Agree that this conversation deserves more nuance and ignoring the good she has done, or putting her against people like Weinstein worsens the quality of the discussion.
The objection isn't that she defends women. It's that she draws the boundary in a way where the costs fall on a much smaller and more vulnerable group. You can think that tradeoff is right, and many do. But that's the tradeoff her critics who are "canceling" her are critiquing her for.
You write that being famous doesn't make an opinion correct, but neither does being popular. This is a liberal ideal and why tyranny of the majority is one of its founding concerns. Mill's whole argument in On Liberty is that the danger isn't only the state; it's social pressure, the mob, prevailing opinion enforcing itself.
That's the principle you're using to protect Rowling from a pile-on, but it's also the same principle that says a poll doesn't settle what a minority is owed. Support for gay marriage as well as interracial marriage were once fringe opinions. The people who defended those rights did so on the appeal to liberal principles. And it's really the point - these protections matter the most exactly when they are counter to "popular opinion"
And to circle back to the nuance - the fact that she is someone who really cares about women shows that good people can inadvertently create a lot of harm, even when they think they are defending rights. Trade-offs are unavoidable, so it is worth thinking about who bears the costs, so we can be careful about how to minimize overall harm, and not just sacrifice one group's rights to defend another's. The liberal answer is to consider context and carefully weigh the harms on the smaller and more vulnerable group.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment Larissa, some quick thoughts on your points...
Am not sure comp to interracial/same-sex marriage work for me. Those were Qs where moral principle of equal treatment under law was really clear, whereas Rowling talks about competing rights + recent policy Qs where evidence, particularly re: medical treatment of minors and female-only spaces is not settled (there have been documented sexual assaults in prisons, for ex).
And I also agree w/your point that popularity doesn't establish truth, but I was talking about cancel culture here, and if 2/3 of Americans hold a position, it isn’t cancel-worthy. Popularity doesn't settle any Q by itself, but is relevant to whether a position is within bounds of normal democratic disagreement.
Your final point actually reinforces what I'm saying and I agree with it: if good-faith people can disagree re: how to weigh competing harms, that’s for sure an argument for more discussion/intellectual humility, vs treating someone as a moral pariah for taking the “wrong side” of a debate. If everyone did that we'd be in a better place.
It's true that prisons puts that competition between rights very starkly. I would note that putting trans women in men's prisons also puts them at incredible risk. I would support minimizing the harms n both those cases. But presenting the policy choices as strictly binary makes it so that we've decided in advance not to spend anything. This is truly a very small group of people. Separate units are a miniscule budget line in the grand scheme of things, and I hate to see it as the subject of a moral impasse.
When a problem gets framed as an unavoidable clash of rights, it's worth asking if the negotiating space has been artificially narrowed. I'd rather ask what it would cost to protect both groups - which could potentially open a much bigger discussion on spending where people may find areas for agreement. A more classic tactic in good-faith negotiation is to expand the pie and what's open for trade-offs.
I think there was also more framing around competing rights in the interracial or same-sex marriage discussion than you may be giving credit for, and some of that was specifically around bodily harm. The safety of women was close to the foundation of the case against interracial marriage, and public approval of it didn't reach half the US until the 90s (!!) Don't Ask Don't Tell hearings were substantially about showers and barracks. Additionally, much of the case against LGBT rights are often framed as a clash with religious rights.
I would be curious to hear more about what you're looking at when you say "the moral principle of equal treatment under the law was increasingly clear" for those cases. It seems like the moral principle had to be argued for, and argued for against a framing that positioned rights as clashing, and evoked the threat against the majority group. I think this is very much aligned to your point about the importance of good-faith arguments - as that's how the moral line evolves.
Yeah sure, so I think it's clear those things were aligned with the core Western notions of freedom, and the claims of harm at the time weren't really scientific or would hold up, just rooted in entrenched/religious beliefs (so they lost) But modern society is clearly far more scientific and data-driven, so when there is a clash of ideas particularly amongst smart people there is likely real weight to both sides. Even shorter: those prior debates didn't have real, defensible research tied to them. I am an optimist and think on a long enough timeline, truth wins out over dogma, unless sufficiently suppressed
Thank you for writing this! I've been so frustrated with the whole J.K. Rowling thing. Back when I first heard about it, I did some digging until I found her exact words, not just what the media or random people on Youtube said. She's never said anything outright against trans people and I find that the people who are upset with her are either twisting her words (or reading the twisted versions posted by others), don't understand her words and/or refuse to acknowledge that trans rights are not a simple, black and white thing and actually contain nuance and grey areas, which Rowling is highlighting.
From what I have gathered about her statements, Rowling is mostly wary about children diving into transitions without more medical understanding and she's concerned that in the discussion about trans-women, cis women are not being considered enough because rights for both trans-women and cis-women affect each other in legal and social spaces. She's scared that cis-women could lose safety if this isn't handled correctly. None of those things equal an anti-trans stance. I think she just feels like there's an imbalance in the conversation. It's insane to me that there are people out there who basically feel like if you aren't 100% on their side it means that you are 100% against them and that's what happened with Rowling.
In online book groups, there is this growing opinion that if an author isn't the perfect picture of goodness and morality, their work is no longer worth reading; As if only perfect people can or are allowed to create great things. Now, I am not advocating for bad behavior or harming other people. And if an well-known author (or anyone really) is proven to be engaging in things like that, they should be held accountable. But it still doesn't erase the fact that they wrote something amazing that has meaning to lots of people. I recognize that can be an uncomfortable thought, but it would do many people some good to learn how to sit with an uncomfortable thought. It's been hard to see so many people in these groups talk about how meaningful the Harry Potter series was to them and that they trashed or gave away all their books over this supposed controversy; as if the books changed somehow, or that the meaning they personally gleaned from them became invalid. It is the very definition of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
How can anyone intelligently disagree with women's needing special safeguarding relative to men? Extra protection for the vulnerable and the physically weak is a basic Western value. So what kinds of pervert pile on to condemn JK Rowling or to invent scabrous, improbable lies about her character?
She wrote a series children's stories that briefly renewed interest in reading, until Facebook, TikTok, and smart phones took over most people's attention. From her abundant book royalties JK Rowling gave huge sums to worthy causes.
Only deranged anarchists, the depraved, or cowards whose only agency is undermining civilised achievement would condemn Rowling. Anonymous shots at others cost just anonymity or secrecy. That is their sole attraction. Cheap shots are easy power -- the only kind of twisted achievement for the morally shrivelled, who are Rowling's opposites.
Do vandals ever openly vandalise or deface work whose creators invested honest effort? Why vandalise or deface only in the dark? Tells you something, doesn't it?
That is not the real argument here, Adam is creating a false dichotomy. Rowlings problem is her position that transgender women do not exist, as evidenced by her public deadnaming and purposeful mis-gendering of transgender women. Her other positions are not the problem.
Rowling and others still in the majority agree with most biologists that there are two sexes, easily determined in most cases by far. Those fortunately few of ambiguous sex (~0.05%, ie 0.0005) called intersex experienced a developmental mishap in early gestation. Though tests of sex chromosomes invisible to humans can sort out what they are (X- and only an X-chromosome or chromosomes determine female. A single Y-chromosome anywhere determines male). None of these rarities qualify as biologically normal.
Until very recent history, 'gender' was a grammatic distinction, of little use in English, whose grammatic gender is natural. Natural gender means a male organism is called 'he' and a female organism is called 'she'.
Recently some have taken to basing gender on behavior, outlook, and attitude. This does not justify a person of one biologic sex calling her/himself a trans- of the opposite sex. If we find the opposite not sexually attractive, the civilised solution is to let homosexually attracted people live accordingly. As for those of one sex who imagine they are of the other, the civilised thing is not to humor them, but to offer therapy. If they still want to use women's restrooms, locker rooms, to play against women, or to be in women's prisons, they should just be told 'No!' with a warning. That is what anyone who claimed to be a natural killer, thief, fraudster, brawler, or public drunkard and should be accommodated would be told. It's men who want to compete in women's sports, use their restrooms and locker rooms, and serve in their prisons. Women don't go the other way. Women who briefly agreed to play men in contact sports regretted it.
Next consider how often the great majority should consider accommodating a tiny minority. It it takes no great use of resources, accommodation should be fine. Otherwise no. Men who like to best women in sports, or who want confinement or to use facilities that support their sexual fantasies deserve no extra consideration.
Sir - if 59% of all white people agreed with some judge that black people were 2nd-class citizens, would that make it true? How about if 97% of whites said that black people were inferior humans, would they be even MORE correct? Ignorance about the great diversity of the human being - and the inherent worth of all of us in our several types - cannot be surveyed, voted, or ruled into existence. It's still just ignorance and needs to be fought against. YES, we can concretely, narrowly ensure that girls/women's sports and women's prisons are administered in fairness and safety - that does not mean, blanket assumption-wise, that ergo trans is evil or not a thing. What trans folks and their families do with their own bodies is actually nobody else's business and Rowling wants to make it her business.
We're talking here about not being able to see a consolidated anti-trans movement - the movement is all over social media, including intelligent, worthy Substacks like this one that have so many other important things to say about the world but periodically have to chime in with "oh, yeah, and I hate trans." That is the movement - it's called Trans Derangement Syndrome, and it usually comes out of the clear blue to ruin an otherwise excellent discussion. Thank you for listening - I'm almost always a huge fan of your work.
As I was saying similarly to another commenter, the comparison to something like slavery or 2nd class citizenship doesn't work for me. Those were questions where moral principle of equal treatment under law was really clear, whereas Rowling talks about competing rights + recent policy Qs where evidence, particularly re: medical treatment of minors and female-only spaces is not settled (there have been documented sexual assaults in prisons, for ex). It does sound like you also care about ensuring safety here.
And no one I've seen, not even Rowling is saying trans people are worth less or don't deserve rights or are evil. I read her statements in full on these issues and they didn't sound hateful at all, they were often very supportive of trans people which I found in stark contrast to what was being said about her.
I also think this conversation shouldn't be "off limits" -- that feels really dogmatic and illiberal to me. People can disagree about the appropriate boundaries while not being insulting or demeaning. If society is going to make policy that affects everyone I think we have an obligation to discuss tradeoffs instead of preventing they don't exist.
Thx for sharing your thinking on this topic btw - it is interesting to see people's point of view
Thanks for this kindly reply - just to add in terms of this issue affecting everyone, in the Hudson Valley where I spend my summers, the Shakespeare Festival has just undergone a marvelous renovation - complete with bathrooms that are NOT marked as men, women, families, anybody. It is two long rows of private, high-walled stalls, where everybody comes and goes without batting an eye and everybody is back from their necessaries by the end of intermission.
Once we get over the crisis of sharing bathrooms (in addition, yes, yes, to the measures taken to ensure safety and fairness in pertinent contexts), I do not see how this is something that affects any of the rest of us in any way. But thank you again - I'm a huge fan!
I don't appreciate the framing of this entire piece, which is clearly a thinly veiled attack on our discussion on LinkedIn. Instead, you brought it to the home field advantage.
To be clear:
- JK Rowling is not a bigot because of her work in women's rights, her position on trans athletes in athletics or any discussion of bathrooms. She's a bigot because she refuses to acknowledge that transgender women exist. She deadnames and misgenders transgender women publicly. See her X/Twitter posts or read the Wikipedia article.
- You continue to insist that good works in one place excuse actions in another. The reference to the KKK was proof that is not the case, and it's not a real argument. There is no equivalency between JK Rowling and the KKK, but that argument is obviously false. Yet you continue to make it here and claim shock at the counterexample.
- Women's rights is a serious issue, and conflating it with the rights of transgender women is not a productive framing of anything. You are trying to make it seem like these are opposing positions, which I hope is not the case, as they are entirely independent issues.
We've seen all these same arguments before regarding LGB, prior to the acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage, et al. There is a reason I won't let this issue go, and it's that the transgender women I know are some of the most kind, caring people out there and they deserve better than being denied their existence.
Just want to add, our thread over on LNKD inspired me to write this because I thought it was interesting since people (not just you) were so passionate about it. Digging in this topic ofc has very little to do with you, specifically, since it's not like you caused academics to post those images in the first place. In fact I didn't even mention your name in the pice bc I didn't think it was super important (lots of people have said similar things so I didn't call you out).
Also, several commenters here seem to agree with your perspective, as I said we have a diverse audience. I would think you'd enjoy more discussion where we weren't pinging that person on LNKD forever.
And reading Rowling's own words on this topic, which I did her longer pieces in full, seemed frequently very supportive of trans people and not hateful at all. I also have trans friends too and they are also very kind people, I think that's really separate to this discussion.
Transgender support is a bi-partisan issue, which has always surprised me. The fact that there is universal support for their rights has always inspired me.
I don't know how you can possibly not see purposeful mis-gendering and deadnaming as "not hateful at all". You should ask your trans friends about that and see what they say.
I don't think the serious people in this debate are trying to hurt anyone's feelings btw I think they want the most fair path forward for everyone, and that's where the discussion comes in around tradeoffs, research results, etc
Agree that this conversation deserves more nuance and ignoring the good she has done, or putting her against people like Weinstein worsens the quality of the discussion.
The objection isn't that she defends women. It's that she draws the boundary in a way where the costs fall on a much smaller and more vulnerable group. You can think that tradeoff is right, and many do. But that's the tradeoff her critics who are "canceling" her are critiquing her for.
You write that being famous doesn't make an opinion correct, but neither does being popular. This is a liberal ideal and why tyranny of the majority is one of its founding concerns. Mill's whole argument in On Liberty is that the danger isn't only the state; it's social pressure, the mob, prevailing opinion enforcing itself.
That's the principle you're using to protect Rowling from a pile-on, but it's also the same principle that says a poll doesn't settle what a minority is owed. Support for gay marriage as well as interracial marriage were once fringe opinions. The people who defended those rights did so on the appeal to liberal principles. And it's really the point - these protections matter the most exactly when they are counter to "popular opinion"
And to circle back to the nuance - the fact that she is someone who really cares about women shows that good people can inadvertently create a lot of harm, even when they think they are defending rights. Trade-offs are unavoidable, so it is worth thinking about who bears the costs, so we can be careful about how to minimize overall harm, and not just sacrifice one group's rights to defend another's. The liberal answer is to consider context and carefully weigh the harms on the smaller and more vulnerable group.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment Larissa, some quick thoughts on your points...
Am not sure comp to interracial/same-sex marriage work for me. Those were Qs where moral principle of equal treatment under law was really clear, whereas Rowling talks about competing rights + recent policy Qs where evidence, particularly re: medical treatment of minors and female-only spaces is not settled (there have been documented sexual assaults in prisons, for ex).
And I also agree w/your point that popularity doesn't establish truth, but I was talking about cancel culture here, and if 2/3 of Americans hold a position, it isn’t cancel-worthy. Popularity doesn't settle any Q by itself, but is relevant to whether a position is within bounds of normal democratic disagreement.
Your final point actually reinforces what I'm saying and I agree with it: if good-faith people can disagree re: how to weigh competing harms, that’s for sure an argument for more discussion/intellectual humility, vs treating someone as a moral pariah for taking the “wrong side” of a debate. If everyone did that we'd be in a better place.
Thank you for inviting the discussion!
It's true that prisons puts that competition between rights very starkly. I would note that putting trans women in men's prisons also puts them at incredible risk. I would support minimizing the harms n both those cases. But presenting the policy choices as strictly binary makes it so that we've decided in advance not to spend anything. This is truly a very small group of people. Separate units are a miniscule budget line in the grand scheme of things, and I hate to see it as the subject of a moral impasse.
When a problem gets framed as an unavoidable clash of rights, it's worth asking if the negotiating space has been artificially narrowed. I'd rather ask what it would cost to protect both groups - which could potentially open a much bigger discussion on spending where people may find areas for agreement. A more classic tactic in good-faith negotiation is to expand the pie and what's open for trade-offs.
I think there was also more framing around competing rights in the interracial or same-sex marriage discussion than you may be giving credit for, and some of that was specifically around bodily harm. The safety of women was close to the foundation of the case against interracial marriage, and public approval of it didn't reach half the US until the 90s (!!) Don't Ask Don't Tell hearings were substantially about showers and barracks. Additionally, much of the case against LGBT rights are often framed as a clash with religious rights.
I would be curious to hear more about what you're looking at when you say "the moral principle of equal treatment under the law was increasingly clear" for those cases. It seems like the moral principle had to be argued for, and argued for against a framing that positioned rights as clashing, and evoked the threat against the majority group. I think this is very much aligned to your point about the importance of good-faith arguments - as that's how the moral line evolves.
Yeah sure, so I think it's clear those things were aligned with the core Western notions of freedom, and the claims of harm at the time weren't really scientific or would hold up, just rooted in entrenched/religious beliefs (so they lost) But modern society is clearly far more scientific and data-driven, so when there is a clash of ideas particularly amongst smart people there is likely real weight to both sides. Even shorter: those prior debates didn't have real, defensible research tied to them. I am an optimist and think on a long enough timeline, truth wins out over dogma, unless sufficiently suppressed
Thank you so much for this eloquent and reasoned comment.
Thank you for writing this! I've been so frustrated with the whole J.K. Rowling thing. Back when I first heard about it, I did some digging until I found her exact words, not just what the media or random people on Youtube said. She's never said anything outright against trans people and I find that the people who are upset with her are either twisting her words (or reading the twisted versions posted by others), don't understand her words and/or refuse to acknowledge that trans rights are not a simple, black and white thing and actually contain nuance and grey areas, which Rowling is highlighting.
From what I have gathered about her statements, Rowling is mostly wary about children diving into transitions without more medical understanding and she's concerned that in the discussion about trans-women, cis women are not being considered enough because rights for both trans-women and cis-women affect each other in legal and social spaces. She's scared that cis-women could lose safety if this isn't handled correctly. None of those things equal an anti-trans stance. I think she just feels like there's an imbalance in the conversation. It's insane to me that there are people out there who basically feel like if you aren't 100% on their side it means that you are 100% against them and that's what happened with Rowling.
In online book groups, there is this growing opinion that if an author isn't the perfect picture of goodness and morality, their work is no longer worth reading; As if only perfect people can or are allowed to create great things. Now, I am not advocating for bad behavior or harming other people. And if an well-known author (or anyone really) is proven to be engaging in things like that, they should be held accountable. But it still doesn't erase the fact that they wrote something amazing that has meaning to lots of people. I recognize that can be an uncomfortable thought, but it would do many people some good to learn how to sit with an uncomfortable thought. It's been hard to see so many people in these groups talk about how meaningful the Harry Potter series was to them and that they trashed or gave away all their books over this supposed controversy; as if the books changed somehow, or that the meaning they personally gleaned from them became invalid. It is the very definition of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
How can anyone intelligently disagree with women's needing special safeguarding relative to men? Extra protection for the vulnerable and the physically weak is a basic Western value. So what kinds of pervert pile on to condemn JK Rowling or to invent scabrous, improbable lies about her character?
She wrote a series children's stories that briefly renewed interest in reading, until Facebook, TikTok, and smart phones took over most people's attention. From her abundant book royalties JK Rowling gave huge sums to worthy causes.
Only deranged anarchists, the depraved, or cowards whose only agency is undermining civilised achievement would condemn Rowling. Anonymous shots at others cost just anonymity or secrecy. That is their sole attraction. Cheap shots are easy power -- the only kind of twisted achievement for the morally shrivelled, who are Rowling's opposites.
Do vandals ever openly vandalise or deface work whose creators invested honest effort? Why vandalise or deface only in the dark? Tells you something, doesn't it?
That is not the real argument here, Adam is creating a false dichotomy. Rowlings problem is her position that transgender women do not exist, as evidenced by her public deadnaming and purposeful mis-gendering of transgender women. Her other positions are not the problem.
Thank you for the comment.
Rowling and others still in the majority agree with most biologists that there are two sexes, easily determined in most cases by far. Those fortunately few of ambiguous sex (~0.05%, ie 0.0005) called intersex experienced a developmental mishap in early gestation. Though tests of sex chromosomes invisible to humans can sort out what they are (X- and only an X-chromosome or chromosomes determine female. A single Y-chromosome anywhere determines male). None of these rarities qualify as biologically normal.
Until very recent history, 'gender' was a grammatic distinction, of little use in English, whose grammatic gender is natural. Natural gender means a male organism is called 'he' and a female organism is called 'she'.
Recently some have taken to basing gender on behavior, outlook, and attitude. This does not justify a person of one biologic sex calling her/himself a trans- of the opposite sex. If we find the opposite not sexually attractive, the civilised solution is to let homosexually attracted people live accordingly. As for those of one sex who imagine they are of the other, the civilised thing is not to humor them, but to offer therapy. If they still want to use women's restrooms, locker rooms, to play against women, or to be in women's prisons, they should just be told 'No!' with a warning. That is what anyone who claimed to be a natural killer, thief, fraudster, brawler, or public drunkard and should be accommodated would be told. It's men who want to compete in women's sports, use their restrooms and locker rooms, and serve in their prisons. Women don't go the other way. Women who briefly agreed to play men in contact sports regretted it.
Next consider how often the great majority should consider accommodating a tiny minority. It it takes no great use of resources, accommodation should be fine. Otherwise no. Men who like to best women in sports, or who want confinement or to use facilities that support their sexual fantasies deserve no extra consideration.
JK Rowling cannot be all bad.
Sir - if 59% of all white people agreed with some judge that black people were 2nd-class citizens, would that make it true? How about if 97% of whites said that black people were inferior humans, would they be even MORE correct? Ignorance about the great diversity of the human being - and the inherent worth of all of us in our several types - cannot be surveyed, voted, or ruled into existence. It's still just ignorance and needs to be fought against. YES, we can concretely, narrowly ensure that girls/women's sports and women's prisons are administered in fairness and safety - that does not mean, blanket assumption-wise, that ergo trans is evil or not a thing. What trans folks and their families do with their own bodies is actually nobody else's business and Rowling wants to make it her business.
We're talking here about not being able to see a consolidated anti-trans movement - the movement is all over social media, including intelligent, worthy Substacks like this one that have so many other important things to say about the world but periodically have to chime in with "oh, yeah, and I hate trans." That is the movement - it's called Trans Derangement Syndrome, and it usually comes out of the clear blue to ruin an otherwise excellent discussion. Thank you for listening - I'm almost always a huge fan of your work.
As I was saying similarly to another commenter, the comparison to something like slavery or 2nd class citizenship doesn't work for me. Those were questions where moral principle of equal treatment under law was really clear, whereas Rowling talks about competing rights + recent policy Qs where evidence, particularly re: medical treatment of minors and female-only spaces is not settled (there have been documented sexual assaults in prisons, for ex). It does sound like you also care about ensuring safety here.
And no one I've seen, not even Rowling is saying trans people are worth less or don't deserve rights or are evil. I read her statements in full on these issues and they didn't sound hateful at all, they were often very supportive of trans people which I found in stark contrast to what was being said about her.
I also think this conversation shouldn't be "off limits" -- that feels really dogmatic and illiberal to me. People can disagree about the appropriate boundaries while not being insulting or demeaning. If society is going to make policy that affects everyone I think we have an obligation to discuss tradeoffs instead of preventing they don't exist.
Thx for sharing your thinking on this topic btw - it is interesting to see people's point of view
Thanks for this kindly reply - just to add in terms of this issue affecting everyone, in the Hudson Valley where I spend my summers, the Shakespeare Festival has just undergone a marvelous renovation - complete with bathrooms that are NOT marked as men, women, families, anybody. It is two long rows of private, high-walled stalls, where everybody comes and goes without batting an eye and everybody is back from their necessaries by the end of intermission.
Once we get over the crisis of sharing bathrooms (in addition, yes, yes, to the measures taken to ensure safety and fairness in pertinent contexts), I do not see how this is something that affects any of the rest of us in any way. But thank you again - I'm a huge fan!
I don't appreciate the framing of this entire piece, which is clearly a thinly veiled attack on our discussion on LinkedIn. Instead, you brought it to the home field advantage.
To be clear:
- JK Rowling is not a bigot because of her work in women's rights, her position on trans athletes in athletics or any discussion of bathrooms. She's a bigot because she refuses to acknowledge that transgender women exist. She deadnames and misgenders transgender women publicly. See her X/Twitter posts or read the Wikipedia article.
- You continue to insist that good works in one place excuse actions in another. The reference to the KKK was proof that is not the case, and it's not a real argument. There is no equivalency between JK Rowling and the KKK, but that argument is obviously false. Yet you continue to make it here and claim shock at the counterexample.
- Women's rights is a serious issue, and conflating it with the rights of transgender women is not a productive framing of anything. You are trying to make it seem like these are opposing positions, which I hope is not the case, as they are entirely independent issues.
We've seen all these same arguments before regarding LGB, prior to the acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage, et al. There is a reason I won't let this issue go, and it's that the transgender women I know are some of the most kind, caring people out there and they deserve better than being denied their existence.
Just want to add, our thread over on LNKD inspired me to write this because I thought it was interesting since people (not just you) were so passionate about it. Digging in this topic ofc has very little to do with you, specifically, since it's not like you caused academics to post those images in the first place. In fact I didn't even mention your name in the pice bc I didn't think it was super important (lots of people have said similar things so I didn't call you out).
Also, several commenters here seem to agree with your perspective, as I said we have a diverse audience. I would think you'd enjoy more discussion where we weren't pinging that person on LNKD forever.
And reading Rowling's own words on this topic, which I did her longer pieces in full, seemed frequently very supportive of trans people and not hateful at all. I also have trans friends too and they are also very kind people, I think that's really separate to this discussion.
Transgender support is a bi-partisan issue, which has always surprised me. The fact that there is universal support for their rights has always inspired me.
I don't know how you can possibly not see purposeful mis-gendering and deadnaming as "not hateful at all". You should ask your trans friends about that and see what they say.
I don't think the serious people in this debate are trying to hurt anyone's feelings btw I think they want the most fair path forward for everyone, and that's where the discussion comes in around tradeoffs, research results, etc
> I don't think the serious people in this debate are trying to hurt anyone's feelings
The serious people are more concerned with the truth than with hurt feelings.
> I don't know how you can possibly not see purposeful mis-gendering and deadnaming as "not hateful at all".
If someone finds the truth "hateful" that's his problem.
> She's a bigot because she refuses to acknowledge that transgender women exist.
People suffering from psychological delusions exist.
Sorry your wife left you??