J.K. Rowling and the Unscientific Inquisition

By Michelle Morales

Who could have imagined the uproar caused by an influential woman merely stating a biological fact that has not been disproved by science, and by noting the relevance of gender in shaping the lives of women and girls around the world?

Feminists across the globe are applauding the bravery of JK Rowling, not least because she thought of women far less privileged than herself. Although her wealth guarantees her more opportunities than most of us could even dream of, instead of choosing the peacefulness of the sidelines, she decided to get right into the eye of the storm by pleading, among other things, for the public to listen to what lesbians have to say about the conflict between sex-based rights and ‘gender identity’ policies. 

Witnessing how this scandal has developed all over the world, it is evident that in this latest wave of the global movement for women's rights, the “feminist” response is to criticise the concerns of a woman who has been a victim of gender-based violence about whether it is prudent to allow males who identify as women into women’s shelters. The “feminist” thing to do, according to social media leftists, is to overlook the sensationalist coverage that a UK media outlet has given to the perpetrator of abuse against JK Rowling and to grant satisfaction to all those who threaten, bully and abuse her on social media. 

At this moment in time, the progressive route is not focused on protecting spaces for women, or the emotional well-being of women harmed by the power relationship between the sexes in private spheres; rather they demand that women, who have been victims of male violence, be “less selfish”, that they should overcome their traumas, and be tolerant towards people with penises who demand access to women-only spaces through backdoor lobbying and stealth. 

Rewriting History

Recently, Jameela Jamil, a television actress and social media personality, stated that by making these pronouncements, JK Rowling was dehumanising transwomen and contributing to the traumatic and violent experiences they receive. 

How are some male people supposed to be dehumanized when they are recognized by the common name by which they are classified to distinguish them from female people, who have the common name of ‘women’?

What Jamil and those who think like her are doing by condemning JK Rowling, is seeking to rewrite history itself. There are no records of human societies where women relegate men to otherness. In fact, it is quite the opposite: it is men who continue to constitute themselves with human universality and delegate otherness unto women. Relegated. Dehumanised. 

For the proponents of ‘gender identity’ policies, women must be replaced by transwomen to misrepresent our history and position us as oppressive women. Jamil does not realize that by acting in this way, she leaves the true perpetrators of violence against both women and transgender people out of the equation. This is pure patriarchal cynicism: allowing abusers to go unnoticed is a strategy of power.

Come on, thousands of Twitter and Facebook posts have been written to blame women for the harm done by sex buyers, pimps, homophobes, sexual partners, depression and other mental conditions related to dysphoria gender. We are also being saturated by celebrities demanding that we accept, under threat of violence, that the desires of some males to a so-called ‘gender identity’ is more valid than the material reality of women and girls around the world.

Unfortunately, Jamil is not the only one with this opinion. Within progressive circles, focusing on women and pointing out the sexual hierarchy that is gender, is to commit discrimination through hate speech. They brand us as discriminatory while arguing, and trying to impose public policies by stealth. They claim that it is fair to make theoretical abstractions regarding the condition of women which separate us from our concrete existence, to undo the language that names and refers to us, to diminish the impact this sexual hierarchy has on us and to challenge the scientific knowledge that proves our material reality. How wonderful!

‘Gender Identity’ or Scientific Knowledge?

Proponents of ‘gender identity’ policies flat-out oppose verified knowledge and instead postulate lies. As a doctor, I know that to apply science you have to select the best scientific arguments, and by that, I mean arguments which can be evidenced. We know that biological sex is real, because we can observe and verify it. Can those who argue for so-called ‘gender identity’ do the same for their position?

At this point in the story, ‘gender identity’ proponents throw around the word ‘intersexuality’. Differences in the development of biological sex (a condition that affects a tiny percentage of people) does not refute the existence of biological sex. Far from it, sex can be observed through physical evaluation and different analyses, because its determination is clinical and genetic. Ascertainable.

On the other hand, ‘gender identity’ supposedly responds to a feeling.

When the scientific community to which I belong wrongly attributed the work of US geneticist Nettie Stevens to a man, they were later forced to rectify because upon comparing observations made by her versus those made by the man, it was shown that the quality of her research was more robust, with a larger amount of experimental information, which she worked on, in detail and meticulously.

Her contributions to science have been consolidated because the observational facts corroborated her hypothesis. In her experiments, geneticist Nettie Stevens observed and compared somatic cells in the mitosis of male and female individual mealworms. She found that the females had 10 pairs of equal chromosomes, while the males had 8 equal pairs and an asymmetric pair. She also discovered that this happened in all males and that females did not provide this small chromosome. What I have just described is how society concluded the determining factor of biological sex, at a chromosomal level.

Before the discovery of the Y chromosome, there was an open debate about whether biological sex was determined by environmental factors, inheritance or exclusively by the mother. Nettie Stevens's research closed the debate. Today, political pressure groups seek to take us all back in time and continue the nineteenth-century speculations which argued that sex is influenced by sociocultural factors and is self-perceived.

In their eagerness to erode women’s hard-fought rights, they continue to backslide to obscurantism itself when they quote the US academic Anne Fausto-Sterling, the inventor of those so-called “five sexes”, without even acknowledging that the biologist's remark was meant in irony. She was scoffing at the medical language which was derogatory to people with sexual development disorders in the 1990s. Recently, in a statement released on social media back in February 2020, she washed her hands clean of this mess saying that she was not responsible for the fact that professors in the Global North do not teach rhetorical figures to their university students, or the fact that scientists and judges did not detect the irony of her argument.

Scientific Research Into Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones: What Are Proponents of ‘Gender Identity’ So Afraid Of?

Proponents of 'gender identity' public policies go deeper into obscurantism when they bully and intimidate in an effort to prevent scientific research from being carried out on the impact that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones could have on minors. 

Both health professionals and health users stand to benefit from these research initiatives. The more research, the more evidence and safety in caring for people, as it should be in ethical medical practice, the better! What are proponents of ‘gender identity’ afraid of?

Progressive sectors that advocate the use of puberty blockers in minors, three consultations (or fewer) after the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, are encouraging human experimentation on vulnerable subjects. Health personnel who work with children and adolescents who disagree with their sex do so in the dark, because there is no scientific evidence to support the use of strong drugs in industrial doses in physically healthy boys and girls.

Boys and girls identified by adults as ‘trans kids’, and sex offenders are the only individuals onto whom, without physical or pathological condition, society aims to justify the administration of drugs and sex hormones of the opposite sex: the latter, with the intention of condemning them to chemical castration.

‘Gender medicine’ is one of the few branches that do their practice on human bodies without explicit evidence. That is unprecedented. The only literature available is related to early puberty in children, which is subsequently extrapolated to cases of gender dysphoria. This is the context in which activists pressure and intimidate scientists,in an effort to halt further scientific investigation being carried out by health professionals. Those health professionals are themselves concerned about the lack of experimental information, and the physical health, mental health, bone density, and cerebral ramifications that arise from using healthy children as guinea pigs to advance the interests of adults.

There are better quality studies which suggest that the so-called "watchful waiting" approach is the best alternative to the medicalization of boys and girls. These studies show that approximately, 80% of children who present the psychic agony of gender dysphoria recover from this concern upon the arrival of adolescence.

How can healthcare professionals make judicious decisions without evidence that confirms the safety of the treatment being prescribed? To the people holding placards that read "Protect Trans Children": have you ever asked yourself what and who should we protect them from? How rational is it to interpret as “hate speech” the concern that close relatives, human rights activists, and people committed to science express on the subject of ‘gender identity’?

Validating ‘gender identity’ is a vow of faith, not scientific confirmation. How are we to legally validate a concept which is harmful to health (especially children’s health) and that is unfair to women because it leaves women and girls unprotected before the law and overlapping sexism?

The Realities of Womanhood

Gender is not an identity; it is a hierarchy. If you don’t agree, learn about the Bacha posh girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or observe how JK Rowling is being treated in England for standing up for women and children’s rights. 

I am not satisfied with a conceptualization of women which is based on anything other than sex. Under alternative patriarchal conceptualizations contrary to the material reality of women, we are reduced to a falsified interpretation. And sexism ceases to be exposed, since we can no longer speak of oppression which directly and specifically affects our sex class.

People who say that trans women are more women than females are no longer looking for women in the past or in the Global South to better understand the realities of womanhood, because what was created by the mind and produced in operating rooms has become a reality for them. People who claim that men also menstruate, lactate, give birth, and have a vagina are erasing women from their own stories, their struggles, and are denying the experiences inherent to their bodies, because a universal experience is mythologized.

When the fictitious idea that males are oppressed in the same way as women are is encouraged, the traces of male violence and the hierarchy between the sexes are rendered invisible. Who will be the focal point of the feminist struggle if, as neoliberalism and postmodernism argue, women and men are already equal in the pyramid of power and privilege? What will we fight for?

Michelle Morales is a doctor specialising in anesthesiology and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She became interested in feminism when she decided to question the oppression of women around her, but couldn’t find the words to articulate her opinions. She writes for Spanish platform Tribuna Feminista.

You can read the Spanish version of this article here.