#folks are LITERALLY putting her at risk all because they think she's “biologically male”

[blusical]

Idk how to properly explain it, but the amount of attacks against Imane Khelif aren't only misogynistic, racist and transphobic, but they also *reek* of intersexism. (Also, comparing a woman with high testosterone levels throwing a punch in boxing to literal domestic abuse is fucking weirdo behavior)

[nightcannotlastforever]

My Opinion on the J.K Rowling Essay

Harry Potter is a good book and while it is a safe place for a lot of Queer folk, the writer has a lot to work on.

J.K Rowling created a fictional universe about a boy who lives in the closet under the stairs and escapes his veil aunt and uncle to go to a magical school known as Hogwarts where he learns spells and potions to become a wizard. So many people project onto Harry because like Harry, a lot of lgbtq+ people are in the closet for many years. Some don’t get that chance to come out. For LGBTQ+, their Hogwarts often gets new friends, get out of that house, and finding a career for themselves. Pride. To simply put it, Harry is a gay icon and we all know it.

Where Rowling went wrong was when she made Dumbledore gay

Rowling made a harmful representation by making Dumbledore gay after the fact. She could have left it alone and never stated sexuality but only after the franchise was over did she risk making him gay. I think it would be okay if she hadn’t made remarks and just left it alone or stated in a line or two he was gay in the books. By leaving it alone and NEVER saying anything, she kind of just slapped the word gay on his character after it was over to be more relatable and “woke”. She didn’t want him to be gay to mess with the story, so she probably wrote it without having in mind that he was gay. That was an afterthought.

On June Sixth of 2020, Rowling tweeted:

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure they’re used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate”

If you wanna know what she said, honestly I think you should just read her essay. It's hard to say exactly what she wrote.

People saw she liked a post from this transphobic bitch and went crazy on Twitter.

J.K Rowling's Essay

Here is copy and paste from her essay:

“Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species”

“It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

She is worried trans activism and healthy representation is messing with causes she supports such as MS research. MS is a disease that affects AFAB and AMAB differently.

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

Scared people being trans will affect children, Rowling?

I won’t get into her third reason because honestly, I don’t give a fuck about it.

Her fourth reason is being scared of lesbians detransitioning and changing their minds.

While that is a valid fear, first of all, the percentage of same-sex people attracted who transition and then regret it is so incredibly low compared to those who did and were happier with other genitalia and chest surgery. And yes, I will link resources and where I got my statistics, unlike J.K... Second, that's none of her business and doesn’t concern her. Third, I’m sure those people would hope that actual trans people get the T and surgeries they deserve and need.

Worried because friend groups all become trans because of one trans person in that group.

If one person in that friend group comes out and like three others come out, it's not because that one person “turned them trans”, it's because seeing someone else out and being proud, may have given them the courage and support they needed to come out. It was quite similar in my case of coming out. I saw friends and other folks online coming out and that gave me the support and courage I needed to tell my dad.

“I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.” Where are these statistics? I don’t recall her in this article stating where she found any of these percentages or anything. She only quotes two to three TERF’s from Twitter.

In an NBC news feature, Lui Asquith states, “The actual numbers around them are significantly low,” Asquith said.

“A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.” That male you speak of J.K? That is no male. That is a woman who may not have dysphoria caused by genitalia or the lack of chest. The women you speak of may not mentally or physically be able to handle transitioning. Maybe they cant transition medically because of health issues. You wouldn’t know.

In the end, she states she doesn’t mean this in a hateful way and she only wants to call out trans folk and those who support trans activism who push women to the side because women go through a lot of threats and abuse and that is why she is writing this transphobic essay. If you want to promote women's rights and spread awareness, maybe don’t do that in a lengthy essay about why being trans is bad…

That’s all. This is kind of just a shitpost. I know that her essay was posted almost a full year ago, but it has been on my mind quite often recently and I wanted somewhere to post it. I don’t want to write this in a way to send hate to any of the people I mentioned, I honestly just wanted to write this to get out anger towards the anti-trans tweets and discussion J.K Rowling has started. She is not detransitioned and in my opinion, as a trans person, doesn’t have a say in what we do to our bodies and the pronouns we identify with. Her writing could perhaps be quite harmful to young trans youth. We, as a community, get a lot of hate and misconceptions.

RESOURCES

https://www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-transgender-community

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2019/02/22/research-brief-data-on-transgender-youth/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition-narrative-fueling-misconceptions-trans-advocates-say-n1102686

[arcticdementor]

In 1924, the British scientist J. B. S. Haldane coined the term “ectogenesis” to describe how human pregnancy would one day give way to artificial wombs. “It was in 1951 that Dupont and Schwarz produced the first ectogenetic child,” Haldane wrote, imagining how an earnest college student of the future would describe the phenomenon. “Now that the technique is fully developed, we can take an ovary from a woman, and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as long as twenty years, producing a fresh ovum each month, of which 90 percent can be fertilized, and the embryos grown successfully for nine months, and then brought out into the air.” By the year 2074, Haldane imagined, ectogenesis had become a popular technique — with “less than 30 percent of children... now born of woman.” Writing at a time when debates over contraception and eugenics raged on both sides of the Atlantic, his prediction was an understandable outgrowth of these new efforts to control fertility. “Had it not been for ectogenesis,” Haldane prophesied, “there can be little doubt that civilization would have collapsed within a measurable time owing to the greater fertility of the less desirable members of the population in almost all countries.”

Today, we have inched slightly — but only slightly — closer to perfecting the technology that would realize Haldane’s vision, albeit for reasons other than the eugenic improvement of the race. A small knot of scientists in the United States and Japan are experimenting with both live animals and human cells to mimic the functioning of the womb. And while their work is in its early stages, it is worth exploring the scientific prospects and ethical implications of research on artificial wombs.

Haldane’s chosen title — Daedalus — is perhaps telling. In Greek mythology, Daedalus, “the cunning worker,” was an ingenious practitioner of the mechanical arts, a figure whose inventions proved, at best, ambiguous contributions to humanity. His most famous invention — wings crafted from bird feathers, wax, and string, built to escape with his son Icarus from the clutches of King Minos — became the tool of his son’s destruction, when “the boy, exulting in his career, began to leave the guidance of his companion and soar upward as if to reach heaven.” The hot sun promptly melted the wax wings, Icarus plunged to his death, and Daedalus was left “bitterly lamenting his own arts.”

…

The question is whether these different avenues of research — at the beginning of pregnancy and the end of pregnancy — will one day converge. “I’ve talked to researchers who are doing research on partial ectogenesis — interventions for premature births, mainly — and I’ve talked to in vitro fertilization researchers who are trying to extend the period of time an embryo can live outside the womb,” says Scott Gelfand, Director of the Ethics Center at the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa, who organized a conference on artificial wombs in 2002. “Put the two together and eventually we’re going to be able to do this.” Of course, many scientific and biological hurdles remain, and physicians who work with assisted reproductive technologies are hesitant to predict the future. “The uterus is a complex organism,” says Dr. David Adamson, Director of Fertility Physicians of Northern California and past president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. “There are still issues related to immunology and cardiovascular development that are extremely complicated and not very well understood. In terms of putting together all of these and having a clinically successful artificial womb,” he says, “my personal perspective is that it is decades away.”

…

Artificial wombs are just the kind of technological prospect that radical ethicists love to celebrate. In 1985, philosopher Peter Singer gave them a ringing endorsement: “I think women will be helped, rather than harmed, by the development of a technology that makes it possible for them to have children without being pregnant,” he said. Singer’s vision echoed that of feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone, who made a similar argument in 1970 in The Dialectic of Sex. Once the “freeing of women from the tyranny of their reproductive biology” occurred, she said, they could finally reach full equality with men. Viewed this way, artificial wombs are merely another step in the ongoing advance of human reproductive technologies and women’s social equality. They would both expand the range of reproductive choices and make the differences between men and women matters of technological convention rather than biological nature.

…

But many ethicists are not so sure. “I think artificial wombs could lead to a commodification of the whole process of pregnancy,” says Rosemarie Tong, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and a leading scholar in feminist bioethics. “To the extent that we externalize an experience like pregnancy, it may lead to a view of the growing child as a ‘thing.’” The further we erode the mystery of the development of human life, the more appealing it becomes to think about improving upon it, or demanding greater control over it. Even given developments in fetal surgery, the human womb still insists that we not breach its protections too often. But with artificial wombs, the transparency of the technology itself would invite greater intervention.

At stake in this debate is the very meaning of human pregnancy: the meaning of the mother-child relationship, the nature of the female body, and the significance of being born, not “made.” Let’s say, for example, that scientists perfect the artificial womb to the point where it becomes a “healthier” environment than the old-fashioned human version. Artificial wombs, after all, wouldn’t be threatened by irresponsible introductions of alcohol or illegal drugs. They could have precisely regulated sources of temperature and nutrition and ongoing monitoring by expert technicians in incubation clinics. Like genetic testing of unborn fetuses, which is fast becoming a medical norm rather than a choice, people might begin to ask: Why take the risk of gestating my child in an old-fashioned womb? With an eye to avoiding costs and complications, insurance companies might begin to insist that we don’t. (Imagine “expectant mothers” stopping by the incubation clinic once a week to check up on their “unborn” child.)

In the near term, most women would almost certainly gestate their children the old-fashioned way, even if they had the choice. “Relatively few people, with tons of money, who are unusual, would use artificial wombs,” says Tong. But even the option of artificial wombs might change the way we view pregnancy, and perhaps the way we view women. Feminist critics of science, particularly those who embrace an “essentialist” view of women, have long claimed that artificial reproductive technologies threaten women’s social status. Australian sociologist Robyn Rowland has argued that the creation of artificial wombs would spell the end of women’s innate power. “We may find ourselves without a product of any kind with which to bargain,” she writes. “We have to ask, if that last power is taken and controlled by men, what role is envisaged for women in the new world? Will women become obsolete?” Rowland and other feminist critics are hardly shrinking violets; they called their 1984 conference on the subject “The Death of the Female.” They view the medical establishment as irredeemably male — a monolithic, misogynistic institution that views women who are not pregnant as, literally, idle machines.

More thoughtful feminist critics note that even without the possibility of manipulation by the medical establishment, artificial wombs would create serious disruptions in our relationships with our children. “It would weaken the mother-child bond,” says Tong. “Indeed, I think it would weaken the bonds between parents and children in general. On the whole, I think the physicality and embodied nature of pregnancy is a real and material way for one generation to connect to the next... Without that rootedness in the body, relationships between the generations become more abstract, less feeling-filled.”

…

There has always been an incalculable mystery surrounding the womb, as religion and folk wisdom attest. “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all,” says Ecclesiastes. In the Hebrew Bible, interventions in the womb were considered to be solely the province of God, not man. In the story of Rachel and Jacob, when the barren Rachel says, “Give me children, or else I die,” Jacob responds in anger, saying “Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?” For centuries, folk tales warned pregnant women against walking in graveyards, looking at deformed people, witnessing a solar eclipse, or even strolling around after dark, lest they damage the developing child.

Our feelings of awe and curiosity about the womb are a reaction both to its physiological function and its potent status as a symbol of fertility, procreation, and the continuation of the species. It is not quite an organ, although it can be donated and transplanted; and it is more mysterious than the heart or the lungs, which both men and women share. It is freighted with meaning because it is the site, or the potential site, of such a fundamental and in many ways still deeply mysterious thing — the emergence and development of a new human life.

In an essay written just before he died, the philosopher Hans Jonas observed that “natality,” as he called it, “is as essential an attribute of the human condition as is mortality. It denotes the fact that we all have been born, which means that each of us had a beginning when others already had long been there, and it ensures that there will always be such that see the world for the first time, see things with new eyes, wonder where others are dulled by habit, start out from where they had arrived.” In the end, artificial wombs are different from current technologies like IVF and modern arrangements like surrogacy, because they represent the final severing of reproduction from the human body. There is something about being born of a human being — rather than a cow or an incubator — that fundamentally makes us human. Whether it is the sound of a human voice, the beating of a human heart, the temperature and rhythms of the human body, or some combination of all of these things that makes it so, it is difficult to imagine that science will ever find a way to truly mimic them. We should remember this truth as we expand the reach of our powers over the very origins of human life, lest we give birth to a technology we will live to regret.