Even the self-described feminists celebrating the Supreme Court’s attempt to banish trans people from womanhood will pay a heavy price.

Archived version without paywall: https://archive.is/vOqSz

  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    The problem is more the idea that single sex spaces would be a thing at all, and that people would be able to use ‘sex’ to discriminate instead of using gender (which would automatically include trans people), not that the supreme court said that sex actually does mean sex - as far as I understand it, please explain to me if I’m wrong.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      It’s a major problem for Trans people, because the rule effectively bars someone by their superficial appearance from using the “sex appropriate” facility and then bars them by their birth identity from using their “sex presenting” facility. It is, in effect, a full exclusion of transgender people from any gender oriented facility.

      But it becomes even more nefarious when employed maliciously against any cis-person who fails to present themselves sufficient to some arbitrary standard of masculinity/femininity. The end result is anyone who can conceivably be “clocked” as transgender - from tomboys to post-menopausal women - is now a potential target for harassment, detention, and legal sanction.

      We are approaching a point of public policy at which you’re effectively saying “Only Barbie can use the lady’s room and only Ken can use the men’s room”.

      • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        But this seems to be working within a system where single sex spaces exist and are used to discriminate. As a nonbinary person, I am very aware of how just the idea of having ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ rooms is already discriminatory, the court ruling didn’t create that. It just said that where single sex spaces already exist, sex means sex. Presumably where single gender spaces exist, trans people would be included, and where gender neutral spaces exist, everyone is included. Gender neutral spaces should be what we’re pushing for, not confusing the terms sex and gender to play into the already discriminatory system we have.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          It just said that where single sex spaces already exist, sex means sex.

          There’s no practical way to identify an individual’s sex at a glance. Which creates de facto exclusion for people who present a gender contrary (or simply ambigiously) relative to their born sex.

          If you look like a dude and you walk into a women’s restroom, you’re not going to be given the benefit of the doubt.

          Gender neutral spaces should be what we’re pushing for

          Broadly speaking. But it is a higher bar, precisely because the same misogynists and reactionaries who advocate for anti-Transgender activism and policy are regularly known for serial harassment of straight cis-people whenever the opportunity presents itself.

          The problem is rooted in patriarchy and ethno-social supremacist attitudes. Transgenderism is a scapegoat for the abuses of people in power who abuse their authority at every opportunity.

    • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.social
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      3 days ago

      That comment is vague enough that I’m not going to bother guessing what you mean, but the reification fallacy is a common trap for fascists, whose ideology depends upon making their preferred version of reality the “correct” one.

      If sex is biological, then we as humans can only observe it secondhand via complicated and potentially ambiguous medical tests. Our direct experience only shows us what someone looks and sounds like, which can also be ambiguous.

      In the Real Physical World, you can’t always tell. The people who don’t want to take that ambiguity seriously are trapped in an artificial world of language where they value their own prescriptive ideals for what the words mean much higher than the reality that words were invented to describe.

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I honestly think she considers herself an “honorary man” at this point, no joke. That picture on the yacht with the cocktail & cigar were… well, she has written villains herself, I can’t understand she doesn’t see the parallels. The only explanation is that she does and that she embraces it 100%

      Also, as a man; we really don’t want her.

        • zeezee@slrpnk.net
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          4 days ago

          really wild take here but I’ve had this pet theory of mine that Rowling actually would like to identify as a man (technically already did as Robert Galbraith) but because she is AFAB and has experienced a lot of misogynistic antagonation throughout the years - she can’t in good conscious do so as she feels she would be betraying women the world over.

          I feel this would explain why she experiences intense transphobia and why she sees transfemmes as “men in disguise” (trauma response from cis men) as well as dismissal of transmascs (if I had to suffer in a patriarchal world, so do you and you’re not allowed to opt out by “pretending” to be a man)

          could be totally off the mark but I feel it wouod explain a lot 🤷

    • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      A) She’s rich so most the rights she erodes for the smallfolk won’t effect her and B) I’m sure she thinks that her rich peers will afford her “One of the good ones” status.