Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling - What is a Woman?

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling (wiki) defines women:

Ed: I've posted this here because I don't want to have to search for it whenever I want to share it with someone. The content belongs to her - I have no rights.

Original tweet here.

You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes.

I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs. She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others.

I don’t believe a woman is more or less of a woman for having sex with men, women, both or not wanting sex at all. I don’t think a woman is more or less of a woman for having a buzz cut and liking suits and ties, or wearing stilettos and mini dresses, for being black, white or brown, for being six feet tall or a little person, for being kind or cruel, angry or sad, loud or retiring. She isn't more of a woman for featuring in Playboy or being a surrendered wife, nor less of a woman for designing space rockets or taking up boxing. What makes her a woman is the fact of being born in a body that, assuming nothing has gone wrong in her physical development (which, as stated above, still doesn't stop her being a woman), is geared towards producing eggs as opposed to sperm, towards bearing as opposed to begetting children, and irrespective of whether she's done either of those things, or ever wants to.

Womanhood isn't a mystical state of being, nor is it measured by how well one apes sex stereotypes. We are not the creatures either porn or the Bible tell you we are. Femaleness is not, as trans woman Andrea Chu Long wrote, ‘an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes,’ nor are we God’s afterthought, sprung from Adam’s rib.

Women are provably subject to certain experiences because of our female bodies, including different forms of oppression, depending on the cultures in which we live. When trans activists say 'I thought you didn't want to be defined by your biology,' it’s a feeble and transparent attempt at linguistic sleight of hand. Women don't want to be limited, exploited, punished, or subject to other unjust treatment because of their biology, but our being female is indeed defined by our biology. It's one material fact about us, like having freckles or disliking beetroot, neither of which are representative of our entire beings, either. Women have billions of different personalities and life stories, which have nothing to do with our bodies, although we are likely to have had experiences men don't and can't, because we belong to our sex class.

Some people feel strongly that they should have been, or wish to be seen as, the sex class into which they weren't born. Gender dysphoria is a real and very painful condition and I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it. I want them to be free to dress and present themselves however they like and I want them to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen regarding housing, employment and personal safety. I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. I believe the ideology that preaches those tenets has caused, and continues to cause, very real harm to vulnerable people.

I am strongly against women's and girls' rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate trans-identified men, for the very simple reason that no study has ever demonstrated that trans-identified men don't have exactly the same pattern of criminality as other men, and because, however they identify, men retain their advantages of speed and strength. In other words, I think the safety and rights of girls and women are more important than those men's desire for validation.

I sincerely hope that answers your questions. You may still disagree, but as I hope this shows, I’m more than happy to have this debate.

Tuesday links

Happy Feast of the Ass!

Alcohol tolerance might have saved our ancestors from extinction, scientists claim.

A 1918 Remedial Introduction to "Politics" for Newly-Enfranchised Women in the U.K.

Richard Feynman’s “Notebook Technique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

The Science Behind Why Dark Winter Days Bum People Out.

The Folklore of Gin.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include Pachelbel's Canon In D performed by train horns, National Geographic’s 100 best photos from 2019, the history of robocalls, and a cumulative list of the Darwin Awards.

His & Her Diary From the Same Day

From an old Reddit post (2011)

For your wino mom or wife on Mother's Day: FlaskScarf, tampon flasks, or the Wine Rack

Check out the FlaskScarf for women; they come in a variety of colors and stripes and have a hidden bladder than can hold up to 8-ounces of booze (or whatever). When you're thirsty just suck on your scarf!

From the makers the FlaskTie for men:

If your mom isn't a scarf person, there's always the classic tampon flask (which comes in a set of five!) or the Wine Rack, which would, since it holds 25 ounces of liquid in it's bra-shaped bladder, probably have some make-mom-look-like-Dolly-Parton properties :

Slightly classier are these fake lotion containers, which are actually very highly rated:

Happy Mother's Day!

Monday links

How To Dress For Success And To Get A Man: A 1967 Guide. Related, "Women are teachable": 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees"

Spring cleaning, 19th century style.

FBI recovers stolen Chagall 30 years after theft.

Microsoft has made its internal training courses for AI available to the public.

Predictions for the Year 2018 From the 20th Century

Shoplifter uses Play-Doh to cover up security camera lens, leaves perfectly pressed fingerprint behind.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include tax-related stuff (history, cartoons, links, Dave Barry, Sci Fi tax revolts, the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman"), and the anniversaries of Lincoln's assassination and the sinking of the Titanic (with eyewitness accounts of each).

"Women are teachable": 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees"

The subject has always interested me, because my mom was one of them - the women who went to work during World War II while the men were off fighting, then gave up their jobs and paychecks once those men came back.

You've come a long way, baby. From the National Archives:

By 1944, over half of American adult women were employed outside the home, making invaluable contributions to the war effort. As women went about their duties, supervisors often worried about effectively assimilating them into the workforce. This publication from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) awkwardly attempted to assist supervisors with managing their new female employees.

Text:

When you supervise a woman…

Make clear her part in the process or product on which she works.

Allow for her lack of familiarity with machine processes.

See that her working set-up is comfortable, safe and convenient.

Start her right by kindly and careful supervision.

Avoid horseplay or “kidding”; she may resent it.

Suggest rather than reprimand.

When she does a good job, tell her so.

Listen to and aid her in her work problems. 

Text:

When you put a woman to work…

Have a job breakdown for her job.

Consider her education, work experience and temperament in assigning her to that job.

Have the necessary equipment, tools and supplies ready for her.

Try out her capacity for and familiarity with the work.

Assign her to a shift in accordance with health, home obligations and transportation arrangements.

Place her in a group of workers with similar backgrounds and interests.

Inform her fully on health and safety rules, company policies, company objectives.

Be sure she knows the location of rest-rooms, lunch facilities, dispensaries.

Don’t change her shift too often and never without notice.

Text:

Whenever you employ a woman...

Limit her hours to 8 a day, and 48 a week, if possible.

Arrange brief rest periods in the middle of each shift. 

Try to make nourishing foods available during lunch periods.

Try to provide a clean place to eat lunch, away from her workplace.

Make cool and pure drinking water accessible.

See that the toilet and restrooms are clean and adequate.

Watch work hazards - moving machinery; dust and fumes; improper lifting; careless housekeeping.

Provide properly adjusted work seats; good ventilation and lighting.

Recommend proper clothing for each job; safe, comfortable shoes; try to provide lockers and a place to change work clothes.

Relieve a monotonous job with rest periods. If possible, use music during fatigue periods.

Text:

Finally–call on a trained woman counselor in your personnel department…

To find out what women workers think and want.

To discover personal causes of poor work, absenteeism, turnover.

To assist women workers in solving personal difficulties.

To interpret women’s attitudes and actions.

To assist in adjusting women to their jobs.

The same group of documents in the Archives also has a booklet called ""Womanpower" Campaign". See the whole thing there:

Churchill on women in combat

Excerpt from a Strand magazine article in 1938:

We take the immunity of women from violence so much for granted that we do not perceive what inroads are being made upon it. These inroads come from opposite quarters. The first is the feminist movement, which claims equal rights for women, and in its course prides itself in stripping them of their privileges. Secondly, the mud-rush of barbarism which is breaking out in so many parts of the world owns no principle but that of lethal force. Thus we see both progressive and reactionary forces luring women nearer to danger, and exposing them to the retaliation of the enemy...

The part which our women played in winning the War was enshrined in the grant of them to vote which for so many years they had vainly sought to wrest from successive Governments by methods too often suggesting that they had not the civic sense to use the privilege rightly. It was the War which solved that problem, as it solved so many others in our internal affairs. . .

On the other hand, even in the last war there were many things that women could do apart from killing which added to the fighting power of the army. There were innumerable duties of all kinds behind the front which brought them ever nearer to the line and into danger. We must expect that this will continue to develop in a war for the future.

Wednesday links

From 1803, the Ottoman Empire's first map of the newly minted United States

Advice on Settling in New York in 1820.

A Creepy Crawly Collection of Insects Built Out of LEGO.

Hormone Guide: How to Speak to Women.

A Natural History of the Wedding Dress.

Rodents of Unusual Size: Giant Rat That Fell From Sky Is New Species.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include 1960 directions for building your own fallout shelter, why we yawn, organizing concerts in German prison camps, an octopus city, and what happens when you get beamed down in Star Trek.

Hormone Guide: How to Speak to Women

For the friend (you know who you are) who needs this reminder about how to talk to women:

Tuesday links

How to fight off an invasive species: Shooting Lionfish With A Glock 9mm.

Churches and their Hidden Basement Bowling Alleys.

This Guy Gets Punched in the Stomach for a Living.

Women are teachable: 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees"

How to Build Your Own Car in Just 400 Easy Steps.

The Best Sport Of The Early 1900s Involved Pushing Around An Elephant-Sized Ball.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include Australia's biggest dog, a Nazi’s documentary photos of Polish Jews in 1940, what happens when you hiccup, and the first day of Fall.

Q&A from the New York Mirror, circa 1950s: If a woman needs it, should she be spanked?

It's unanimous:

via @Flashbak

Monday links

When Given Colored Construction Paper, Wasps Build Rainbow Colored Nests.

Goat Rituals and Tree-Trunk Gravestones: The Peculiar History of Life Insurance. Related: How Maritime Insurance Built Ancient Rome.

You can now Rent Julia Child’s Provencale Kitchen as she Left It, via Airbnb

Advice from 1658: How to Give Up Wine.

Check Out All the Largest Flying Boats in History.

How To Dress For Success And To Get A Man: A 1967 Guide. Related, "Women are teachable": 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees"

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse, a gallery of vintage mechanical calculators, the British plan for a chicken-heated nuclear bomb. a giant flesh-eating koala , and why UPS trucks don't turn left.

The hormone released during nursing and orgasms also bonds humans to dogs

WSJ: For all of you moms out there, oxytocin is one of the hormones released from 1. nursing and 2. orgasms. Kind of an I-feel-really-good-about-you hormone. 

The discovery concerns the mammalian hormone oxytocin, which evolved around 500 million years ago from an ancestral version still found in fish and amphibians. The hormone evolved to play a key role in what makes mammals mammalian.

Other newborn animals typically fend for themselves: Crocodiles, for example, are catching insects soon after birth. But mammals develop slowly, and mothers have to feed their newborns. Oxytocin evolved to make this possible, prompting mothers who are nursing to produce more milk as their babies demand it.

Evolving the means to nurse the young was only half the battle. You also have to want to take care of them and to invest zillions of calories in generating milk and fending off predators. And you need to be able to recognize your offspring in a crowd, so you don’t waste your energy helping others to leave behind copies of their genes.

Oxytocin helped to solve both problems. Around the time of birth, female mammals release oxytocin in some brain regions, and the hormone allows them to register and recall their offspring’s smell, appearance or voice. Oxytocin rewards such maternal behavior with feelings of well-being.

So, extend that to relationships with pets - apparently, although I've always read about it in the nursing/orgasm contexts, there's a male version, too, at least insofar as bonding with pets is concerned:

Reporting in the journal Science, Miho Nagasawa of Azabu University in Japan and colleagues observed that modern dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin when they interact with each other. Remarkably, dogs who gaze the most at their humans during interactions had the biggest oxytocin rise—as did their humans.

The scientists then spritzed oxytocin (or saline, as a control treatment) up the dogs’ noses. The oxytocin caused female dogs to gaze more at their humans…whose own oxytocin levels rose as a result. All of this only affected dogs and their owners. Hand-reared wolves and their owners didn’t react in the same way to the treatment, and dogs administered oxytocin didn’t gaze any longer at humans who weren’t familiar to them. In other words, dog and human brains seem to have evolved at lightning speed to co-opt oxytocin for bonding between our species.

This sure helps to explain people who use baby talk with their dogs.

Read the whole article in the WSJ. H/T GeekPress.

Friday links

Dr. Samuel Johnson was born on this date in 1709: here's a selection of his insults and Scotland-bashing quotes.

25 Unusual Foreign Travel Warnings for Visiting the U.S.

This Father Pulled Out His Daughter’s Wobbly Tooth With A Drone.

Hormone Guide: How to Speak to Women.

Harvard linguist points out the 58 most commonly misused words and phrases.

Close Calls: Three Times When the Human Race Barely Escaped Extinction.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include a selection of really bad book covers (and books), the world's longest (700 miles) yard sale, 10 and 8 year old Seattle girls who launched their own spacecraft, and footage of an 800K gallon Jim Beam spill 1. hit by lightning then 2. sucked into the air by a tornado.

On a post re "Free tampons could lessen inequality", check the editor's note

Disclaimer du jour, apparently from the Daily Bruin.

via Mickey Kaus.

Cost-Cutting Measures Force Company To Start Hiring More Female Employees

Well, I've always contended that if women really were paid 78 percent (or whatever) of what a man makes, no one would hire a man, at least until all of the women were employed.

I especially like this bit:

Collier added that the shift toward female staffers would also allow the company to save money by suspending its executive development program.

Read the whole thing. And yes, of course, it's The Onion.

HARTFORD, CT—In an effort to remain financially solvent by keeping payroll expenditures in check, executives at the Banford Group announced Tuesday they would have to start hiring more female employees.

“Due to ongoing economic pressures, it’s crucial for the well-being of this company to rein in the growth of operating costs, so effective immediately all new hires must be women,” said CEO Jay Collier, adding that the cutbacks would require department managers to only consider female employees for promotions within the company’s ranks. “It’s not going to be easy, but we’ve got to tighten our belts until we’re more financially stable, and that means bringing on a female candidate for every open position. Once we return to steady profitability, we can get back to hiring men.” Collier added that the shift toward female staffers would also allow the company to save money by suspending its executive development program.

Crimson Tide II: a submarine with an all-female crew who are PMSing together and have nukes

My favorite Mad TV skit ever:

And this, from The Onion: Lilith Fair Performers, Attendees Achieve Largest-Ever Synchronized Ovulation:

SALT LAKE CITY, UT–In what is believed to be the largest group ovulation in history, more than 20,000 Lilith Fair performers and attendees simultaneously released ova into their uteruses Tuesday.

Singers Sarah McLachlan (left) and Paula Cole
 celebrate the history-making egg-release.

The collective egg-release, which took place at 11:24 p.m. MST, capped off a five-hour concert featuring such nurturing, supportive female artists as Paula Cole, Shawn Colvin, Natalie Merchant, and Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan.

"This mass ovulation is a celebration of our fertility. It's a celebration of our sisterhood," said McLachlan, her uterine wall lined with nutrient-rich blood. "By releasing these eggs, we recognize and honor our collective femininity."

Singer Joan Osborne, who joined McLachlan in a duet of the McLachlan hit "Sweet Surrender" following the historic ovulation, called the experience "the most affirming of my life."

"The energy radiated by everyone on stage and in the crowd was exhilarating. As a woman, I felt totally empowered," said Osborne, whose 1997 song "One Of Us" spent six weeks at the top of the charts. "My fallopian tubes are glowing."

According to McLachlan, the synchronized ovulation, sponsored by Volkswagen, Starbucks and Bioré Pore Cleansing Strips, was successful because of the "incredibly supportive atmosphere" of the concert.

"Everyone at the show was surrounded by other women who understand what they go through on a daily basis in this society," McLachlan said. "Knowing you have that kind of strong support system around you makes it that much easier to ovulate."

Lilith Fair concertgoers cheer ovaried singer Shawn Colvin.

Among the other artists who participated in the historic egg-release: Suzanne Vega, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, Meredith Brooks, Erykah Badu and Jewel.

"To me, this is what Lilith Fair all about," Saliers said. "To be able to get up on that stage and imbed an ovum in your uterus in front of 20,000 screaming, fertile fans who are doing the same thing, well, that's just the ultimate."

"I've never been around so many people who share my interest in women's issues and social justice," Jewel said. "It makes me want to ride my horse bareback through a forest stream."

Fans were equally excited.

"Without a doubt, that was the best concert I've ever been to," said Rebecca Roth of Ogden, UT, wearing her $27 "I Ovulated At Lilith Fair" souvenir T-shirt. "The Indigo Girls and Sheryl Crow and Natalie Merchant were all so amazing. And Sarah [McLachlan] looked beautiful. I have to get that skirt she was wearing."

"I am going to be so sad when I menstruate my egg," fellow concertgoer Angela Hiller of Provo, UT, said. "I totally wish I could keep it inside me forever as a reminder of this special day."