Reality Isn’t Optional

[ndrosen]

The woke are piling on JK Rowling for tweeting, “‘People who menstruate,’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” This supposedly shows disrespect for those with different gender identities.

Monica Hesse had a column in Tuesday’s Washington Post, and then Molly Roberts’s column Wednesday scolded JKR for treating gender as binary. The horror!

I realize that some people actually have non-standard chromosomal arrangements and/or plumbing, and I’m not out to persecute them. Other people are not happy with the sex they are; well, we all have our personal problems. Nonetheless, on some matters, reality isn’t optional, and however someone may feel about her “gender identity” (remember when “gender” was a grammatical term?), if she has a uterus and menstruates, she’s a biological woman, or possibly, in a few cases, an intersex person with at least partial male and female reproductive organs.

If I were to “identify” as a woman, or as non-binary or two-spirit, I would still have my male organs, and would not menstruate. If you menstruate, ma’am, you’re a woman. I do not demand that you like it, and I will not attempt to stop you from getting surgery and hormone treatments, if you feel strongly enough about the matter. Short of going through with major surgery, you’re still a woman, and whether you would still be one afterward is a genuinely tricky question where things get non-binary. Meanwhile, physical and biological reality do not cease to exist because of your wishes or your personal frustrations.

Here’s to JKR and trans-exclusionary radical feminism!

Comments

[brainwane]

Hey this is a really not great post -- are you open to being persuaded otherwise here (including by geneticists and other biologists)?

[ndrosen]

Yes, I’m willing to be persuaded by actual evidence and reasoning.

[brainwane]

Thought you might want to read "An open letter to JK Rowling’s blog post on Sex and Gender" by Sophie Grace Chappell (Philosophy, Open University).

[ndrosen]

I have read it, and I do have sympathy for Professor Chappell, and for other people who don’t fit in. As a high IQ oddball, I should understand the pain of not fitting in, although I am unambiguously male with a pretty normal sex drive.

I also read some of the comments on the article, and think that they made reasonable points, too. One of them contained a link to an article about a number of sexual assaults committed in British gaols by transwomen sent to women’s prisons. For the record, I do not believe that all “trans” people are rapists, or want to become rapists, but I do point out that there are problems with treating people as being the sex they claim to identify as, rather than the sex they biologically are.

[vesta_aurelia]

It's all a make-believe story ... until you get to know actual intersex people, as I do.
One whose body menstruates and two whose do not.
One who states they have both genitalia (and no, I'm not going to insist on looking myself--even I am not that crass).
This idea that human sexual biology is binary is contradicted by genetic and physical science.

Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct.
The social construct of female in Western society boils down to "worthlessness except for male benefit."
If it's down to simply "not liking" one's socially constructed gender, I would be male. I'm not. I know my self is female--just as I know that our current social construction of female is, as my father would call it, "a shit sandwich you have to eat with a smile."

Don't fall for the false dichotomies.
Sexual biology and biochemical gender are far more complex than mainstream America is comfortable with.

[ndrosen]

Please read my post carefully. I said that I realize that some people are actually intersex, with non-standard chromosomal arrangements and/or plumbing. My quarrel is with the idea that declaring oneself the opposite sex, or non-binary, by people who do have standard biological sex, makes it so.

To the extent that socially constructed femininity in our society really is a s*** sandwich that you have to eat with a smile, you have my sympathies.