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Notes on Nathan Robinson's Response to J.K. Rowling  - The Bathroom Debate

Because of my great respect for his other writing, I have taken particular interest in the response of Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs to the recent J.K. Rowling controversy, entitled "J.K. Rowling and the Limits of Imagination". The essay is a polemical attack on her views and character, calling her a transphobic bigot.

I will mostly be using the traditional definitions of "woman" and "man" in this response ("adult human female" etc.), except when denoting otherwise using the adjective "trans".

Here are some of my thoughts, mostly on bathrooms and changing rooms.

The subtitle reads:

The creator of Harry Potter could imagine the most marvelous fictional universe in children’s literature—yet she can’t imagine the inner lives of transgender people or the radical expansion of political possibilities.

This is a very helpful sentence contradicting the idea that Rowling is of poor character. Yes, the ideas trans rights activists (henceforth TRAs) peddle are indeed "radical". It should come as no surprise that people have trouble imagining radical ideas. This is a common feature of radical ideas, regardless of whether they are true! Whether someone can imagine radical ideas is not very indicative of their character.

She tells the usual fear-mongering tales that conservative Republicans tell about the perils of having trans women in the bathroom:

“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.”

As my colleague Brianna Rennix has written, this is ridiculous: people who wish to commit sex crimes in bathrooms do not have their gender checked at the door. A person does not have to “pass” as a woman to commit a crime in the ladies’ room, they just have to walk into the ladies’ room.

First off, note the switch from Rowling's "bathrooms and changing rooms" to just "bathrooms... the ladies' room". Changing rooms have mysteriously disappeared in Nathan's response. I have seen this dodge before. Perhaps because it's easier to defend bathrooms, where private stalls prevent voyeurism, than changing rooms, where people may change and shower in the open.

But more importantly, Nathan's retort is easy to dispute. It is very easy to think of impediments that keep men from entering women's spaces. They may be observed, noted as suspicious, and/or confronted inside the space. They may be observed, noted as suspicious, and/or confronted by observers outside the space, such as a waiter in a restaurant seeing a man enter the women's restroom. They may be asked to leave businesses or other establishments. They may suffer social consequences if word is spread of their behavior. They may be ejected by staff or police. With social and physical consequences for trespassing, it would be difficult for a man to use strategies such as repeated entry or lingering in women's spaces, useful for finding opportunities for misconduct. Seriously, what would happen if a man entered a women's changing room with twenty women in it? They'd confront him and chase him out! And all of these possible consequences also creates internal discouragement in the offender: fear. Fear can be overcome by repeated confrontation of the fear - in this case, that would be repeated intrusion into women's spaces. But that's difficult if the intrusions result in consequences.

But with explicit sanctioning of self ID as the only criterion for entry into women's spaces, none of these defensive strategies can work properly. Intruders can overcome their fears through practice. They can enter and linger as often as they like, so long as their behavior wouldn't provoke suspicion if done by a woman. They can't be ejected by staff or police until after they commit an offense, and much voyeurism won't be punishable at all - no one gets kicked out of a changing room for scanning the room. No one gets kicked out of communal showers for showering in them.

There is one remaining defense with self ID: prejudice. If trans women are still observed and noted as suspicious, that decreases the ability for men to intrude and offend. If social consequences are still imposed on trans women for using the women's bathroom, that also serves as a deterrent. But if this prejudice is eliminated in this context as TRAs desire, these defenses will be lost as well.

Does Nathan really think it's a knockdown argument that unless there's a guard at the door, or the door is locked, that that means there is no impediment to going somewhere? Sometimes I leave my front door unlocked at home. But if an intruder were to enter my home, they'd risk running into me, the police being called, etc. That's just a basic fact about life. The threat of social or physical consequences discourages people from certain behaviors even when there's no immediate obstruction to those behaviors.

On to the next quote from Nathan.

More importantly, she does not consider that her own framework for bathrooms, by wanting trans women to use the men’s room, will create the exact abuse situations that she says she is worried about—and every day instead of rarely. We have some data suggesting that forcing trans people to use the wrong bathroom increases their risk of being assaulted, which is what you’d expect. Why is the fear experienced by trans women forced to use a bathroom for the opposite gender not present in her framework? Because J.K. Rowling is transphobic, and trans women’s experiences are seen as less legitimate.

First, TRAs have a really hard time understanding that their Gender Critical opponents don't have a problem with trans people, they have a problem with men - people who fit the traditional anatomic definition of "male" or "man", regardless of how they identify. My guess is that this is because feminists of all stripes have normalized anti-male rhetoric, so to admit that GC feminists are anti-male and not transphobic would be rhetorical surrender. Rowling addresses this specifically in her essay: "Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women," but Nathan ignores what she says. Excluding trans women but accepting trans men in the women's bathroom is best characterized as anti-male, not transphobic. And demanding that trans women not be called "men" or "male" in any context is using definitions as a manipulative tool by making it rhetorically impossible to refer to human sexual dimorphism.

Second, segregating bathrooms and changing rooms are a probabilistic measure towards reducing sexual misconduct and violence. Not all misconduct will be prevented - the goal is just to prevent some of it. Some women commit sexual or violent crimes against other women - we let them in the women's bathroom anyway. Many men don't commit sexual or violent crimes against women - they're excluded regardless, even if they're in a low risk category (e.g., gay). Men are left to fend for themselves against other men in men's bathrooms and changing rooms - even if they're weak, disabled, poor, or of a marginalized racial group. Many trans women could easily pass as men and go unnoticed in the men's room - self ID means we're not just talking about trans women who have undergone sex change operations that intrinsically draw attention. Should our efforts be devoted to reducing intramale violence and harassment in the men's room, or effectively abandoning the segregation system altogether by adopting self ID? How will the effects of self ID change over time as trans acceptance increases, reducing the social barriers to a non-trans male predator pretending to be trans as an abuse tactic? These are completely debatable questions. It is not bigoted to consider excluding some or all trans women, just as it is not bigoted to exclude gay males. Segregation systems by definition separate humans from each other based on some arbitrary criteria, and I have heard no call for generally integrating bathrooms and changing rooms into unisex spaces.

Next quote.

...in her essay she talks about the problems she sees with letting “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” be considered a woman, which is very straightforward: she thinks many who claim to be women are not in fact women.

More subtle dishonesty from Nathan. Here's the quote he's referencing from Rowling:

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.

That doesn't actually imply Nathan's "very straightforward" interpretation that "she thinks many who claim to be women are not in fact women". It just means what she says, and it is indeed a simple truth. Perhaps there are not many men dishonestly claiming to be trans women now - Rowling actually doesn't comment on that at all in that quote. Nathan just made an opinion up for her so he could trash her. But if transphobia is eliminated from society as both TRAs and Gender Critical people desire, and there is no medical or other gatekeeping preventing males from claiming to be women, then yes, any man may claim to be a woman with zero impediment. We have ample evidence from history that men will go to great lengths to commit crimes against women. So yes, we would expect voyeurism and other abuse rates in women's spaces from opportunistic male intruders to go up. Obviously. If we didn't, why would we bother having separate facilities in the first place?

Nathan’s argument also reeks of what I previously noted: that the TRAs demand that “men” and even “male” be used to refer to gender identity, and not anatomy, is a manipulative tactic to make it impossible to discuss human sexual dimorphism. Nathan writes, “She thinks many who claim to be women are not in fact women.” Trans women are often anatomically male (I’m not going to debate whether medicine can change sex or intersex people here). Being born anatomically male is why they’re trans women and not non-trans women!

I'll take a moment to note that the TRAs no longer consider gender dysphoria a condition for being trans. That is, even persons that are psychologically accepting of their conventional gender, or who could become accepting through non-transition treatments or growth, can be considered trans. So what's stopping an abusive male from saying, "hey, I would just prefer to shower with women - that sounds more pleasant than showering with men?" Nothing!

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2 + 2 = ? : using nonstandard arithmetic is easy to abuse

If you're not familiar with the 2+2 Twitter War of 2020, here is a thread about it from the anti-woke side.

Progressives pointed out various scenarios or mathematical contexts where 2 + 2 might not equal 4. Depending on how you saw it, these were either interesting ideas to consider or obnoxious pedantry to ridicule.

I want to write briefly regarding this particular tweet by one Professor Kareem Carr:

I don’t know who needs to hear this but if someone says “2 + 2 = 5”, the correct response is “What are your definitions and axioms?” not a rant about the decline of Western civilization.

Here's a brief introduction to "modular arithmetic" if you're not familiar. It works like a clock. On a clock, 9 + 4 = 1. 7 + 7 = 2. Since the "wrap-around" number is 12, this is called "modulo 12". But other moduli are possible. For instance, 2 + 2 = 1 modulo 3. The "wrap-around" number is 3, and 4 is 1 greater than 3, so the final answer is 1. The difference with a clock is that a clock goes from 1 to 12, but modular arithmetic starts at 0 and ends right below the "wrap-around" number. So 6 + 6 = 0 modulo 12.

In modulo arithmetic, numbers are always less than the "wrap-around" number, just like there's no 13 on a clock.

Now consider the following statements. I do NOT believe these statements. I am presenting them for rhetorical purposes ONLY.

0 people were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012.

Police only knelt on George Floyd's neck for 46 seconds on May 25, 2020.

I would simply say these are false statements.

But would Professor Carr respond, "what are your definitions and axioms?"

The first one is true... modulo 26. (26 people were killed in the shooting.) The second one is true... modulo 60. (Police knelt on Floyd's neck for 7 minutes, 46 seconds.)

And of course you could say "fewer than 100,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust" without stating that you were using modulo 100,000 arithmetic, which by definition has no numbers above 100,000. "What are your definitions and axioms?"

Of course, the idea that no one was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting is in fact a notorious conspiracy theory. And I don't need to say anything more about Holocaust denial.

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Homosexual Recruitment Has Arrived

From Wikipedia:

"Homosexual recruitment" and similar derogatory terms are used to describe the belief that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people engage in deliberate attempts to convert otherwise heterosexual people into adopting a "gay lifestyle". This belief has been widely rejected as false by sociologists and psychologists.

I'm a lifelong liberal. Until recently, I would have agreed that "homosexual recruitment" was a conspiracy theory. But no longer. Homosexual recruitment is now real.

The ascendance of the trans rights movement has brought us a new idea: “genital preferences are transphobic”. The basic idea is that if you say you’re attracted to women, but exclude trans women with penises, you’re being transphobic. Or if you say you’re attracted to men, but exclude trans men with vaginas, you’re being transphobic.

If you haven’t heard this before, it might sound completely absurd, like I’m making it up, but it is in fact real. The idea is at least partly motivated by the struggle trans people have finding sexual partners and their desire to be validated as authentic members of their desired gender.

Most of the discussion over the idea that "genital preferences are transphobic" seems to be around lesbians, because lesbians seem disproportionately targeted by this variety of rhetoric.

But if "genital preferences are transphobic", that would apply to everyone, including straight, non-trans men and women.

Which is to say, it's a suggestion that if straight men don't consider sex with people with penises that identify as women, that's hateful, bigoted.

And if straight women don't consider sex with people with vaginas that identify as men, that's hateful, bigoted.

And you wouldn't want to be a bigot, would you?

So there it is. Pressuring straight people into same-sex sexuality. Homosexual recruitment has arrived.

The trans rights activist response might be that a non-trans man having sex with a trans woman isn't gay, and a non-trans woman having sex with a trans man isn't lesbianism, because as we hear ad nauseam, "trans women are women, and trans men are men".

But this is using language as a manipulative tool to avoid the actual concern. If instead of focusing on language, and instead focus on what a conservative means by homosexual recruitment, it is plain that "genital preferences are transphobic" fits the description. That progressives have redefined the words "man", "woman", "gay", and "lesbian" in their own dialect of English, and use the redefinitions in an argumentatively hostile way, is not a refutation. Frankly, it is further evidence of ill will.

I want to say that not all LGBT people think “genital preferences are transphobic”. The idea seems to be spearheaded by trans people, not by non-trans gays and lesbians. In fact, many gays and lesbians object to what they see as homophobic attempts to convert them to bisexuality. And not all trans people believe it either. I discourage stereotyping.