The tweeter had no problems excusing trans activists behaviour by mentioning them being "allowed to express their anger", while they did not offer the same generous interpretation to the person mentioned above, lesbian woman, dying from cancer.
Rowling claims Forstater was fired. She was not fired. She came to the end of her fixed contract and was not offered a new one.
Rowling claims Forstater asked "the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law". She did not.
The judgement is available online and prefectly readable so either Rowling is incredibly stupid to have misunderstood both of these points she has made or she has deliberately lied.
Your first counterpoint is really hair-splitting - fixed-term contracts continue to increase precisely so that people can be cut without being officially fired. It's a hole in workers' rights, meant for legitimate uses, that has sadly been exploited across the board in Europe. Thousands of workers now exist in this limbo where their contracts have to be renewed every few months for no other reason than to keep them pliable. Anybody familiar with the reality of progressive causes in Europe should know that, and Rowling likely does (she is very much left-of-centre). Forstater's was a firing in all but name, regardless of whether you agree that she should have been fired or not.
It is not hair splitting. It is a basic fact. Her contract ran out months after her co-workers complained about the hostile work environment she was creating and the warning she had received.
Being a tax specialist consultant retained by a think tank is pretty much a text book case of when you'd be on a fixed term contract.
Ending a fixed term contract is more or less equivalent of being fired. Fixed term contracts are widely used to avoid labour law giving stronger protection to permanent contracts. A fixed term contract is generally not a "consulting gig", it's a method to simplify workforce management for the employer.
So morally Mrs. Rowling is correct, I think on this matter and it is petty to point this out since that was not the crux of the matter.
>However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased
Wait, what? Are you considered a bigot for not wanting to date someone who doesn't have the genitals you prefer? Can someone shed some light on this please?
No, clearly not. It is generally well recognised and accepted that people have sexual attraction to other people based on all sorts of attributes. That doesn't take away from everyone else's right to identify as they feel.
It's more of a clash of worldviews. People fundamentally disagree about the importance of things like biological sex vs. socially-fluid and arbitrary gender roles. And the thing about this is that both gender-critical TERF's and trans activism are really niche, minority movements; most people will simply never have to care about this stuff.
The article also gets into stuff like the underlying dynamics of gender dysphoric identity, which seems to be hignly socially influenced especially in younger folks. People will obviously disagree as to how this dysphoric identity should be treated; some will advocate a more relaxed, wait-and-see approach even as others (including many in the medical establishment) argue for a rapid transition. These are not trivial issues and there are arguments for both sides.
There are people who would consider you as such, yes.
Can light be shed? Hardly. In the environment described by Rowling, any amount of disagreement within that sphere of thinking can raise pitchforks. It's a sort of corner case for human compassion and understanding in the subtleties and complexities involved, and people are afraid to touch it.
> Are you considered a bigot for not wanting to date someone who doesn't have the genitals you prefer?
The range of different beliefs among humans is so vast that almost any question of the form 'Do some people believe X?' has the answer 'Yes', even for quite extreme values of X. But that doesn't tell us much about the beliefs of typical people. This is especially true when there are folks going around emphasising the most extreme beliefs in groups they disagree with in order to produce a counterreaction.
There is a rising extreme in the range of American viewpoints which is no longer a question of existence of a rare belief but an almost-theology around various social justice causes and accompanying zealotry. It is somewhat difficult to process in a population accustomed to much different kinds of familiar fervent actions which were based around many conservative ideologies.
First, most reasonable people do not shame anyone for their body preferences- period. It is often more about how than what. You may prefer someone who is taller, shorter, larger, thinner, etc. But if you talk in absolutes, like "Tall people are ugly" then certainly you'll receive criticism.
And this of course leaves people feeling hurt. When I was active in dating, I wanted to date women who were attracted to thinner or average men, while I'm overweight. It hurt, but I accepted it.
That said, there are some, very tiny minority of trans people who are upset that in not being eligible for dating someone based on body preference speaks to their being perceived as their gender. "If I'm a ___, why would you not date me as such?"- and their answer is "Because you do not percieve me as my gender presentation".
Sometimes these people are loud and aggressive in their objections.
At the same time, it's also a fact that this is a tiny minority of people, a very tiny minority, and it's used largely as a way of amplifying a problem that largely does not exist- it's a strawman argument which does exist to some extent, but is much smaller than it's being portrayed.
Like I said at the start, it's complicated, but it's largely a justification to be hateful on JK Rowling's part.
> "men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women"
Many people will not like this, but so-called autogynephilia seems to be a real causal factor behind some varieties of gender-dysphoric identity among people assigned-male-at-birth. (To be clear about this, other varieties do exist that involve very different causal paths.) Her language was obviously unkind, but she was pointing at something quite real.
There might be some basis for truth here, but I was also being polite (you didn't know that from my reply). Let's go full quote, just so people don't get the impression that Magdalen was trying to make a fair and reasoned point:
"You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. Fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. Our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck".
Yes, but the reason why that attack is so contentious in the first place is that it hits at a real weakness in trans activism. It was trans activists themselves who first politicized the narrative around things like autogynephilia and rapid-onset dysphoria, by branding these ideas as anti-trans and bigoted no matter how "fair and reasoned" expressed - and this is something that creates real harm, as Rowling obliquely points out by referencing the "detransitioning" trans and contrasting them with folks who took a far more cautious approach to transitioning in the past.
Firstly, that attack is conentious because it calls all trans people "sick fucks". That isn't really a conversation topic.
Also, I keep hearing about "detransitioning", but can't find any evidence it is actually significantly growing -- numers who regret getting surgery seem to sit around, or below, 1%.
No, you are not considered a bigot for this by anybody who is worth listening to. There are probably a few extremists for whom this is the case – like any extremist, their views are best disregarded.
But that's part of the problem here, and why this is a damaging article. It uses this view from a handful of extremists – "you are a bigot unless you date women with penises" – a view that almost nobody sensible would reasonably agree with, and then holds it up as an example of why another, unrelated set of things need to be fought against. This is a pretty common approach for people to use when trying to discredit or attack something they dislike.
I will add that Magadalen Berns, for what it's worth, was an explicit, out-and-out anti-trans activist. To quote her directly writing to a trans woman:
"You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty perversions. our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck"
It is dishonest of Rowling to phrase this interaction in a way that doesn't at least acknowledge why her actions would be controversial under the circumstances. And this is a pattern that's repeated throughout the article. Let's call it an "appeal to reasonableness" – what seems like a reasonable and constructive argument on the surface only appears so because a lot of the context has been ignored or misrepresented.
In America at least, this wing of extremists is getting too big, too loud, and too influential to simply be dismissed. Not that you should take to heart what they have to say, but you shouldn't pretend it's just an aberration.
I completely agree. Anti-this or anti-that, whatever.
American Identity Politics is a rot that has really damaged our western civilizations.
She seems invested in protecting women due to a shared experience and becoming convinced through genuine social work that this "movement" and all the toxic wrong-think and undeserved discourse has just served to confuse us and help paralyze rational management of her patients. It makes it much more difficult to look after vulnerable people and has invented terms that are offensive to women.
I support her and I hope whatever societies we end up with we institute protections that defend rational people from having wrong-think weaponised against them much better than we do today. Our decision makers shouldnt feel that they must act a certain way because a pressure group has shouted loudly, and does not hold the consent of the demos at large, which erodes respect and damages the legitimacy of our democracy.
I am a Brit and unfortunately Identity Politics is extremely dangerous on my Isles.
No thinking Anglo-Saxon-Celt-Indian-Sikh-Hindu-Breton-Briton-Norman-Hiberian-Welsh-Scot-Norman-Irish-Kenyan-Ghanan-Ugandan-Nigerian-Jew or other should support it. Each of us can magic up a real ancestral grievance. Some of it's horrific!
I'm excited to see how my government handle the next few weeks. The majority position now is unless it stops tolerating unlawlessness, destruction and boat people that the current system has been thoroughly comprimised and is not fit for purpose.
If my government wakes up in time, the Antifa element of this illegitimate paid up BLM "movement" & the institutional elements that enable them are in for a lovely shock. All educated black people I know in the UK now are already against them.
They and those that have validated mob rule will truly deserve what their weaponisation of race will bring to them, our western civilization (flawed, but still the best) is on fire because of them!
"On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.
Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Burns on Twitter."
That's crazy. I follow all kinds of people on Twitter. I certainly don't agree with all of them. Maybe I should be happy that I am not a public figure...
You have the resources to do anything or create anything and enact real change without having to worry anymore about rent or food from your walled country estate.
Yet this is how you spend your time? Arguing with people on a glorified Internet forum?
Twitter is not the real world, but Attention Addiction is very real and seemingly anyone can fall victim.
The problem, though, is not that trans-rights groups have captured the public mindset. Nor that Mrs. Rowling would be a bigot.
The main problem is that the the public debate climate has reduced to cultural revolution level of intolerance. It's shocking to the depths the west has sunk to.
Simple slogans and actions are offered as a solution to a set of complex problems, and if you don't agree to the message, you are labeled obviously as a Enemy Of The Moral Righteousness and must be flamed to death.
This is exactly what the public debate climate was in the soviet states. There is only one accepted truth. And if you question the truth, then you must be a bad person in every other way as well. Since, we all know, there is only right and wrong, black and white, true and false. We know the real world is a simple place, where it suffices to repeat the party line and enjoy a blissful existence knowing you are on the right side of history and anyone who opposes you must be wicked through and through. Or, just, anyone trying to debate anything, really. Since you need opposing viewpoints to form a debate.
I'm glad people like Rowling don't stand down in front of the hivemind firing squad but try to maintain the climate of open debate alive.
Most people probably won't care one way or the other, but it saddens me our public debate channels give the loudest voice to intolerance and mob mentality driven attacks.
She is debating the topic. Are you not allowed to debate a topic anymore without being labeled a campaigner? At what point is a debate turning into a part of a "campaign"?
As Mrs. Rowling explains she is not operating out of objective curiosity, but she is debating a topic that raises emotions of fear and suffering in her. Obviously she is not the most objective person to discuss this topic then, and given her wide audience, does indeed raise questions on should she actually contribute to the discussion. But on the other hand for really good results in a discussion, all parties should have a skin in the game, so to speak.
Personally the thing I find mostly hard to comprehend are underage persons being allowed a sex change operation. Should you actually allow that? Underage kids are anyway unique and weird in so many ways.
So - is this an actual worry? Or is it used as a "think of the children" argument for general anti-trans messaging in general? I have no clue.
I'm completely unfamiliar with this topic so I would really love to hear the opinons of anyone who has gone through a sex change operation, minor or adult. Does it make sense to allow minors a sex change operation? Or is this such a fringe topic it should not be brought up in a public debate?
This "debate" has been part of a dedicated (and sadly currently successful) campaign to dictate the Scottish Government policy.
This isnt a high school debate club where you pick some topic of dispute for fun, this is people in positions of enourmous influence spreading propoganda in order to influence policy that directly harms peoples lives.
Pretending that the people with 14.5M followers, regular opinion columns in national papers etc are being "silenced" is part of the propoganda.
Sex change operations are not legally possible in most country under a certain age, around 18. For example in Europe:
> In thirteen out of twenty-eight Member States, general surgery rules apply as regards the age at which children can request a sex reassignment surgery. In this context, the age requirement for access to medical treatment without the consent of the parents or of a public authority is 18 years in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, France, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, and 15 years in Slovenia. In the United Kingdom the age requirement ranges from 16 in Scotland to 17 in England and 18 in Wales. In Belgium, Estonia, Germany and Luxembourg the child’s maturity is assessed.
Apart from that, trans children (like all children) need support and ways to express their preferences, their gender identity safely, to avoid psychological trauma.
You can thank Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and the like. Discussion online used to be more complex and thoughtful until everything became a 140 character newsfeed entry and that is not just romanticism. People always had certain characteristics and tendencies, good or bad, but nowadays we put them on pedestals.
Also, the magnitude of people who are literally too dumb to comprehend even the most basic concepts (e.g. "science is a constant process of knowledge discovery") is far far higher than I would have ever dreamed back before social media gave everyone a platform. I used to think that some people just didn't get the right education or didn't have the same chances but the truth is that a lot of people are just willfully ignorant assholes unwilling to even listen to anyone but their own brain waves.
I am fairly young but feel fairly old when I see complete morons on YT or TikTok feeling the need to chime into societal discussions without any foundation. Case in point, a very smart YouTube named "Rezo" has politically upset Germany by "destroying" a political party (CDU, party of Merkel) with a 54min video containing nothing but RESEARCHED AND CITED (!) facts and videos. Like a scientific paper in video form. [1]
The responses? "But he has blue hair so fuck him!!!11!"
Every shallow Instagram sycophant has an opinion about issues that others studied for decades and got PhDs for it which in itself is fine but becomes absurd when it is expected that their opinion should hold equal weight and value.
The modern Internet is absurd in the way it has transformed discussions. It constantly works to erode Western values by elevating fringe groups that would never even find a way to spout their nonsense on any other platform - at least not with the same reach.
In regards to the black and white thinking that seems common on the internet I think it’s very important to understand and have compassion for the volume of people who have experienced some form of emotional abuse in their life.
How you treat other people is scoped by how you are capable of treating yourself. Developmentally we learn how to treat ourselves from how our parents or caregivers treat us. It’s always useful to remember that people who are judgmental also direct that same lack of acceptance inward in some way.
Abuse and developmental trauma are not only the extreme physical or sexual abuse that people might think of. Neglect, inappropriate boundaries and validation being contingent on meeting arbitrary standards has a strong negative impact as well.
Often it is important for people to create an “other” and tear them down in order to somehow increase their own self worth in the moment. This is not a real solution to self-esteem so people who do so may have to increase the volume of their behavior over time to try and maintain some baseline sense of “being ok.”
People are responsible for their behavior regardless of their life experiences and I’m not saying we should excuse bad behavior.
I think it’s very important to remember that the problem is not “dumb people” attacking things because they are “dumb”. Believing this is extremely disempowering and will generate conflicts and alienation between people over time.
The idea of “dumb people” is the biggest cultural red herring ever and extremely toxic because when someone is labeled dumb:
- There is no point talking to them or listening to them
- They are never going to change, they are just a “dumb person”
- There is no point trying to understand them better
- Calling someone dumb and treating them like a “dumb person” is abusive.
That being said people who are stressed out, people who have experienced abuse and are having a flashback (complex ptsd is interesting) have an inhibited pre-frontal cortex. This means reduced “executive function” and basically that it is harder to think. So they might be acting in “dumb” ways. The key is that this inhibition on thinking will go away once their stress levels are better.
Because the subject matter is a frequent target of "cancel culture" and it will attract flags from people who seek to silence disagreement with their positions instead of for legitimate inappropriate-for-HN reasons.
The belief in the prevalence of so-called "cancel culture" is one that belongs squarely on one side of this debate, and asking HN moderators to explicitly come down on that side is not asking for balance, it's asking for them to take your side.
The normal flagging process on HN takes down a lot of posts on both "sides", purely by virtue of them being strongly political at all.
Because a discussion of feminist causes cannot be considered complete without a massive mansplaining. /s
More seriously, it's a bit surprising to see "the CEO and Co-Founder of Podium - Building a user-moderated social network to stop toxicity, misinformation, and abuse online" decide to weigh in such a controversial and debatable argument with such strong words, and over a competing social network! It's not exactly an endorsement of Podium ...
55 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] thread1a. Unless there’s context I’m unaware of, this hardly makes her less of a victim.
1b. Good on the judge.
1c. Nice to have.
2a. Okay. Prepared to hear more.
2b. I thought gender dysphoria was more prevalent in the young?
2c. I mean, trans rights don’t infringe on JKR’s rights, but yet it clearly affects her.
3a. What was the transphobic content in the response?
3b. Good to know.
4a. I don’t blame Burns for being fed up.
4b. Ok.
5a. Why shouldn’t she mention the cancelations?
5b. I don’t think anyone denies this. The debate was whether a transphobic or ostensibly transphobic tweet causes suicide, no?
5c. JKR does not do any of these things, right?
5d. But dying lesbians are not allowed to express their anger?
6a. Okay.
6b. Yet another “okay“ from me.
6ca. Okay.
6cb. Citation needed.
6d. Sounds reasonable.
6e. Huh.
7a. Not sure how this reflects upon her.
7b. This comes out a bit like preaching to the choir. Am I the only one who does not know what constitutes the transphobia here?
7c. What of the apparent social spread of gender dysphoria, then? What about people wanting to have the treatment reversed?
7d. Granted.
7e. Makes sense.
7f. Interesting.
7g. Source, nice.
7h. That’s great news.
7h2. Again, source, nice.
Yikes.
Would recommend any commenters to read 4a in the tweet, as this gets somewhat buried in the overly long list of non-rebuttals above.
> 5d. But dying lesbians are not allowed to express their anger?
5d doesn't mention dying lesbians. Not sure what you're getting at here...
Outside of 4a and 5d, most of your list seems to be agreement. ..
The tweeter had no problems excusing trans activists behaviour by mentioning them being "allowed to express their anger", while they did not offer the same generous interpretation to the person mentioned above, lesbian woman, dying from cancer.
But I found that essay to be quite sensible. Now, it is time for me to see how others have responded.
Rowling claims Forstater asked "the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law". She did not.
The judgement is available online and prefectly readable so either Rowling is incredibly stupid to have misunderstood both of these points she has made or she has deliberately lied.
Being a tax specialist consultant retained by a think tank is pretty much a text book case of when you'd be on a fixed term contract.
So morally Mrs. Rowling is correct, I think on this matter and it is petty to point this out since that was not the crux of the matter.
Wait, what? Are you considered a bigot for not wanting to date someone who doesn't have the genitals you prefer? Can someone shed some light on this please?
The article also gets into stuff like the underlying dynamics of gender dysphoric identity, which seems to be hignly socially influenced especially in younger folks. People will obviously disagree as to how this dysphoric identity should be treated; some will advocate a more relaxed, wait-and-see approach even as others (including many in the medical establishment) argue for a rapid transition. These are not trivial issues and there are arguments for both sides.
Can light be shed? Hardly. In the environment described by Rowling, any amount of disagreement within that sphere of thinking can raise pitchforks. It's a sort of corner case for human compassion and understanding in the subtleties and complexities involved, and people are afraid to touch it.
The range of different beliefs among humans is so vast that almost any question of the form 'Do some people believe X?' has the answer 'Yes', even for quite extreme values of X. But that doesn't tell us much about the beliefs of typical people. This is especially true when there are folks going around emphasising the most extreme beliefs in groups they disagree with in order to produce a counterreaction.
First, most reasonable people do not shame anyone for their body preferences- period. It is often more about how than what. You may prefer someone who is taller, shorter, larger, thinner, etc. But if you talk in absolutes, like "Tall people are ugly" then certainly you'll receive criticism.
And this of course leaves people feeling hurt. When I was active in dating, I wanted to date women who were attracted to thinner or average men, while I'm overweight. It hurt, but I accepted it.
That said, there are some, very tiny minority of trans people who are upset that in not being eligible for dating someone based on body preference speaks to their being perceived as their gender. "If I'm a ___, why would you not date me as such?"- and their answer is "Because you do not percieve me as my gender presentation".
Sometimes these people are loud and aggressive in their objections.
At the same time, it's also a fact that this is a tiny minority of people, a very tiny minority, and it's used largely as a way of amplifying a problem that largely does not exist- it's a strawman argument which does exist to some extent, but is much smaller than it's being portrayed.
Like I said at the start, it's complicated, but it's largely a justification to be hateful on JK Rowling's part.
You can decide if you agree with that or not, but that is the kind of thing she said which upset people.
Many people will not like this, but so-called autogynephilia seems to be a real causal factor behind some varieties of gender-dysphoric identity among people assigned-male-at-birth. (To be clear about this, other varieties do exist that involve very different causal paths.) Her language was obviously unkind, but she was pointing at something quite real.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2010.4...
"You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. Fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. Our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck".
Also, I keep hearing about "detransitioning", but can't find any evidence it is actually significantly growing -- numers who regret getting surgery seem to sit around, or below, 1%.
But that's part of the problem here, and why this is a damaging article. It uses this view from a handful of extremists – "you are a bigot unless you date women with penises" – a view that almost nobody sensible would reasonably agree with, and then holds it up as an example of why another, unrelated set of things need to be fought against. This is a pretty common approach for people to use when trying to discredit or attack something they dislike.
I will add that Magadalen Berns, for what it's worth, was an explicit, out-and-out anti-trans activist. To quote her directly writing to a trans woman:
"You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty perversions. our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck"
It is dishonest of Rowling to phrase this interaction in a way that doesn't at least acknowledge why her actions would be controversial under the circumstances. And this is a pattern that's repeated throughout the article. Let's call it an "appeal to reasonableness" – what seems like a reasonable and constructive argument on the surface only appears so because a lot of the context has been ignored or misrepresented.
American Identity Politics is a rot that has really damaged our western civilizations.
She seems invested in protecting women due to a shared experience and becoming convinced through genuine social work that this "movement" and all the toxic wrong-think and undeserved discourse has just served to confuse us and help paralyze rational management of her patients. It makes it much more difficult to look after vulnerable people and has invented terms that are offensive to women.
I support her and I hope whatever societies we end up with we institute protections that defend rational people from having wrong-think weaponised against them much better than we do today. Our decision makers shouldnt feel that they must act a certain way because a pressure group has shouted loudly, and does not hold the consent of the demos at large, which erodes respect and damages the legitimacy of our democracy.
I am a Brit and unfortunately Identity Politics is extremely dangerous on my Isles.
No thinking Anglo-Saxon-Celt-Indian-Sikh-Hindu-Breton-Briton-Norman-Hiberian-Welsh-Scot-Norman-Irish-Kenyan-Ghanan-Ugandan-Nigerian-Jew or other should support it. Each of us can magic up a real ancestral grievance. Some of it's horrific!
I'm excited to see how my government handle the next few weeks. The majority position now is unless it stops tolerating unlawlessness, destruction and boat people that the current system has been thoroughly comprimised and is not fit for purpose.
If my government wakes up in time, the Antifa element of this illegitimate paid up BLM "movement" & the institutional elements that enable them are in for a lovely shock. All educated black people I know in the UK now are already against them.
They and those that have validated mob rule will truly deserve what their weaponisation of race will bring to them, our western civilization (flawed, but still the best) is on fire because of them!
That's crazy. I follow all kinds of people on Twitter. I certainly don't agree with all of them. Maybe I should be happy that I am not a public figure...
Yet this is how you spend your time? Arguing with people on a glorified Internet forum?
Twitter is not the real world, but Attention Addiction is very real and seemingly anyone can fall victim.
The main problem is that the the public debate climate has reduced to cultural revolution level of intolerance. It's shocking to the depths the west has sunk to.
Simple slogans and actions are offered as a solution to a set of complex problems, and if you don't agree to the message, you are labeled obviously as a Enemy Of The Moral Righteousness and must be flamed to death.
This is exactly what the public debate climate was in the soviet states. There is only one accepted truth. And if you question the truth, then you must be a bad person in every other way as well. Since, we all know, there is only right and wrong, black and white, true and false. We know the real world is a simple place, where it suffices to repeat the party line and enjoy a blissful existence knowing you are on the right side of history and anyone who opposes you must be wicked through and through. Or, just, anyone trying to debate anything, really. Since you need opposing viewpoints to form a debate.
I'm glad people like Rowling don't stand down in front of the hivemind firing squad but try to maintain the climate of open debate alive.
Most people probably won't care one way or the other, but it saddens me our public debate channels give the loudest voice to intolerance and mob mentality driven attacks.
... As we discuss (on Hacker News) the celebrity with 14.5M twitter followers who decided to arbitrarily join an anti trans campaign ...
As Mrs. Rowling explains she is not operating out of objective curiosity, but she is debating a topic that raises emotions of fear and suffering in her. Obviously she is not the most objective person to discuss this topic then, and given her wide audience, does indeed raise questions on should she actually contribute to the discussion. But on the other hand for really good results in a discussion, all parties should have a skin in the game, so to speak.
Personally the thing I find mostly hard to comprehend are underage persons being allowed a sex change operation. Should you actually allow that? Underage kids are anyway unique and weird in so many ways.
So - is this an actual worry? Or is it used as a "think of the children" argument for general anti-trans messaging in general? I have no clue.
I'm completely unfamiliar with this topic so I would really love to hear the opinons of anyone who has gone through a sex change operation, minor or adult. Does it make sense to allow minors a sex change operation? Or is this such a fringe topic it should not be brought up in a public debate?
This isnt a high school debate club where you pick some topic of dispute for fun, this is people in positions of enourmous influence spreading propoganda in order to influence policy that directly harms peoples lives.
Pretending that the people with 14.5M followers, regular opinion columns in national papers etc are being "silenced" is part of the propoganda.
> In thirteen out of twenty-eight Member States, general surgery rules apply as regards the age at which children can request a sex reassignment surgery. In this context, the age requirement for access to medical treatment without the consent of the parents or of a public authority is 18 years in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, France, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, and 15 years in Slovenia. In the United Kingdom the age requirement ranges from 16 in Scotland to 17 in England and 18 in Wales. In Belgium, Estonia, Germany and Luxembourg the child’s maturity is assessed.
(https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-ag...)
The main medical treatment available is blocking puberty:
https://www.gendergp.com/debunking-the-myths-surrounding-pub...
Apart from that, trans children (like all children) need support and ways to express their preferences, their gender identity safely, to avoid psychological trauma.
https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc
Also, the magnitude of people who are literally too dumb to comprehend even the most basic concepts (e.g. "science is a constant process of knowledge discovery") is far far higher than I would have ever dreamed back before social media gave everyone a platform. I used to think that some people just didn't get the right education or didn't have the same chances but the truth is that a lot of people are just willfully ignorant assholes unwilling to even listen to anyone but their own brain waves.
I am fairly young but feel fairly old when I see complete morons on YT or TikTok feeling the need to chime into societal discussions without any foundation. Case in point, a very smart YouTube named "Rezo" has politically upset Germany by "destroying" a political party (CDU, party of Merkel) with a 54min video containing nothing but RESEARCHED AND CITED (!) facts and videos. Like a scientific paper in video form. [1]
The responses? "But he has blue hair so fuck him!!!11!"
Every shallow Instagram sycophant has an opinion about issues that others studied for decades and got PhDs for it which in itself is fine but becomes absurd when it is expected that their opinion should hold equal weight and value.
The modern Internet is absurd in the way it has transformed discussions. It constantly works to erode Western values by elevating fringe groups that would never even find a way to spout their nonsense on any other platform - at least not with the same reach.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y1lZQsyuSQ
How you treat other people is scoped by how you are capable of treating yourself. Developmentally we learn how to treat ourselves from how our parents or caregivers treat us. It’s always useful to remember that people who are judgmental also direct that same lack of acceptance inward in some way.
Abuse and developmental trauma are not only the extreme physical or sexual abuse that people might think of. Neglect, inappropriate boundaries and validation being contingent on meeting arbitrary standards has a strong negative impact as well.
Often it is important for people to create an “other” and tear them down in order to somehow increase their own self worth in the moment. This is not a real solution to self-esteem so people who do so may have to increase the volume of their behavior over time to try and maintain some baseline sense of “being ok.”
People are responsible for their behavior regardless of their life experiences and I’m not saying we should excuse bad behavior.
I think it’s very important to remember that the problem is not “dumb people” attacking things because they are “dumb”. Believing this is extremely disempowering and will generate conflicts and alienation between people over time.
The idea of “dumb people” is the biggest cultural red herring ever and extremely toxic because when someone is labeled dumb: - There is no point talking to them or listening to them - They are never going to change, they are just a “dumb person” - There is no point trying to understand them better - Calling someone dumb and treating them like a “dumb person” is abusive.
That being said people who are stressed out, people who have experienced abuse and are having a flashback (complex ptsd is interesting) have an inhibited pre-frontal cortex. This means reduced “executive function” and basically that it is harder to think. So they might be acting in “dumb” ways. The key is that this inhibition on thinking will go away once their stress levels are better.
The normal flagging process on HN takes down a lot of posts on both "sides", purely by virtue of them being strongly political at all.
https://twitter.com/Carter_AndrewJ/status/127078794127576268...
More seriously, it's a bit surprising to see "the CEO and Co-Founder of Podium - Building a user-moderated social network to stop toxicity, misinformation, and abuse online" decide to weigh in such a controversial and debatable argument with such strong words, and over a competing social network! It's not exactly an endorsement of Podium ...