Growing up as a (closeted at the time) gay kid in the suburbs, the Harry Potter books transported me to another world, one where I didn’t have to feel alone, where as Rowling said of her own books “by page or by screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home”. So many of my LGBTQ+ friends (Trans included) felt so seen by these books growing up - there was something about Potter that really resonated with the idea of being the outsider, etc. Rowling has done so much good for the world, especially for so many children with her various charities like Lumos (she is the first UK Billionaire to lose Billionaire status from donating so much to charity) and now that everyone is boycotting her, do they even realize so much of her money actually goes to supporting incredible causes? Very excited to check out this podcast, and still a huge Potter fan to this day, as it saved my life as a kid, and countless others
Never read any of her books, Justin. But Rowling has to be doing something uniquely right; she has somehow in the past twenty years or so been vilified by both the sanctimonious progressive Left and the sanctimonious Christian Right (no offense to Christians here, please..or trans either, for that matter). Now who the hell else has done that? She is proof that both extremes can have a common enemy.
First Megan you should read a book titled “Educated” by Tara Westover. Then I hope you can contact her and talk to her. You’ll know what to do next.
Second, these podcasts are so important! Megan, you have done an absolutely incredible job with these episodes. There is so much information, legitimate information here.
Third, I read all of the Harry Potter books and saw all the movies, with (or without) my three children. I’m 68. Personally, I thought of them as fantasy fiction as an adult. However I can see how my children saw much much more. JK Rowling is clearly genius as far as these books go. She makes so many good points, which I agree with. The state of gender issues in America is completely out of control. Children are being harmed, families have been ripped apart and we need to speak up about it, for the children.
Finally, I and many many others have been wondering how all the gender issues have mainstreamed. Well, I was totally unaware of the happenings on tumblr! Imagine hundreds of thousands of women on line talking about their feelings, anonymously. Ugh. And I am a woman and would never ever do that.
Great job, clearly you and Jo Rowling were meant to get together.
Their common enemy seems to be Truth. Something that has become exceedingly uncommon, but it's something that both Bari Weiss and JK Rowling seem to have deeply in common.
I am with you. I'm older so didn't grow up with Harry Potter but always identified with stories like it where a variety of people with different interests come together for a common goal. I think that's why I was drawn to Star Wars--it wasn't just one hero saving the world, it was a team of people working together. I'm currently enjoying the Hogwarts game a lot with my niece and find it wild that such an innocent game provokes such outrage among so many people.
As a gay man, I'm noticing that almost all events now are slowly becoming "all trans, all the time." I, too, know transgender people including a transman who really does pass as a man. The goal of most trans people I know is to simply blend in. I sometimes think "is this muscular hairy guy REALLY someone they want to make use the women's restroom?" Also, the trans people I know did not make the decision lightly. They did it as adults and after MUCH therapy and thought. Sure, wear whatever clothes you want but no one should get irreversible gender surgery until they're at least in their 20s.
I think most reasonable people are fine with adults making adult decisions on how they want to live their lives. If I met someone like Chaz Bono or Caitlin Jenner on the street, I would have no idea about their birth gender, nor would I care. If someone wants to truly be thought of and treated as the opposite sex, why make a big deal out of it by declaring yourself as "trans", it kind of defeats the purpose.
What I have a problem with is first, the increasing numbers of rapid onset gender dysphoria in teenage girls, and the rapidity with which they are pushed into transformation.
I also have a problem with this "non-binary" they/them stuff. Pick what you want to be and be it. I truly think some of this is a form of rebellion like the beatniks, hippies and punks in previous generations, not true "transgenderism".
It also seems that many of these people are attracted to the opposite sex, but instead of accepting themselves as being homosexual, they convince themselves they are the opposite sex.
I implore you to research what genuine experts have to say about "rapid onset gender dysphoria". The term originated from a few religious websites for parents of trans kids who were seeking support. It's called that because the parents think it happens "so suddenly", when really their children only said something after they had given it a lot of thought. From a parental perspective it seems rapid, but from the perspective of the trans person it is not. That is misinformation based on a bunk "study" whose sample size came directly from those few websites I mentioned, and only asked the parents of trans kids about it. No trans people were involved.
I don't blame you at all for believing things you've seen online, because misinformation definitely can present itself as accurate, but I do ask that you please seek out the personal, lived experience of trans people. You can also research biological sex and see that it is extremely diverse in humans, bimodal not binary, and that gender is actually tied to sex, but sex is not simply XX or XY, and it isn't even only based on our sex chromosomes, which is why gender also has variations. I recommend sciencebasedmedicine . org. They have a great article titled The Science of Biological Sex that is all backed by peer-reviewed, scientific research. It's really worth looking into!
You know what? Thanks, I will be happy to look at what other sources and “experts” have to say-I did that with CRT and it didn’t change my opinion one bit, but I learned some things.
Here’s a caveat though:
So called experts told the medical professionals over 30 years ago to treat pain with opioids aggressively and to believe every pain patient.This is why we now have an opioid crisis.
And hearing about the lives of these people is fine, I don’t doubt they have tremendous struggles, but so do anorexics who sincerely believe they are overweight but we don’t treat them with bariatric surgery and weight loss medication.
If you're going to look at other experts and sources have to say about CRT and transgender dysphoria, please don't leap to unresearched conclusions about the opioid crisis. I am an older physician, so I have lived through the swing of the pendulum from "don't give opioids to people in pain because they'll get addicted or overdose" (1970s) to "believe pain pts, give opiods judiciously, monitor for addiction" (1980s) to "Purdue says oxycontin isn't addictive, so we can prescribe it freely" (1990s) to "oh no! opioid crisis! don't give opioids to people in pain because they'll get addicted or overdose" (2000s-2010s-now—swing back to 1970s).
The opioid crisis is multifactorial: socioeconomic factors (collapse of industrial economy), attitudes on the part of doctors, and most importantly, capitalism run amok (Purdue pushing oxycontin for venal reasons, followed by contamination of street drugs with fentanyl). The War on Drugs has been especially pernicious, causing a great deal of damage.
*Everything* is multifactorial. We should all be able to research these tooics widely and deeply, and withhold hasty judgments. Stay open-minded, please.
Another reason for the opiate crisis is that people were simply cut off with no tapering, so they went into serious withdrawals. After surgery some years ago, I was on Percocet for about a month but the doctor weaned me off during the last two weeks.
Modern neurological research has shown that the human brain doesn't mature until one's mid/late 20s. A couple of the last faculties to develop are decision-making and resistance to peer pressure. You can throw all the "scientific studies" you like at this issue, but the fact remains that you are allowing someone lacking adult reason to make decisions that will irreversibly and profoundly change their lives.
Parents, for all you disparage them, possess that adult reasoning and have the best interests of their children at heart. Not so much for researchers and medical professionals, who have a variety of competing motives (growing their practice, access to grant money, etc.).
As far as "lived experience" is concerned, there's another phrase for that...anecdotal evidence.
So I have to ask you both.... if scientists who have studied gender aren't good enough, and the experiences of people who are trans aren't good enough, then whose perspective on this is good enough? Is it only people who confirm what you already believe? Does someone else's anecdotal evidence contradicting your own make yours any less true for you? And based on what you've said about brains not being developed... Does that mean people under the age of 25 can't be trusted to make any life decisions, or that children can't be given any choice or responsibility? That they know nothing about their emotions or identity because their brains aren't fully developed? Does that mean people under 25 who commit crimes can't be held accountable because they don't have full adult brains so they didn't know better? It just doesn't make sense to me. Can people only know their gender and sexuality when they're 25 or older? I am genuinely asking these questions, not to be answered for me, but for you to consider the human experience and what you know about your own life, inner workings, and loved ones. There are a lot of people who hold biases and beliefs about trans people, just like the ones you are expressing here, until they love someone who is trans.
Trans adults do exist, which means trans children do exist. Are there people who think they are trans, and even begin the process of transitioning, and then realize they aren't? Absolutely. Generally that happens because other mental health needs went ignored. And those people and their experiences are valid the same way people who transition and live the rest of their life as trans are valid. If you believe being trans is a mental illness then of course that's all you'll see no matter what information you see to the contrary. It can all be explained away by our personal biases. That's why I asked you to seek out trans experiences. Not for concrete scientific evidence, but so you can see how meaningful and significant it is for a trans person to be able to express themselves authentically. It's important to look into people's eyes and connect with them as a human being. Socializing online the way we do robs us of genuine connection and it can make us forget there's a real person on the other end whose life is probably not that different from our own. How can you pass an accurate judgement on a person whose experience you know nothing about?
In my opinion, people shouldn't be forced to fit into any box when it comes to self expression, as long as they are being safe and considerate of those around them. If I had a child who expressed interest in transitioning I would bring them to a therapist and allow them to explore gender expression in age appropriate ways, none of which would be permanently life altering. No surgeries, no hormones, just living life in a way that is safe and happy. I would make sure all of their mental health needs were fully addressed and considered instead of rushing to quick fixes and instant gratification. I would like to think any other reasonable person would do the same. And believe me, I have very little trust in governments and medical systems. I know very few people that do. I am aware that money rules the world and when people see an opportunity to capitalize, they will. So the same way I believe there are medical professionals that push pills, injections, and surgeries on cis people without considering their best interests, there are doctors who do the same with trans people. I'm not naive to that reality. So it's important to find medical professionals who have our best interests at heart, and they do exist, but it isn't always easy to find them. Unfortunately this is the system we have to rely on and it can be a minefield.
My desire for all of humanity is an improved quality of life, and because I know many trans people whose lives have greatly improved upon transitioning, I know that is a valid path for someone to take. Everyone deserves the opportunity to safely explore who they are, and the younger someone is when they choose to do that, the sooner they will become a confident and self-actualized person. And we need more people in this world who are secure in who they are, because the world would be a much better place if we were all happier people.
There's actually more agreement between us than you think. Working with and guiding trans kids (of which there are very few) until they reach the age of majority should be standard. Yes, that means no hormones and no surgeries. The decisions one makes when young (college, career, significant other) are all reversible. This one isn't, and that's the difference.
Would you therefore agree that trans-women, having gone through puberty as males, have no business in organized women's sports? Would you therefore agree that until appropriate surgery is performed, trans-women should stay out of women's bathrooms and other sex-segregated areas? You see, trans people are not just asking for tolerance. They're asking half the population to give up the right to privacy, to fair competition. Why do trans folks feel they have a right to trample on other people's rights? As Jefferson said, 'your right to swing your arm stops at the tip of my nose'.
One of the problems with relying on "experts who have studied gender" is that far too many of them are physicians whose livelihood comes entirely from medicalizing kids with gender issues.
All of this makes sense. I cannot understand how a trans child feels, so I am always open to learning more about that perspective. I do think a lot about the various identities, choices, and "truths" I cycled through myself as a child and adolescent, and I know that if I'd made some of those things permanent and irreversible, it would have been catastrophic. I grapple with questions like, "if gender is fluid/ spectrum (and I believe it is), then why do we have to permanently alter it to feel ok about our selves?" I understand this is all very personal, but it seems like the physical development of specific body parts has taken over the deeper work of finding and making peace with the essence of self instead of how we appear and present to the world. I don't want to diminish those who have felt suicidal due to their wish to transition - I haven't ever had to suffer in that way. But while I've never abhorred my body for being female, I certainly have felt hatred for my own body - it's shape and size, etc. I've looked in the mirror and thought, "that can't be me. that's not who I am." It has taken a lot of inner work and self-acceptance to make peace with the body I was born in. So that gets me stuck sometimes.
There are plenty of scientific studies documenting people regretting transitions. Science isn’t a sword that cuts down all arguments. As a parent id be terrified of being responsible for that mistake. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there is more nuance and wiggle room to the science you are using as a shield to avoid discussing the opposing opinion.
ROGD is a phrase coined by Lisa Littman after doing research on the phenomenon. And sex is binary, not bimodal. Gender, a social construct based on sex-driven stereotypes, may indeed be bimodal.
Lisa Littman's research was conducted on three anti trans websites called 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and Youth TransCritical Professionals. The research polled parents of children who had come out as transgender. Not a single trans person was included in the research and I don't know about you, but I certainly know more about my identity than anybody else. Not to mention I have read her research paper and it really conflates gender dysphoria and being transgender. Not all trans people experience gender dysphoria. She also misrepresented research done by a trans person to fit her narrative. I maintain that children need all of their mental health needs to be treated before being able to accurately assess their gender identity. I also don't think it's necessary to immediately put a label on someone who is questioning their gender. I know there are people who believed they were trans and then realized they weren't, and those people are valid and important in this discussion. I know that generally happens to someone when they have other mental health needs that are going ignored.
And sex is bimodal which you will see if you check the resource I provided. A quick way to indicate sex is not binary is the fact that there are variations in sex chromosomes and all people are not simply XY or XX. Some of these variations include X, XXY, XYY, and XXXY. Sexual dimorphism is also not simply determined by sex chromosomes. There are other relevant genetic factors involved such as hormone levels. I really recommend this resource. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/
You're changing your story already. You initially said "The term originated from a few religious websites for parents of trans kids who were seeking support." But when called on it, you go in a different direction. So knowing that, it's hard for me to want to engage in good faith debate if you're going to move the goalposts.
It's curious that you say "not all trans people experience gender dysphoria". By definition somebody who is transgender, using the current definition of transgender, must experience dysphoria or else they wouldn't think they were the opposite gender (i.e., sex). If I'm not experiencing some sort of unease with being male (or female) then there's nothing that would prompt me to claim I'm female (or male). If you meant something else then please be more clear.
I have checked out those sources. My starting point was that I wanted this to be normal and science-based and explainable. Unfortunately what I've found is that the vast majority of transgender folks have one or more comorbidities that are ignored in the rush to satisfy the discomfort they are feeling. You should consider reading Helen Joyce's book "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality", although based on your comment above you would likely claim she is conflating, ignoring, wrong, etc. But it gives a very good explanation of how the entire science is based on individuals, who themselves suffered from mental issues, pushed an idea that has now, in the last 10 or so years, become a trend much like anorexia, cutting, recovered memories, and other things that are either viewed correctly (as mental illnesses that cause damage to the person) or have been debunked (recovered memories).
Your examples of sex not being binary are akin to saying that because some people are born without a leg therefore there is a class of humans who are three-limbed. Intersex conditions are abnormalities that do not create a third (or fourth, or fifth) sex anymore than other birth defects create a new class of human. In fact, one of the examples you mention is Klinefelter Syndrome, and the parents of those kids are not stoked how their kids' condition is being used by TRAs to further an agenda based on emotions and feelings.
There are lots of different types of personalities but there are only two sexes and therefore only two genders. Your science is bought and paid for by the medical industrial complex in the same way the cigarette industry funded research that claimed no relation between smoking and lung cancer. Big pharma, big hospital organizations, big universities all expect a huge ROI on their manipulation of young people. These organizations don’t want people to get better, they want patients, aka cash flow, for a person’s entire life. They are making big money on young peoples normal struggles of growing up. Shame on you to the hottest place in Hell.
I don't think the concern is so much about the muscular hairy trans man being forced to use the woman's restroom as it the muscular hairy trans woman being allowed to use the woman's restroom.
Just passing on the theme here: I was a very heterosexual, yet lonely and misunderstood kid when I was young. It was The Lord of the Rings for me. Oh, and Conan the Barbarian. I blame my unrealistic expectations of women's bodies on the popular Conan art. :)
I have known the gay community in one form or another since 1970 in the military. Those of us who knew felt no need to address the issue. They did their job and since much was in a war zone, I and my friends preferred skill and capability over the none issue of who you wanted to sleep with. Knew married guys going with Transgender and still not my business.
Just wish everyone would just leave each other alone. You are not special because you fall into the alphabet group. I am not special because I like women. Just live your own life. Yes it at times requires walking on, but we just aren’t allowed to eliminate the idiots.
"Live your own life" (and MYOB) was doable and conflict free with the LGB rights movement. LGB rights didn't cost anyone else their rights. LGB rights didn't ask human society to redefine everything or for preferential treatment within it. Trans identified people, however, are demanding (and getting) permission to live lives of sexual impersonation that society cannot accommodate without taking away the rights of others. There are serious conflicts.
Exactly. In the US, my rights and freedoms extend only so far as they do not infringe on someone else'. Trans absolutely challenges our concept of privacy, which is not explicitly constitutionally protected but nevertheless is assumed. I am shocked that all mothers are not horrified at the idea that their school-age daughters would have their locker rooms invaded by biological males that are attracted to biological females.
Well the grown female UPenn swimmers were upset that, as one unnamed person said, William Thomas was running around the locker room with his towel & everything else flapping, & apparently it was obvious that he was "attracted to women."
Trans men are having their breasts removed. I'm not seeing many stories about trans women rushing to cut off their dicks. IMO, that would make a very compelling case for having committed to their new gender identity. Like, if an adult takes it to this point I got nothing to say about it. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsurg.2021.639430/full
You nailed one of the most important issues which is the balancing of different peoples rights. 50 percent of the population are female. That's a lot of people. Now compare that to the percentage of (trans women) which is very low even adding the new numbers which may actually be the temporary product of the social contagion effect. The balancing analysis in this instance weighs heavily in favor of the massively larger group of women affected compared to the extremely small number of trans women. But rationality and reasonableness are not the guiding principles of the Left where narcissism reigns.
You are correct there. Peevishly appropriating the word "marriage" instead of being content with "civil union" was disrespectful overreach. "Marriage" is a sacrament to some citizens. It should have been left alone. Suing the baker was (and still is with the new suit against him) mean spirited bullying. Ironically intolerant and unnecessary. Some people are not content with just winning. They want scorched earth.
Absolutely 100% aligns with my sentiments and 70+ years of experiences. Being black, Polish, Norwegian, male, Jewish, red neck, straight, gay, disabled, athletic, etc., etc. doesn't make you special. Just be kind to others (golden rule) and lead a productive responsible life.
Why are the extremes on the right and the left so damned violent.
It sends the message, "Believe my way or I will hurt/kill you."
That is the message of the 1939 NAZIs and the 1919 Communists. Regardless of their ideologies they are both the same totalitarian assholes. Assholes we should not just be avoiding but condemning.
Where are our politicians on this. Hiding under their beds most likely. We need to vigorously enforce the constitutional right to peaceful, that's right peaceful, demonstration. We need mandatory long prison sentences for violent wackos. This will send a subtle message to those inclined to violent demonstrations.
If you want violence, do it in your backyard, burn down your house. Turn over your cars. That's right, get all of this hatred out of your mean, tiny, little minds by destroying your own property, not that of others.
Hear-hear! Protest to your heart's content, people, make your case to the public, I'm fine with that and will protect your right to do so. You start looting, burning, and killing innocents, though, and I will ask the state to stop you in ways you might not appreciate.
There are always a small % of folks in any group that are wacko. Hence extremists. But, ouch, sometimes those wackos take over and steer the boat. Antifa - check. Pro Hamas supporters - check.
I think just about everyone but the Westboro Church folks would agree with that. But loud elements of the LGBTQ crowd seem intent on making their sexual preferences everyones business--parades, drag queen shows in libraries, access to women's bathrooms and locker rooms, advocating for instruction about their issues in early grade-school, etc. I wish they'd just give it a rest.
“Look at me! Look how different I am. But you must treat me like everybody else. As an equal. Except you have to refer to me using misnomers, allow me access to any bathroom I want, and comply with any demands I request. See how different I am? But don't treat me differently. Unless I ask you to.”
Reminds me of a Camille Paglia essay wherein she opined that a lot of gayness requires transgression of social norms. And when social norms adjust to accept them then they have to transgress further and further in order to have the thrill of transgression still.
Kind of like how when you silence and censor those on the fringe, you end up with a new "fringe" to silence and censor. Not a sustainable model for a free society.
I agree K Lodge. They want the attention. It serves their agenda. And when it backfires with violence as they of course know it will, it gives their cause media coverage they desire.
FWIW, I think much of this came out of the desire to correct pretty much most of the historical cultural trends that was pretty homophobic and where "queer" (the term, I guess now for "LGBTQ") people experienced variations of intense bullying, persecution, as well as the implied requirement to remain closeted.
So a movement began to introduce "tolerance" into social learning, to ostensibly mitigate the standard bullying against non-conforming LGBTQ identifying children (and adults) in schools and work places. Which seems to be veering into an "over correction" with the questionable introduction of "drag" into children's spaces, and the (I still haven't really seen any sort of measurable evidence beyond anecdotal evidence as to the degree as to which this is occurring) supposed introduction of "queer theory" and "gender ideology" in schools and workplaces.
And now it seems there is going to be a correction against the over-correction, what we should hope is that the correction itself isn't also an over-correction and reverts much of the (good) progress that LGBTQ people have made in our society in the last very recent decades. Balance betweeen toleration and the ability to be "visibly queer" without fear of being bullied and harmed, with a balance towards appropriate boundaries particularly within children's spaces and educational spaces.
Yes I lived in the SF Bay Area in the 80s through 90s & knew transgender people & every single one wanted more than anything to be "invisible." Few were 100% successful but that was always the goal. And I am not talking about drag queens or gender fuckers or any of the other varieties, whose goal was/is to be as obvious as possible. The people I knew who wanted to live as the other sex wanted more than anything to pass. To never ever have anyone bring it up. How the times have changed.
There is a push today to normalize sexual deviance to start the education in children as young as kindergartens, and to re-educate the population. I haven’t figured out why this is happening but it’s not going to stop, especially when it’s supported by current administration.
This was back in the good old days of so-called "gatekeeping" in which adults who struggled with dysphoria were evaluated and helped by doctors who worked from the precautionary principle. Only those were green-lighted for transition who were assessed, through a careful and lengthy process, as likely to benefit despite the risks. Moving to "self ID" has caused so much harm in so many ways.
Same experience here. I’m from New Orleans which as long as I can remember was a gay friendly city. I know a trans woman who also happened to be a physician. In the 90s, not even a fully grown adult doctor, who certainly understood what he was doing, could get the surgery without years of therapy from several different psychiatrists. She also had to “live as a woman” for several years prior. She told me she had to have recommendation letters from the doctors who treated her before she could even have the surgery in Taiwan. Apparently they were more experienced in Taiwan, but she still ended up with a terrible post surgery infection which caused a much longer and harder recovery. How anyone could allow a minor to undertake this is just beyond the pale. Anyway, my friend definitely wanted to blend in as a woman and just BE. No agenda, definitely no thinking she was somehow special. It upended her life in many ways..
Back in the day, meaning the first seven decades of the twentieth century, the word "queer" was a slur, something straight people would yell on the street as they threw rocks at us or punched us in the face. We gays and lesbians used the word occasionally -- ironically -- with quotation marks around it, to signify that we knew what the world thought of us, but oh well, what are you gonna do?
When the alphabet people adopted it as part of their lexicon, it made no dent in my thinking. Its original connotation held and it still does. Now, queer carries with it the erasure of lesbians and gays in a new way, by denying our sex. Trans activists appropriated gay narratives to legitimate themselves, although gay and trans have very little in common. Back in the day, gay conversion therapy meant something pernicious and terrible for gay men. It included hard core religious bullying, behavior modification, and electro-shock treatments. But trans conversion therapy means nothing more than asking probing questions and listening to the answers. Taking nothing for granted. Considering, thinking, feeling, assessing. You know, therapy.
I feel very sorry for confused teens who go to a gender therapist today expecting to discuss their feelings and the origins of their dysphoria, but instead leave after one visit with a prescription for puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Only one question asked: do you think you're trans?
A very good friend of mine was an artist at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he was one a number of gay men there in the late 50s, & he was not out at the time, or at least, wasn't when he first got there. I remember him telling me how strange he thought the new word "gay" was, like people thought they were ebullient or dancing all the time, plus he never wanted to seem swishy. I can hear him telling the story. He was a hoot.
I've been following two young women who are detransitioning & being vocal about the treatment they got as minors who went for help & got exactly what you describe, & how they were best case ghosted, worst case violently bullied, by the trans community when they expressed regret. Your gender is affirmed but only if it's the gender the trans community deems is right for you, apparently. You've probably heard of Chloe Cole. The other is Prisha Mosley. Prisha is new to youtube. She's really eloquent. The diagnosed mental disorders she had before surgery, which should have prevented those surgeries, are now being used by the gender specialists as the reason for her regret. This is actually true for both of them. They are young women who both want children & no longer have breasts. The whole thing is ghastly, nightmarish.
Yes, I'm familiar with Ms. Cole and Ms. Mosley. Both are very brave, articulate and intelligent. Both have gone from being victims to being activists in order to save the lives of others.
Their stories break my heart. What was done to them in the name of "helping" would be a bad joke if the results weren't so catastrophic. Prisha's story is particularly sad because she doesn't seem to have the support of her family that Chloe has. But she's become more confident with every video. She puts herself in harms way, risking her own physical safety to tell the truth in state legislatures around the country. For example, in Tennessee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exiNdzYf7AU
Chloe also testifies before state legislative bodies. I'm hoping that her personal lawsuit will be the first of many to bankrupt the medical groups that prey on the bodies of children.
Yes I hope so too. I was dismayed to hear it's kaiser she's suing, which is like suing a tobacco company. Kaiser also puts a 250k cap on what you can be awarded in the event you win, but this likely isn't about damages as much as damage. I hope it opens a floodgate of suits & that these butchers are all bankrupted.
Kevin, that is a question that needs more attention. I don't understand why the LGB tolerate the Ts attaching themselves to their agenda. I have heard some gays complain about it.
Before there was general legal protection for gay men and lesbian women in workplace and marriage, I never liked the people who would show up at an advocacy event for legal protection for same-sex relations, and declared "but I like women, too! Include us! Change your group's name"
Can you imagine if, for example, at an advocacy group for bicycle commuters' people would come and scream: "But I walk too! Change your name to the 'Park Slope Bicycle and Pedestrian Commuter's advocacy group!'"
(And in my 60 years as a gay man, I've never actually known a bisexual, in terms of a friend or even casual acquaintance who dated both men and women.)
I knew a few people who called themselves bi back in the day. It never stuck as a lifestyle; ie was a stepping stone from which to return to being straight after experimenting, or going on to being gay after making an announcement they felt wouldn't shock anyone, including themselves.
I think originally nobody had a problem welcoming the tiny, tiny number of actual transgender women into "gay spaces." They were very marginalized and would find sympathetic company. Trans women in gay bars 30 and 40 years ago were welcome and treated politely. I never saw any trans men.
Today, "trans" is something very different. I see it as homophobic. Today, they're telling women who would possibly have been happy lesbians 20+ year ago that they're actually men and need surgery and drugs. And "sissy" boys who prefer to play with the girls aren't allowed to be sissies, they're given puberty blockers. Parents prefer it this way. They'd rather have a kid with a medical condition that needs drugs than, frankly, a little c*cks*cker for a son. To me, it's very anti-gay.
Another reason is most of the issues the LG community fought for have been solved. There's gay marriage, and little workplace discrimination. Instead of folding up their tents, the existing advocacy groups needed something to do, so they branch out.
As a religious Jewish gay man, I find that I can't participate in any "gay" organization today. They've *all* embraced intersectionality, which means that Jews are evil colonizing oppressors. I'm not welcome.
Some Indeed! There's a huge #waronlesbians faction & there was an uproar some years ago about that with regard to the Pride parade in Edinburgh. The perspective of one #lesbianvisibility person is documented here, & it ain't pretty. No terfs on our turf, etc. etc. Lots of lesbians apparently too frightened to attend the parade.
I think this is key to the "terf" attacks: "a specific misogyny towards homosexual women who dare to define and defend their sexuality without men telling us what it should be"
"Queer." I've heard it also means "Questioning," but it seems kind of dangerous to have one abbreviation letter mean two different things. It occurs to me that this is exactly the kind of thing they are fighting against! Who knows to what nefarious purpose Q might be put by the unscrupulous, & how much psychological damage could result from being mislettered.
I am talking about people who identify as “queer”. They are all communists.
I dare say there isn’t a single non-psychopath who identifies as “queer” and yet we are somehow lumping these people in with gays and lesbians.
In reality I think the moniker LGBTQ+ is homophobic. The T and the Q are almost always just psychotic perverts so it’s kinda horrendous to lump them in with lesbians and gays.
“Oh yeah it is weird sex. It’s all the same thing. Let’s group them together.”
If you're referring to adults who are "queer" activists, I don't know if they're ALL communists and/or psychopaths. it seems like a bit of a generalization, especially the psychopath part, but you could be right. They do have a leftist worldview founded in critical theory, which is Marxist, or Maoist, or a variation of one of those.
But if you're referring to pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults, who have been indoctrinated in gender theory and call themselves queer because they think it's cutting edge, then no, I don't think they're communists or psychopaths. They're children -- followers -- who have no idea who they are or how the world works. And many of them won't have a fully-developed prefrontal cortex for years. It's impossible to know how they're going to turn out. It helps me to remember that desistance and detransition are definitely a possibility.
I can't speak for everyone but queer is often the preferred option for people who don't feel like any other labels are quite right, hence the 'other' option, and it's been that way for a long time. As an example, I've known a number of women who were mostly straight, but sometimes attracted to women. Straight doesn't quite fit, bisexual doesn't quite fit, so queer works for some people. Not all perverts, often not even involved in activism, just outside the standard checkboxes.
Justin-- People tend to be ignorant. Recently, when there was a backlash against showing Gone With The Wind in colleges because it might "trigger" people-- and then everyone turned against the deceased Margaret Mitchell-- I read that she was good friends with Benjamin May who was president of the all male- all Black Morehouse college and had donated lots of money to the college. So many people are being cancelled or blacklisted because of people who know very little beyond a Woke mentality. I worry that we are becoming a country where the Woke police are watching us in case we make a 'wrong move.'
Do you find your LGBTQ+ friends are angry with Rowling or felt betrayed by her comments? I’m genuinely interested how broad this backlash is or if we just tend the “nutpick” the worst of them?
Nutpicking is what the MSM typically does when covering anything involving conservatives. It's basically what they did with the Jan 6th debacle. But everything - they look around and find the one nut they can use and try to pretend they're all like that. That's precisely what Michelle Goldberg did in that podcast a couple days ago where she talked about being the only journalist among them that actually attended the truckers strike in Ottawa. She managed to pick the one nut who was there for "mushrooms" and wrote about him. FB and Twitter and email lists everywhere were full of commentary by non-nut truckers and their friends and family at that strike. MSM won't ever hear interviews with any of them.
The human condition is a complex mix and sorting out the various emotions through experience is an excellent teaching device. Everyone on earth has voluntarily joined this school and will graduate eventually. There is no urgency and you have all the time in the world to understand what Jesus was teaching 2,000 years ago. Good luck and may the force be with you!
Harry Potter came out when I was in my twenties. I used to see people on the T in Boston reading it all the time and thought, “I can’t believe these adults are reading a children’s book. They need to get a life.”
Now I have children and have read the entire series and realize how wrong I was. As noted in the article, if you want your kids to learn about the qualities that make for a good person, read Harry Potter (and the James Harriot series). JK Rowling is an inspiration.
The thing that bothers me the most are the ungrateful assholes who starred in the movies and now try and distance themselves from Rowling. They only reason anyone know who the hell you are is because of Rowling. You should have shrines set up to her in all of your houses.
Fun fact- did you know Emma Watson loves children so much she sits on the board of the parent company of Balenciaga? Big fan of kids she is...
Big bad LeBron on his knees before Xi Jinping? Jamie Dimon's servile apology? Disney's editing to please the Chi Com censors? Jiao Bideng taking their laundered cash? Oh, no, Cena has plenty of competition.
There are tens of billions of dollars at stake. You're damn right they're going to apologize for whatever they're told to apologize for. They did everything but lie prostrate in sackcloth and ashes.
“The thing that bothers me the most are the ungrateful assholes who starred in the movies and now try and distance themselves from Rowling”
Well, they are actors. Most of them have about as much depth and imagination as a single, blank sheet of paper. For most of them, qualities like integrity, courage and loyalty are simply concepts written on a script.
From being around musicians, I concur that most of them have only a very shallow knowledge of politics. The bulk of their opinions comes from what their peer group tells them. Few of them spend any time doing their own research. It is what it is. Most artists have to bust their tails to make a living, and they don't have much time for anything else. However, it is still true that one should, in general, refrain from making grand pronouncements about subjects of which one knows nothing.
Does anyone have integrity anymore? Sad. I find fewer and fewer people willing to stand up against the Powers that Be (the extreme right or the extreme left).
I sympathize, very much, with those who would have to pay a high price. But what any of us cannot afford is to not have a backbone. Think of the price those who fought and died for the creation of the nation paid. Or the price those who have fought and died for her preservation have paid.
And if they want to keep working they have to virtue signal like all the others. They are basically whores in the broad sense. My apologies to the real profession. And I suspect that to portray the kinds of graphic sex acts they so routinely do in movies these days they are in fact literal prostitutes as well.
The only possible excuse, not that it’s a good one, is that as actors, their livelihoods depend directly on how people perceive them. They all have agents, and probably have public relations teams whose entire job is to figure out situations like this. If I had to guess, they were advised or told by their staff to publicly deny support for J K Rowling to maintain their careers and popularity. They are still young and have much of their careers ahead of them, and so the pressure to follow that advice must be enormous.
I seriously think that Emma Watson was cast as Hermione at an impressionable time in her psychological development, and somehow all those hours playing Hermione convinced her that she's smarter than she actually is. She's a pretty mediocre actress, too, though not as godawful as some of her detractors would have one believe.
The stars, who are only stars bc Rowling wrote an amazing series, are garbage. Where’s their courage that they showed as the characters in the books? Where is their acceptance of other people’s opinions? They tempered their response to see if they were accepted by what they perceived as “the right group!” What about all of their fans??
I think they will end up on the wrong side of this ultimately. Not sure when things will turn back to intelligent thinking.
To my mind the issue is simple: it is possible to have a same sex attraction and be mentally normal. It is possible to have a fulfilling sexual encounter with someone of the same gender .
It is not possible to CHANGE your gender. Period. Full Stop. There is no second option.
It is possible to change your gender PRESENTATION even to the point where your external genitalia are changed and your internal hormonal environment artificially altered (in what are likely profoundly unhealthy and life shortening ways), but you CANNOT CHANGE YOUR GENDER. Unless you are a hermaphrodite, you are born XX or XY. That is one of the most basic postulates of Biology, even if even that field is getting corrupted by politics.
So claiming that you can change your gender is delusional. Nuts. Insane. And demanding that others join you in that delusional belief is abusive and fascistic.
And as she said, Feminism has no meaning if anyone can be a woman any time they choose, even if they were born with a penis.
The whole Trans agenda is nuts, and I honestly think the people funding and driving all this have it as their intention breaking and shaking any remaining social cohesion we had to smithereens.
And to be clear, there have always been, in all cultures, people who identified as other than their birth gender. In some times and places they were punished severely, and in others accepted and even given a name that amounted to Other (as in Male, Female and Other). There is nothing wrong with being different in this way.
What is wrong is claiming that you actually CAN change gender, and in pushing pro-Trans propaganda relentlessly on our children, and then making it easy for them to make permanent bad decisions.
That, and of course cohering in violent mobs. There is nothing Liberal about that.
Kudos to Rowling for sticking to her guns in what truly is a cultural war.
Biological sex is distinct from gender. In the 90s, we knew this. We understood that biological sex is a fixed characteristic, though gender could be mutable (there have been two-spirit people around for ages). Now, too many people want to pretend that biological sex is mutable, but gender is fixed. You're a girl who wears your hair short and likes watching war movies and playing with toy trucks? You're actually a boy. Today's gender wars are the stupidest thing I have ever seen. And I'm not that young.
I've been reading biologists trying to claim that even biological sex is mutable.
Obviously, if people want to say that little boys don't need to act a certain way and little girls another, that's fine and it's true. Much of our expectations comes from acculturation.
But at the same time, praising little girls who reach for trucks and little boys who reach for dolls is also acculturation; and I would wonder if the little boy you made into a little girl by praising "girl" behaviors and ignoring or even punishing "boy" behaviors is HAPPIER.
Boys and girls really do have observative differences from the earliest ages. They are not major, but small things over time tend to become large things. Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking.
Would society benefit from emphasizing empathy more in boys, and assertiveness and physical courage in women? Probably. But that's not really what we are discussing, is it?
You can wish you were born another gender, but that doesn't mean you are. Same with race. Seems like it would be better to work on accepting what you are than trying to medically alter it.
Good point. I think the phrase was originally intended to mean in this world you can be anything you want to be but has been expanded to the world of imagination. So now for some the imaginary world is conflate with the real world.
"Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking," is that across cultures, or in just one culture? I have a hard time believing that a girl liking dolls is biological.
The research I know of was done, I believe, in the United States and the UK.
But have you not observed differences between men and women all your life in how they process the world? Women are born more social. And their brains have more connections between the hemispheres, which makes them better at multi-tasking, which is useful for mothers.
I can't for the life of me see why this would not be cross cultural. Men dominate in nearly every society the world over, and if, as I believe, matriarchal culture predominated for some time in our prehistory, that simply means that the boys were taught to respect the feminine more than they are now. They were still doing the hunting and heavy lifting.
And of course it is interesting to speculate on the psychosocial effects of female political dominance, but I'm not going to do that here today.
"Women are born more social." See, that's the kind of thing I mean. I need evidence for that. I just don't buy it. Maybe it's because I'm not social. Traditional gender roles like liking heels and lipstick are not biological any more than actual biological sex is mutable. In hunter-gatherer societies, it did make more sense for men to do the hunting because they were biologically stronger, yes. Women did the gathering and hunting small game and contributed to the food supply that way. I'll give you that. But the relative value placed on hunting vs. gathering varied widely across pre-industrial hunter-gatherer societies.
Male and female brains literally have small differences, such as the density of the Corpus Callosum, and the relative sizes of different parts.
And estrogen obviously has an effect, as does testosterone. These differences are not HUGE, and differing cultures can wind up with a very very wide range of acceptable ways of behaving based on these biological differences. But they are real, and left to themselves do tend to cause nearly all cultures to view the male/female distinction as a primary difference from which many others derive, like sun and moon.
To my mind, scoping out the exact differences is not that interesting, and any more that's probably not research you can even do, any more than you could look into the possibility that many homosexuals were sexually traumatized and that that likely has something to do with it.
I think the current idea of gender is a relative modern invention and has become divorced from biological sex in the sense of male and female (XX or XY chromosomes) which are obviously immutable from conception on.
And the medical profession knows this and is not speaking for fear of whatever, not that I think everyone has to come out with personal confessions. But in their practices they know and should be having truthful conversations with patients and with their families, friends, neighbors, anyone who asks their educated opinions.
Big money in trans surgeries. In my community the largest hospital in the state is preparing for it. They are asking for a 130 million dollar surgery building. Vermont.
I like to read diaries of the westerners who first moved into the former U.S. Western frontier. Original sources are the way to go. Learned that in high school history with De Toqueville's "Democracy in America," bless Mr. Rizos' heart. His humane, funny, informed rationalism outlives him in his many former students.
Learning in those diaries about the many Native American cultures exposed me to values uninfluenced by European and Middle Eastern history. Most Native American cultures were sexually modest, a few libertine. Virtually all had a role for those rare few, mostly men but occasionally women, who chose to present and live socially as the opposite sex. This convinced me trans identity is normal and valid even if rare, that it is more fundamental than being a liberal right of freedom, that describing it as a mental illness is unnecessary. Not clear whether it was related to homosexuality, which was not described. Maybe a taboo on the part of the diarists.
Yet Native Americans did not imagine such men were actually women. They were what they were, something different and unique. I never found any evidence that female warriors were permitted in male-only spaces like kivas. Men presenting as women may have been in female meal preparation areas but there would be no need for them to isolate for menstruation or childbirth.
Current archeology is strongly influenced by woke ideology and the subject is invisible, or questioned without supporting data. It would be fascinating for this subject to be explored by an unbiased researcher. The population of Native Americans was high enough that rare atypical behaviors would be apparent. Not so sure about other stone age groups, with lower populations, in South America and Africa. Wonder about the Aborigines.
The Trans community wants to portray historical females who "passed" as males for reasons having nothing to do with their gender identity as really being "trans men".
>>They were what they were, something different and unique>>
On the Indian subcontinent, hijras are recognized as a third gender, neither male nor female. India, Nepal, and Bangladesh have all officially recognized third-gender hijras as citizens deserving of equal rights.
Wikipedia is unreliable and I don't find much else that is specific with a cursory search, but the category seems to have arisen from hermaphrodites, an ambiguous sex before chromosomes could be determined. Most hijras, though, seem to be male with their genitalia removed to make them eunuchs.
There is certainly a history in both East and West of converting males to eunuchs by removing at least the testicles before puberty. That was a unique gender role, eternal, adult prepubescence, although the testicles meant the individual's sex was male. Having internal gonads, it would be harder to make a female eunuch. It certainly is analogous to some of what is chosen now.
There's a book about and containing letters of Ethyl Waxham, called "Lady's Choice" that you would probably enjoy. She graduated from Wellesley in 1905 but then took a position teaching in a one room school house in a remote part of Wyoming and ultimately married a rancher nearby whom she corresponded with for a number of years. She's an excellent writer of letters and her life was very interesting. I bought a copy of it for my wife when we were visiting the museum shop at Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. I haven't seen it elsewhere but it's probably available on line. We were reading the book to each other while driving from Washington State to North Carolina and back - through some of the country she was talking about.
We woke up this morning and there was 1/8th of an inch of "snow" on the grass outside. Nothing on the roads. They closed the schools to be safe. One of the remarkable things we kept noticing in the Waxham book was how they would routinely get on a horse and go through 3-4 foot drifts for miles off some beaten path just to say, "Hi" to someone they hadn't seen in a while. People today have no idea what they could be capable of.
Wouldn’t it be better for Megan Phelps Roper to interview you Barry? You seem to have a better understanding in one post, then I’m sure we will pick up from the interview with JK. You cannot change your gender it’s as simple as that. If you born a woman that’s what you are the same for a man. If you just take interaction on this site, I’m sure 95% of people will agree with you. We need to stand up and stand together that this above all else is just demonic and has absolutely no place in our societies. I think what will be a big game changer is if any new administration cuts the federal $$$, the change will be instantaneous.
LOL. I am certainly ready with opinions, but am not myself so delusional as to think many people want or need them.
I have been calling J.K. Rowling Joanne Rowling for some time--and I am the only person I know doing this consistently--because that is her name. As I understand the story, the J.K. was intended to mask the fact that she was a woman, since the nerd world is largely dominated by male nerds.
So the very fact of how she is called provides some cause for feminist complaints of the valid sort.
For my part, I have high trust in her intelligence, courage and forthrightness, and anticipate an interesting interview. This is a huge win both for this interviewer and this website, and I am gratified to see that.
It's not that I am strongly opposed to gays but, I am furious about the LBGTQ political agenda that intentionally infiltrations this small. They have orchestrated very destructive divisions in this vulnerable state because of our size. Pop 600,000. VT now has more LGBTQ residents than another other state. Our small state ought to be federally protected from the abusiveness of incoming radicals with political agendas.
Parents can now register on a new-born's birth certificate that they are of no gender.
When you elected Bernie your senator many years ago, the state was set up for the consequences to set in. Reap what you sow - and maybe move to another state.
WE did not put Bernie in office. Bernie won his first campaign by one or two votes. Progressives saw that as an opportunity and moved in to conquer. Over the years they have had a lot of losses. But, they have a VERY firm grip now. It's tragic.
I had never read her books but she turns out to be much braver than almost every writer out there (exception being obviously Rushdie). That so many writers organisations have been mealy mouthed instead of in full defence of her free speech is not only disappointing it's pathetic.
Don't forget Stephen King mealy mouthing. The man can't be cancelled either and he too bent at the knee instead of standing with Rowling who's his friend.
I still remember how it all went down. First he had to unlike her tweet even after she heaped praises on him for his support. But of course that wasn't enough for The Mob. Then he tried to mealy mouth his way to explain himself. None of it was enough until they pinned him agains the wall. It was really something to watch him finally capitulate with the last single tweet "Trans Women Are Women". And then they let him go.
The whole thing was wild! It was like watching Peter denied Jesus three times and the rooster crowed. Tell me again this isn't a religion.
“They removed photos of her from their websites and Potter tattoos from their bodies.”
—————————————————-
I actually can’t think of anyone I respect less than the person who gets a Harry Potter tattoo removed.
Like the baseline we are starting at is that you have a Harry Potter tattoo. So you’re already a moron. But then you get the tattoo removed because you’re a huge fan of child molesters and you feel offended on their behalf.
So what do you call kindergarten teachers asking 5 year olds about their genitals, encouraging them to hide conversations from their parents, and promoting grown men stripping as a form of “inclusion?”
And yet the Democrats promote those very things in both policy and rhetoric and they are most certainly not out of a job. The dude calling himself Rachel is insisting on making sure child genital mutilation is embraced as part of the policies he’s implementing as part of his politically appointed position and these people are certainly not out of a job because of the political party that backs them. In fact the political party involved investigated parents and called them domestic terrorists for saying exactly what you just said.
We need to recognize reality. Political reality is that there may always be extremes, but they are only truly dangerous when the extremes are driving policy. There are no "extreme" factions on the right driving policy today. The extreme left is the SOLE driver of policy right now on the left.
Platitudes like "both parties have extremes" is how people get easily convinced that being a "haven" for 12-year-olds to genitally mutilate their own bodies without their parents even knowing or kindergarten teaches talking to 5-year-olds about their genitals and being born in the "wrong" body is somehow "equivalent" to taking porn out of public-school libraries and banning child genital mutilation since the damage is often irreversible. In reality these things aren't even in the same universe, but people believe they are because they believe the platitude "both parties have extremists" and become convinced completely reasonable actions, like removing porn from public schools for children, is just as extreme as mandating it be shown to little kids.
The best argument anyone has for "extremists" on the right is around abortion, but even that gets exaggerated by the opposition with false claims a 6-week elective ban with many exceptions is "really" going to ban birth control or the morning after pill. Moreover, the actual policies being promoted on the left are at least as extreme as they openly claim that burning a 38-week baby alive in saline, or ripping a 30-week baby apart alive, while that human being killed feels every bit of it, for ANY reason, is "healthcare." The majority of the country would like to follow a common European approach of a post 10-12 week ban on elective abortions. Once things settle down, I think most states and/ or the country will end up at that more reasonable and moderate position. My point is in this case BOTH extremes control the policy in this one area.
You are correct on the media which is a huge problem and screams of a need for antitrust. Many industries do - healthcare, banking, media, technology. Even public education needs to have competition which for most of the population the consolidation of school districts and opposition to school choice by the left prevents. We need anti-trust and a commitment to competition. We have a better chance of actually getting that by supporting moderate populists with growing power in the Republican party in the primaries than we will begging the Democrats to stop acting crazy or building a 3rd party from the ground up.
Okay. This is one podcast that I _will_ listen to because I greatly admire J.K. Rowling.
_Not_ as the author of the "Harry Potter" books, which (while I _did_ read them aloud to my children when they were growing up) I considered rather pedestrian in style though A+ in world-building. So far as magical children's literature goes, though, I personally much prefer E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Andrew Lang, and even Kipling.
But I _so_ admire that quick retort: "Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"
Rowling is an absolute hero to me.
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the feminist movement I more-or-less grew up with. I guess they'd call it first-wave feminism.
To me, the whole creeping politicization of the trans phenomenon is such a blatant attempt to co-opt that movement. It makes me want to scream.
There was always a slippery slope with feminism and racial civil rights. There was the call for equality of opportunity. That is what affected me. Ivy league schools Yale and Harvard did not accept females when I was applying to college. My male peers refuse to believe that, are convinced women had equal opportunity if not preference when they were young. They look it up, find it is true, then forget it and have to be reminded again. Embedded beliefs are very hard to replace.
Then there was the focus on oppression, with victims, women and black people, and oppressors, men or white people. This was the path taken, a dark path.
The great leaders, Mandela and King, in spite of any personal faults, held up a Christian ideal rarely achieved, of reconciliation. They understood that any oppression is harmful to the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and they valued all humanity.
The other view is easier. It is cheap moral virtue, as the widely misrepresented Jordan Peterson says. It appeals to a person with a simple worldview.
Religion exists partly because most people are that simple. If a few can establish a structure that guides everyone, that is worth doing, yet such power has its own great risks.
All of the 20th-century civil rights movements have gone bad. Every one of them has degenerated into a special-interest group, demanding privileges, and enforcing conformity among its members.
Yale did not accept female undergrads until (1969, I believe). I was a freshperson in 72, unfortunately ran out of $ after one year but remember this clearly.
In the 60's, when I was a child, my father expected me to get a scholarship to Radcliff (Harvard's sister school for women). I remember clearly, tho i could be wrong, that Harvard was for men only at that time.
Not undergraduate women. You are incorrect, as were my male friends. Radcliffe and Harvard combined their admissions in 1975, three years after I applied to college.
Radcliffe. Grad school. Med school Law school. But I could not get a Harvard undergraduate degree regardless of my qualification because of my sex. They. Did. Not. Accept. Women. I was there, then. Were you?
I refused to attend a school "for women." When Yale opened its doors to women two years later I was accepted as a math transfer.
"I personally much prefer E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Andrew Lang, and even Kipling."
I loved Nesbit, Lang's compilations, George McDonald... Then, there's L.M. Boston, Hugh Lofting, L. Frank Baum, Joan Aiken... I guess Rowling reminded kids that reading was a thing.
I admire Rowling most for speaking out on the Wimpund issue.
Keep in mind that Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series for children, so I give her pedestrian writing style a pass. As a huge fan of the Potter books, I decided to try her mystery series, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. These minutiae-laden tomes are gratuitously gory and definitely “adult” in tone, but boring, humorless, not believable, and ultimately unreadable. I know some folks love this series, but I’ll take the weird and wonderful world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry any day.
I know the difference between children's and adult fiction. Would not describe the style of E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Andrew Lang, Kipling, or George MacDonald (cited below) as pedestrian.
And the Cormoran Strike books are okay. Show her growth as a writer.
But anyway, I love her, you love her. No need to argue. 😀
No matter how often I read or hear asinine terms like “people who menstruate”, and “assigned at birth”, I still cringe. And, too, the way these ideologues manipulate language is far worse than Double Speak. That I had to explain to my daughter a week after she finished health class what a person’s sex is, that the words “sex” and “gender” are not interchangeable, is ludicrous.
This is our world today. College educated...or indoctrinated...whichever, lefties genuinely believe we can solve every perceived sexual and gender phobic issue by inventing new words. The thinking is, I assume, is that if it sounds better we’ll all buy into it. Marketing 101.
I remember taking a trip to Las Vegas decades ago on a 3 day junket which included air fare, hotel accommodations, free meals and limousine service to and from the airport. Up until then my only limousine ride was a trip to a burial site for a close relative. So a Las Vegas limo ride sounded pretty cool.
My wife and I arrived at the airport and followed a man who turned out to be our driver out of the building. I say turned out because I had envisioned our driver in a dark suit with a cap on like we see in movies. Our casually dressed escort led us to a nondescript white passenger van nearly full of other guests. Before boarding I remarked to our driver “I thought we were supposed to be taking a limousine.” He smiled and assured me “This IS a limousine.”
They also think they can solve the homeless problem by calling them "person experiencing houselessness". Now the dug addicts sleeping in tents are no different from the Instagrammer documenting his Van Life on camera.
Actually, the REAL problem is they're eliminating all the words that people in dire situations need to sound alarm to their situations. Homeless people and those who seriously want to help them need the word "homeless" to explain their problem at hand. Not many regular people will run out to lend a hand to the unhoused Millennial retrofitting a van or a school bus to live like a free spirit near the Grand Canyon.
It’s the playbook our dear leader uses in his mumbling disgorgements of hubris.
From him we learned we weren’t in a recession, we wouldn’t get involved in any offensive actions in Ukraine, our economy is the best it’s ever been, the border is secure, the Afghan pullout was a major success…I could go on. Next he’ll tell us they aren’t homeless, they are just millions of people waiting to take advantage of a buyers market when interest rates, which skyrocketed thanks to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, drop to more favorable rates.
Our contributions to the Ukraine are only a tiny part of what caused this inflation. It's caused by the printing of 8 or 10 trillion dollars since covid started and distributing it. The supply of goods and services didn't increase correspondingly, so there is a lot more money available competing for the same amount of goods and services. Prices have to go up correspondingly. The Ukraine contributions are only in the billions. An order of magnitude (or more) money was printed with no corresponding increase in GDP.
It's also a clever way to tax all the savings people have locked up in 401ks and pensions.
Unfortunately, in most cases homelessness is a consequence not a cause of their situations. Substance abuse is the general precondition. And mental illness, although people who have been abusing some of those drugs - particularly meth- seem to become deranged over time anyway.
Yes. You can play that game all day. Keep changing the phrasing to obscure the fact that the person is homeless. Who knows how long before the words house and home are deemed ‘privilegist’ and therefore abusive language psychologically harmful to the “unhoused”. New terms for that thing you live in like ‘affixed structure accommodating persons of privilege’ are closer than we ever want to imagine.
I think it's also insulting to the homeless. All those lengthy phrases the ideologues fashion to describe people are. Calling a homeless person unhoused does not make them feel any better. Those who use the term aren't doing it to benefit the homeless but to say “look how moral and superior I am”.
As long as it makes the ideologues (the only benefactors of their activism) feel better it solves half the problem of homelessness,right?
I imagine their discussions over Chardonnay and finger sandwiches along the lines of, “If the homeless could just realize how life changing our words are and do their part to find somewhere to live. It’s so frustrating. Anyone else need another glass of wine?”
Bulls... to be honest. My youngest daughter had a baby a couple of months ago ( a boy). She was chatting to another new Mum about Brest feeding, this new Mum told her “we need to call it chest feeding now” I could not believe what I had just heard. My daughter told her politely you can call it what you want, but for me it’s breast feeding 😃😃
Sorry, but no amount of surgery, chemicals or wishful thinking will turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man. I could not care less if men want to pretend that they are women or women pretend they are men. We are all a little bit weird in one way or another, so who am I to judge? However, when we start allowing men into private spaces for women and allow men to compete in women's sports, I draw the line. This nuttiness that has infected the Democratic Party will prevent me from ever supporting them.
Huzzah to J.K. Rowling! Too few public figures today are willing to stand behind their convictions...
Not caring less about men saying they are women and vice versa open the door to men into women's private spaces and sports. This crap is personified misogyny.
Tell me Sofia, what would you do? Would you make cross-dressing illegal? If I changed my name from Charlie to Charlene and informed you that my preferred pronouns are she/her, would you toss me in prison?
Under the non aggression principle, everyone is free to do as they like as long as they do no harm to others or infringe upon the freedom of others. In other words, people need to mind their own damn business until someone violates the non aggression principle. Invading private spaces violates the non aggression principle. Engaging in unfair competition violates the non aggression principle. Allowing a child to make stupid, life-altering decisions violates the non aggression principle. Pretending to be the opposite sex does not.
BTW, my preferred pronoun is "M'Lord" or "My Lord, Protector of the Realm" if you're not into the whole brevity thing. :-)
Charles, you can call yourself Charlene, wear a lace pinafore, prance through life in high-heeled shoes and shout to the world that you’re a woman. You can adopt an all-fish and krill diet, wear a black dinner jacket and a white shirt and identify as an Emperor Penguin. I don’t care. But your “civil rights” don’t include insisting that I pretend that your delusion is the real deal, so I won’t be doing that.
You made the comment about changing your name then informing others of your new pronouns....... why would you be informing anyone about your new pronouns if you don’t expect them to participate in your delusion. For me that’s where the line gets crossed and my response becomes “whatever dude”
You did not clarify that demanding others recognize you as Charlene as violation of the non-aggression principle. Which might be debatable, I do not think so, but I'll give you a might. But it does violate the give them an inch . . . principle a/k/a known as the slippery slope principle. For example if sex is changed legally and proper pronounce is required by virtue thereof where failing to do so risks a hate crime offense, how can you then deny the newly minted woman the ability to compete as a woman? This query is illustrative of why I cannot Tweet. I have thoughts longer than 4 characters. 😉
Seems CPhillips you just want to argue or maybe be right. I couldn't care less about explaining anything to you. It's just not important at this point. For one thing I don't even remember what you accused me of.
I wouldn’t toss you in prison for asking me to call you something I’ll never actually call you, but I also won’t participate in your delusion. You come and tell me you are a “she/ her” when you are clearly born with a penis and I’ll respond “no dude, I don’t play the pronoun game.” I don’t care what adults do because we are all a little weird, but I won’t participate in any way in any part of their delusions either.
I agree, Lynne! Apparently, you did not read my first post in this thread where I clearly stated, "However, when we start allowing men into private spaces for women and allow men to compete in women's sports, I draw the line."
I didn't see anything in her post that was objectionable or offensive or implying people shouldn't be allowed to dress up and act like whatever sex they want. She was merely objecting to allowing them to "invade private spaces" as you put it. Calm down.
"Not caring less about men saying they are women and vice versa open the door to men into women's private spaces and sports..."
Maybe I'm wrong Jeff, but the way I read it, she's saying that my (and presumably others) not caring if men pretend to be women in public directly results in men invading women's private spaces and sports. That's a leap of illogic I couldn't let pass.
The “Harry Potter” series is exactly like a Bible because it’s a salvation story. Harry Potter is Christ who faces death and overcomes.
I don’t think Rowling finds any of the hatred she has been confronted with surprising. After all, that’s another lesson from the Gospels: if you speak the truth, the world will hate you.
I taught a course on the topic of liberty, a "Gen Ed capstone course," for senior-year students for many semesters at a local college. I will not teach the course again although students found it more than worth the effort to read books such as "On Liberty" by J.S. Mill. On the issue of free speech, students were exposed to the doings of the church alluded to in the essay. In the current truthophobic environment, a career can be ended by exposing students to a sign stating "God hates fags."
I found it cathartic to share with students how my own views on such issues as homosexuality had changed drastically because others, exercising their own freedom of speech, persuaded me that my position on issues did not stand up to scrutiny. I think it was Keynes who admitted something close to "when the facts change, I change my opinion."
The first assigned reading in the course was Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of a Slave," his first autobiography. It contains the word that begins with "n" that can no longer be uttered unless you have the right color skin. The college does have a course titled "Harry Potter" with something else in the title that currently escapes me. I think this essay and the issue it addresses would be an excellent topic but I admit being fearful of sending it to the professor for that course.
It is painful to choose to remain silent sometimes because the cost of being vocal can be career ending. Fortunately, J.K. Rowling made a fortune serving society and can withstand the financial consequences of exposing Truthophobia. I look forward to the series. Thanks for an excellent essay.
Megan - this is considerably off-topic, but I wanted to tell you how happy I am that you have separated from the evil that permeates your family. My childhood's closest friend, D.S., was killed in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion at Montcoal, WV, in 2010. A series of "protesters" - carrying "God Hates Dead Miners" signs and hailing from you-know-where - planted themselves at the vigil before it was known that there were no survivors.
I never forgot nor forgave them. There was a young woman there as well. During a time in history when there seems to be neither forgiveness nor redemption, I am glad to say that - at least for her - there has been both. Bless you.
I can't understand why people need to be reduced to their genitals (person with a penis, vulva, etc.) in order to be inclusive and accepting of transgender people. Transgender rights is not the same thing as Gender Ideology. Proponents of Gender Ideology know their arguments are illogical, so their only way to defend their position is to bully, slander, threaten and cancel those who try to argue with them.
I’m not sure it really is all that “complex”. There are two “genders”, “sexes”, whatever. There is a VERY small minority of people that struggle with their gender “identity, the VAST majority of us are VERY comfortable with our assigned genders at birth. Medical and especially surgical mutilation of children is criminal child abuse. Adults have autonomy. Not that difficult!!
As Rowling's story confirms, the wrath of the righteous is the surest evidence of the evil that exists just below the surface of civil society. Intolerance of different ideas, beliefs, or philosophies underlies not only book banning, but the Salem witch trials, race riots, the martyrdom of the unorthodox, the persecution of the Jews, etc., etc. Those who are absolutely convinced of their moral correctness, their favored status with God, science, or history, are the most dangerous bigots in the world. It is not only Nazis who burn books. The progress of "Political Correctness" and the "Woke" movement is just another example of this fact.
Like Abraham Lincoln, I think that rather than worry about whether God is on our side, we should be more concerned about whether we are on God's side. The most dangerous people in the world are those who are certain of the correctness of their beliefs, especially when they gather in groups.
From the time I was little my father would always say, "You see an angry crowd? You head the other direction. Don't go near it," and "The IQ of a crowd is the average IQ divided by their number".
There’s a lot of talk these days about separating the art from the artist. But I don’t see how you can do that with Harry Potter. Rowling’s sense of morality permeates the entire series and it is decidedly not woke.
For one thing, the books are steeped in history and mythology, indicating Rowling’s reverence for these subjects. And memory in particular is a critical theme. The past is essential for understanding the present, and erasing it or replacing it with lies (in the press or other places) is counterproductive and invites evil and corruption. That is a consistent lesson.
For another, Voldemort’s entire philosophy hinges on eliminating the distinction between good and evil and replacing it with power politics. The only sides that matter are who has power and who is oppressed. Voldemort believes the muggle world and muggle-borns by extension oppress the magical world. This oppression is evil and the only way to right it is to reverse it. This is how he justifies his desire to rule the world and establish a new hierarchy where pure blood wizards are at the top. Rowling was trying to draw a comparison to Nazism of course, but the principle is broadly applicable. If you believe that the world can simply be divided between oppressors and the oppressed, you believe the same lie as Voldemort.
And lastly, no, the books are not about acceptance or finding yourself. They are about having the courage to face adversity, stand up to evil, and tell the truth even when nobody believes you, even when everybody hates you.
So of course Rowling doesn’t care about being beloved and she is determined to speak the truth! The wokeists are an army of Dolores Umbridges and Rowling is more than happy to scar her own hand to not tell lies.
I love your analysis and agree completely. I also found it amusing listening to how Christian’s vilified her and even someone suggested that Harry’s scar was like a swatzika when the entire story is essentially a ww2 category with a lot of influence of Christian morality (Harry is essentially a Christ figure, “the chosen one”, and in the end he chooses to die for everyone at the face of evil and his love protects everyone like his mothers love protected him)
Megan is becoming an a poster for what a news writer should be. I am becoming a fan of your efforts. Please don’t go left or right. Just write the stories.
JK is correct. What’s with the major efforts to make women something other than a woman? Seriously, women are the backbone of the world and I fail to understand why the woke fools want to belittle and invalidate women? A woman is so absolutely special and beautiful that the woke must be threatened by those special qualities. I can understand in a way, looking at so many of the woke crowd leads to the assumption they need to sneak up on a water fountain.
The nothing kids who got rich and famous now seem to think they are gifted. Nah, a dumbass is still a dumbass. No gratitude to the person who made your life good. You have become the poster for spoiled, rich, selfish people with no credibility on anything you cry about.
Growing up as a (closeted at the time) gay kid in the suburbs, the Harry Potter books transported me to another world, one where I didn’t have to feel alone, where as Rowling said of her own books “by page or by screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home”. So many of my LGBTQ+ friends (Trans included) felt so seen by these books growing up - there was something about Potter that really resonated with the idea of being the outsider, etc. Rowling has done so much good for the world, especially for so many children with her various charities like Lumos (she is the first UK Billionaire to lose Billionaire status from donating so much to charity) and now that everyone is boycotting her, do they even realize so much of her money actually goes to supporting incredible causes? Very excited to check out this podcast, and still a huge Potter fan to this day, as it saved my life as a kid, and countless others
Never read any of her books, Justin. But Rowling has to be doing something uniquely right; she has somehow in the past twenty years or so been vilified by both the sanctimonious progressive Left and the sanctimonious Christian Right (no offense to Christians here, please..or trans either, for that matter). Now who the hell else has done that? She is proof that both extremes can have a common enemy.
I think she should run for office..
Very true... and funny.
First Megan you should read a book titled “Educated” by Tara Westover. Then I hope you can contact her and talk to her. You’ll know what to do next.
Second, these podcasts are so important! Megan, you have done an absolutely incredible job with these episodes. There is so much information, legitimate information here.
Third, I read all of the Harry Potter books and saw all the movies, with (or without) my three children. I’m 68. Personally, I thought of them as fantasy fiction as an adult. However I can see how my children saw much much more. JK Rowling is clearly genius as far as these books go. She makes so many good points, which I agree with. The state of gender issues in America is completely out of control. Children are being harmed, families have been ripped apart and we need to speak up about it, for the children.
Finally, I and many many others have been wondering how all the gender issues have mainstreamed. Well, I was totally unaware of the happenings on tumblr! Imagine hundreds of thousands of women on line talking about their feelings, anonymously. Ugh. And I am a woman and would never ever do that.
Great job, clearly you and Jo Rowling were meant to get together.
Look forward to hearing more.
Totally agree!
Good point.
Their common enemy seems to be Truth. Something that has become exceedingly uncommon, but it's something that both Bari Weiss and JK Rowling seem to have deeply in common.
Ha! I would put Susan Wise Bauer in this category too. And maybe RFK Jr.
I am with you. I'm older so didn't grow up with Harry Potter but always identified with stories like it where a variety of people with different interests come together for a common goal. I think that's why I was drawn to Star Wars--it wasn't just one hero saving the world, it was a team of people working together. I'm currently enjoying the Hogwarts game a lot with my niece and find it wild that such an innocent game provokes such outrage among so many people.
As a gay man, I'm noticing that almost all events now are slowly becoming "all trans, all the time." I, too, know transgender people including a transman who really does pass as a man. The goal of most trans people I know is to simply blend in. I sometimes think "is this muscular hairy guy REALLY someone they want to make use the women's restroom?" Also, the trans people I know did not make the decision lightly. They did it as adults and after MUCH therapy and thought. Sure, wear whatever clothes you want but no one should get irreversible gender surgery until they're at least in their 20s.
I think most reasonable people are fine with adults making adult decisions on how they want to live their lives. If I met someone like Chaz Bono or Caitlin Jenner on the street, I would have no idea about their birth gender, nor would I care. If someone wants to truly be thought of and treated as the opposite sex, why make a big deal out of it by declaring yourself as "trans", it kind of defeats the purpose.
What I have a problem with is first, the increasing numbers of rapid onset gender dysphoria in teenage girls, and the rapidity with which they are pushed into transformation.
I also have a problem with this "non-binary" they/them stuff. Pick what you want to be and be it. I truly think some of this is a form of rebellion like the beatniks, hippies and punks in previous generations, not true "transgenderism".
It also seems that many of these people are attracted to the opposite sex, but instead of accepting themselves as being homosexual, they convince themselves they are the opposite sex.
I implore you to research what genuine experts have to say about "rapid onset gender dysphoria". The term originated from a few religious websites for parents of trans kids who were seeking support. It's called that because the parents think it happens "so suddenly", when really their children only said something after they had given it a lot of thought. From a parental perspective it seems rapid, but from the perspective of the trans person it is not. That is misinformation based on a bunk "study" whose sample size came directly from those few websites I mentioned, and only asked the parents of trans kids about it. No trans people were involved.
I don't blame you at all for believing things you've seen online, because misinformation definitely can present itself as accurate, but I do ask that you please seek out the personal, lived experience of trans people. You can also research biological sex and see that it is extremely diverse in humans, bimodal not binary, and that gender is actually tied to sex, but sex is not simply XX or XY, and it isn't even only based on our sex chromosomes, which is why gender also has variations. I recommend sciencebasedmedicine . org. They have a great article titled The Science of Biological Sex that is all backed by peer-reviewed, scientific research. It's really worth looking into!
You know what? Thanks, I will be happy to look at what other sources and “experts” have to say-I did that with CRT and it didn’t change my opinion one bit, but I learned some things.
Here’s a caveat though:
So called experts told the medical professionals over 30 years ago to treat pain with opioids aggressively and to believe every pain patient.This is why we now have an opioid crisis.
And hearing about the lives of these people is fine, I don’t doubt they have tremendous struggles, but so do anorexics who sincerely believe they are overweight but we don’t treat them with bariatric surgery and weight loss medication.
If you're going to look at other experts and sources have to say about CRT and transgender dysphoria, please don't leap to unresearched conclusions about the opioid crisis. I am an older physician, so I have lived through the swing of the pendulum from "don't give opioids to people in pain because they'll get addicted or overdose" (1970s) to "believe pain pts, give opiods judiciously, monitor for addiction" (1980s) to "Purdue says oxycontin isn't addictive, so we can prescribe it freely" (1990s) to "oh no! opioid crisis! don't give opioids to people in pain because they'll get addicted or overdose" (2000s-2010s-now—swing back to 1970s).
The opioid crisis is multifactorial: socioeconomic factors (collapse of industrial economy), attitudes on the part of doctors, and most importantly, capitalism run amok (Purdue pushing oxycontin for venal reasons, followed by contamination of street drugs with fentanyl). The War on Drugs has been especially pernicious, causing a great deal of damage.
*Everything* is multifactorial. We should all be able to research these tooics widely and deeply, and withhold hasty judgments. Stay open-minded, please.
Another reason for the opiate crisis is that people were simply cut off with no tapering, so they went into serious withdrawals. After surgery some years ago, I was on Percocet for about a month but the doctor weaned me off during the last two weeks.
One extreme to the other…
Modern neurological research has shown that the human brain doesn't mature until one's mid/late 20s. A couple of the last faculties to develop are decision-making and resistance to peer pressure. You can throw all the "scientific studies" you like at this issue, but the fact remains that you are allowing someone lacking adult reason to make decisions that will irreversibly and profoundly change their lives.
Parents, for all you disparage them, possess that adult reasoning and have the best interests of their children at heart. Not so much for researchers and medical professionals, who have a variety of competing motives (growing their practice, access to grant money, etc.).
As far as "lived experience" is concerned, there's another phrase for that...anecdotal evidence.
So I have to ask you both.... if scientists who have studied gender aren't good enough, and the experiences of people who are trans aren't good enough, then whose perspective on this is good enough? Is it only people who confirm what you already believe? Does someone else's anecdotal evidence contradicting your own make yours any less true for you? And based on what you've said about brains not being developed... Does that mean people under the age of 25 can't be trusted to make any life decisions, or that children can't be given any choice or responsibility? That they know nothing about their emotions or identity because their brains aren't fully developed? Does that mean people under 25 who commit crimes can't be held accountable because they don't have full adult brains so they didn't know better? It just doesn't make sense to me. Can people only know their gender and sexuality when they're 25 or older? I am genuinely asking these questions, not to be answered for me, but for you to consider the human experience and what you know about your own life, inner workings, and loved ones. There are a lot of people who hold biases and beliefs about trans people, just like the ones you are expressing here, until they love someone who is trans.
Trans adults do exist, which means trans children do exist. Are there people who think they are trans, and even begin the process of transitioning, and then realize they aren't? Absolutely. Generally that happens because other mental health needs went ignored. And those people and their experiences are valid the same way people who transition and live the rest of their life as trans are valid. If you believe being trans is a mental illness then of course that's all you'll see no matter what information you see to the contrary. It can all be explained away by our personal biases. That's why I asked you to seek out trans experiences. Not for concrete scientific evidence, but so you can see how meaningful and significant it is for a trans person to be able to express themselves authentically. It's important to look into people's eyes and connect with them as a human being. Socializing online the way we do robs us of genuine connection and it can make us forget there's a real person on the other end whose life is probably not that different from our own. How can you pass an accurate judgement on a person whose experience you know nothing about?
In my opinion, people shouldn't be forced to fit into any box when it comes to self expression, as long as they are being safe and considerate of those around them. If I had a child who expressed interest in transitioning I would bring them to a therapist and allow them to explore gender expression in age appropriate ways, none of which would be permanently life altering. No surgeries, no hormones, just living life in a way that is safe and happy. I would make sure all of their mental health needs were fully addressed and considered instead of rushing to quick fixes and instant gratification. I would like to think any other reasonable person would do the same. And believe me, I have very little trust in governments and medical systems. I know very few people that do. I am aware that money rules the world and when people see an opportunity to capitalize, they will. So the same way I believe there are medical professionals that push pills, injections, and surgeries on cis people without considering their best interests, there are doctors who do the same with trans people. I'm not naive to that reality. So it's important to find medical professionals who have our best interests at heart, and they do exist, but it isn't always easy to find them. Unfortunately this is the system we have to rely on and it can be a minefield.
My desire for all of humanity is an improved quality of life, and because I know many trans people whose lives have greatly improved upon transitioning, I know that is a valid path for someone to take. Everyone deserves the opportunity to safely explore who they are, and the younger someone is when they choose to do that, the sooner they will become a confident and self-actualized person. And we need more people in this world who are secure in who they are, because the world would be a much better place if we were all happier people.
There's actually more agreement between us than you think. Working with and guiding trans kids (of which there are very few) until they reach the age of majority should be standard. Yes, that means no hormones and no surgeries. The decisions one makes when young (college, career, significant other) are all reversible. This one isn't, and that's the difference.
Would you therefore agree that trans-women, having gone through puberty as males, have no business in organized women's sports? Would you therefore agree that until appropriate surgery is performed, trans-women should stay out of women's bathrooms and other sex-segregated areas? You see, trans people are not just asking for tolerance. They're asking half the population to give up the right to privacy, to fair competition. Why do trans folks feel they have a right to trample on other people's rights? As Jefferson said, 'your right to swing your arm stops at the tip of my nose'.
One of the problems with relying on "experts who have studied gender" is that far too many of them are physicians whose livelihood comes entirely from medicalizing kids with gender issues.
All of this makes sense. I cannot understand how a trans child feels, so I am always open to learning more about that perspective. I do think a lot about the various identities, choices, and "truths" I cycled through myself as a child and adolescent, and I know that if I'd made some of those things permanent and irreversible, it would have been catastrophic. I grapple with questions like, "if gender is fluid/ spectrum (and I believe it is), then why do we have to permanently alter it to feel ok about our selves?" I understand this is all very personal, but it seems like the physical development of specific body parts has taken over the deeper work of finding and making peace with the essence of self instead of how we appear and present to the world. I don't want to diminish those who have felt suicidal due to their wish to transition - I haven't ever had to suffer in that way. But while I've never abhorred my body for being female, I certainly have felt hatred for my own body - it's shape and size, etc. I've looked in the mirror and thought, "that can't be me. that's not who I am." It has taken a lot of inner work and self-acceptance to make peace with the body I was born in. So that gets me stuck sometimes.
There are plenty of scientific studies documenting people regretting transitions. Science isn’t a sword that cuts down all arguments. As a parent id be terrified of being responsible for that mistake. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there is more nuance and wiggle room to the science you are using as a shield to avoid discussing the opposing opinion.
ROGD is a phrase coined by Lisa Littman after doing research on the phenomenon. And sex is binary, not bimodal. Gender, a social construct based on sex-driven stereotypes, may indeed be bimodal.
Lisa Littman's research was conducted on three anti trans websites called 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and Youth TransCritical Professionals. The research polled parents of children who had come out as transgender. Not a single trans person was included in the research and I don't know about you, but I certainly know more about my identity than anybody else. Not to mention I have read her research paper and it really conflates gender dysphoria and being transgender. Not all trans people experience gender dysphoria. She also misrepresented research done by a trans person to fit her narrative. I maintain that children need all of their mental health needs to be treated before being able to accurately assess their gender identity. I also don't think it's necessary to immediately put a label on someone who is questioning their gender. I know there are people who believed they were trans and then realized they weren't, and those people are valid and important in this discussion. I know that generally happens to someone when they have other mental health needs that are going ignored.
And sex is bimodal which you will see if you check the resource I provided. A quick way to indicate sex is not binary is the fact that there are variations in sex chromosomes and all people are not simply XY or XX. Some of these variations include X, XXY, XYY, and XXXY. Sexual dimorphism is also not simply determined by sex chromosomes. There are other relevant genetic factors involved such as hormone levels. I really recommend this resource. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/
You're changing your story already. You initially said "The term originated from a few religious websites for parents of trans kids who were seeking support." But when called on it, you go in a different direction. So knowing that, it's hard for me to want to engage in good faith debate if you're going to move the goalposts.
It's curious that you say "not all trans people experience gender dysphoria". By definition somebody who is transgender, using the current definition of transgender, must experience dysphoria or else they wouldn't think they were the opposite gender (i.e., sex). If I'm not experiencing some sort of unease with being male (or female) then there's nothing that would prompt me to claim I'm female (or male). If you meant something else then please be more clear.
I have checked out those sources. My starting point was that I wanted this to be normal and science-based and explainable. Unfortunately what I've found is that the vast majority of transgender folks have one or more comorbidities that are ignored in the rush to satisfy the discomfort they are feeling. You should consider reading Helen Joyce's book "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality", although based on your comment above you would likely claim she is conflating, ignoring, wrong, etc. But it gives a very good explanation of how the entire science is based on individuals, who themselves suffered from mental issues, pushed an idea that has now, in the last 10 or so years, become a trend much like anorexia, cutting, recovered memories, and other things that are either viewed correctly (as mental illnesses that cause damage to the person) or have been debunked (recovered memories).
Your examples of sex not being binary are akin to saying that because some people are born without a leg therefore there is a class of humans who are three-limbed. Intersex conditions are abnormalities that do not create a third (or fourth, or fifth) sex anymore than other birth defects create a new class of human. In fact, one of the examples you mention is Klinefelter Syndrome, and the parents of those kids are not stoked how their kids' condition is being used by TRAs to further an agenda based on emotions and feelings.
There are lots of different types of personalities but there are only two sexes and therefore only two genders. Your science is bought and paid for by the medical industrial complex in the same way the cigarette industry funded research that claimed no relation between smoking and lung cancer. Big pharma, big hospital organizations, big universities all expect a huge ROI on their manipulation of young people. These organizations don’t want people to get better, they want patients, aka cash flow, for a person’s entire life. They are making big money on young peoples normal struggles of growing up. Shame on you to the hottest place in Hell.
Earnest recommendation: read "Gender Queer" for one personal perspective on non-binary.
PSW, right there with you on the non-binary crap. At least trans makes some sense, man to women or visa versa. You can’t be “nothing”.
I don't think the concern is so much about the muscular hairy trans man being forced to use the woman's restroom as it the muscular hairy trans woman being allowed to use the woman's restroom.
Comment of the week!
Just passing on the theme here: I was a very heterosexual, yet lonely and misunderstood kid when I was young. It was The Lord of the Rings for me. Oh, and Conan the Barbarian. I blame my unrealistic expectations of women's bodies on the popular Conan art. :)
“So many of my LGBTQ+ friends (Trans included) felt so seen by these books growing up “
———————————————-
Do you think it is good to lump all of these people together? What does the Q mean?
I have known the gay community in one form or another since 1970 in the military. Those of us who knew felt no need to address the issue. They did their job and since much was in a war zone, I and my friends preferred skill and capability over the none issue of who you wanted to sleep with. Knew married guys going with Transgender and still not my business.
Just wish everyone would just leave each other alone. You are not special because you fall into the alphabet group. I am not special because I like women. Just live your own life. Yes it at times requires walking on, but we just aren’t allowed to eliminate the idiots.
"Live your own life" (and MYOB) was doable and conflict free with the LGB rights movement. LGB rights didn't cost anyone else their rights. LGB rights didn't ask human society to redefine everything or for preferential treatment within it. Trans identified people, however, are demanding (and getting) permission to live lives of sexual impersonation that society cannot accommodate without taking away the rights of others. There are serious conflicts.
Exactly. In the US, my rights and freedoms extend only so far as they do not infringe on someone else'. Trans absolutely challenges our concept of privacy, which is not explicitly constitutionally protected but nevertheless is assumed. I am shocked that all mothers are not horrified at the idea that their school-age daughters would have their locker rooms invaded by biological males that are attracted to biological females.
Well the grown female UPenn swimmers were upset that, as one unnamed person said, William Thomas was running around the locker room with his towel & everything else flapping, & apparently it was obvious that he was "attracted to women."
Trans men are having their breasts removed. I'm not seeing many stories about trans women rushing to cut off their dicks. IMO, that would make a very compelling case for having committed to their new gender identity. Like, if an adult takes it to this point I got nothing to say about it. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsurg.2021.639430/full
No getting around some things, is there?
You nailed one of the most important issues which is the balancing of different peoples rights. 50 percent of the population are female. That's a lot of people. Now compare that to the percentage of (trans women) which is very low even adding the new numbers which may actually be the temporary product of the social contagion effect. The balancing analysis in this instance weighs heavily in favor of the massively larger group of women affected compared to the extremely small number of trans women. But rationality and reasonableness are not the guiding principles of the Left where narcissism reigns.
but only because we are not standing up to them. It is time to fight back.
Actually LGB did ask for marriage to be redefined and to impose that on bakers, florists, photographers, etc.
You are correct there. Peevishly appropriating the word "marriage" instead of being content with "civil union" was disrespectful overreach. "Marriage" is a sacrament to some citizens. It should have been left alone. Suing the baker was (and still is with the new suit against him) mean spirited bullying. Ironically intolerant and unnecessary. Some people are not content with just winning. They want scorched earth.
Thank you for that perspective.
Absolutely 100% aligns with my sentiments and 70+ years of experiences. Being black, Polish, Norwegian, male, Jewish, red neck, straight, gay, disabled, athletic, etc., etc. doesn't make you special. Just be kind to others (golden rule) and lead a productive responsible life.
Why are the extremes on the right and the left so damned violent.
It sends the message, "Believe my way or I will hurt/kill you."
That is the message of the 1939 NAZIs and the 1919 Communists. Regardless of their ideologies they are both the same totalitarian assholes. Assholes we should not just be avoiding but condemning.
Where are our politicians on this. Hiding under their beds most likely. We need to vigorously enforce the constitutional right to peaceful, that's right peaceful, demonstration. We need mandatory long prison sentences for violent wackos. This will send a subtle message to those inclined to violent demonstrations.
If you want violence, do it in your backyard, burn down your house. Turn over your cars. That's right, get all of this hatred out of your mean, tiny, little minds by destroying your own property, not that of others.
Hear-hear! Protest to your heart's content, people, make your case to the public, I'm fine with that and will protect your right to do so. You start looting, burning, and killing innocents, though, and I will ask the state to stop you in ways you might not appreciate.
There are always a small % of folks in any group that are wacko. Hence extremists. But, ouch, sometimes those wackos take over and steer the boat. Antifa - check. Pro Hamas supporters - check.
No, it must be shoved down your throat until you are silenced. 🤐
The math is not that difficult, unless you go to Harvard.
So true. With whom you sleep and what you do is both none of my business and beyond boring.
I think just about everyone but the Westboro Church folks would agree with that. But loud elements of the LGBTQ crowd seem intent on making their sexual preferences everyones business--parades, drag queen shows in libraries, access to women's bathrooms and locker rooms, advocating for instruction about their issues in early grade-school, etc. I wish they'd just give it a rest.
“Look at me! Look how different I am. But you must treat me like everybody else. As an equal. Except you have to refer to me using misnomers, allow me access to any bathroom I want, and comply with any demands I request. See how different I am? But don't treat me differently. Unless I ask you to.”
Well said. Very well said and you said it in just one paragraph.
Sums it up quite neatly, though I'd say it isn't much of an "ask" (re: that last line). More of a tell. Or a command.
Unless I absolutely demand you to and if you don’t comply I will have you fired and shunned.
Reminds me of a Camille Paglia essay wherein she opined that a lot of gayness requires transgression of social norms. And when social norms adjust to accept them then they have to transgress further and further in order to have the thrill of transgression still.
Kind of like how when you silence and censor those on the fringe, you end up with a new "fringe" to silence and censor. Not a sustainable model for a free society.
Her essays seem even more on point today than when I read them in the 90s. Time to re-visit
I agree K Lodge. They want the attention. It serves their agenda. And when it backfires with violence as they of course know it will, it gives their cause media coverage they desire.
FWIW, I think much of this came out of the desire to correct pretty much most of the historical cultural trends that was pretty homophobic and where "queer" (the term, I guess now for "LGBTQ") people experienced variations of intense bullying, persecution, as well as the implied requirement to remain closeted.
So a movement began to introduce "tolerance" into social learning, to ostensibly mitigate the standard bullying against non-conforming LGBTQ identifying children (and adults) in schools and work places. Which seems to be veering into an "over correction" with the questionable introduction of "drag" into children's spaces, and the (I still haven't really seen any sort of measurable evidence beyond anecdotal evidence as to the degree as to which this is occurring) supposed introduction of "queer theory" and "gender ideology" in schools and workplaces.
And now it seems there is going to be a correction against the over-correction, what we should hope is that the correction itself isn't also an over-correction and reverts much of the (good) progress that LGBTQ people have made in our society in the last very recent decades. Balance betweeen toleration and the ability to be "visibly queer" without fear of being bullied and harmed, with a balance towards appropriate boundaries particularly within children's spaces and educational spaces.
I can still remember when someone might say something like, "I had a queer feeling," and almost no one would think of homosexuality.
Yes I lived in the SF Bay Area in the 80s through 90s & knew transgender people & every single one wanted more than anything to be "invisible." Few were 100% successful but that was always the goal. And I am not talking about drag queens or gender fuckers or any of the other varieties, whose goal was/is to be as obvious as possible. The people I knew who wanted to live as the other sex wanted more than anything to pass. To never ever have anyone bring it up. How the times have changed.
There is a push today to normalize sexual deviance to start the education in children as young as kindergartens, and to re-educate the population. I haven’t figured out why this is happening but it’s not going to stop, especially when it’s supported by current administration.
To start understanding you need to go to Youtube & watch the documentary "The Children of Table 34." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtElwdfCUTc
About the Alfred Kinsey experiments. Not for the faint of heart.
After you watch that, watch What you didn't know about Alfred Kinsey & Hugh Hefner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stufhfZGCAw
Sprinkle in some postmodernism & there you have the vile stew.
Haunting stuff.
Your use of “re-educate” is as fitting as it is terrifying. That is precisely what is happening.
Do you mean brainwashing?
This was back in the good old days of so-called "gatekeeping" in which adults who struggled with dysphoria were evaluated and helped by doctors who worked from the precautionary principle. Only those were green-lighted for transition who were assessed, through a careful and lengthy process, as likely to benefit despite the risks. Moving to "self ID" has caused so much harm in so many ways.
Same experience here. I’m from New Orleans which as long as I can remember was a gay friendly city. I know a trans woman who also happened to be a physician. In the 90s, not even a fully grown adult doctor, who certainly understood what he was doing, could get the surgery without years of therapy from several different psychiatrists. She also had to “live as a woman” for several years prior. She told me she had to have recommendation letters from the doctors who treated her before she could even have the surgery in Taiwan. Apparently they were more experienced in Taiwan, but she still ended up with a terrible post surgery infection which caused a much longer and harder recovery. How anyone could allow a minor to undertake this is just beyond the pale. Anyway, my friend definitely wanted to blend in as a woman and just BE. No agenda, definitely no thinking she was somehow special. It upended her life in many ways..
Yeah. What does the Q mean?
Back in the day, meaning the first seven decades of the twentieth century, the word "queer" was a slur, something straight people would yell on the street as they threw rocks at us or punched us in the face. We gays and lesbians used the word occasionally -- ironically -- with quotation marks around it, to signify that we knew what the world thought of us, but oh well, what are you gonna do?
When the alphabet people adopted it as part of their lexicon, it made no dent in my thinking. Its original connotation held and it still does. Now, queer carries with it the erasure of lesbians and gays in a new way, by denying our sex. Trans activists appropriated gay narratives to legitimate themselves, although gay and trans have very little in common. Back in the day, gay conversion therapy meant something pernicious and terrible for gay men. It included hard core religious bullying, behavior modification, and electro-shock treatments. But trans conversion therapy means nothing more than asking probing questions and listening to the answers. Taking nothing for granted. Considering, thinking, feeling, assessing. You know, therapy.
I feel very sorry for confused teens who go to a gender therapist today expecting to discuss their feelings and the origins of their dysphoria, but instead leave after one visit with a prescription for puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Only one question asked: do you think you're trans?
I don't know what the Q means. Ask them.
A very good friend of mine was an artist at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he was one a number of gay men there in the late 50s, & he was not out at the time, or at least, wasn't when he first got there. I remember him telling me how strange he thought the new word "gay" was, like people thought they were ebullient or dancing all the time, plus he never wanted to seem swishy. I can hear him telling the story. He was a hoot.
I've been following two young women who are detransitioning & being vocal about the treatment they got as minors who went for help & got exactly what you describe, & how they were best case ghosted, worst case violently bullied, by the trans community when they expressed regret. Your gender is affirmed but only if it's the gender the trans community deems is right for you, apparently. You've probably heard of Chloe Cole. The other is Prisha Mosley. Prisha is new to youtube. She's really eloquent. The diagnosed mental disorders she had before surgery, which should have prevented those surgeries, are now being used by the gender specialists as the reason for her regret. This is actually true for both of them. They are young women who both want children & no longer have breasts. The whole thing is ghastly, nightmarish.
Yes, I'm familiar with Ms. Cole and Ms. Mosley. Both are very brave, articulate and intelligent. Both have gone from being victims to being activists in order to save the lives of others.
Their stories break my heart. What was done to them in the name of "helping" would be a bad joke if the results weren't so catastrophic. Prisha's story is particularly sad because she doesn't seem to have the support of her family that Chloe has. But she's become more confident with every video. She puts herself in harms way, risking her own physical safety to tell the truth in state legislatures around the country. For example, in Tennessee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exiNdzYf7AU
Chloe also testifies before state legislative bodies. I'm hoping that her personal lawsuit will be the first of many to bankrupt the medical groups that prey on the bodies of children.
Yes I hope so too. I was dismayed to hear it's kaiser she's suing, which is like suing a tobacco company. Kaiser also puts a 250k cap on what you can be awarded in the event you win, but this likely isn't about damages as much as damage. I hope it opens a floodgate of suits & that these butchers are all bankrupted.
Kevin, that is a question that needs more attention. I don't understand why the LGB tolerate the Ts attaching themselves to their agenda. I have heard some gays complain about it.
Quite honestly, I don't even like the B's!
Before there was general legal protection for gay men and lesbian women in workplace and marriage, I never liked the people who would show up at an advocacy event for legal protection for same-sex relations, and declared "but I like women, too! Include us! Change your group's name"
Can you imagine if, for example, at an advocacy group for bicycle commuters' people would come and scream: "But I walk too! Change your name to the 'Park Slope Bicycle and Pedestrian Commuter's advocacy group!'"
(And in my 60 years as a gay man, I've never actually known a bisexual, in terms of a friend or even casual acquaintance who dated both men and women.)
I knew a few people who called themselves bi back in the day. It never stuck as a lifestyle; ie was a stepping stone from which to return to being straight after experimenting, or going on to being gay after making an announcement they felt wouldn't shock anyone, including themselves.
Can you speak to why the LGB community is including Ts as part of their agenda?
I think originally nobody had a problem welcoming the tiny, tiny number of actual transgender women into "gay spaces." They were very marginalized and would find sympathetic company. Trans women in gay bars 30 and 40 years ago were welcome and treated politely. I never saw any trans men.
Today, "trans" is something very different. I see it as homophobic. Today, they're telling women who would possibly have been happy lesbians 20+ year ago that they're actually men and need surgery and drugs. And "sissy" boys who prefer to play with the girls aren't allowed to be sissies, they're given puberty blockers. Parents prefer it this way. They'd rather have a kid with a medical condition that needs drugs than, frankly, a little c*cks*cker for a son. To me, it's very anti-gay.
Another reason is most of the issues the LG community fought for have been solved. There's gay marriage, and little workplace discrimination. Instead of folding up their tents, the existing advocacy groups needed something to do, so they branch out.
As a religious Jewish gay man, I find that I can't participate in any "gay" organization today. They've *all* embraced intersectionality, which means that Jews are evil colonizing oppressors. I'm not welcome.
My gay friends say there is no such thing as a bi-sexual man. They’re just gay who occasionally enjoy sex with a woman
Some Indeed! There's a huge #waronlesbians faction & there was an uproar some years ago about that with regard to the Pride parade in Edinburgh. The perspective of one #lesbianvisibility person is documented here, & it ain't pretty. No terfs on our turf, etc. etc. Lots of lesbians apparently too frightened to attend the parade.
https://forwomen.scot/22/06/2019/pride-edinburgh/
I think this is key to the "terf" attacks: "a specific misogyny towards homosexual women who dare to define and defend their sexuality without men telling us what it should be"
Thanks for the link Fifi. So much hatred! So much misogyny.
I had no idea.
I think it means "queer" but have no idea how that might be different from "gay". Or care.
Oh gay is way too binary!
(Am I here right now?)
"Queer." I've heard it also means "Questioning," but it seems kind of dangerous to have one abbreviation letter mean two different things. It occurs to me that this is exactly the kind of thing they are fighting against! Who knows to what nefarious purpose Q might be put by the unscrupulous, & how much psychological damage could result from being mislettered.
Yeah it means queer but I’m asking what queer means. If you really drill down it just means communist.
It means "not you." I think logically that means "other," won't they be surprised to find _that_ out. That they are othering themselves.
That's an orthogonal property. I've known a number of "queers" over the years who were not at all communists. Some were quite conservative.
I am talking about people who identify as “queer”. They are all communists.
I dare say there isn’t a single non-psychopath who identifies as “queer” and yet we are somehow lumping these people in with gays and lesbians.
In reality I think the moniker LGBTQ+ is homophobic. The T and the Q are almost always just psychotic perverts so it’s kinda horrendous to lump them in with lesbians and gays.
“Oh yeah it is weird sex. It’s all the same thing. Let’s group them together.”
I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.
If you're referring to adults who are "queer" activists, I don't know if they're ALL communists and/or psychopaths. it seems like a bit of a generalization, especially the psychopath part, but you could be right. They do have a leftist worldview founded in critical theory, which is Marxist, or Maoist, or a variation of one of those.
But if you're referring to pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults, who have been indoctrinated in gender theory and call themselves queer because they think it's cutting edge, then no, I don't think they're communists or psychopaths. They're children -- followers -- who have no idea who they are or how the world works. And many of them won't have a fully-developed prefrontal cortex for years. It's impossible to know how they're going to turn out. It helps me to remember that desistance and detransition are definitely a possibility.
I can't speak for everyone but queer is often the preferred option for people who don't feel like any other labels are quite right, hence the 'other' option, and it's been that way for a long time. As an example, I've known a number of women who were mostly straight, but sometimes attracted to women. Straight doesn't quite fit, bisexual doesn't quite fit, so queer works for some people. Not all perverts, often not even involved in activism, just outside the standard checkboxes.
Justin-- People tend to be ignorant. Recently, when there was a backlash against showing Gone With The Wind in colleges because it might "trigger" people-- and then everyone turned against the deceased Margaret Mitchell-- I read that she was good friends with Benjamin May who was president of the all male- all Black Morehouse college and had donated lots of money to the college. So many people are being cancelled or blacklisted because of people who know very little beyond a Woke mentality. I worry that we are becoming a country where the Woke police are watching us in case we make a 'wrong move.'
Do you find your LGBTQ+ friends are angry with Rowling or felt betrayed by her comments? I’m genuinely interested how broad this backlash is or if we just tend the “nutpick” the worst of them?
"nutpick". What an apt expression. Thank you for that. I'm going to use it.
Nutpicking is what the MSM typically does when covering anything involving conservatives. It's basically what they did with the Jan 6th debacle. But everything - they look around and find the one nut they can use and try to pretend they're all like that. That's precisely what Michelle Goldberg did in that podcast a couple days ago where she talked about being the only journalist among them that actually attended the truckers strike in Ottawa. She managed to pick the one nut who was there for "mushrooms" and wrote about him. FB and Twitter and email lists everywhere were full of commentary by non-nut truckers and their friends and family at that strike. MSM won't ever hear interviews with any of them.
The “ worst of them” is the loudest. Then...they have a lot of support
Amen
Glad to see that you’re confusing the woke mobs by sitting facts and common sense. Well said.
"confusing the woke mobs by sitting facts and common sense"
I'm not woke but am thoroughly confused nevertheless: perhaps it's the spelling, citing facts?
I doubt the woke mobs read any of these comments or his substack.
Cry.
The human condition is a complex mix and sorting out the various emotions through experience is an excellent teaching device. Everyone on earth has voluntarily joined this school and will graduate eventually. There is no urgency and you have all the time in the world to understand what Jesus was teaching 2,000 years ago. Good luck and may the force be with you!
Harry Potter came out when I was in my twenties. I used to see people on the T in Boston reading it all the time and thought, “I can’t believe these adults are reading a children’s book. They need to get a life.”
Now I have children and have read the entire series and realize how wrong I was. As noted in the article, if you want your kids to learn about the qualities that make for a good person, read Harry Potter (and the James Harriot series). JK Rowling is an inspiration.
The thing that bothers me the most are the ungrateful assholes who starred in the movies and now try and distance themselves from Rowling. They only reason anyone know who the hell you are is because of Rowling. You should have shrines set up to her in all of your houses.
Fun fact- did you know Emma Watson loves children so much she sits on the board of the parent company of Balenciaga? Big fan of kids she is...
“Emma Watson loves children so much she sits on the board of the parent company of Balenciaga”
—————————————————
Nothing will ever top John Cena apologizing to China.
Big bad LeBron on his knees before Xi Jinping? Jamie Dimon's servile apology? Disney's editing to please the Chi Com censors? Jiao Bideng taking their laundered cash? Oh, no, Cena has plenty of competition.
Lebron Jiang
Irrelevant.
There are tens of billions of dollars at stake. You're damn right they're going to apologize for whatever they're told to apologize for. They did everything but lie prostrate in sackcloth and ashes.
Irrelevant.
Is that a self-proclamation?
"Jiao Bideng" is hilarious.
It’s even better because Jiao is an actual Chinese word for 1/10th Yuan and it works perfectly with 10% for the Big Guy
“The thing that bothers me the most are the ungrateful assholes who starred in the movies and now try and distance themselves from Rowling”
Well, they are actors. Most of them have about as much depth and imagination as a single, blank sheet of paper. For most of them, qualities like integrity, courage and loyalty are simply concepts written on a script.
From being around musicians, I concur that most of them have only a very shallow knowledge of politics. The bulk of their opinions comes from what their peer group tells them. Few of them spend any time doing their own research. It is what it is. Most artists have to bust their tails to make a living, and they don't have much time for anything else. However, it is still true that one should, in general, refrain from making grand pronouncements about subjects of which one knows nothing.
Does anyone have integrity anymore? Sad. I find fewer and fewer people willing to stand up against the Powers that Be (the extreme right or the extreme left).
It's a little easier when you have financial independence.
True, but it also requires a backbone.
Indeed. It does indeed. I am full of admiration for her. I was thinking of those who cannot afford to have such backbones.
I sympathize, very much, with those who would have to pay a high price. But what any of us cannot afford is to not have a backbone. Think of the price those who fought and died for the creation of the nation paid. Or the price those who have fought and died for her preservation have paid.
True, unfortunately.
And if they want to keep working they have to virtue signal like all the others. They are basically whores in the broad sense. My apologies to the real profession. And I suspect that to portray the kinds of graphic sex acts they so routinely do in movies these days they are in fact literal prostitutes as well.
I agree Tim. Especially the weenie who played HP.
nothing more true than the ad for pepsi on the super bowl about "acting"
The only possible excuse, not that it’s a good one, is that as actors, their livelihoods depend directly on how people perceive them. They all have agents, and probably have public relations teams whose entire job is to figure out situations like this. If I had to guess, they were advised or told by their staff to publicly deny support for J K Rowling to maintain their careers and popularity. They are still young and have much of their careers ahead of them, and so the pressure to follow that advice must be enormous.
I seriously think that Emma Watson was cast as Hermione at an impressionable time in her psychological development, and somehow all those hours playing Hermione convinced her that she's smarter than she actually is. She's a pretty mediocre actress, too, though not as godawful as some of her detractors would have one believe.
Exactly!
I love “nutpicks!”
The stars, who are only stars bc Rowling wrote an amazing series, are garbage. Where’s their courage that they showed as the characters in the books? Where is their acceptance of other people’s opinions? They tempered their response to see if they were accepted by what they perceived as “the right group!” What about all of their fans??
I think they will end up on the wrong side of this ultimately. Not sure when things will turn back to intelligent thinking.
To my mind the issue is simple: it is possible to have a same sex attraction and be mentally normal. It is possible to have a fulfilling sexual encounter with someone of the same gender .
It is not possible to CHANGE your gender. Period. Full Stop. There is no second option.
It is possible to change your gender PRESENTATION even to the point where your external genitalia are changed and your internal hormonal environment artificially altered (in what are likely profoundly unhealthy and life shortening ways), but you CANNOT CHANGE YOUR GENDER. Unless you are a hermaphrodite, you are born XX or XY. That is one of the most basic postulates of Biology, even if even that field is getting corrupted by politics.
So claiming that you can change your gender is delusional. Nuts. Insane. And demanding that others join you in that delusional belief is abusive and fascistic.
And as she said, Feminism has no meaning if anyone can be a woman any time they choose, even if they were born with a penis.
The whole Trans agenda is nuts, and I honestly think the people funding and driving all this have it as their intention breaking and shaking any remaining social cohesion we had to smithereens.
And to be clear, there have always been, in all cultures, people who identified as other than their birth gender. In some times and places they were punished severely, and in others accepted and even given a name that amounted to Other (as in Male, Female and Other). There is nothing wrong with being different in this way.
What is wrong is claiming that you actually CAN change gender, and in pushing pro-Trans propaganda relentlessly on our children, and then making it easy for them to make permanent bad decisions.
That, and of course cohering in violent mobs. There is nothing Liberal about that.
Kudos to Rowling for sticking to her guns in what truly is a cultural war.
And what does that tell you about the people - including the Democrat administration and medical community - which tells you otherwise?
To my mind, after COVID anything is possible. And anyone who failed to grasp the obvious lesson from COVID--that the System is corrupt--is an idiot.
But yes, they are paying biologists to make one of the simplest ideas in biology convoluted and ambiguous. AND SOME OF THEM ARE DOING IT.
That they've lost their minds.
Money and power are strong aphrodisiacs to whomever...
Biological sex is distinct from gender. In the 90s, we knew this. We understood that biological sex is a fixed characteristic, though gender could be mutable (there have been two-spirit people around for ages). Now, too many people want to pretend that biological sex is mutable, but gender is fixed. You're a girl who wears your hair short and likes watching war movies and playing with toy trucks? You're actually a boy. Today's gender wars are the stupidest thing I have ever seen. And I'm not that young.
I've been reading biologists trying to claim that even biological sex is mutable.
Obviously, if people want to say that little boys don't need to act a certain way and little girls another, that's fine and it's true. Much of our expectations comes from acculturation.
But at the same time, praising little girls who reach for trucks and little boys who reach for dolls is also acculturation; and I would wonder if the little boy you made into a little girl by praising "girl" behaviors and ignoring or even punishing "boy" behaviors is HAPPIER.
Boys and girls really do have observative differences from the earliest ages. They are not major, but small things over time tend to become large things. Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking.
Would society benefit from emphasizing empathy more in boys, and assertiveness and physical courage in women? Probably. But that's not really what we are discussing, is it?
You can wish you were born another gender, but that doesn't mean you are. Same with race. Seems like it would be better to work on accepting what you are than trying to medically alter it.
I think.much of it is a parent or parents with baggage of various types putting their thumb on the scale.
That and/or taking "You can be whatever you want to be" to the extreme.
Good point. I think the phrase was originally intended to mean in this world you can be anything you want to be but has been expanded to the world of imagination. So now for some the imaginary world is conflate with the real world.
"Boys are more active, and tend to favor things and movement. Girls are less active, and tend to favor dolls and talking," is that across cultures, or in just one culture? I have a hard time believing that a girl liking dolls is biological.
The research I know of was done, I believe, in the United States and the UK.
But have you not observed differences between men and women all your life in how they process the world? Women are born more social. And their brains have more connections between the hemispheres, which makes them better at multi-tasking, which is useful for mothers.
I can't for the life of me see why this would not be cross cultural. Men dominate in nearly every society the world over, and if, as I believe, matriarchal culture predominated for some time in our prehistory, that simply means that the boys were taught to respect the feminine more than they are now. They were still doing the hunting and heavy lifting.
And of course it is interesting to speculate on the psychosocial effects of female political dominance, but I'm not going to do that here today.
"Women are born more social." See, that's the kind of thing I mean. I need evidence for that. I just don't buy it. Maybe it's because I'm not social. Traditional gender roles like liking heels and lipstick are not biological any more than actual biological sex is mutable. In hunter-gatherer societies, it did make more sense for men to do the hunting because they were biologically stronger, yes. Women did the gathering and hunting small game and contributed to the food supply that way. I'll give you that. But the relative value placed on hunting vs. gathering varied widely across pre-industrial hunter-gatherer societies.
Male and female brains literally have small differences, such as the density of the Corpus Callosum, and the relative sizes of different parts.
And estrogen obviously has an effect, as does testosterone. These differences are not HUGE, and differing cultures can wind up with a very very wide range of acceptable ways of behaving based on these biological differences. But they are real, and left to themselves do tend to cause nearly all cultures to view the male/female distinction as a primary difference from which many others derive, like sun and moon.
To my mind, scoping out the exact differences is not that interesting, and any more that's probably not research you can even do, any more than you could look into the possibility that many homosexuals were sexually traumatized and that that likely has something to do with it.
Camille Paglia, an old-school feminist that I have a lot of respect for, has said, "If women ran the world, we'd all still be living in grass huts."
You MUST watch Jordan Petersen's 2-hour interview of Chloe Cole. You must.
It is biological & not only across cultures, across species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3MzPeomqs&ab_channel=JordanBPeterson
I think the current idea of gender is a relative modern invention and has become divorced from biological sex in the sense of male and female (XX or XY chromosomes) which are obviously immutable from conception on.
And the medical profession knows this and is not speaking for fear of whatever, not that I think everyone has to come out with personal confessions. But in their practices they know and should be having truthful conversations with patients and with their families, friends, neighbors, anyone who asks their educated opinions.
Big money in trans surgeries. In my community the largest hospital in the state is preparing for it. They are asking for a 130 million dollar surgery building. Vermont.
Exactly. You have voiced my opinion entirely.
I like to read diaries of the westerners who first moved into the former U.S. Western frontier. Original sources are the way to go. Learned that in high school history with De Toqueville's "Democracy in America," bless Mr. Rizos' heart. His humane, funny, informed rationalism outlives him in his many former students.
Learning in those diaries about the many Native American cultures exposed me to values uninfluenced by European and Middle Eastern history. Most Native American cultures were sexually modest, a few libertine. Virtually all had a role for those rare few, mostly men but occasionally women, who chose to present and live socially as the opposite sex. This convinced me trans identity is normal and valid even if rare, that it is more fundamental than being a liberal right of freedom, that describing it as a mental illness is unnecessary. Not clear whether it was related to homosexuality, which was not described. Maybe a taboo on the part of the diarists.
Yet Native Americans did not imagine such men were actually women. They were what they were, something different and unique. I never found any evidence that female warriors were permitted in male-only spaces like kivas. Men presenting as women may have been in female meal preparation areas but there would be no need for them to isolate for menstruation or childbirth.
Current archeology is strongly influenced by woke ideology and the subject is invisible, or questioned without supporting data. It would be fascinating for this subject to be explored by an unbiased researcher. The population of Native Americans was high enough that rare atypical behaviors would be apparent. Not so sure about other stone age groups, with lower populations, in South America and Africa. Wonder about the Aborigines.
The Trans community wants to portray historical females who "passed" as males for reasons having nothing to do with their gender identity as really being "trans men".
>>They were what they were, something different and unique>>
On the Indian subcontinent, hijras are recognized as a third gender, neither male nor female. India, Nepal, and Bangladesh have all officially recognized third-gender hijras as citizens deserving of equal rights.
How fascinating. I had never heard of this.
Wikipedia is unreliable and I don't find much else that is specific with a cursory search, but the category seems to have arisen from hermaphrodites, an ambiguous sex before chromosomes could be determined. Most hijras, though, seem to be male with their genitalia removed to make them eunuchs.
There is certainly a history in both East and West of converting males to eunuchs by removing at least the testicles before puberty. That was a unique gender role, eternal, adult prepubescence, although the testicles meant the individual's sex was male. Having internal gonads, it would be harder to make a female eunuch. It certainly is analogous to some of what is chosen now.
Thanks for sharing this.
Here's a good summary:
https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/gender/third-gender-and-hijras
There's a book about and containing letters of Ethyl Waxham, called "Lady's Choice" that you would probably enjoy. She graduated from Wellesley in 1905 but then took a position teaching in a one room school house in a remote part of Wyoming and ultimately married a rancher nearby whom she corresponded with for a number of years. She's an excellent writer of letters and her life was very interesting. I bought a copy of it for my wife when we were visiting the museum shop at Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. I haven't seen it elsewhere but it's probably available on line. We were reading the book to each other while driving from Washington State to North Carolina and back - through some of the country she was talking about.
Cool, thanks so much! I found it on archive.org. (The paperback is pricey online!)
We woke up this morning and there was 1/8th of an inch of "snow" on the grass outside. Nothing on the roads. They closed the schools to be safe. One of the remarkable things we kept noticing in the Waxham book was how they would routinely get on a horse and go through 3-4 foot drifts for miles off some beaten path just to say, "Hi" to someone they hadn't seen in a while. People today have no idea what they could be capable of.
Thanks for the info!
Wouldn’t it be better for Megan Phelps Roper to interview you Barry? You seem to have a better understanding in one post, then I’m sure we will pick up from the interview with JK. You cannot change your gender it’s as simple as that. If you born a woman that’s what you are the same for a man. If you just take interaction on this site, I’m sure 95% of people will agree with you. We need to stand up and stand together that this above all else is just demonic and has absolutely no place in our societies. I think what will be a big game changer is if any new administration cuts the federal $$$, the change will be instantaneous.
LOL. I am certainly ready with opinions, but am not myself so delusional as to think many people want or need them.
I have been calling J.K. Rowling Joanne Rowling for some time--and I am the only person I know doing this consistently--because that is her name. As I understand the story, the J.K. was intended to mask the fact that she was a woman, since the nerd world is largely dominated by male nerds.
So the very fact of how she is called provides some cause for feminist complaints of the valid sort.
For my part, I have high trust in her intelligence, courage and forthrightness, and anticipate an interesting interview. This is a huge win both for this interviewer and this website, and I am gratified to see that.
Boycott Vermont.
It's not that I am strongly opposed to gays but, I am furious about the LBGTQ political agenda that intentionally infiltrations this small. They have orchestrated very destructive divisions in this vulnerable state because of our size. Pop 600,000. VT now has more LGBTQ residents than another other state. Our small state ought to be federally protected from the abusiveness of incoming radicals with political agendas.
Parents can now register on a new-born's birth certificate that they are of no gender.
Please join this protest.
Boycott Vermont and make it known why.
When you elected Bernie your senator many years ago, the state was set up for the consequences to set in. Reap what you sow - and maybe move to another state.
Bernie ran for governor in VT and did not win.
WE did not put Bernie in office. Bernie won his first campaign by one or two votes. Progressives saw that as an opportunity and moved in to conquer. Over the years they have had a lot of losses. But, they have a VERY firm grip now. It's tragic.
I had never read her books but she turns out to be much braver than almost every writer out there (exception being obviously Rushdie). That so many writers organisations have been mealy mouthed instead of in full defence of her free speech is not only disappointing it's pathetic.
Don't forget Stephen King mealy mouthing. The man can't be cancelled either and he too bent at the knee instead of standing with Rowling who's his friend.
I had to mute King's tweets. What a conventional mouthpiece.
I still remember how it all went down. First he had to unlike her tweet even after she heaped praises on him for his support. But of course that wasn't enough for The Mob. Then he tried to mealy mouth his way to explain himself. None of it was enough until they pinned him agains the wall. It was really something to watch him finally capitulate with the last single tweet "Trans Women Are Women". And then they let him go.
The whole thing was wild! It was like watching Peter denied Jesus three times and the rooster crowed. Tell me again this isn't a religion.
Writers who oppose freedom of speech are, by definition, apparatchiks.
“They removed photos of her from their websites and Potter tattoos from their bodies.”
—————————————————-
I actually can’t think of anyone I respect less than the person who gets a Harry Potter tattoo removed.
Like the baseline we are starting at is that you have a Harry Potter tattoo. So you’re already a moron. But then you get the tattoo removed because you’re a huge fan of child molesters and you feel offended on their behalf.
I just can’t even believe these are real people.
GREAT, tattoo comment.
Not political?
So what do you call kindergarten teachers asking 5 year olds about their genitals, encouraging them to hide conversations from their parents, and promoting grown men stripping as a form of “inclusion?”
And yet the Democrats promote those very things in both policy and rhetoric and they are most certainly not out of a job. The dude calling himself Rachel is insisting on making sure child genital mutilation is embraced as part of the policies he’s implementing as part of his politically appointed position and these people are certainly not out of a job because of the political party that backs them. In fact the political party involved investigated parents and called them domestic terrorists for saying exactly what you just said.
We need to recognize reality. Political reality is that there may always be extremes, but they are only truly dangerous when the extremes are driving policy. There are no "extreme" factions on the right driving policy today. The extreme left is the SOLE driver of policy right now on the left.
Platitudes like "both parties have extremes" is how people get easily convinced that being a "haven" for 12-year-olds to genitally mutilate their own bodies without their parents even knowing or kindergarten teaches talking to 5-year-olds about their genitals and being born in the "wrong" body is somehow "equivalent" to taking porn out of public-school libraries and banning child genital mutilation since the damage is often irreversible. In reality these things aren't even in the same universe, but people believe they are because they believe the platitude "both parties have extremists" and become convinced completely reasonable actions, like removing porn from public schools for children, is just as extreme as mandating it be shown to little kids.
The best argument anyone has for "extremists" on the right is around abortion, but even that gets exaggerated by the opposition with false claims a 6-week elective ban with many exceptions is "really" going to ban birth control or the morning after pill. Moreover, the actual policies being promoted on the left are at least as extreme as they openly claim that burning a 38-week baby alive in saline, or ripping a 30-week baby apart alive, while that human being killed feels every bit of it, for ANY reason, is "healthcare." The majority of the country would like to follow a common European approach of a post 10-12 week ban on elective abortions. Once things settle down, I think most states and/ or the country will end up at that more reasonable and moderate position. My point is in this case BOTH extremes control the policy in this one area.
You are correct on the media which is a huge problem and screams of a need for antitrust. Many industries do - healthcare, banking, media, technology. Even public education needs to have competition which for most of the population the consolidation of school districts and opposition to school choice by the left prevents. We need anti-trust and a commitment to competition. We have a better chance of actually getting that by supporting moderate populists with growing power in the Republican party in the primaries than we will begging the Democrats to stop acting crazy or building a 3rd party from the ground up.
Okay. This is one podcast that I _will_ listen to because I greatly admire J.K. Rowling.
_Not_ as the author of the "Harry Potter" books, which (while I _did_ read them aloud to my children when they were growing up) I considered rather pedestrian in style though A+ in world-building. So far as magical children's literature goes, though, I personally much prefer E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Andrew Lang, and even Kipling.
But I _so_ admire that quick retort: "Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"
Rowling is an absolute hero to me.
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the feminist movement I more-or-less grew up with. I guess they'd call it first-wave feminism.
To me, the whole creeping politicization of the trans phenomenon is such a blatant attempt to co-opt that movement. It makes me want to scream.
The gay rights movement has been co-opted, too.
There was always a slippery slope with feminism and racial civil rights. There was the call for equality of opportunity. That is what affected me. Ivy league schools Yale and Harvard did not accept females when I was applying to college. My male peers refuse to believe that, are convinced women had equal opportunity if not preference when they were young. They look it up, find it is true, then forget it and have to be reminded again. Embedded beliefs are very hard to replace.
Then there was the focus on oppression, with victims, women and black people, and oppressors, men or white people. This was the path taken, a dark path.
The great leaders, Mandela and King, in spite of any personal faults, held up a Christian ideal rarely achieved, of reconciliation. They understood that any oppression is harmful to the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and they valued all humanity.
The other view is easier. It is cheap moral virtue, as the widely misrepresented Jordan Peterson says. It appeals to a person with a simple worldview.
Religion exists partly because most people are that simple. If a few can establish a structure that guides everyone, that is worth doing, yet such power has its own great risks.
All of the 20th-century civil rights movements have gone bad. Every one of them has degenerated into a special-interest group, demanding privileges, and enforcing conformity among its members.
Such and interesting set of statements you've made here. Loved paragraphs 3-5.
After smart phones and social media, time seems to have sped up and experience distorted.
Women have been admitted to Harvard since the 1930s.
Yale did not accept female undergrads until (1969, I believe). I was a freshperson in 72, unfortunately ran out of $ after one year but remember this clearly.
In the 60's, when I was a child, my father expected me to get a scholarship to Radcliff (Harvard's sister school for women). I remember clearly, tho i could be wrong, that Harvard was for men only at that time.
Not undergraduate women. You are incorrect, as were my male friends. Radcliffe and Harvard combined their admissions in 1975, three years after I applied to college.
Radcliffe. Grad school. Med school Law school. But I could not get a Harvard undergraduate degree regardless of my qualification because of my sex. They. Did. Not. Accept. Women. I was there, then. Were you?
I refused to attend a school "for women." When Yale opened its doors to women two years later I was accepted as a math transfer.
I agree with all of this including:
"I personally much prefer E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Andrew Lang, and even Kipling."
I loved Nesbit, Lang's compilations, George McDonald... Then, there's L.M. Boston, Hugh Lofting, L. Frank Baum, Joan Aiken... I guess Rowling reminded kids that reading was a thing.
I admire Rowling most for speaking out on the Wimpund issue.
Have you read Edward Eager?
Top rate! I can't recommend him highly enough. 😀
He was the one on the list I didn't know. I need to be a grandma someday and do the children's book thing all over again :)
Keep in mind that Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series for children, so I give her pedestrian writing style a pass. As a huge fan of the Potter books, I decided to try her mystery series, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. These minutiae-laden tomes are gratuitously gory and definitely “adult” in tone, but boring, humorless, not believable, and ultimately unreadable. I know some folks love this series, but I’ll take the weird and wonderful world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry any day.
Really?! I am one of those who loved her Galbraith mysteries. Just riveting IMO.
I respected and read all the Harry Potter books as a cultural phenomenon, and watched all the movies, but I found those more of a slog.
So something for everyone! Terrific! My witch's hat off to Rowling!
Yes, something for everyone. My mind is open to trying out whatever she writes, I have such respect for her.
Don't agree.
I know the difference between children's and adult fiction. Would not describe the style of E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Andrew Lang, Kipling, or George MacDonald (cited below) as pedestrian.
And the Cormoran Strike books are okay. Show her growth as a writer.
But anyway, I love her, you love her. No need to argue. 😀
I don't give them credit for the foresight but it certainly is becoming the effect.
No matter how often I read or hear asinine terms like “people who menstruate”, and “assigned at birth”, I still cringe. And, too, the way these ideologues manipulate language is far worse than Double Speak. That I had to explain to my daughter a week after she finished health class what a person’s sex is, that the words “sex” and “gender” are not interchangeable, is ludicrous.
This is our world today. College educated...or indoctrinated...whichever, lefties genuinely believe we can solve every perceived sexual and gender phobic issue by inventing new words. The thinking is, I assume, is that if it sounds better we’ll all buy into it. Marketing 101.
I remember taking a trip to Las Vegas decades ago on a 3 day junket which included air fare, hotel accommodations, free meals and limousine service to and from the airport. Up until then my only limousine ride was a trip to a burial site for a close relative. So a Las Vegas limo ride sounded pretty cool.
My wife and I arrived at the airport and followed a man who turned out to be our driver out of the building. I say turned out because I had envisioned our driver in a dark suit with a cap on like we see in movies. Our casually dressed escort led us to a nondescript white passenger van nearly full of other guests. Before boarding I remarked to our driver “I thought we were supposed to be taking a limousine.” He smiled and assured me “This IS a limousine.”
They also think they can solve the homeless problem by calling them "person experiencing houselessness". Now the dug addicts sleeping in tents are no different from the Instagrammer documenting his Van Life on camera.
I recently heard this one, too: “an unhoused person”.
The problem with changing language like this is eventually phrases lose their meanings and constantly have to be updated. It's all nonsense.
Actually, the REAL problem is they're eliminating all the words that people in dire situations need to sound alarm to their situations. Homeless people and those who seriously want to help them need the word "homeless" to explain their problem at hand. Not many regular people will run out to lend a hand to the unhoused Millennial retrofitting a van or a school bus to live like a free spirit near the Grand Canyon.
It’s the playbook our dear leader uses in his mumbling disgorgements of hubris.
From him we learned we weren’t in a recession, we wouldn’t get involved in any offensive actions in Ukraine, our economy is the best it’s ever been, the border is secure, the Afghan pullout was a major success…I could go on. Next he’ll tell us they aren’t homeless, they are just millions of people waiting to take advantage of a buyers market when interest rates, which skyrocketed thanks to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, drop to more favorable rates.
Our contributions to the Ukraine are only a tiny part of what caused this inflation. It's caused by the printing of 8 or 10 trillion dollars since covid started and distributing it. The supply of goods and services didn't increase correspondingly, so there is a lot more money available competing for the same amount of goods and services. Prices have to go up correspondingly. The Ukraine contributions are only in the billions. An order of magnitude (or more) money was printed with no corresponding increase in GDP.
It's also a clever way to tax all the savings people have locked up in 401ks and pensions.
But I agree with the rest of what you wrote.
I guess we need to start referring to the poor as "persons experiencing lack of wealth".
😂😂😂I know it’s not funny, but this post got me laughing.
Unfortunately, in most cases homelessness is a consequence not a cause of their situations. Substance abuse is the general precondition. And mental illness, although people who have been abusing some of those drugs - particularly meth- seem to become deranged over time anyway.
That is true about the overlap between mental illness and drug use. Too much drug use and then drug-induced psychosis.
Yes. You can play that game all day. Keep changing the phrasing to obscure the fact that the person is homeless. Who knows how long before the words house and home are deemed ‘privilegist’ and therefore abusive language psychologically harmful to the “unhoused”. New terms for that thing you live in like ‘affixed structure accommodating persons of privilege’ are closer than we ever want to imagine.
I think it's also insulting to the homeless. All those lengthy phrases the ideologues fashion to describe people are. Calling a homeless person unhoused does not make them feel any better. Those who use the term aren't doing it to benefit the homeless but to say “look how moral and superior I am”.
As long as it makes the ideologues (the only benefactors of their activism) feel better it solves half the problem of homelessness,right?
I imagine their discussions over Chardonnay and finger sandwiches along the lines of, “If the homeless could just realize how life changing our words are and do their part to find somewhere to live. It’s so frustrating. Anyone else need another glass of wine?”
We'll, it changes it from a factual descriptive adjective to one that implies they've been victimized by external agents.
Bulls... to be honest. My youngest daughter had a baby a couple of months ago ( a boy). She was chatting to another new Mum about Brest feeding, this new Mum told her “we need to call it chest feeding now” I could not believe what I had just heard. My daughter told her politely you can call it what you want, but for me it’s breast feeding 😃😃
"Chest feeding" always makes me think of the movie "Alien".
Yip chest feeding is for Aliens.
What the… just when you think the language game couldn't get any worse.
Yes, I was corrected by a self-righteous twit who explained to me that the term for a person who sleeps under a bridge is “unhoused.”
In that case, every car I've ever owned has been a limousine. And 2+2=5. Right is left. Up is down.
A woman is what a person calls himself...
Sorry, but no amount of surgery, chemicals or wishful thinking will turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man. I could not care less if men want to pretend that they are women or women pretend they are men. We are all a little bit weird in one way or another, so who am I to judge? However, when we start allowing men into private spaces for women and allow men to compete in women's sports, I draw the line. This nuttiness that has infected the Democratic Party will prevent me from ever supporting them.
Huzzah to J.K. Rowling! Too few public figures today are willing to stand behind their convictions...
An earlier female author exposed the horror of the experiments our medical and legal establishments are pushing today - Mary Shelley.
Not caring less about men saying they are women and vice versa open the door to men into women's private spaces and sports. This crap is personified misogyny.
Tell me Sofia, what would you do? Would you make cross-dressing illegal? If I changed my name from Charlie to Charlene and informed you that my preferred pronouns are she/her, would you toss me in prison?
Under the non aggression principle, everyone is free to do as they like as long as they do no harm to others or infringe upon the freedom of others. In other words, people need to mind their own damn business until someone violates the non aggression principle. Invading private spaces violates the non aggression principle. Engaging in unfair competition violates the non aggression principle. Allowing a child to make stupid, life-altering decisions violates the non aggression principle. Pretending to be the opposite sex does not.
BTW, my preferred pronoun is "M'Lord" or "My Lord, Protector of the Realm" if you're not into the whole brevity thing. :-)
Charles, you can call yourself Charlene, wear a lace pinafore, prance through life in high-heeled shoes and shout to the world that you’re a woman. You can adopt an all-fish and krill diet, wear a black dinner jacket and a white shirt and identify as an Emperor Penguin. I don’t care. But your “civil rights” don’t include insisting that I pretend that your delusion is the real deal, so I won’t be doing that.
That's amusing, if rather irrelevant. At what point did I demand you agree with me and what did I say that you find delusional?
You made the comment about changing your name then informing others of your new pronouns....... why would you be informing anyone about your new pronouns if you don’t expect them to participate in your delusion. For me that’s where the line gets crossed and my response becomes “whatever dude”
You did not clarify that demanding others recognize you as Charlene as violation of the non-aggression principle. Which might be debatable, I do not think so, but I'll give you a might. But it does violate the give them an inch . . . principle a/k/a known as the slippery slope principle. For example if sex is changed legally and proper pronounce is required by virtue thereof where failing to do so risks a hate crime offense, how can you then deny the newly minted woman the ability to compete as a woman? This query is illustrative of why I cannot Tweet. I have thoughts longer than 4 characters. 😉
Seems CPhillips you just want to argue or maybe be right. I couldn't care less about explaining anything to you. It's just not important at this point. For one thing I don't even remember what you accused me of.
Funny.
I wouldn’t toss you in prison for asking me to call you something I’ll never actually call you, but I also won’t participate in your delusion. You come and tell me you are a “she/ her” when you are clearly born with a penis and I’ll respond “no dude, I don’t play the pronoun game.” I don’t care what adults do because we are all a little weird, but I won’t participate in any way in any part of their delusions either.
Not when "doing what they like" means having an intact penis and competing in women's competitive sports, or using women's locker rooms and restrooms.
I agree, Lynne! Apparently, you did not read my first post in this thread where I clearly stated, "However, when we start allowing men into private spaces for women and allow men to compete in women's sports, I draw the line."
I did. Just wanted to emphasize it.
Since you can't be civil. F U.
You're accusing me of being uncivil? I suppose being logical and respecting people's civil liberties must be a real mind-blower for you.
I didn't see anything in her post that was objectionable or offensive or implying people shouldn't be allowed to dress up and act like whatever sex they want. She was merely objecting to allowing them to "invade private spaces" as you put it. Calm down.
Thanks Jeff C.
"Not caring less about men saying they are women and vice versa open the door to men into women's private spaces and sports..."
Maybe I'm wrong Jeff, but the way I read it, she's saying that my (and presumably others) not caring if men pretend to be women in public directly results in men invading women's private spaces and sports. That's a leap of illogic I couldn't let pass.
Every word you write is made up assumptions. You're a troublemaker.
Charles Phillips
Bravo. I might’ve said I am with you, but that was open to misinterpretation.
Terence,
I strive for clarity, but frequently fall short. What part of my comment did you see as needing clarification?
The “Harry Potter” series is exactly like a Bible because it’s a salvation story. Harry Potter is Christ who faces death and overcomes.
I don’t think Rowling finds any of the hatred she has been confronted with surprising. After all, that’s another lesson from the Gospels: if you speak the truth, the world will hate you.
I taught a course on the topic of liberty, a "Gen Ed capstone course," for senior-year students for many semesters at a local college. I will not teach the course again although students found it more than worth the effort to read books such as "On Liberty" by J.S. Mill. On the issue of free speech, students were exposed to the doings of the church alluded to in the essay. In the current truthophobic environment, a career can be ended by exposing students to a sign stating "God hates fags."
I found it cathartic to share with students how my own views on such issues as homosexuality had changed drastically because others, exercising their own freedom of speech, persuaded me that my position on issues did not stand up to scrutiny. I think it was Keynes who admitted something close to "when the facts change, I change my opinion."
The first assigned reading in the course was Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of a Slave," his first autobiography. It contains the word that begins with "n" that can no longer be uttered unless you have the right color skin. The college does have a course titled "Harry Potter" with something else in the title that currently escapes me. I think this essay and the issue it addresses would be an excellent topic but I admit being fearful of sending it to the professor for that course.
It is painful to choose to remain silent sometimes because the cost of being vocal can be career ending. Fortunately, J.K. Rowling made a fortune serving society and can withstand the financial consequences of exposing Truthophobia. I look forward to the series. Thanks for an excellent essay.
Megan - this is considerably off-topic, but I wanted to tell you how happy I am that you have separated from the evil that permeates your family. My childhood's closest friend, D.S., was killed in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion at Montcoal, WV, in 2010. A series of "protesters" - carrying "God Hates Dead Miners" signs and hailing from you-know-where - planted themselves at the vigil before it was known that there were no survivors.
I never forgot nor forgave them. There was a young woman there as well. During a time in history when there seems to be neither forgiveness nor redemption, I am glad to say that - at least for her - there has been both. Bless you.
I can't understand why people need to be reduced to their genitals (person with a penis, vulva, etc.) in order to be inclusive and accepting of transgender people. Transgender rights is not the same thing as Gender Ideology. Proponents of Gender Ideology know their arguments are illogical, so their only way to defend their position is to bully, slander, threaten and cancel those who try to argue with them.
They're not changing language to be inclusive. That's just their facade. Their true mission is to make you comply.
It also gives them the delusion of moral superiority.
Yip 💯 correct
I’m not sure it really is all that “complex”. There are two “genders”, “sexes”, whatever. There is a VERY small minority of people that struggle with their gender “identity, the VAST majority of us are VERY comfortable with our assigned genders at birth. Medical and especially surgical mutilation of children is criminal child abuse. Adults have autonomy. Not that difficult!!
Madjack
I completely agree, but only in part. Because for the MSM and Cultural Influencers it seems not just difficult but impossible.
As Rowling's story confirms, the wrath of the righteous is the surest evidence of the evil that exists just below the surface of civil society. Intolerance of different ideas, beliefs, or philosophies underlies not only book banning, but the Salem witch trials, race riots, the martyrdom of the unorthodox, the persecution of the Jews, etc., etc. Those who are absolutely convinced of their moral correctness, their favored status with God, science, or history, are the most dangerous bigots in the world. It is not only Nazis who burn books. The progress of "Political Correctness" and the "Woke" movement is just another example of this fact.
Like Abraham Lincoln, I think that rather than worry about whether God is on our side, we should be more concerned about whether we are on God's side. The most dangerous people in the world are those who are certain of the correctness of their beliefs, especially when they gather in groups.
From the time I was little my father would always say, "You see an angry crowd? You head the other direction. Don't go near it," and "The IQ of a crowd is the average IQ divided by their number".
Love that rule of crowd intelligence.
The most dangerous people are those who act on that certainty.
There’s a lot of talk these days about separating the art from the artist. But I don’t see how you can do that with Harry Potter. Rowling’s sense of morality permeates the entire series and it is decidedly not woke.
For one thing, the books are steeped in history and mythology, indicating Rowling’s reverence for these subjects. And memory in particular is a critical theme. The past is essential for understanding the present, and erasing it or replacing it with lies (in the press or other places) is counterproductive and invites evil and corruption. That is a consistent lesson.
For another, Voldemort’s entire philosophy hinges on eliminating the distinction between good and evil and replacing it with power politics. The only sides that matter are who has power and who is oppressed. Voldemort believes the muggle world and muggle-borns by extension oppress the magical world. This oppression is evil and the only way to right it is to reverse it. This is how he justifies his desire to rule the world and establish a new hierarchy where pure blood wizards are at the top. Rowling was trying to draw a comparison to Nazism of course, but the principle is broadly applicable. If you believe that the world can simply be divided between oppressors and the oppressed, you believe the same lie as Voldemort.
And lastly, no, the books are not about acceptance or finding yourself. They are about having the courage to face adversity, stand up to evil, and tell the truth even when nobody believes you, even when everybody hates you.
So of course Rowling doesn’t care about being beloved and she is determined to speak the truth! The wokeists are an army of Dolores Umbridges and Rowling is more than happy to scar her own hand to not tell lies.
I love your analysis and agree completely. I also found it amusing listening to how Christian’s vilified her and even someone suggested that Harry’s scar was like a swatzika when the entire story is essentially a ww2 category with a lot of influence of Christian morality (Harry is essentially a Christ figure, “the chosen one”, and in the end he chooses to die for everyone at the face of evil and his love protects everyone like his mothers love protected him)
Megan is becoming an a poster for what a news writer should be. I am becoming a fan of your efforts. Please don’t go left or right. Just write the stories.
JK is correct. What’s with the major efforts to make women something other than a woman? Seriously, women are the backbone of the world and I fail to understand why the woke fools want to belittle and invalidate women? A woman is so absolutely special and beautiful that the woke must be threatened by those special qualities. I can understand in a way, looking at so many of the woke crowd leads to the assumption they need to sneak up on a water fountain.
The nothing kids who got rich and famous now seem to think they are gifted. Nah, a dumbass is still a dumbass. No gratitude to the person who made your life good. You have become the poster for spoiled, rich, selfish people with no credibility on anything you cry about.