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Comment by femiagbabiaka | Hacker News Reader

JK Rowling is a good example of quite the opposite — someone who uses flowery language to insinuate pretty heinous things about trans people, and then pretend she’s said something innocuous. At any rate, you can’t cancel a multi-millionaire.

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You'd have to be more specific about the rest of your post. What exactly is heinous?

But the litmus test for whether cancel culture exists isn't whether you can cancel a millionaire, but to see how people react to what she said. Like writing a public letter to your employer to express disapproval for a coworker who signed the same Harper letter.

I'll side with Paul Graham on the matter. Here he replies to AOC: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1281626457693982724 36min ago.

“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman—and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones—then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

I could annotate her most recent post (and all of them) pointing out all of the dogwhistles, but this paragraph is pretty demonstrative of the style I was referring to. She starts from a defense of trans women, one that rings false because of all of the qualifications she makes which anti-trans activists will pick up on -- "Like women" "Natal girls and women" etc. etc., and then transitions seamlessly into harmful and dangerous tropes (men in dresses are coming to molest YOUR daughters!) from half a century ago. And of course, all of this is an overstated panic, and the solution of gender neutral bathrooms has been working just fine in the Bay Area and elsewhere. To be honest, that isn't even the most offensive dogwhistle in this article: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...

As far as Paul goes, I wonder who exactly he sees to be the powerless? To circle back to Rowling, is it the multi-millionaire author? Or trans people in the U.K.? These wealthy folks are not simply advocates, they're partisans. And not for a generic free speech, but simply the speech they believe is right.

> As far as Paul goes, I wonder who exactly he sees to be the powerless?

Why are only millionaires your candidates for who people who could be powerless in this situation instead of the vast majority of the non-millionaire population?

As for JK Rowling's essay, it's one of those things everyone should read for themselves. The vast majority of people reading it will not come to the conclusion that Rowling is anti-trans, and they will probably agree with her. Rather, there seems to be a lot more smoke than fire when you read it after hearing how anti-trans Rowling obviously must be.

I'm not a fan of the "dogwhistle" accusation. I just see it as a fashionable way to accuse someone of saying something that they didn't say. Like people claiming the Harper letter is clearly anti-trans when the only "trans" in it is "transgression": https://twitter.com/LLW902/status/1280547024014905346/photo/...

Evaluating words without context doesn't work. You have to evaluate the words people say in the context in which they say them. Language is socially constructed and the meanings of words change over time. "We must secure the existence of our people" doesn't really sound particularly ominous on its own, but I want to avoid someone who says that because there's a nonzero chance that association with them will put me in actual, physical, danger.

> Why are only millionaires your candidates for who people who could be powerless in this situation instead of the vast majority of the non-millionaire population?

I don't believe that's who Paul is advocating for, that's precisely the point. This piece by Osita Nwanevu is quite good on this point: https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-rea....

> As for JK Rowling's essay, it's one of those things everyone should read for themselves. The vast majority of people reading it will not come to the conclusion that Rowling is anti-trans, and they probably agree with her.

That's the exact purpose of the language she uses. Morality is not as simple as gentle and convincing rhetoric, designed to play on the fears and sympathy of people who know nothing about trans people. The rhetoric that China uses to describe the Uighur population to the rest of the Chinese populace is quite similar.

> I'm not a fan of the "dogwhistle" accusation fad. I just see it as a fashionable way to accuse someone of saying something that they didn't say. Like people claiming the Harper letter is clearly anti-trans when the only "trans" in it is "transgression".

There's quite an extensive field of research into dogwhistle politics. Not reading into it doesn't mean it isn't real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics.

The claims that the letter itself is transphobic are people over-reacting and over-extrapolating. But what precisely do you think Rowling signed the letter in service of?

Not to mention the replies on his tweet are full of people arguing nonsense like "it seems you have something to hide" , and "cancelling means shutting down voices", not realising that people would be much less angry if cancellation meant twitter account cancellation and not losing one's jobs.

example?

I wrote out a graf with an example downthread, I'd copy over, but posting the same thing twice feels a little redundant.

Well, first of all I disagree that her defense of trans women is disingenuous. Her points are well thought out. She points to specific situations where trans women are vulnerable. Just because she has another concern doesn't invalidate her concern for trans women being vulnerable.

So her heinous viewpoint is she has concern for girls in restrooms and locker rooms? Why is she not allowed to have this concern? The rest of the country/world is not San Francisco. Where I live I've never seen anything other than Men and Women restrooms. Sure adding a gender neutral bathroom could help with the issue but they don't exist in the vast majority of locations in the US. I have two high school daughters - one with autism. I'm sorry if its a dangerous trope from half a century ago - but my wife and I would be concerned with a trans woman sharing the locker room with them. Certainly my non-autistic daughter would feel uncomfortable. My daughter with autism wouldn't care because she has trouble with boundaries and being appropriate which makes it more concerning.

So now you'll say I don't care about the fate of trans people. Nope. It's possible to have concern for them and concern for non-trans people.

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