this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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No. She's very much wrong. Human men can be born with non-functional ovaries. Her statement is factually inaccurate. She didn't say anything about gametes or chromosomes. She said "born with egg producing equipment, even faulty". That is a VERY specific phrasing and she is wrong.
You are obviously just trying to force a conversation about term usage and insisting that the words we use for both gender and sex should only ever be considered under the sex-based definition.
Language changes constantly. It's all made up, literally. Words mean what the populace uses them to mean.
Lastly, nobody in this thread is arguing the science. If you're talking to me, talk to me instead of building a straw man that's easy to feel superior to. I get that calling trans women women makes you uncomfortable. Get over it. Stop trying to shift the conversation to a framing that puts you on sturdier ground when it isn't what people are talking about.
JK Rowling's a TERF. She makes factually inaccurate statements (e.g. the tweet in the OP). That isn't up for debate. It's self evident. If you want to have a conversation about science deniers, do it somewhere else. Because nobody here is denying the science except Rowling.
Language changes and that's great. It's intellectually dishonest to rely on a redefinition that someone wouldn't agree with to "prove" them wrong. You're essentially saying "If I define equals as not equals, then your statement that 1 + 1 = 2 is clearly false, ha!"
Our language changing doesn't affect the reality of biological sex, and relying on a redefinition of "woman" that isn't based on biological sex to "prove" someone wrong that wouldn't agree with that redefinition in the first place isn't a serious argument. She's clearly using the common definition as "adult female human" that most people still use.
No, that's not clear at all and you're the only one here who thinks she's talking about chromosomes and gametes. YOU'RE doing that. She is a fucking TERF, has shown it repeatedly, and she doesn't think trans people are real or have a right to exist. She won't use preferred pronouns for someone who identified as a gender that doesn't match their sex.
We've been using "man" and "woman" to talk about gender and sex for a long, long time. YOU don't get to decide that only one half of that reality is valid and tell people "you can't use 'woman' to talk about your gender. That's reserved for sex now"
I'm not really sure how you can say "She's a TERF" and also "She's not using the sex-based definition" with a straight face. Clearly she's using that definition, because she's a TERF. How is that something to argue over?
It's not hard to understand. She is a TERF. Her statement was that she believes people with female sex characteristics must also be female gendered. It's blatantly obvious to everyone but you.
TERFs use the sex-based definition of the word "woman". That's like, the whole point of being a TERF. She's doing so right in the OP screenshot, saying "if , it's proof you are a woman". I can't spell it out more clearly to you than redirecting you to literally the OP, in which Rowling does precisely that.
That doesn't mean you have to agree with the definition, that's just a simple statement of fact.
You clearly disagree with the definition of "woman" that she's using, which is fine. But you can't invalidate her argument by relying on a definition she doesn't agree with in the first place.
So you're saying her post was an attempt to say that only female sex people have ovaries? A factually inaccurate statement? Or is it that female sex people with a non-functioning uterus are still female sex, a position that nobody is arguing against?
You're being willfully blind to her bigotry at this point
What exactly do you mean by "ovaries"? If you mean "functional ovaries", then you're incorrect. You might be thinking of ovotestes, in which some people have what's known as streak gonads, which is a non-functional bit of tissue. Most people (including biologists) wouldn't consider that "ovaries", much in the same way that a flake of skin isn't a human.
No (human) male has mature, functioning ovaries, only (human) females do. If you want to take the most uncharitable reading of Rowlings' tweet (for argument's sake), then she was still 99.999+% correct, and you can make her statement 100% correct by adding "[only]" before "egg-producing".
The phrasing "sex is defined by the type of gametes one's body is organized around producing" is often used because it handles even the case of ovotestes or gonadal dysgenesis, for when you want to be pedantically correct. I personally think it's silly to crucify her for phrasing that can be interpreted uncharitably, but to each their own.
You're really gonna sit here and try to convince people that a known TERF who is vocally anti-trans made a tweet about people with ovaries being women and it wasn't an attempt to tell trans people that they aren't actually their gender?
Even if her only goal was to remind trans men that they'll never be male sex, or trans women that they'll never be female sex, that still makes her a bigot and an asshole.
Your apologia for her hateful nature is disgusting
Yes, she was talking about sex and not gender. I'm not saying that she's not being an asshole, merely saying that she's correctly talking about sex. If you want to hate on her, hate on her for the right reasons.