When did being woke become a bad thing?

Would you like to outline big social movements that failed?

The only ones I can think of were all right wing. In Ireland it's stuff like being anti abortion, anti divorce, criminalizing gay people, not allowing unmarried women to open bank accounts without a man cosigning, forcing women to quit jobs when they got married etc...

Modern "woke" people look for equal rights for lgbtq+ people, women, minorities etc. They don't want to see discrimination based on unchangeable characteristics such as sex, gender, race, sexual orientation etc.

How is somebody's opinion dangerous like you claim? Because you don't like it and therefore it must be silenced?

Surely the reems of abuse and death threats she got are far more dangerous no? Ah yeah, that's deserved because she needs to be silenced.

That's a complete strawman though, I don't think anyone is making that argument. What they are saying is being transgender doesn't change your sex

I think it has to be different across different sports because there's different demands on different sports. Tiddlywinks ;) is different to running.

Also, we get into a weird area where we're then testing cis women. What if they're cis but they happen to have higher levels of growth hormones or testosterone naturally? We've seen it happen recently where three black women were banned from competitive sport because of this. And it could be argued that all high level competitive sportsmen/women have a genetic advantage over the rest of us. Most of us, no matter how hard we trained would have no hope of competing at that level.

I'm not trying to deliberately muddy the waters here. I just want to point out that it's it's a messy area. Rules that people put in place to block trans athletes may block cis ones too. At the same time I agree that there do need to be some rules in place.

I'm not a Dr. I don't have the right answers to decide what the rules should be. But I hope that they're apt and suitable for each individual sport at individual levels.

It might be worth looking at exactly what that statement says however. It does not seem to put it "on her and her opinion" like you are moving to do.

The paragraph quoted does not particularly blame her or her statements for anything in fact. Rather it discusses how the "public response on social media and in the press" following her statements should give us all pause to question how we debate these topics in public. I have some (a little) sympathy to that way of thinking. The court of public opinion is a mess - especially on places like twitter.

But nothing I have seen from JK Rowling - from you - or from your link - suggests to me that her opinions are dangerous, her having an opinion is dangerous, or her expressing her opinions is dangerous.

In fact I am struggling to think of a single quote from her - let alone her entire set of opinions in context and considered as a whole - that "emboldens bullies" or suggests "intimidating" anyone has been "permitted" or that "normalises discrimination and dehumanising of trans people" as another user put it. I sat through the rather plodding "Witch Trials" podcast about Rowling too which seemed to summarize her position well enough. Tough the podcast was at least twice as long as it needed to be to achieve any of that.

Most of what I get from her in fact can be summed up by suggesting she is perfectly fine with trans people and many of the things they want for society. But that perhaps some aspects of our current society should be kept as spaces for actual women due to how important - and how hard won - those structures and spaces are.

In fact in your own link they quoted her directly as saying "Like the vast majority of the people who’ve written to me, I feel nothing but sympathy towards those with gender dysphoria". So it seems to me the things her opinions are being blamed for are exactly the opposite of what she thinks herself she is expressing.

If anything though there is a real warning here against the cult of personality that our species is so prone to. Something more volartile and harmful than the concept that "opinions are dangerous" and should be "shouted down" as was claimed earlier in the thread.

Any personality.

No one is perfect. And if one holds another in such esteem as to require them to be anywhere approaching perfection - then one is putting oneself at risk. So if there are people who "once looked up to JK Rowling" as you put it and have subsequently engaged in self harm or suicide because Rowling subsequently did not fit the mold they had created for her - then that is on them, not her. If your well being and mental health is that deeply tied to another person then you should be seeking help. Especially if that other person is not someone you actually really know in any way other than through their art.

There are threads on this forum arguing what we should and should not be teaching children in schools. Perhaps that is something we should be teaching them. Like so many things in life - there is nothing particularly wrong with looking up to others - I do it myself all the time. But like so many things in life - anything taken too far goes past useful and quickly becomes harmful.

Tiddlywinks is - as I am sure you intended - a tongue in cheek example. But actually it can surprise some people as to the male/female divide in some sport. Snooker is a relatively good example. As womenssnooker.com points out - many of the barriers to women are being removed. In fact snooker has never been men only. Actually four women completed full time on the professional circuit in the 22/23 season. But even in snooker being male confers advantages and my suspicion is you will not be seeing women in the last 32 at the crucible any time soon. Though I will be delighted to be wrong!

As someone who competes very often in many countries in sports like Jujitsu - I know how the rules of division can affect a person. My body weight for example is pretty much directly on the border between commonly used weight classes. A single kilo on or off can dictate whether I am going to be up with the heaviest of the people in my division on the day - or among the lightest. I win a lot. I lose a lot. In all my relevant weight classes. But my loses certainly are somewhat skewed towards the higher weight class.

I certainly have sympathy for those that fall on the boundary of any rule put in place in any walk of life. Not just sport. We have so many rules and boundaries in society and law and morality and ethics and education and politics - and they will always disenfranchise someone somewhere alas. I have seen people who genuinely needed the money - fail to get education grants. While others who certainly could have done fine without it - qualified. "means testing" they called it.

And that is but one example of likely endless 1000s.

So this sympathy has to be tempered by a "bigger picture" view of things. Three women as a statistic against the endless 1000s of people who compete in "sport" is not exactly a noise in the signal. Even if it was 30 not 3, across all sports, we would be doing pretty damn well.

But they can and should certainly be used to refine the rules as we go forward rather than - as some might want to do - attempt to rubbish and over turn those rules entirely.

Testosterone might be a quick and simple test to highlight certain cases for example. But it does not strike me as perfect for many reasons. Failure of that test allegedly (you did not cite it so I can not refer to it directly) threw up three women as a problem case. Great. So now that the test has caught them in the first testing net - what further evaluation can be made available to check as to their eligibility to compete? That would be my thinking if I was running a sporting body. If truly intersex people make up 0.018% of the entire population for example - then genetic testing certainly opens up a clarification possibility? Again like you I am no doctor.

But as many in this debate/discussion have pointed out again and again - merely testing testosterone levels is not enough. Mostly because many/most of the advantages conferred by it have been attained long before that test is performed. A male who has gone through entirely male puberty and then taken steps to greatly suppress testosterone - would likely pass such a test for example. But they will still have much of the advantages conferred. Advantages not conferred in the same way in the three women you refer to who have slightly higher levels than is typical of their biological sex.

No set of rules to create divisions in sport is going to be perfect. Ever. But we can strive towards perfection as best we can rather than throw our hands up entirely and act like we are saying "Shure anyone can compete against anyone or we are somehow impinging on their human rights" as some (at least one I can think of anyway) rather more extreme posters on this site have suggested.

No I don't and that's a disgusting thing to say to someone. My comprehension is perfect, perhaps you should read posts fully before replying. Do you always insult people when you know that your struggling to post clearly?

Your waffling and going around my point. We are talking about racism not in out group preference or biological reality. You know absolutely nothing about me so how the feck can you know anything about my ideologies?