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I stand with Jo
Like a lot of women — like Jo Rowling — I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the subject of transgenderism over the last couple of years.
In my case, I went looking after receiving rape threats for saying “you need a uterus to have periods”. What on earth was so staggeringly wrong about saying that you couldn’t shed your uterine lining without having a uterus? How did a statement of biology lead to such a violent and sexualised response?
So I went looking. I spoke to lots of people, and read lots of articles, on all three sides of the debate.
All three sides? As well as the gender critical feminists, who believe that gender is a nonsense concept but that you can dress however you like as long as you accept that biology is immutable, it turns out that the trans side of things is split in two. On the one side are those variously described as transsexuals, transmedicalists and, by those who dislike them, truscum; they tend to believe that to be trans one must experience gender dysphoria and make, or fully intend to make, the fullest possible hormonal and surgical transition, and many are just as critical of both the concept of gender and the idea that one can change sex as are the gender critical feminists. On the other side are those who believe that a man (and they do tend to be men) can simply state “I am a woman” and so become one; some might go on to take hormones, or have breast implants, but many do neither.
This was something of a revelation to me. I knew about — know members of — the first group, but found the second group harder to understand. I went looking for more information.
I learnt about Karen White, a convicted paedophile and sex offender, who transitioned while on remand, went into a women’s prison, and sexually assaulted inmates. I learnt about Katie Dolatowski, who was convicted of voyeurism and sexual assault in a public toilet against two girls aged ten and twelve years old. I learnt about Rachel McKinnon, Hannah Mouncey, Laurel Hubbard, Maxine Blythin and other athletes who went through male puberty before beginning to compete in women’s sports, effortlessly beating world-class female opponents.
And I thought “Hang on a minute.”
I wondered if it was really the case that all of those people are actually women, or if maybe some of them are men who’ve seen some advantage in claiming to be women. After all, women’s prisons are more pleasant places than men’s; there are far more unaccompanied pubescent girls in the women’s toilets than in the men’s; and even a mediocre male athlete can beat a top-ranked female athlete in most sports.
(I’m not even going to get into the terrifying and irreversible side effects of the off-licence chemotherapy drugs being given to delay puberty, the schoolgirls being told that they must share changing rooms with boys, the rising number of detransitioning women, the rape survivors being told that they can’t request female medical personnel. If you want to read more about them, Helen Joyce of the Economist wrote an excellent article.)
And I learnt about the seemingly endless barrage of death and rape threats, of instructions to “suck my girl dick”, that descend upon any woman who has the temerity to ask those sorts of questions aloud. Look what Jo Rowling got just for saying that sex is real. Look at where I started, with rape threats for saying that you needed a uterus to menstruate.
So, big old coward that I am, I noped out of there and shut the fuck up, which was just what they wanted: scare women, rely on women being socialised to be nice, threaten their jobs. Whatever it takes to shut them up, so that they can pretend that no one disagrees with them.
But, you know what? Fuck it.
Sex is real. It is binary. You can be either male or female, and you can’t change that, no matter how you dress or what surgeries you undergo. Your body is of the type that produces either eggs or sperm, even if you are infertile, even if you remove your gonads. There are no in-between gametes, there is no spectrum.
(Something like 0.018% of the population has a disorder of sexual development. They aren’t hermaphrodites and they generally really, really hate it when people trot them out as an argument in favour of sex not being binary. As someone with a chromosome abnormality put it to me recently, “If I’d been born with only one leg, would that prove humans aren’t bipedal?”)
It’s because sex is real that baby girls are selectively aborted in the womb. It’s because sex is real that women undergo forced pregnancy. It’s because sex is real that getting a blood transfusion from a woman can be deadly for men. It’s because sex is real that only men get prostate cancer.
Sex-specific toilets let women go out in public for more more than a few hours at a time, especially when menstruating; sex-specific changing rooms let us exercise and maintain healthy bodies away from prying eyes and wandering hands; sex-specific domestic violence refuges let us escape from dangerous residential situations; sex-specific medical and nursing care lets us get necessary treatment without embarrassment or fear; sex-specific educational opportunities and awards give less-outgoing girls a chance to shine; sex-specific employment and salary statistics let us monitor equality in the workplace: all of these hard-won rights will be removed from women, if one allows men to access them purely by stating that they are now also women.
Wear what you like. If you’re an adult and can afford it, have whatever surgery you like. Just don’t deny that sex is real, and that women, female people, have and need sex-specific rights.
So, anyone still reading? Where does this leave us, I wonder?
I am exactly the same person that I was before you read this, but it’s possible that you have changed.
Are you thinking that I’m a TERF? If you’re using the term to refer to its actual meaning, I can assure you that I’m not, because Radical Feminism has very different political views to mine. If you’re using it as a more polite form of “bitch”, perhaps you should re-think your language.
What about “transphobe”? Does that one fit?
Well, I don’t cower in corners to avoid passing trans people (ok, maybe one or two of them who tell really boring anecdotes). I’m certainly not afraid of transsexuals as a class of people, they mostly seem to quietly live their lives.
The other trans people, though? The ones who threaten to rape and murder women who disagree with them? Yeah, they’re pretty fucking terrifying.
In my case, I went looking after receiving rape threats for saying “you need a uterus to have periods”. What on earth was so staggeringly wrong about saying that you couldn’t shed your uterine lining without having a uterus? How did a statement of biology lead to such a violent and sexualised response?
So I went looking. I spoke to lots of people, and read lots of articles, on all three sides of the debate.
All three sides? As well as the gender critical feminists, who believe that gender is a nonsense concept but that you can dress however you like as long as you accept that biology is immutable, it turns out that the trans side of things is split in two. On the one side are those variously described as transsexuals, transmedicalists and, by those who dislike them, truscum; they tend to believe that to be trans one must experience gender dysphoria and make, or fully intend to make, the fullest possible hormonal and surgical transition, and many are just as critical of both the concept of gender and the idea that one can change sex as are the gender critical feminists. On the other side are those who believe that a man (and they do tend to be men) can simply state “I am a woman” and so become one; some might go on to take hormones, or have breast implants, but many do neither.
This was something of a revelation to me. I knew about — know members of — the first group, but found the second group harder to understand. I went looking for more information.
I learnt about Karen White, a convicted paedophile and sex offender, who transitioned while on remand, went into a women’s prison, and sexually assaulted inmates. I learnt about Katie Dolatowski, who was convicted of voyeurism and sexual assault in a public toilet against two girls aged ten and twelve years old. I learnt about Rachel McKinnon, Hannah Mouncey, Laurel Hubbard, Maxine Blythin and other athletes who went through male puberty before beginning to compete in women’s sports, effortlessly beating world-class female opponents.
And I thought “Hang on a minute.”
I wondered if it was really the case that all of those people are actually women, or if maybe some of them are men who’ve seen some advantage in claiming to be women. After all, women’s prisons are more pleasant places than men’s; there are far more unaccompanied pubescent girls in the women’s toilets than in the men’s; and even a mediocre male athlete can beat a top-ranked female athlete in most sports.
(I’m not even going to get into the terrifying and irreversible side effects of the off-licence chemotherapy drugs being given to delay puberty, the schoolgirls being told that they must share changing rooms with boys, the rising number of detransitioning women, the rape survivors being told that they can’t request female medical personnel. If you want to read more about them, Helen Joyce of the Economist wrote an excellent article.)
And I learnt about the seemingly endless barrage of death and rape threats, of instructions to “suck my girl dick”, that descend upon any woman who has the temerity to ask those sorts of questions aloud. Look what Jo Rowling got just for saying that sex is real. Look at where I started, with rape threats for saying that you needed a uterus to menstruate.
So, big old coward that I am, I noped out of there and shut the fuck up, which was just what they wanted: scare women, rely on women being socialised to be nice, threaten their jobs. Whatever it takes to shut them up, so that they can pretend that no one disagrees with them.
But, you know what? Fuck it.
Sex is real. It is binary. You can be either male or female, and you can’t change that, no matter how you dress or what surgeries you undergo. Your body is of the type that produces either eggs or sperm, even if you are infertile, even if you remove your gonads. There are no in-between gametes, there is no spectrum.
(Something like 0.018% of the population has a disorder of sexual development. They aren’t hermaphrodites and they generally really, really hate it when people trot them out as an argument in favour of sex not being binary. As someone with a chromosome abnormality put it to me recently, “If I’d been born with only one leg, would that prove humans aren’t bipedal?”)
It’s because sex is real that baby girls are selectively aborted in the womb. It’s because sex is real that women undergo forced pregnancy. It’s because sex is real that getting a blood transfusion from a woman can be deadly for men. It’s because sex is real that only men get prostate cancer.
Sex-specific toilets let women go out in public for more more than a few hours at a time, especially when menstruating; sex-specific changing rooms let us exercise and maintain healthy bodies away from prying eyes and wandering hands; sex-specific domestic violence refuges let us escape from dangerous residential situations; sex-specific medical and nursing care lets us get necessary treatment without embarrassment or fear; sex-specific educational opportunities and awards give less-outgoing girls a chance to shine; sex-specific employment and salary statistics let us monitor equality in the workplace: all of these hard-won rights will be removed from women, if one allows men to access them purely by stating that they are now also women.
Wear what you like. If you’re an adult and can afford it, have whatever surgery you like. Just don’t deny that sex is real, and that women, female people, have and need sex-specific rights.
So, anyone still reading? Where does this leave us, I wonder?
I am exactly the same person that I was before you read this, but it’s possible that you have changed.
Are you thinking that I’m a TERF? If you’re using the term to refer to its actual meaning, I can assure you that I’m not, because Radical Feminism has very different political views to mine. If you’re using it as a more polite form of “bitch”, perhaps you should re-think your language.
What about “transphobe”? Does that one fit?
Well, I don’t cower in corners to avoid passing trans people (ok, maybe one or two of them who tell really boring anecdotes). I’m certainly not afraid of transsexuals as a class of people, they mostly seem to quietly live their lives.
The other trans people, though? The ones who threaten to rape and murder women who disagree with them? Yeah, they’re pretty fucking terrifying.