Death-Eater Rowling Doubles Down on Transphobia with New Novel

It would be awesome of more trans actors could play trans characters in movies and TV too.

TulipMama said:

I find it heartening, at least, to see how many former fans are taking a stand against her nonsense. When her bass-akwards, honestly evil views came to light, tattoo parlors across the board were swamped with requests to remove or alter HP tattoos. The Fandoms I follow posted a deluge of Trans-Positive content from personal stories to fanfics and it was beautiful to see.

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Gen Z are growing up with a lot more awareness and compassion than previous generations. Schools (at least in the UK) are obliged by law to prevent discrimination against trans students (many still fail at this, but the trans kids and their parents have the law on their side, and Mermaids, a fantastic organisation that supports trans kids and their families) and there are a lot more kids who are out about being trans, where previously they often couldn't tell anyone, even their parents, about how they feel. The result is that so many more kids know trans people and are aware of the difficulties they face. Even if there are still bigoted bullies among the kids, the schools have a legal obligation to crack down on it, and more kids are siding with trans kids against the bullies. There's still a hell of a long way to go, but they're doing miles better than previous generations at combatting bigotry. And lots of gen X and millennial adults are raising and teaching this generation. There are a lot more supportive parents and teachers than previously. And a lot of educating going on when kids come out as trans and want to be known by their correct gender at school.

Platforms like Twitter make it look like the bigots are more numerous than they really are. What happens when bigots are allowed to loudly spout their bigotry and intimidate those who don't agree with them is that a lot of people who don't like them will just quietly leave the platform. Or they stay on for a bit and argue until they're emotionally exhausted and have to give up for the sake of their mental health - particularly if they are trans or a supportive parent/family member of a trans person, where such arguments aren't merely academic, they're deeply personal and threatening to themselves or someone they love. This is true of all forms of bigotry. And the bigots aren't in the protected categories themselves and don't have or aren't supportive of loved ones that are, so they don't have anything at stake in these so-called "debates" - they will go on systematically intimidating people without any cost to themselves. Twitter has the other major problem in that the character limit makes it impossible to properly discuss complex issues such as why Rowling's comments are so damaging.

I have a nasty feeling that JK Rowling's publishers etc are going along with it all because they think the publicity that the "debate" (see the above paragraph as to why I don't think the word debate is correct here) causes will boost sales. It probably will, but it's going to do a lot of reputational damage in the long term. Gen Z is the up and coming target audience and lots of them won't tolerate bigotry. And Harry Potter always appealed to marginalised kids and kids who want to be supportive of marginalised kids - the same kids who will be trans allies.

J.K. Rowling plugs disgusting anti-trans online store to her 14 million Twitter followers

The wild womyn workshop is a U.K.-based online store that bills itself as selling “a range of unique and beautifully designed items for radical womyn.” An entire section of the online store is labeled “Gender Critical,” a euphemism for transphobia.

Here are some of the items for sale at that store, which include pins that are direct attacks on transgender people, like this one that says, “Transwomen [sic] are men.”


“Woman is not a costume,” one pin says, implying that transgender women aren’t really women, they just wear women’s clothes.

While most of the merch attacks trans women, this one says “Transmen [sic] are my sisters.”

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Rowling posted in one of the site's shirts, which reads, "This witch doesn't burn." I despise her for doing harm to transgender people and for painting herself, with all her privilege, as an innocent, persecuted victim. Rowling is a hardcore TERF.

Yeah, I saw that on Twitter. I also saw that there's a decent chance that the Fantastic Beasts movie series might be cancelled. Partly because JKR is being horrible, partly because the last one bombed so hard (which is partly because she wrote the script, which seems to be her one and only film writing attempt). And I'm sure COVID isn't helping things, either. Anyways, if it does end up being cancelled I'm sure she's going to blame trans people and she's going to make herself so upset over the whole thing. It's always very funny to me when people think Big Gay/Big Trans is controlling the world and making us eat soy burgers and putting fluoride in the water to make us gay or trans. I sure wish we had that much power! First thing I would do would be to eminent domain all of Chic-Fil-A's recipes.

Lyv said:

J.K. Rowling plugs disgusting anti-trans online store to her 14 million Twitter followers



Rowling posted in one of the site's shirts, which reads, "This witch doesn't burn." I despise her for doing harm to transgender people and for painting herself, with all her privilege, as an innocent, persecuted victim. Rowling is a hardcore TERF.

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This is really horrible. It's hard to understand where all this hate and resentment comes from in women who consider themselves feminists. When has a human rights movement ever been made stronger by dividing itself and excluding people?

I can't think of a single thing a trans person has done to hurt me, take anything away from me, or even inconvenience me in my life, and I can't think of a way feminism isn't made stronger by including trans women.

Funny part of it is I was wondering just the other day if the word "womyn" is still in use. Lo and behold, it is!

And I'm starting to hate this woman with every fiber of my being.

Roxxsmom said:

I can't think of a single thing a trans person has done to hurt me, take anything away from me, or even inconvenience me in my life, and I can't think of a way feminism isn't made stronger by including trans women.

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I think it's an act of "oppression Olympics." You can't be a real woman if you haven't suffered as much as me, your period needs to make you throw up from pain, you need to be sexually harassed by your boss, you need to have been fired for being pregnant or passed over for a promotion because you have kids. A trans woman "was" a "man" at some point in her life, ergo, she could have never faced the same amount of problems as a cis woman. But that totally discounts the extra stuff that trans women have to go through that cis women do not, and the feeling of "something's wrong with me" you have for years until you figure out that it's from being trans.

I see trans women who want to wear make up or dresses because it makes them happy, but then they get yelled at for "being a caricature of a woman" or "regressing feminism." It's not okay for them to want to be a mom or do feminine things. But if they wear no make up and masculine clothing then they're not trying hard enough to be a woman. I still struggle with liking/wanting "feminine" things, as well as liking/wanting "masculine" things, especially if they're "bad" things. I had to go through so much mental gymnastics to allow myself to buy a combination shampoo-conditioner because hurr durr men don't know how to wash themselves, so does buying that mean that I agree with that sentiment? Am I allowing myself to be a dumb stupid man? That's the kind of shit that cis people never have to deal with.

ChaseJxyz said:

That's the kind of shit that cis people never have to deal with.

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I'm thankful for that, and I wish people could generally be less shirty about gender roles. As a cis guy who didn't tick the typical boxes for many "manly men" things while growing up, I was often bullied in a small rural school for being different.

And that's not me claiming All Victims Are The Same, Poor Me, just me acknowledging that the bit of it I got growing up gives me huge sympathies for people who get worse every day, and I wish I could wave the proverbial wand and make that stop for everyone.

ChaseJxyz said:

I think it's an act of "oppression Olympics." You can't be a real woman if you haven't suffered as much as me, your period needs to make you throw up from pain, you need to be sexually harassed by your boss, you need to have been fired for being pregnant or passed over for a promotion because you have kids. A trans woman "was" a "man" at some point in her life, ergo, she could have never faced the same amount of problems as a cis woman. But that totally discounts the extra stuff that trans women have to go through that cis women do not, and the feeling of "something's wrong with me" you have for years until you figure out that it's from being trans.

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You're probably right about that, at least for some of them. It's silly, because ciswomen have different obstacles and experiences too. I had very painful periods as a teen, but I certainly never threw up from the pain. And I never experienced the kind of sexual harassment some women did either. But some trans women experience a great deal of harassment, not to mention the fear over doing something as mundane as using a rest room or being attacked by random strangers just because they are trans.

I see trans women who want to wear make up or dresses because it makes them happy, but then they get yelled at for "being a caricature of a woman" or "regressing feminism." It's not okay for them to want to be a mom or do feminine things. But if they wear no make up and masculine clothing then they're not trying hard enough to be a woman. I still struggle with liking/wanting "feminine" things, as well as liking/wanting "masculine" things, especially if they're "bad" things. I had to go through so much mental gymnastics to allow myself to buy a combination shampoo-conditioner because hurr durr men don't know how to wash themselves, so does buying that mean that I agree with that sentiment? Am I allowing myself to be a dumb stupid man? That's the kind of shit that cis people never have to deal with.

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I can see how all this adds to the stress for people who are trans. It's a loaded enough issue for those of us who have never had our gender seriously questioned.

I do remember being mistaken for a boy a couple of time when I was about 13 and had just gotten a pixie cut. I was working at a stable and wasn't wearing any makeup (girls in my school mostly didn't at that age) or jewelry, and was dressed in jeans and a work shirt and was still pretty thin with no curves at all. I always wore earrings after that and didn't get a short haircut again for a long time (and my mom always pestered me about that--but you're so pretty with short hair and long hair looks so sloppy. Women of her generation did not equate femininity with long hair the ways later generations seem to).

What's also weird is that there were times when I wished I were a guy. Guys seemed so confident and sure of themselves and were always the center of attention without trying and were the ones people always asked do do fun and important technical things. No one expected them to be handsome the way we had to be pretty, and they even got to tell mock us for how we looked when they weren't good looking either (because it doesn't matter if guys have pimples or large noses or whatever--I know this isn't true now, but it seemed so at the time).

And also because most of the books I enjoyed had boys and men doing important, fun things and there seemed to be a tacit agreement that women and girls just couldn't because of their periods, or the risk of rape, or their weaker physiques or something, and surely there must be a biological reason we'd never had a girl president and all the inventors and scientists were men (of course they all weren't men, but we never learned about the female scientists and inventors in school). But I mostly just wanted to live in a world where women and girls could go on quests and adventures, or at least be included in more stories about quests and adventures and do sciencey and adventurous things in real life. I also wanted to live in a world (though I couldn't articulate this yet) where women were thought of as real and typical humans whose value wasn't largely defined by how they looked and which men they were associated with.

Compared to all the sexism and trying to figure out what it even means to be female in a "man's world" crap, having menstrual cramps was a minor frustration and definitely not integral to my feminine identity.

Not equating these experiences with the pain and frustration of being transgender in a world that still so often denies the reality of the experience, though. But being female is confusing and challenging, even for cisgender women. I don't see how it would be in any way easier for transgender women. Surely widening the circle of acceptance, and expanding our definition of femininity, as well as allowing all women the latitude to embrace whatever expressions of gender they think are important, should make life better for all women, imo.

Fuck TERFs.

I'm going to muck this up. It's clear in my head, but not always when I put it into words. Apologies in advance.

I think for some of these cis women it's more fundamental, and rooted in gender essentialism. Their womanhood is based on a belief that the binaries men and women skew toward are based not in culture, but in DNA. Trans women threaten their "specialness" somehow, because they believe trans women are (unjustly, in their view) trying to infringe on what they believe are the innate benefits of being born female. It's why, in my opinion, the most outspoken TERFs are privileged white women: it's hard to believe your privilege isn't somehow yours by divine right, for you to deny everyone you don't like.

It's rubbish on so many levels. (It's also why TERFs are not, IMO, feminists, but that's a different conversation.)

I've had a lot of cis women in my life accuse me of being unfeminine, and of doing the girl thing wrong. (It's made me very suspicious of stereotypically feminine women, which I recognize is unfair, but there you are.) And yet I've always been absolutely certain I'm female. I couldn't, however, tell you why I feel that way. So when another person tells me they're female, I believe them, no matter what their upbringing or experiences. Why on earth wouldn't I?

It's so strange that JK Rowling even cares. Trans people don't affect her life at all. I know I shouldn't have sympathy for the devil, but part of me is concerned about her. She is clearly having a meltdown over something that literally shouldn't bother her. Of course, she is actively hurting trans women, so my pools of tears for her is pretty shallow, but it's obvious to me she is not mentally well. To write an entire book about a "transvestite serial killer" as some pearl clutching warning about the dangers of "men in dresses," it's just so sick and so obsessive. I don't want to speculate, because I can never peer into her brain, but something in there is broken. Again, though, with her influence she is doing immeasurable harm, so I don't feel sorry for her so much as I feel "sad" for her. All the money in the world, and she is a miserable, petty train wreck obsessed with an issue that doesn't impact her life at all.

ConnorMuldowney said:

...she is a miserable, petty train wreck obsessed with an issue that doesn't impact her life at all.

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This goes for other transphobic and homophobic people too, not to mention all the other folks who get their jollies by trying to stop people from living as they choose when those choices hurt no one.

Roxxsmom: I totally get what you're talking about, that's how I felt a lot of the time when I thought I was cis. TERFs, when they remember that trans men exist, say that we're just trying to escape the types of things you're talking about, that it's just a tactic to be equal to men. That MAYBE was a thing hundreds of years ago, where women were legally property so there wasn't much of a choice, but it wasn't super widespread. The "benefits" of becoming a man do not outweigh the costs and extra risks that happen when you transition your gender; if you go stealth (no one in your life knows you're trans) you might be able to get a lot of the benefits and no transphobic harassment, however, the stress of hiding your deep, dark secret causes its own host of problems. Even after you've had all the surgeries and been on hormones for years, certain parts of your body aren't going to work exactly the same as a cis persons, so you have to create more lies for that...Anyone who thinks that people transition their genders to just have an easier life as a woman/man because women/men have it so easy really just doesn't understand what living life as either gender entails. It's absolutely a privilege thing.

Liz: What you're talking about reminds me a lot of The Handmaid's Tale. That being a woman is a god/nature-given status and that you are special because of your organs and your ability to reproduce with them. Being a woman is all about embracing those things and doing those things. When I reread/watched it recently I kept thinking about the gender essentialism and how much that is just TERF rhetoric. But it's known that TERFS align themselves with conservative Christians for the express purpose of going after trans people.

Connor: My hypothesis was she was just an older, misguided person that had real (if unfounded) concerns about the safety of women and girls. A man pretending to be a woman to get into the bathroom, that sounds like a thing that a man would do, right? But she's choosing to doubledown. She's choosing to hang out with other TERFs and she's learning new talking points and new reasons to hate and mistrust trans people. A lot of "gender critical" folx end up losing many of their family and friends for their beliefs so they hang out in their echo chambers. It's easier than to admit that you're wrong and YOU have been the one causing people to suffer. TERF-ism has been a real big thing in the UK lately and a lot of big name politicians/celebrities are voicing their opinions on """"""the trans debate""""""". So it was only a matter of time before JKR did, too.

Cis, older, white woman's opinion:
It feels like part of that 'zero-sum' thinking that makes some white people fear that POC can only make gains at the cost of white people's losses.
Glass ceilings are starting to break, but it may feel like men who aren't doing well are using 'trans-woman' status as a way to do an end-run and grab jobs and opportunities that 'should' have gone to cis-women.
And, vice-versa, I suppose - trans-men are looking for an 'easy' road to success, grabbing jobs that they couldn't get as cis-women.

Either way, it feels like there's a level of bitterness there, a feeling of being cheated. Although why this affects J.K. Rowling, of all people, eludes me.

frimble3 said:

Either way, it feels like there's a level of bitterness there, a feeling of being cheated. Although why this affects J.K. Rowling, of all people, eludes me.

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That's the weirdest, and most despicable thing of all. She's won the lottery, achieved success few of any gender can dream of. But she's punching down.

Roxxsmom said:

That's the weirdest, and most despicable thing of all. She's won the lottery, achieved success few of any gender can dream of. But she's punching down.

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This. She literally has more money than the Queen, and yet she's choosing to hurt people who could never harm her.

Maybe this is proof that *nobody* deserves that level of astronomical wealth and the power it gives them.

I've always thought so.
The Queen has the excuse that she's really part of 'showbiz', the pageantry that is English history, and lures the tourists. She's got to keep up the palaces and the horses, and it's not like she's got much a life of her own.

But J.K. Rowling? She's got the money, and it's all hers to spend, and she's got the name, and she'll always be the woman who wrote the 'Harry Potter' books.
She could just sit quietly the rest of her life and count her money. Write exactly what she wants, do as she pleases. And, if people didn't leap on her new series, under the new name, well, screw 'em, she's still J.K. Rowling. She'll be in children's literature books for ever.

So, why the animosity? I could understand it from some woman who's been kicked aside for promotions by men, and now, some trans-woman is hired ahead of her in the name of 'diversity' - it's not right, but it's sort of understandable.
But J.K. Rowling?

I've run across articles about anti-Trans thinking by some lesbians too. The argument I saw made in one article is that transgender boys are really girls who feel pressured to be boys because they are not pretty or traditionally feminine and because they like girls romantically or that some trans women claiming to be gay are really men simply trying to have sex with lesbian women. These arguments are so absurd, they seem almost like caricatures to me.

But some lesbians are complaining now that the community perceives that all lesbian women are TERFS, and there is even a sense that the TERF movement is a lesbian movement, and I don't get where that comes from. The gay women I've known personally are pro Trans, and there are clearly heterosexual TERFS, like Rowling.

Gah.

There's some rotten underbelly lesbian history; vis-a-vis the Michigan Womyn's Festival. There are also historically lesbian communities in the twentieth century that were emphatically for cisgendered women, only. Not even male children past puberty.

Panty check is a phrase in lesbian subculture, that's derived largely from the MWF, in very not good ways.

Some lesbians really really do not like men. At all. They object to their existence. This is minority. But the festival was seen by some as womyn [sic] only territory, to the point that non-gender standard presenting women, straight and lesbian, as well as transwomen, were attacked verbally, more in some cases, and well . . . it's reallly ugly and it's all from poorly documented memories and lots of assertions.

Google it. I wasn't there, and it's just wrong no matter how people spin it.

But it's part of the reason I'm so hostile about even a metaphorical panty check.

AW Admin said:

Gah.

There's some rotten underbelly lesbian history; vis-a-vis the Michigan Womyn's Festival. There are also historically lesbian communities in the twentieth century that were emphatically for cisgendered women, only. Not even male children past puberty.

Panty check is a phrase in lesbian subculture, that's derived largely from the MWF, in very not good ways.

Some lesbians really really do not like men. At all. They object to their existence. This is minority. But the festival was seen by some as womyn [sic] only territory, to the point that non-gender standard presenting women, straight and lesbian, as well as transwomen, were attacked verbally, more in some cases, and well . . . it's reallly ugly and it's all from poorly documented memories and lots of assertions.

Google it. I wasn't there, and it's just wrong no matter how people spin it.

But it's part of the reason I'm so hostile about even a metaphorical panty check.

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I hadn't heard specifically about the MWF, but I had heard about some of the more radical and unpleasant elements in the lesbian community in other contexts. My mom was part of the women's movement back in the 70s, and the group she was going to for a while was taken up by that fringe, and she gave up on it for a while, as they had some pretty horrible things to say to the members who were heterosexual and married etc. I didn't know this at time, having been a child, but years later she told me when I asked why she'd stopped going to the consciousness-raising groups at the women's center.

I also have a couple of bi friends who have run afoul of "gold star" lesbians who deny that they, as bisexual people, are real members of the LGBTQ+ or OUILTBAG community, or to put it another way, the "B" should just be removed (and the T too). Some even deny that lesbian women who ever had a sexual relationship with a man are real. I've run across nastily misogynistic gay men too, though maybe there's a different feel or tone to it. But I certainly wouldn't say most gay men hate women either.

It is sad, though, that some in the trans community now feel that all lesbians are their enemies. I can see where the suspicion arises from, though. That is really awful.

If we humans can't figure out a way to stop dividing ourselves and hurting others, I worry we won't survive much longer.

It doesn't help that in a lot of (online, in my experience) lesbian spaces that the minority that are TERFs are very vocal and aren't curbed in some way. You won't feel safe in a space if someone is mouthing off that trans women aren't real women. Also the whole "gold star" thing makes pre-op/non-op folx not want to get involved for obvious reasons. When you run into enough of those people, it's easier to assume that any person from that community has a decent chance of being like that (or they see that sort of thing happen and they don't speak up against it, which is worse). I know that's upsetting to a number of cis lesbians but if your space allows this TERFy behavior to happen, well, this is the result.

I have a very...difficult relationship with (mostly cis) gay mens' spaces, because of the reasons above. I don't know if I'm going to be attacked or told I don't belong there, I don't know if I'm going to be fetishized, unless the space is specifically labeled as radically inclusive I do not know if it's actually going to be a safe, welcoming space or not. But then those radically inclusive spaces aren't just for men who are ONLY gay, or who are ONLY men. It's a lot less straining to just avoid gay mens' spaces and to assume that cis gay men won't be attracted to me than to get my hopes up and then be told that my body is disgusting or that I'm not real. There just aren't enough gay men out there to make me think otherwise, and it's the same thing for trans women and lesbians.

The biggest shocker for me is that people apparently still held her to any kind of standard and are shocked about this after her banking goblins who were carbon copies of Nazi propaganda cartoons of Jews, or the Chinese girl with the Korean counterpart to "Miller Smith" for a name, among the less subtle signs that minorities aren't part of her world. I mean, weren't those enough red flags to cancel her? She got away with all of that and thought she'd get away with the transphobia too, because people kept throwing their money at her anyway. Everything she did was shrugged off at the prospect of another book or fanfiction-worthy revelation, and that's how you get celebrities who think they're untouchable. I'm not shocked she made transphobic comments; after everything else, that's just her staying in character. What unsettles me is that people didn't draw the line earlier, for example at the ism that got 6 million of us gassed.

Until maybe a year ago (though the past few years have been so crazy it's hard to keep the chronology straight) I had nothing but positive thoughts about J.K. Rowling. I wasn't a big HP fan, but admired that she'd created a vivid imaginary world people connected with. And she seemed to be using her wealth and position for positive ends.

Then this. So much good will, wiped out by picking this bigoted hill to die on.

As a cis-het male, it's been easy for me to be unaware of TERF-dom until fairly recently. Not 'til I started corresponding with a trans woman writer in New Zealand, did I learn how much of the anti-trans bigotry comes from cis women who consider themselves feminists, but are putting all their energy into trying to exclude trans women.

They've got all these fantasies about bathrooms and changing rooms being invaded by "male-bodied people with penises". (They mention genitals a lot, and the scary predatory trans women of their imaginations never have bottom surgery, and aggressively expose their bodies to strange cis women in dressing-rooms.)