Can Kids Consent to Hormone Blockers?

No.
None of that.
All of that?
Wrong.

I can't stand JK Rowling but she definitely got a mauling on Twitter. What did she say that was so bad? I've never got to the bottom of it and noped out of conversations that got irate

Her initial tweets were fake-innocent "golly gee whiz, I'm just asking questions" shit, but then she re-tweeted known transphobes.
And it wasn't a "whoops, I didn't know who they are" thing, cuz she did it again, and again, and again.
Then she wrote a big essay that a bunch of dumb Brit celebrities signed on to that was LOADED with dog-whistle TERF shit.
And, she wrote a detective book where a serial killer dresses as a woman, which is a hacky beaten to death transphobic trope.
She knows what she's fucking doing.

I'm pretty certain I read one of her tweets in which she straight up said "transwomen are not women". I'm certain of that because I was ambivalent about demonizing her because I so loved the Harry Potter series. Anyway, it was that tweet that was the deal breaker for me.

Stephen King replied to one of her tweets with "transwomen are real women" and she unfriended and blocked him.

Right. I remember that.

She also got death threats from the very beginning. This tends to be polarizing for people - especially those that have already experienced abuse.

And she was concerned about male sexual predators using UK's laws that allowed people to state their gender without any confirmation to infiltrate women's abuse shelters.

You know, like the one she went to when her husband abused her.

It seems like most of this is the confusion of sex and gender, and we should do a better job of understanding that.

If you are talking about sex, then Rowling is mostly right. There's a few abnormalities where someone with two xx chromosomes can get a genetic piece that normally resides in the Y chromosone, but that's exceedingly rare.

If you are talking about gender, we've long known that isn't defined only by sex, and the psychological make-up of that is a considerable portion of it, not just the biology.

Saying there's a difference between sex and gender, and Rowling was talking about one when her critics were talking about the other, shouldn't be open season for hate speech.

Not a legit concern any more than the bathroom bullshit.
Which she's also signal boosted for.

"Violation of woman's spaces" is dog-whistle for "a man in a dress will rape you" which implicitly expresses that trans people aren't even real.

Nope, sorry, abuse isn't goalsies.
We've all got trauma.
I've got some.
I don't get to be a bigot because of it.
I hold myself to the same standard as everyone else.

Should she have been dogpiled on Twitter?
Nope.

Anne Coulter got a pie thrown at her.
Doesn't make her not a fascist.

Geraldo got his nose broken.
Doesn't make him not a slime.

JK shouldn't be Twitter mobbed.
And she is a TERF.
These things can both be true.

The question is the severity, but if you think a predator isn't going to use that loophole at some point, it strikes me as quite similar to the conceit that bump fire guns were safe and it was ridiculous anyone would think otherwise. They were never used in a mass shooting event - until they were. And it was obvious in retrospect, wasn't it?

I think you can say that said policy has the potential to be extremely problematic without saying 'trans people aren't even real', which is of course absolute bullshit, and quite frankly a silly thing to ascribe to anyone who isn't a religious zealot on the matter.

Right, because there's absolutely no way that her concerns on women being abused could be anything other than bigotry and not acting in good faith on her part.

Nice that you have the capability to read minds.

I have no idea if she is a TERF or not, but I do think that TERFs have a few real concerns that science hasn't addressed, no matter how much you want to say otherwise.

For example the MMA transgender fighter we talked about - the last fight she was in she broke the woman's skull, and the women whose orbital was fracutred said that she was stronger than any other women she ever encountered.

There's currently a study going on in the UK prison system because they found that the number of transgender women who conducted sexual assault on other inmates was far higher than the norm. But because there were relatively few transgender inmates, they wanted to study it further before they made any decisions, so studies are ongoing on the issue.

Seems to me that the jury is still out on the best policies going forward on some of this, and we need to have the ability in society to discuss the matter in good faith.

IMO it's far less pressing an issue than any number of other problems we have in western society in general and America in particular, but the reactions of the left wing in this often haven't been in good faith either.

A lot of cruelty and oppression has come under the guise of "what could happen".

It's always instructive to remember that Japanese-American interment was sold to the public as " a rational precaution".

If you're suicidal, you are not of sufficiently sound mind to consent to elective, non-emergency procedures. And no, "do thisfor me or I will kill myself "doesn't make it an emergency to get hormones and elective surgery. It makes it necessary to put you under observation until you can demonstrate stabilty.

Ensuring a predator doesn't enter a women's shelter is the responsibility of the shelter and cannot possibly be controlled by a court - except to say that it should already be illegal for anyone to enter a shelter without permission from the shelter itself.

Absolutely true.

But what we are talking about here is should a person be allowed to declare themselves a female and gain access to female safe spaces with no outside verification.

Even then, in terms of 'severity' what I'm talking about is it might be that the absolute good allowing that to happen does outweigh other considerations, even if it's possible bad actors will use the loophole for mayhem.

But we should be able to have a discussion about this, and even possibly have reasonable people come down on different sides of that question without repeated death threats. Which is where we are now.

Because that type of thing also has led to a lot of cruelty and oppression.

Wait... there's some conflation there.

The issue is abusive men. No-one needs it pointing out that there are some damaged males who are hellbent on attacking women. The numbers are frightening. I think it's a legitimate safeguarding concern that nefarious males deceptively presenting as transwomen to get unimpeded access to vulnerable women and girls is a distinct possibility. Transwomen aren't the actual problem, they're as much victims in this as cis women, but that doesn't mean that abuse of females at the hands of males can be ignored because it's too complex to figure out.

Like Demiurge indicated, the problem arises from conflicts with policy based on biological sex becoming offensive and exclusionary through the lens of gender.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ...

There are conditions that if I had to live through them for 20 years straight, I'd probably end myself.
Does admitting that make me suicidal RIGHT NOW??!?!
Do I need to be put under observation RIGHT NOW?!?!?!
Of course fucking not.

You can probably think of some form of existence that would make you want to check out.
Even if it's as extreme as you're a goddamn severed head hooked up to bionic walking sneakers.

totally agree.

Also agree.

Not sure that that was ever on the table as reasonable argument in favor of gender reassignment surgery.

This is in context of the UK's laws, and in those cases the shelters aren't allowed to turn away anyone who claims they are a woman, because doing so would be against their human rights. Indeed, that's to protect trans people.

Critics of that rule believe that there should need to be an outside agency that confirms that the individuals in question are legitimate, because of fear of possible abuse. To this point that abuse hasn't happened, but it seems likely at some time some bad actor will attempt to use said loophole.

At least, that's my understanding of the issue as it exists now.

Boom!

16 years ago, I donated quite a few things to the women's shelter near me. A lot of James' baby items as well as women's office attired I'd outgrown. I was allowed to carry the items as far as the porch. I could not enter the facility itself.

I also don't know how women in the US or UK are "admitted" to the facility but "turning away" someone and not allowing someone access are two entirely different things, I think.

For example, I go to the door and say "I'm running from an abusive husband, please let me in" and the shelter say "no", that would be not allowing someone access to the facility. However, if I go to the township office that governs the shelter and I apply for admission to the facility and they say "no, you're a trans and therefore, not a woman, so you can't be admitted", that would be turning someone away.


My point is, we need to ensure we're all talking about the same thing rather than arguing semantics.

In this context it means admission to the site for the purpose of receiving assistance from the shelter.

Currently it simply requires an affirmation that you are of the required sex.

Critics say that is rife for abuse, and that in the cases of trans people it should require sign off by a medical authority that said person is attempting to transition, even if they haven't started with hormones or gone so far as surgery.

Oh. Ok

The Economist is just a name - they don't adhere to specifically talking about economics. They discuss climate change, immigration, current affairs, technology, the list goes on

One of my more recent favorite articles of theirs is about how a local Indigenous People's band is trying to solve the housing issues in my city:
https://www.economist.com/the-ameri...canadian-indigenous-group-could-outwit-nimbys

So I don't even know where you think you're going with this, apart from shitting on people who ask questions about things apparently

Oh. In that case, I disagree with critics.

A) A man set on getting to the object of his abuse is not going to waste time filling out forms to gain access to a shelter. Most likely, he'd shoot his way inside.

B) If a transwoman - at any stage of her transition, is being abused and is in the hospital and filling out forms for admission to a shelter, then she should be granted access.

I don't know how you'd square the circle of having a protective space dedicated to biological females if you permitted entry based on self-id of gender.

You'd either have to say there's no need for a protective space of biological females, in which case you'd have to argue against the reasons they were set up for in the first place; or you'd have to say there is a need of segregation based on biological sex- in which case exclude those who self-id into that group.

I don't know how you start unpicking it. Attacks on women have been a big talking point in the UK over the last few weeks following the brutal murder of a woman called Sarah Everard.

I'd disagree @Jenee, I don't think a man would shoot his way into a shelter, at least not here in the UK. It's already happened in a women's prison. To be clear, I don't think these types of people are what I would believe to be transwomen. Transwomen are as much victims of these predators as cis women.

If men jumping through all the hurdles it takes to transition just so they can maybe possibly accidentally glimpse a pussy was a thing, it would have fucking happened by now.

It's not a thing.

It's the new "back masking in metal songs lets the Devil in".
Which was the new "Elvis Presley's pelvis wiggle will make your virgin daughters thirst or cock".
Which was the new "marijuana makes you into an axe murderer".

Why do people keep falling for this shit?
I get the dumb rednecks falling for it, but I don't get how people with three digit IQs are drinking the Kool-Aid.

Because the whole point of self-id is that they don't have to transition?

It's hardly an elective surgery if it treats whatever is making someone suicidal.

And why does it bother you any, if it's not even impacting you? Doesn't seems like a libertarian position you're taking.

How much is it actually happening, though? How many victims and perpetrators can you actually name? If you ask me to provide the names of murdered transwomen, the list is nearly endless.

"Male predators pretending to be transgender as part of a clever scheme to abuse girls and women" is the "murderers are intentionally putting poison and razor blades expensive drugs into Halloween candy to kill unsuspecting children" of gender politics.


Men have an easy enough time gaining access to vulnerable women alret. There's no need to fake being transgender to gain access to a women's washroom, especially with the amount of attention it would draw. No one bats an eye about a janitor or maintenance man walking into a bathroom.

Wow. Multiple posts debunked this, and you still can't process it. Your brain just won't accept the fact we've repeatedly said that's not the criticism we are making.

@Diacanu Facepalm x 1

C'mon, explain it to me. Please? If I'm being unreasonable in assuming self-id (in which no medical transition is required) could present an opportunity for a predator to access vulnerable women, then put out my worry.

Asked and answered - it hasn't happened yet, but with the rules as they are in some places such as the UK it is certain to happen at some point in time.

The question is the societal responsibility in that regard, and whether it's acceptable to not mitigate that risk because of the other societal good it provides.

And again, we were told transwomen aren't rapists - and then we get a report where multiple transwomen were guilty of sexual assault in the UK prison system. Is it enough to change the housing policy? Maybe, maybe not, but we definitely should consider the implications and see if this was an aberration or something that needs to be addressed.