J.K. Rowling

[hellsbells]

Women are responsible for male violence because we wear makeup and short skirts.


(Very sarcasm)

[Matilda]

Can anyone explain to me the differences between the transracial and transgender debates? I'm lost as to why Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug are condemned for claiming to be transracial, yet we (and by we I mostly mean females, as males seem to be allowed any view they want on trans issues), blindly have to follow the transwomen are women mantra, and accept any impact it has on our safety.

[ladyboy]

Here's a pretty good explanation.

This thread is getting offensive. I'm willing to share information assuming people actually want to learn and have open minds, but I get the sense that's not where these questions or comments are coming from.

[Matilda]

My post was a genuine question, not trying to be goady. I'm interested in other people's thought processes around a subject that has a lot of similarities for me. The link doesn't convince me but that's OK, we're all allowed to think different things.

This struck me from the link:

Unlike gender, which is assigned to you at birth, your race or ethnicity is rooted in ancestry. You can’t inherit your gender but you do inherit your race. The fact that these people believe that they can pick and choose parts of the ethnicity they want and later decide to revert to their whiteness is white privilege at its worst.....Black isn’t something you can just decide to be. You can’t turn around, put on some makeup and perm your hair and assume that you’re now navigating the world as a black person.

It doesn't mention sex at all. I think a more accurate way of looking at it would be to discuss gender and culture as being something that you can't inherit, but sex and ethnicity are. I've had an Ancestry DNA test and it knows that I'm female and can pinpoint my ethnicity to a very specific part of the UK (which most of my ancestors are from). I can't change that at all. I could identify and begin trying to live my life as a black man tomorrow, but my sex would still be female and Ancestry would still be telling me that genetically I belong to a different ethnic group.

[Wol]

If you believe trans women are not women, please do some more research. They don't just throw on a dress and make up. That's drag. Trans people (male and female) go through physical and emotional hell to be what they believe they are. I cannot imagine the pain of waking up every day feeling that your outward appearance is a betrayal of who you are, that your body is a prison. I have seen what hormone therapy does to people. I have seen what the surgical process and scars look like. And it's not like completion of the process suddenly means you are happy. One of my dearest friends is a trans woman. She's had multiple surgeries including facial reconstruction. She definitely doesn't look like she was born female - she can't hide that she is trans. Before COVID she dealt with stares and pointing and whispers and side eyes daily. It's a hard f**king life, just like we all are trying to live, trans or cis or POC or economically disadvantaged or survivors or whatever we are all dealing with.

And evil comes in all forms and sizes. There will be trans people who commit crimes, same as whites and POC and gays and whoever. But that doesn't mean all trans people are lurking in bathrooms waiting to rape someone. Are all frat boys rapists? There's a lot of statistics that they might be, but not all. Toxic masculinity is a real thing, but we all know good men. Feminism and sisterhood are a real thing, but we all know plenty of ugly ass Karens out there. You get my point.

[leigh1983]

Apr 20, 2007 16:17:13 GMT -4 Matilda said:

My post was a genuine question, not trying to be goady. I'm interested in other people's thought processes around a subject that has a lot of similarities for me. The link doesn't convince me but that's OK, we're all allowed to think different things.

This struck me from the link:

I think a lot of people having trouble understanding that being transgender is not easy, children can know at the age of two that their biological sex does not match their gender identity. Imagine knowing that from an early age, and not having the support system to be who you are. J.K. has the resources and money to learn these things, but for whatever reasons she chooses to live in fear of something she doesn't understand. So instead of being an advocate, she doubles down and makes it about something else. This is nothing new, some Native American tribes think that everyone is born with two spirit man and woman. In this day and age what makes one person feel like a woman is not the same for another woman. Some women like to get dressed up and wear their makeup everyday, another women might feel more comfortable in dresses and skirts, another might feel more comfortable in men's clothing that doesn't make her less of a woman. There are men who like to wear makeup and get their nails done, but it doesn't make them less of a man.

We have to remember that people who identity as trans have had this ideal of what a women means to them in their heads for a very long time. It might not be how we think, but that's why we women should be a safe space for them and advocate for them. Women can share misogyny qualities just as much as men do.

As far as someone being trans racial someone gave an example of Jessica Krug. I haven't heard any debates about being trans racial myself. However I will say Jessica Krug did not feel or think she was an Afro-Latino. She is con artist plain and simple, she knew that she could make lots of money off being considered light skin, but that's a different topic for a different day.

[londonstill]

I do find it really hard to reconcile feeling that you have a different gender identity than your sex because I don’t have a gender identity at all. I just feel that I have a sex and a personality and the idea of intrinsic gender retrospective and often offensive. I’m autistic, both of my kids are autistic and autistic people are really over represented percentage wise in trans figures. It concerns me a great deal. It doesn’t mean I think trans women have bad intentions or are evil etc.

[Ginger]

A lot of interesting points being made.

I have been in the situation of being in a women's bathroom and feeling legitimately terrified by the presence of someone with a man's voice entering the same bathroom. I hid quietly in the stall until that person left, so I don't know what gender that person was presenting as, but it was definitely a biologically male voice.

In this case, I was in Hyannis during the off-season. It's a tourist town, but it's also a hub for the state's homeless population. When I was there in October, it was empty of tourists, but there were dozens upon dozens of homeless people gathered. There were maybe 30-40 sitting on the benches in front of the JFK Museum. There was a little park crowded with homeless, and at one point an ambulance came to take away someone who was overdosing.

I had a bathroom emergency, and followed the signs to the tourist restroom. It was a free-standing cabana about half a mile off the beaten track in a parking lot. There were no people around anywhere. While I was in the stall, two homeless people entered. By the voices, one or both voices were biologically male, and they were using the women's bathroom to do their morning ablutions.

I was terrified of being attacked and robbed and that was NOT an irrational fear. If the voices had been female, I still would have been concerned, but much less so. The fear had to do with the secluded location and that the people were clearly homeless, and it was two of them versus one of me. Whether or not a biologically male person would be "allowed" in the restroom wasn't really that relevant because I think they would have used whichever bathroom they wanted anyway and there was nobody monitoring who went where.

It's not a situation I am in every day, but I've certainly used National Park restrooms and highway stop restrooms that were also similarly isolated, and it's not an experience I wish to repeat.

I support trans people using the restrooms of the gender they present as. But at the same time, I know from personal experience that the safety concern is not irrational or something that never happens. I wish people were able to discuss some of the finer points of these issues without making it a wholesale "you're either with us or against us" thing.

[syve]

Sept 17, 2020 14:52:09 GMT -4 Ginger said:

I support trans people using the restrooms of the gender they present as. But at the same time, I know from personal experience that the safety concern is not irrational or something that never happens. I wish people were able to discuss some of the finer points of these issues without making it a wholesale "you're either with us or against us" thing.

I don't think safety concerns are irrational, just for me personally, I don't see what they have to do with trans people, particularly transwomen.

If I hear a masculine voice when I'm in the bathroom whether I feel safe or not depends on how safe the bathroom feels anyway, whether it feels well lit and clean, how many people are around, if there is drug use or blue lights, will someone hear me if I scream, and more broadly how safe I feel in an area or country.

I mean, plenty of toilets have men cleaning them, so it's not even that surprising to hear a man's voice in the bathroom.

I live in a country where for the last five years people have been able to change their gender legally through self-determination, meaning they just swear an oath with a solicitor, and it has had zero impact on my life as a ciswoman. Nothing has been different for me. Which is why I find all these scare tactic what ifs in the UK media so bewildering. We already made the changes some people there are fighting so hard against and nothing they predict has happened so far, five years down the line.

[Neurochick]

Apr 25, 2019 15:51:47 GMT -4 Lwaxana said:

I think a more apt analogy are those individuals who claim to be transracial, believing they were born as the wrong race and who identify as the race they feel they truly are. Most critics against transracialism point to the fact that transracialism is harmful to those races that still suffer from oppression, bias, and abuse. In a perfect world, who would care what skin color you wanted to be? But there's a violent history there and a lot of cultural baggage that still leads to violence and injustice. And it's the exact same thing between men and women. An article in Slate about transracialism actually compared the reaction of ciswomen to transwomen to the reaction of the black community to whites who identify as black. That it feels harmful and appropriative of an oppressed and targeted demographic. Our reality has to be dealt with just as much as the reality of their identity. You can't try and erase everything women have been through because it makes womanhood more difficult. Our history and experience isn't what's making transwomen unsafe, men are.

This is very true. Trans-racial is a bit different because there was/is a law that stated even if you were something like 1/64 black, you were still black. My own grandfather looked physically like a white man, but at that time he was born, in Virginia, he was considered "colored." His brother however, left the state and lived the rest of his life as white.

About 25 years ago, I knew of a man who was trans, he was born female and seriously, I was shocked, because he looked like a man 100%. Oh, and he used the men's room too.

The posts here have been great. I think there are two issues may or may not be in conflict with each other. One is: Trans people should use the bathroom of the gender they represent; the other is biological women should have a safe space.

I too am confused at the term "gender identity" I am female, that is the sex I am. I do not have the same upper body strength as a male. I think that's more about biology than gender identity?

Maybe the issue is that we associate certain character traits with male or female.