Transnegation Roundup/2020/08/04
Transnegation Roundup for Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Cis is a slur
05:54 @wendycockcroft reshares “I don't misgender or fail to use preferred descriptors, etc., in my dealings with trans people. Even so, saying that a woman is an adult human female gets me called a bigot.”
Nope. Nobody says that. I've seen this claim several times, and it's ridiculous. 
misrepresentation
She may be covertly redefining "female" to mean "cis female", but she needs to say that -- which is why it's so important to have disambiguators like "cis" in conversations like this.
This was a reshare of a tweet from Monday:
21:31 @BlairJ640 “There are people in my mentions calling me all kinds of nasty names and forcing the label ‘cis’ on me, but if I don’t respect and use a transperson’s preferred pronouns, I’m a bigot? Go figure.”
That does indeed make you at least unreasonable (which may be driven by bigotry, but possibly just misunderstanding) – because the two are not the same:
- "Cis[gender]" is a technical term, and "gender critical" advocates persistently refuse to definitively offer any alternatives. They will frequently use misleading terms like biological sex or birth sex (and gender-specific variants), but they have also argued that using these terms -- or any terms -- to distinguish between cis and trans people is problematic, for reasons that make no sense.
- Respecting someone's pronouns is just common courtesy. Nobody likes being misgendered, and there's no reason (other than bigotry) to do it knowingly.
Omission of Evidence
2020-06-10 Caught in the middle: This is a blog post by a woman with CAIS (Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome), an intersex condition in which a person who can in every other way appear and identify as female at birth, while still having a Y chromosome and lacking a uterus.
“I have even seen my biology used to accuse JK Rowling of supporting the mutilation of intersex baby’s genitals...”
I've searched the analyses of JKR's writings/tweets that I was already aware of, and searched the web by keyword for any additional information, but have not been able to find anyone making this argument. That doesn't mean it didn't happen; it just means that I don't know what was actually said. sourceless interpretation
There are connections between the positions JKR has supported and the idea that intersex babies need to be surgically "corrected" as soon as possible after birth, though without a source link it's impossible to tell what the connection was that the accuser was making. As such, this comes across more as painting JKR as the "real" victim, which she is not.
To be fair, the author does link to a long page full of screenshots of some abuse that ranged from unproductive to downright awful and (yes!) misognynistic, not to mention body-shaming and in other ways despicable. Being abused for advocating a cause, however, is not really evidence in support of that cause – and while much of the abuse on that page goes beyond the pale, the anger behind it seems entirely justified in light of how JKR is abusing her platform to dishonestly promote false beliefs.
“Her crime has been to write the below tweet and an essay on her experiences as a woman.”
It's not clear what "the below tweet" refers to; no tweet is shown, nor is there one at the link, which goes to her infamous essay J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues, referred to here as "an essay on her experiences as a woman" -- which not only misrepresents the essay's content but pretends away how deeply problematic it is... as well as the other volumes of awful disinformation JKR has spread about trans people in general and trans women in particular. I feel like I'm drowning in it, even just looking at what she herself has said and ignoring the legions of people repeating it as fact on social media. misrepresentation
“The toxicity of this debate [...]” -- as if JKR herself wasn't largely responsible for the escalation in toxicity, via her support for unscientific beliefs presented as scientific, denying any real opposition, posing as if she spoke for all cis women, using language which attempts at every turn to deny trans people's existence except as cis cross-dressers... the list of "crimes" goes on and on. misrepresentation
“[...] has resulted in even well-respected academics who write about intersex issues, endorsing the belief that it is acceptable to refer to people like me in the most dehumanising ways.” -- again, where are the links? Did academics seriously argue that it's ok to dehumanize intersex people, or were they just yelling at the author in anger and the author decided to take that as directed at intersex people collectively? We have absolutely no reason to trust the pro-JKR faction to be arguing in good faith, at this point, so anyone defending her really needs to show their receipts. sourceless interpretation
She continues to cite more examples of abuse and bad-faith arguing without receipts, though, and at this point I am just kind of done with her... but I have to highlight one more thing:
“It is hard to understand why people promoting these guides on how to best support trans young people, do not share the same empathy for children & young people with different sex development.”
WTF. Yes, we absolutely do! We are often the ones who raise the issue of how anti-trans rules meant to "protect women" will often negatively impact intersex people, not to mention gender-non-conforming cis people and numerous other groups. At this point, she's so badly misrepresenting the trans activist position that it feels like hate speech, although I cannot tell if it was intended that way. misrepresentation