Any thing you use to define what a "real woman" is inevitably hurts cis women, too. Body parts, reproductive ability, hormones, bone structure, childhood, how they dress, even chromosomes, there is no one thing that makes a woman that all women have besides that they identify as a woman. There has also been literally 0 cases of a cis man dressing up as a woman in order to hurt women; the idea that a man would go through the financial, legal and medical hoops to transition just for nefarious purposes is absurd. Especially in the UK, where Rowling lives, it's much, much harder to get HRT and to legally change things. But the UK seems to be a hotbed of TERFs right now.
Exactly. Thinking of all those objections to same-sex marriage on the basis of marriage being solely for procreation, not love, or companionship, or raising kids people may have via other means etc. This marginalizes so many heterosexual couples too. Are they seriously proposing that infertile people, women past menopause, people with blended families, people who simply don't want kids, shouldn't be allowed to marry either?
And if folks shrug it off and say, "Well obviously it's not about the outliers in the het community. We'll be okay," does so at their peril. But aside from all this, it's just ridiculous to deny people who are harming no one in any tangible way the right to live their lives as they choose, free of persecution and discrimination. This is America (and Rowling lives in the UK, another country that is supposed to be free). As every child chants from time to time, "It's a free country!" At least it is supposed to be. Of course some interpret freedom as the freedom to persecute and discriminate against others.
We may start seeing more of those velvet-gloved Terf types here too, now that Transgender rights are more codified. They will use the excuse of "men intruding on women's private spaces" the way some have in the UK. Right now in the US, there's still a heavy focus on restrooms and on the right of people to be free of employment discrimination and the right to have their health care needs covered, or hell, the right not to be killed.
I think back to when my mom was in a women's therapy group, many years ago, when the therapist asked if they'd be okay for a transgender woman (who had transitioned with surgery and hormones). Many in her group said they weren't, because they were dealing with issues related to growing up as female blah, blah, blah.
Even at the time I thought that odd, because I would very much want to learn from a person whose experiences as a female person had been different growing up, and what it meant to be female to them. Quite honestly, I struggle with what it means to be female, especially as a cis, het woman who finds many of the things my gender is expected to do and be to be a burden. But I still know I am female. Luckily for me, no one has ever challenged that seriously (aside from a few people, mostly guys, who tell me what women are
really like in those debates about how to write male and female characters differently that come up sometimes in the writing forums). I feel sad for people who are told over and over they can't possibly be who they are and who have constant obstacles tossed in their paths.
I saw a disturbing argument that the archvillain Voldemort has too many parallels with Rowling's expressed attitudes towards trans people to be anything but an allegory for them.
Also, I hear (I never read the books) there's an AFAB nonbinary character who by the end of the books decides they're really girly after all and she is happy being a girl with a girly frilly wife status quo.
I'm having trouble thinking of examples here, and I did read those books a few times over the years.
But regardless of whether she's been this way all along, or if she never gave transgender people much thought one way or the other until more recently, it's really horrible.