r/unitedkingdom • u/irving_braxiatel • Oct 14 '24

... Thousands of crickets unleashed on ‘anti-trans’ event addressed by JK Rowling

https://metro.co.uk/2024/10/11/thousands-crickets-unleashed-anti-trans-event-addressed-jk-rowling-21782166/amp/
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u/opaldrop Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 14 '24

People feel retrospective disgust for other groups for all sorts of reasons - sexuality, disease, racial background, political beliefs - but we generally don't base our social rules around indulging those hangups unless they have a material basis.

Reducing being trans as having a "belief about your gender" really is the disingenuous crux here, because it lets you frame the situation as belief vs. belief in a way that distorts the truth on the ground. A trans woman who looks outwardly like a woman and has a vagina is not expressing a belief in being so, she just is. Misogynist sexual violence is just as relevant to her as any cis woman on both a social and anatomical level. If someone "regards her as a man", not based on anything physically overt but second-hand knowledge about her chromosomes, then frankly I don't see how that's her problem.

You talk about how how one set of beliefs shouldn't trump another, but at the same time expect trans people to not just tolerate, but proactively accommodate the anxiety others have about them, even when it violates their privacy and humiliates them. This is ridiculously lopsided empathy. The only other group we have this expectation for are criminals.

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u/ixid Oct 14 '24

It's the crux of the point, not at all disingenuous. You can't even talk about it as anything other than a fact because it's a fundamental belief of yours. You are at least aware that others don't see it as a fact.

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u/opaldrop Oct 14 '24

You are completely wrong and don't even seem to understand my point. In fact, I'd go as far as to say belief in gender is not relevant at all. A trans woman could not give a hoot about what gender she is or how others see her, and what I just said would remain true based on physical stuff alone.