re: "'This climate of fear serves nobody well,' says J.K. Rowling" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2020, December 10)
People who menstruate do tend to be women, although it ain't necessarily so, especially with the rise of modern science that can do so much better than blind, mindless nature, who wantonly created us human beings along with our relatives, from roses and rats to eels and Covid-19.
Tables, as Latin famously tells us, are female (mensa), while although they also sound female (nauta), sailors are in fact male in the Latin world; horns (cornu), meanwhile, which really do look as though they should be male, are in fact neutral. But that is never necessarily so. The gender of tables seems what it is: an arbitrary, or at best accidental, assignment of sex; less obviously and far more fun, the same is true of sailors, as the healthily increasing number of sexually female sailors attests. And why should a bull's proud horns have to be neutral? Could it be blamed were that proud animal to take offense at such a rude human designation of one of his prides and joys? Neutral! Bah, humbug.
We have our underlying biology, which makes most, but by no means all of us either an XX female or an XY male, but nature often enough mixes things up, with results that clearly show that even at the most basic biological level not all humans, or other animals, can be neatly fit into a black and white male or female pigeon hole.
More to the point, our personalities, our persons, that is, need not be subject to the tyranny of our natural biology. Yes, people who menstruate do tend to be women, and it's not unreasonable to use the term women provided we acknowledge that that is merely a convenient short hand, one that must increasingly prove dodgy as science enables ever more humans than those who start life with a traditional XX built body to also share in the joys of menstruating. If a table can be comfortably female gendered, why can't a menstruating person be male or whatever gendered? If the context requires it, we can focus on the biology, noting that they are XX or XY or XXY or XYY or something more exotic, but their being a person is something that, being them, should be for them to decide, including what label best fits their evolving conception of themselves as gendered entity: male, female, transgender, neutral, non-binary, or whatever. Perhaps we should stop making such a fuss about the gender by which a person in part defines themselves as a person, letting them get on with being the person they are and are becoming, as get on with our person-driven lives.
Ms Rowling is surely right that less of the climate of fear would be a good thing, but is that the natural way for human beings? Sadly, the devotees of nature, naturalness and all things natural will continue to follow that "red in tooth and claw" essence of the nature of the natural. Persons really can do so much better.
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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The Sydney Morning Herald article.
It is published there at https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/this-climate-of-fear-serves-nobody-well-says-j-k-rowling-20201210-p56ma0.html#comments
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