AF: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK
is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their
gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated
the concern that this would "throw open the doors of bathrooms and
changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman",
potentially putting women at risk of violence.
JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as
“mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which
reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually
existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view
presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a
penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such
changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that
the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who
identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form
of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful
fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often
discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of
self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that
cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon
them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself
cause for worry.
https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times
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