> Personally I don't get the impression that Framework is endorsing a particular view, nor are they directly sponsoring a specific individual or their views.
I agree. However, I do think that Framework is taking a particularly cowardly stance by refusing to acknowledge community concerns, and I think that kind of behavior is exactly how far-right groups gain power in tech spaces. When one group just wants to live in peace, and another group wants to make the first group disappear, organizations that don't distinguish between the two ultimately drive out the peaceful group.
At the same time, I think there's a somewhat valid space for the psychology of this response.
If I use Harry Potter as an example, I think Harry Potter fans fall in a handful of camps:
1. Agrees with JK Rowling on her anti-trans rhetoric
2. Grew up loving Harry Potter and detests JK Rowling's views, possibly to the point of a boycott
3. Has never heard of any of the controversy and is blissfully ignorant
4. Is aware of the controversy but never signed up for that discussion in the first place and is just here for wizard fiction, wishes the controversy never existed.
I think the CEO of Framework is essentially going for #4 here, and I am quite mixed on whether that standpoint is enabling of problematic people or not. I can understand arguments both ways. For the role of a CEO, in this day and age, taking a polarized position does have the possibility of alienating half of your customer base, essentially a no-win scenario.
#4 is also mixed with a sprinkle of "Sometimes saying too much and engaging too much in the argument is your own undoing and digging your own grave." Often CEOs that say nothing end up with better outcomes than those who take an active stance on issues.
I can totally recognize that #4 is objectively more cowardly and less principled than #2, but I also don't know that we can expect 100% of generally good people to be freedom fighters.
Yeah, that's a good breakdown. I mean, he definitely brought this on himself by leaning so hard into Omarchy in the first place, but maybe he was just ignorant of DHH's views and thought that was a "neutral" thing to do.
In any case, I think it's important for consumers to confront companies when they pull stunts like this. Also, I'm not certain that #4-type CEOs actually have better outcomes - maybe in the short term, but when the creeping technofascism becomes more obvious, that causes real problems (see e.g. NixOS, Tesla)
It’s a fun one, though, because JKR’s whole life and works involve strong themes surrounding eugenics.
So it’s really not that far of a stretch to make this association in her case.
In her books the wizards fight against wizard Hitler and his eugenic holocaust. In real life, she engages in her own form of eugenic crusade where she believes the sex organs you are born with define your personality, identity, and your criminal tendencies.
JKR has never advocated violence, never denied anyone's humanity, and never called for any group to be eradicated. Hitler did all of those things on an industrial scale.
What on earth compelled you to equate the most evil mass-murderer of the 20th century with a children's author and feminist who says sex is real and matters for women's rights and safety?
Being less explicit about hate doesn’t make it not hate.
JKR doesn’t believe trans women deserve rights that normal people have, and believes that they are inherently threatening to women just by existing.
She wrote a book series about how your bloodline doesn’t define who you are as a person, and then turned around and decided that the sex organs you’re born with determine your propensity for criminality.
For some reason she scapegoats a group of people representing less than 1% of the population for crime against women and it doesn’t make any statistical or logical sense to those of us who haven’t been living in a moldy flat sleeping on a bed of cash.
JKR isn't advocating for anyone's human rights to be taken away, and she's never said anything of the sort. Her core point is that women and girls need single-sex spaces, services and other provisions because because male dominance in society, backed by violence and reproductive control, puts those who are female at a structural disadvantage, and that no matter how someone identifies, this material imbalance between the sexes hasn't gone away.
She's simply arguing that women shouldn't have to surrender the few hard-fought protections that were carved out to help level this unequal scenario in the first place.
Eh, that's not really the part of her arguments I have a problem with. I think she doesn't have a sensible answer to the bathrooms question (that doesn't just punish trans people) but I'm not sure what the right answer is either. I do have a problem with her doing stuff like this:
She's made a pattern of this behavior, and I think it clearly reveals her transphobia. (I also am not sure what the right solution is for trans people in competitive sports! I think that's a very tricky subject. But attacking cis women for looking too masculine is certainly not part of the answer.)
Also, her twitter rants about trans people are pretty shocking.
Barbra Banda failed a sex verification check issued by Zambia's Football Association, who then preemptively withdrew Banda and others from competing in WAFCON on this basis.
One would have thought the BBC could have picked a better candidate for Women's Footballer of the Year than a player who had been withdrawn from competition for not being female. You think JKR shouldn't comment on this?
What you mean is, they decided she had too much testosterone (although apparently even the details of the test are unclear?). Lots of women have high testosterone, it's bizarre to unilaterally declare her to not be a woman on that basis alone. Sex, like gender, is a spectrum.
But sure, I guess we can consider that hormone requirement as just an extremely crude approximation. JKR's comments are still repugnant.
You're conveniently designating Banda and Semenya as male for having male-typical testosterone levels, ignoring their sex characteristics, chromosomes, other hormones, etc. You specifically refer to them as "males". So, they should use only male bathrooms, right? That's JKR's whole thing, and earlier you said:
> women and girls need single-sex spaces
It follows that you should designate a person with female-typical testosterone and estrogen levels as female, whether or not they have XY or similar chromosomes, a penis, etc. Those people should then use female bathrooms, right? Including trans women taking hormonal treatment? And those trans women should be able to compete in women's sports, since they pass your hormone test?
Or maybe, just maybe, sex is more complicated than that.
I also wonder how women with minor hormone irregularities feel when people like you dismiss them as men in denial.
Semenya took a case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and lost. The published ruling revealed that Semenya has a disorder of sex development that only affects males. Semenya later acknowledged in an interview of being "born without a uterus" and with "internal testicles". At this point, it is indisputable that Semenya is male.
Banda was withdrawn by FAZ from WAFCON because CAF had started testing athletes in the female category for male-typical levels of testosterone. Barring serious illness or doping, a failed test implies presence of testes which implies male.
Some male athletes who want to compete in the female category have suppressed their testosterone, either through pharmaceutical means or surgical excision of their testes. This doesn't mean they aren't male, nor does it remove the physical advantages conferred during male sex development. Which is, fundamentally, what the female category in sport exists to exclude.
So there is no contradiction as it all leads back to this principle.
Women with minor hormone irregularities, like PCOS for example, aren't affected by the above.
You are now jumping between at least three different definitions of "male" when convenient for your argument. This is silly.
And yes, women can have high testosterone without testes. Again, it's bizarre that you're clinging to a testosterone standard that would declare a decent percentage of healthy, normal women to actually be men. I'm sorry, but sex is more complicated than that. You're not doing anyone any favors by trying to impose neat definitions on a messy reality.
I'm not jumping between definitions, I'm using the single definition that is relevant for women's sport: anyone who went through male puberty retains an irreversible performance advantage and therefore should be excluded from the female category.
Women with PCOS or similar are highly unlikely to exceed the testosterone limits that some sporting bodies implement as proxy for detecting male advantage, and indeed are explicitly exempted in such policies and have never been barred under any DSD regulation.
The true edge cases aren't athletes like Semenya and Banda, but the very rare individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), who don't respond to testosterone at any point in their development. Most sporting bodies carve out an exemption to exclusion for them.
Again, I don't care about women's sport regulations. That's a complicated issue, I get it! Barring women with high testosterone from competing seems like a very crude solution to me, but whatever.
What I do care about is your insistence that a single hormone test lets you exclude someone from being a woman, and JKR's dismissal of Banda. That's just so messed up, and ironically feels very misogynistic.
Yes she is. She wants it to be impossible for trans people to use the bathroom in public.
She literally wants it to be an impossible paradox.
Trans women can’t use the ladies room because they’re a “danger” to women. Trans women can’t use the men’s room because they look like women.
For people like JKR who hate trans women, trans men don’t exist, intersex people don’t exist, and non-binary people don’t exist. Trans women are just easy to hate for various psychological and political reasons.
She just wants them to be punished. That’s it. All of these other excuses that have to do with violence and crime are no different than when my MAGA relatives justify the ICE Gestapo’s illegal kidnappings by the supposed criminality of immigrants. We don’t need due process when they’re “illegals” who are “more likely to be criminals and are in gangs.” They “don’t have rights” for various stupid-ass reasons.
Again, it is a statistical and logical fallacy to consider a population so small to be a threat to women.
JKR has not proposed taking away any rights from men, only trans women.
Women aren’t surrendering anything. The list of things they’re surrendering has a length of 0.
I do wonder, have you read anything she's written on this topic? I'm intrigued as to how you've managed to misunderstand her argument so comprehensively.
I agree. However, I do think that Framework is taking a particularly cowardly stance by refusing to acknowledge community concerns, and I think that kind of behavior is exactly how far-right groups gain power in tech spaces. When one group just wants to live in peace, and another group wants to make the first group disappear, organizations that don't distinguish between the two ultimately drive out the peaceful group.