by their GP that they don’t know enough about trans-related care to provide it.
(Trans Mental Health Survey 2012, sample size =889)

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/trans_stats.pdf

[Sammy5IsAlive]

The thing about competitive sport is that all sorts of different things give different people an advantage. For instance, if you're a goal keeper, it obviously helps to be tall and agile. In some sports, upper body strength is vital, in others, lung capacity is key, or stamina, or strength. We don't consider it unfair that one team has a taller 'keeper than another. Michael Phelps, one of the greatest swimmers ever, has double jointed ankles which give him a better kick, and produces half the lactic acid, which causes fatigue, of other people. We don't try to level the playing field there by forcing him to have surgery on his ankles, or take drugs to increase his lactic acid, we just say how amazing it is that he has these natural quirks that give him the ability to be a great athlete.

There also seems to be a stereotype here that all trans women are 6 foot 6 tall with broad shoulders, hence they won, for instance, a women's contact sport such as rugby. That's not the case at all - and, as I've already mentioned, the taking of oestrogen causes a great deal of muscle wastage, regardless of the type of puberty that someone went through.

I'd be interested to know who the many people saying it would be dangerous to allow trans men to play rugby with cis men are - which I assume is what you're referring JustElmo? - are they experts or are they people who have just decided that based on their own feelings and prejudices without any actual evidence?

I've just been out for a walk and was thinking along similar lines of your first paragraph in terms of athletes at least (whether track and field, cycling, swimming). Professional athletes are there because they have biological advantages over the 'normal' population. Obviously where they place in their profession comes down to a much greater extent on their own 'agency'. But it does at least give pause for thought when you hear complaints of biological differences giving a competitive advantage.

The rugby issue is different though - that is not a case of competition but of safety. I'm not an expert but a quick google suggests that there is a  consensus of dimorphism between male and female skulls. Interestingly there is much less consensus on cranial thickness (and also whether thickness of bone correlates with resiliency to head injuries). Either way the overall differences will not go away with the suppression of testosterone and consequent reduction in muscle mass. In a sport where head on head collisions are inevitable that has got to be a major concern.

[TepidT2O]

The professional sports framing of the discussion on trans rights is borderline obstructive.

Its a non-issue.

Trans people already due to feeling like they're in the wrong body have enough distress in their lives without non-trans people cheapening their plight with "yeah but what about the commonweath games?".

What happens with professional sports? It doesn't fucking matter. Figure it out if it ever arises.

Trans women are not spending years growing up in a society which doesn't understand them and in most cases doesn't even want to understand them, afraid for their safety in private and public, going through the trauma of transitioning so that they can turn out in the 100m and win a gold medal.

Imagine growing up feeling like you were in the wrong body, like an alien inside your own skin and then having the courage to transition and hope to be accepted and identify as a woman only for someone to parrot on about the integrity of a sporting environment which isnt even under 'threat'.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/trans_stats.pdf

Well, I wouldn’t wish to be transgender, it’s about the most difficult and awkward thing to go through that I could imagine...

The stats are shocking, and if people we’re less judgemental it would be a great start.

But I simply don’t agree with you in the figuring it out if it ever arises bit.

Of course it will arise. Why won’t trans women want to be professional sports people? Why the hell shouldn’t they?

And it’s important because it’s the logical conclusion of the argument that trans women are women.

So, it either does survive the professional sport test or it doesn’t.

Which is it? Why? This is the very essence of the debate, a distillation of of the key rift in ideas. If an argument doesn’t survive this, it isn’t fit for purpose.

Logically I don’t think either side of the fence works, so I think we’ve got to go back to square one and start again.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

Plus if you are looking at it from a safety point of view in certain sports (the issue with rugby discussed above also perhaps extends to combat sports involving head strikes) that is not an issue that is confined to 'professional' sport.

Agree with the general gist of Cpt Reina's post though - the sports angle is very much secondary to much more fundamental issues.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

And it’s important because it’s the logical conclusion of the argument that trans women are women.

Disagree with this. As far as sports go the argument is whether trans women are female.

For me the moment you start conflating sex with gender is where you start giving the bigots the oxygen to breathe.

[ljycb]

And it’s important because it’s the logical conclusion of the argument that trans women are women.

I don’t agree.

For me the moment you start conflating sex with gender is where you start giving the bigots the oxygen to breathe.

Spot on.

[S]

There are clearly more urgent concerns that need addressing, but I think any discussion on how transgender men or women fit into sport is one to be welcomed. Rather than see it as a confusion of priorities, I tend to look at it as a progressive thing. To even hold such a discussion you're acknowledging that going forward the needs of the trans community need to be catered for in professional sport. Which doesn't sound like much of a moral victory until you imagine raising such a topic as recently as twenty or maybe even ten years ago. The suicide figures posted above are tragic. Strange as it may sound though, graphs like that are why I think talking about the future of transgender people in sport can be an optimistic thing. A society that can achieve integration on that level is surely one that can reverse such harrowing statistics.

[S]

I'll add that in terms of actual ideas for that progression I can't say I'm totally sure. I'm not as well researched as some of you, because there's a lot of points made in here that I agree with when in actual fact they seem to cancel each other out. A sign I probably need to read more.

[TepidT2O]

When I hear about the distress and hardship transitions causes I am of course rightly moved. We’ve perish deserves individual respect and tolerance

But I find this moving too.

And I’m not sure where the bigotry is, I just can’t.

This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Burns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called c*nt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a c*nt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

https://www.jkrowling.com/answers/

[Elmo!]

When I hear about the distress and hardship transitions causes I am of course rightly moved. We’ve perish deserves individual respect and tolerance

But I find this moving too.

And I’m not sure where the bigotry is, I just can’t.


https://www.jkrowling.com/answers/

Will mayeb put together a longer response later but my initial response to that is that Rowling has some cheek to complain about a Twitter pile on.... she is the master at instigating them.

[Elmo!]

Oh and when she says this:

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one.

She is just flat out wrong. The plans were put on hold ages ago and in fact it has just been announced they have been shelved while the coronavirus is dealt with.

It also did not mean that 'in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one'.

As I've mentioned in here before, it was still a 6 month process in total. It makes me doubt everything else she has written.

[Bobsackamano]

Excellent essay, thanks for posting.

[TepidT2O]

Oh and when she says this:

She is just flat out wrong. The plans were put on hold ages ago and in fact it has just been announced they have been shelved while the coronavirus is dealt with.

It also did not mean that 'in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one'.

As I've mentioned in here before, it was still a 6 month process in total. It makes me doubt everything else she has written.

Didn’t you post some legislation showing the steps someone should go through to be considered a woman, but that there was no need to provide any evidence of these?

Apologies if my memory of this is wrong...

[Elmo!]

Didn’t you post some legislation showing the steps someone should go through to be considered a woman, but that there was no need to provide any evidence of these?

Apologies if my memory of this is wrong...

They need to have lived in their acquired gender for 3 months on application. There is no evidence required but it would be a criminal offence to make a false declaration. After the application has been accepted there would be a 3 month reflection period before the certificate would be issued.

4.02. In summary, the Scottish Government’s proposals are:

    The removal of current medical requirements when applicants are seeking legal gender recognition;

    The removal of the need to apply to the GRP. Instead, applicants would apply to the Registrar General for Scotland (“the Registrar General”) who already has a number of existing functions under the GRA;[29]

    Applicants must either (a) have been born or adopted[30] in Scotland or (b) be ordinarily resident in Scotland;
    Applicants must have lived in their acquired gender for a minimum of 3 months (rather than the current 2 years) before submitting an application for gender recognition;

    After an application has been accepted by the Registrar General, the applicant would have to confirm after a reflection period of 3 months that they wish to proceed;

    Applicants would have to confirm that they intend to live permanently in their acquired gender;

    Applicants would still be required to submit statutory declarations, made in front of a notary public or a justice of the peace;
and
    It will be a criminal offence to make a false statutory declaration in relation to gender recognition and to make a false application for gender recognition.

Of course, its also the case that there is nothing stopping a man entering a female toilet right now, its not an offense.

[TepidT2O]

They need to have lived in their acquired gender for 3 months on application. There is no evidence required but it would be a criminal offence to make a false declaration. After the application has been accepted there would be a 3 month reflection period before the certificate would be issued.

Given that they don’t need to provide any evidence I don’t see that her statement is in any way wrong though..


You can just say you’re a woman (and vice versa that you’re a man.??)

I’m not sure I think people having to provide evidence like that is necessarily a good thing though...

[Elmo!]

So I just did a bit of googling on one of Rowlings other points.

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the republication:

In a notice of correction prefacing her updated version of the study, Littman stated:

    [T]he post-publication review identified issues that needed to be addressed to ensure the article meets PLOS ONE's publication criteria. Given the nature of the issues in this case, the PLOS ONE Editors decided to republish the article, replacing the original version of record with a revised version in which the author has updated the Title, Abstract, Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion sections, to address the concerns raised in the editorial reassessment. The Materials and methods section was updated to include new information and more detailed descriptions about recruitment sites and to remove two figures due to copyright restrictions. Other than the addition of a few missing values in Table 13, the Results section is unchanged in the updated version of the article.[3]

PLOS One's editor wrote that "the corrected article now provides a better context of the work, as a report of parental observations, but not a clinically validated phenomenon or a diagnostic guideline".[15] On behalf of the journal, Heber wrote, "Correcting the scientific record in this manner and in such circumstances is a sign of responsible publishing", where further scrutiny was called for to "clarify whether the conclusions presented are indeed backed up by the analysis and data of that original study."[15] Heber later stated, "At its core, the survey of the parents stands as it is... We let the original results stand."[14]

[Elmo!]

Given that they don’t need to provide any evidence I don’t see that her statement is in any way wrong though..


You can just say you’re a woman (and vice versa that you’re a man.??)

I’m not sure I think people having to provide evidence like that is necessarily a good thing though...

The point is it takes time, and it can be refused.

And you can just go into any toilet you want right now as it isn't an offense.

[TepidT2O]

The point is it takes time, and it can be refused.

And you can just go into any toilet you want right now as it isn't an offense.

How would it be raised as a criminal issue if no evidence is required?

And making it a criminal offence to lie about it?  It would just be a legal mine field surely?

As I say, I don’t think providing evidence is the way to go.

I still can’t see anything bigoted about her views there though.

[Elmo!]

How would it be raised as a criminal issue if no evidence is required?

And making it a criminal offence to lie about it?  It would just be a legal mine field surely?

As I say, I don’t think providing evidence is the way to go.

I still can’t see anything bigoted about her views there though.

I said she was wrong, not that she was bigoted (in this particular discussion anyway).

If you are found to have lied, you will have broken the law and open to prosecution. It's all just proposals for now and no details. Its been shelved for now anyway, which she was also wrong about.

[Elmo!]

Long Twitter thread worth reading on Rowlings blog post. Its unbelievable how economic with the truth she has been.

(Across 2 different threads)

https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1270766889325727744

https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1270784861779918848

[Ray K]

For some reason Graham Linehan tagged Hozier in this tweet
People who parrot meaningless meme-speak like "Trans rights are human rights" (who says they aren't? No-one) while ignoring the abuse received by women who speak out against gender ideology... you have no use. You are literally useless. cc @Hozier https://t.co/KjDrPJZcIV

And Hozier absolutely, well, took him to church

@Hozier
You won’t drag me into your weird, obsessive little culture war, mate. I wrote a message in solidarity of a group who’s life expectancy ranges in the 30’s solely due to murder and suicide (is it any wonder). Is your back not *aching* from bending to punch so fucking low.

[Red Viper]

I'm not going to pretend to be the most educated person on this topic but the way Rowling talks about this issue just makes her come across as extremely small minded and bitter. There's not an ounce of humility in that blog and certainly no attempt to have a reasonable discussion about why people think she's wrong.

There's also a few points that even without fact checking I knew were complete lies.