Love some the follow-up comments:
Rowling could learn from Howard [P. Lovecraft], both in that he seemed to be slowly becoming a less terrible person as he got older, and in that he’s fucking dead
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JK Rowling’s latest idiotic embarrassing bs
The person on the right in the pink hat is Harry Miller, a “Gender Critical” activist like JKR
He currently thinks he’s doing some “clever” campaign where he joins Pride marches with “controversial” signs and acts surprised when no one there cares…
Here he is with a sign that, in true GC fashion, has genitals drawn on it
He wrote about it here. He’s proud of this cringe. This is cutting edge activism for them
https://thecritic.co.uk/why-wont-the-chief-constable-hold-my-sign/
Of course JKR has been told that the person she’s in a rage at is one of her own. Harry Miller’s own shell group WAFC even RTd her without criticism
None of them really care about what is true or not. The GC movement sees lying and misinformation as means that justify the ends
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And it’s not like the Harry Potter books don’t have problematic elements on their own (Goblin/Jewish bankers, slavery, etc). Those could be rationalized away before with “well it’s fantasy, those aren’t meant to relate to people and issues in our world”, but with her bigotry exposed, you have to admit that the books are really problematic.
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And I wonder if she’s going to go further mask off there.
That change to the Venus symbol makes me think “runic”, which I really associate with white nationalists now.
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“You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war."
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Also, the one Irish kid is always blowing stuff up…
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So, wouldn’t that (“women who have been discriminated against for their views on sex and gender”) include cis-identying women who support trans rights and have been harassed by bigots?
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That symbol really is evocative of/a merging with Odal, isn’t it.
I’m sure it’s a coincidence.
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Well, I’ve avoided it about as long as I can. My sister is a TERF. Not a hardcore “I’m scared to have trans people in public restrooms” one, but definitely transphobic and gradually becoming more radicalized in that direction by YouTube videos and mainstream media, and I don’t know what to do. It’s making me increasingly uncomfortable being around her, and the best I’ve been able to do is try to avoid the subject- we live together as caretakers for my father with advanced Alzheimer’s and we absolutely depend on each other every minute of every day sharing that burden. Getting in angry screaming matches about this issue, or really any issue, is not an option. It’s just fucking not. I’m also TERRIBLE at arguing and debating, clearly remembering specific facts, and making a clear concise point, whereas she’s a political science major, loves to talk, and basically makes long speeches about whatever is on her mind to anyone who will listen for fun (we’ve lost a few hired assistant caretakers this way because she made them uncomfortable), so I’m really outgunned when it comes to trying to change her mind. But at the same time it hurts me to see her going down this path and I feel increasing urgency to do something while there’s still a chance of reversing it.
Her position, if I had to try to sum it up based on what she’s told me, is that she’s all for androgyny and men who are feminine in appearance, but she draws the line at trans women calling themselves, well, women. She finds that threatening and demeaning and I get the strong feeling that she doesn’t believe trans women are “real”, that is, she thinks they’re all basically roleplaying, mostly for sexual fetish purposes. She’s had almost entirely bad experiences with cis men throughout her life, and I think she feels that this is just another way men are trying to invade women’s spaces and prey on them. She’s 100% against trans women in sports, assuming they have an inherent unfair advantage and will just drive “real” women out of sports entirely if allowed to compete, and she thinks male criminals will try to claim they’re trans in order to get into women’s prisons and rape them. She thinks allowing gender-affirming care for children is irresponsible and cultish, though I don’t think she cares what adults do with their bodies (as long as they’re shut out of women’s spaces). Conversely, she seems to realize that the whole bathroom issue is just stupid fearmongering nonsense, and she watches and seems to admire some trans YouTubers, such as Contrapoints. As for trans men, she never even brings them up- as far as she’s concerned, they’re a complete non-factor, and I think she might even believe they’re a myth.
I think this is also a personal issue for her to some degree- once any group personally insults her, that seems to be pretty much it for them in her mind. As an example, she absolutely loathes Bernie Sanders because she was at a political event where some toxic Bernie bros were being rude, disruptive and screaming down Hillary supporters. And that was all it took- now Bernie is more to blame than Trump for Hillary losing the election, and ALL his supporters are those Bernie bros in her eyes. Never mind what Bernie’s actual policies are, never mind that he also had support from a diverse range of people who aren’t misogynistic, toxic frat boys- in her mind, he’s forever a crazed radical, a mirror image of Trump who just wanted to tear Hillary down because she was a woman and who must want to violently burn down the whole system because he used the word “revolution” in a few speeches. Apply that vengeful logic to a couple genuinely assholish trans women she had a bad experience with once (and that did indeed happen), and now she’s got a personal stake in transphobia beyond her gender.
So I don’t know what to do. Her bigotry is coming from a place of genuine fear, ignorance (she doesn’t personally know any trans people) and past bad experiences. She sends me videos like these and I’m not sure how or whether to respond:
(I’ve only watched the first one in its entirety, I just do not have the patience or courage to face two straight hours of angry strangers on YouTube trying to convince me that trans people are evil.)
Finally, while I have my own complicated gender issues, I wouldn’t exactly consider myself trans (no transition is being attempted, and living with a TERF only reinforces that decision) and I’m certainly not dialed in and knowledgeable enough about the trans community to confidently and convincingly refute every point that she makes. I have several trans friends but I don’t want to drag them into this family drama and make them try to do the work of “fixing” my sister, so I typically don’t even bring it up when talking to them. That said, any advice anyone here can provide would be appreciated- I feel like this tension just keeps building, and short of my father passing away and my sister and I finally parting ways, I don’t know how to defuse it.
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Trans is who you are, not the actions you take. It is this way partly because of the social pressure to detransition or not transition.
It is also about self identity so that people can choose to say they are not trans when they have reached a point where their transition (which does not need to be medical) is complete.
Do not let the people who hate us define who we are.
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Sometimes keeping things simple is best.
I have friends who are trans men and women. They’re fine people and I won’t have you calling them criminals in my presence.
Also - it’s counterproductive to have your dick removed if your goal is to be a man sexually assaulting women.
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Wish I could offer some advice. I am really avoidant of any sort of confrontation and end up internally screaming on the rare occasions when my transphobe boss says something I want to punch him for.
I don’t know how to convince people, who are already convinced, that trans folks:
- have real, genuine, valid, and important feelings and experiences
- are not making it up
- know who they are better than random strangers, British fantasy authors, or 38-times-convicted felons do
- fight an uphill battle to go through transition – whether medical, social, or even just in their own heads! – and are not doing it lightly
- that trans men actually do exist; it’s just that people don’t see them as a threat. Also, having a beard and no boobs = almost automatic pass, while women are scrutinized in such detail that cis women are frequently “accused” of being trans.
Yes, there are in fact people who have a fetish for appearing as, or experiencing sex as, a different gender/sex than they actually identify as. And they are not bad awful horrible people either. They’re not out to rape anybody, or steal their glory in sports or make people feel unsafe. They’re also not going through the entire complicated and expensive process of transition for the sake of the fetish.
No, there are in fact NOT cis men who pretend to be women just so they can sneak into bathrooms and assault women. Those kinds of assholes just skip right to the assault. But there are cis women being accosted for trying to use womens’ restrooms because they don’t look feminine enough to somebody…
No, there are not cis men who “pretend” to be women so they can win at sports. There are certainly repressed would-be trans women who want to participate in sports though… and cis women, especially the non-white ones, who have to go through interrogation to prove they’re “real” women…
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Bingo. Why would rapists need to camouflage themselves as anything but what they often already are - a politician or police officer? Or a movie producer?
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Trans women have been using restrooms for over a hundred years. Yet there’s no evidence of us being more prone to sexual assault than cis women.
We did not magically have bladders installed last year.
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I was recently doing some deep cleaning on my music library. I ran across a number of tracks referencing HP from 20 or so years ago that were really well done from some of my favorite filk artists. I kind of hated to delete them as many of them had very clever word play or were just good musical performances, but I couldn’t really stand to listen to them now. (I’ll note the artists in question aren’t doing any HP material any more and haven’t in a very long time.)
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ETA: Of course Newsom folded.
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