Ricky Gervais isn't even funny. He's kind of a non-entity off my radar. That JK Rowling holds such views makes me incredibly sad.
Regarding TERFs, I recently read the opinion of some people within the trans community and trans allies that TERF shouldn't be used a term because they are not actually feminists at all. The alternative suggested is: "feminism appropriating radical transphobe". Make what you will of the fact that the acronym for this is FART.
They are not feminists because they exclude trans women. Even though science is showing us that the brains of trans people matches their internal gender - in other words that trans women have brains like cis women, not like cis men. If they refuse to acknowledge the science, they're even more wrong (I could forgive ignorance if people are willing to learn better). I am absolutely sick to death of science deniers.
Also, regardless of brains, if you believe in gender equality, that means all genders. Some people are born intersex - doctors have known this since forever, though it's always been kept hidden and intersex people assigned a gender based on a hurried opinion of a doctor on a newborn baby. Now that scientists are starting to understand how the gender of brains develops, not only does this explain why some people are trans, it's likely that non-binary identities are the result of the brain itself being intersex. There always has been more than two genders. Gender equality means all of them.
Here's a link to some science because the belief that being trans is a lifestyle choice is way too prevalent so the more this information is put out there, the better.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas...muR8vM8CjhYeOhmPm573SNtESPnZnWEKgOy-h-r4aDm_4
The article includes genetics as well as information about the development of the brain, and how they are linked.
and some key quotes:
Date: February 5, 2020
Source: Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
Summary: Some of the first biological evidence of the incongruence transgender individuals experience, because their brain indicates they are one sex and their body another, may have been found in estrogen receptor pathways in the brain of 30 transgender individuals.
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Basically -- and perhaps counterintuitively -- these genes are primarily involved in estrogen's critical sprinkling of the brain right before or after birth, which is essential to masculinization of the brain.
Variants investigators identified may mean that in natal males (people whose birth sex is male) this critical estrogen exposure doesn't happen or the pathway is altered so the brain does not get masculinized. In natal females, it may mean that estrogen exposure happens when it normally wouldn't, leading to masculinization.
Both could result in an incongruence between a person's internal gender and their external sex. The negative emotional experience associated with this incongruence is called gender dysphoria.
"They are experiencing dysphoria because the gender they feel on the inside does not match their external sex," Theisen says. "Once someone has a male or female brain, they have it and you are not going to change it. The goal of treatments like hormone therapy and surgery is to help their body more closely match where their brain already is."
"It doesn't matter which sex organs you have, it's whether estrogen, or androgen, which is converted to estrogen in the brain, masculinizes the brain during this critical period," says Dr. Lawrence C. Layman, chief of the MCG Section of Reproductive Endocrinology, Infertility and Genetics in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "We have found variants in genes that are important in some of these different areas of the brain."
And another thing, even if there wasn't the science and people just wanted to be trans - why the hell not just let people live their lives the way that's right for them!
But there is the science. Lots of people don't know it. Other people actively deny it. That just makes it worse.
