Sunday, March 19, 2023

Rowling's transphobia (March 2023)

Please also see my article:
I’m disappointed in the ‘Witch Trials’ 16-min ⏰⏰⏰⏰
J.K. Rowling’s image-polishing podcast doesn’t grapple with the real problem
When someone accuses Rowling of transphobia, her team’s refrain is: When has she ever been transphobic? At this point, I hear it as a running joke.

guy typing

Rowling calls trans people 'dangerous'

Yes, she said "this movement." But — what trans movement? She doesn't distinguish between a movement and actual trans people. This is a common transphobic tactic. They refer to individual trans people as "trans activists" and trans people collectively as "the trans movement," which they expect will let them characterize us in harmful ways. They expect no one will push back on them for this. Well, I push back. Saying "this movement" is "dangerous" is functionally the same as saying that trans people are dangerous.

Liana Kerzner (March 14, 2023) tweets: J.K. Rowling, flat out saying that she believes trans people are 'dangerous'. The screenshotted Rowling quote is: Time will tell whether I've got this wrong. I can only say that I've thought about it deeply and hard and long and I've listened, I promise, to the other side. And I believe absolutely that there is something dangerous about this movement and it must be challenged.

To read that EW article:
https://ew.com/celebrity/jk-rowling-addresses-transgender-women-comments-witch-trials-podcast/

Why don't trans people try to persuade JK Rowling?

Because she's said she's not open to changing her mind, even if presented with a rational argument.

Victoria March 14, 2023 tweets: idk how it’s possible for JK Rowling to get even worse but she did it. Citing a screenshot of a headline in the Independent: JK Rowling says she 'absolutely' knew Harry Potter fans would be 'deeply unhappy' over trans views. Author also said she called her management team and told them 'you cannot argue me out of this'
Aidan Comerford tweets March 14, 2023: 'You cannot argue me out of this' - @jk_rowling Yes, we know. You say you're fighting people you compare to death eaters, while your movement allies with the Far Right, you blow kisses to an anti-gay campaigner, and you laud a woman who called trans people 'blackface actors.
m tweets (March 18, 2023): my tweet about how jkr doesn't understand her own books has a lot of people saying "imagine saying you know more than her about her own books!" but not a lot of people explaining what I said that's wrong. weird huh.
Bad Writing Takes (March 16, 2023): In JK Rowling's latest - and potentially most bigoted and dangerous - diatribe against transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community, she implies that Harry Potter's Death Eaters were stand-ins for queer people campaigning for equal rights. Yes, really. Buckle up [emoji indicating there is a thread, i.e., more tweets]

[To see the other tweets in this thread, go to X.]
https://twitter.com/BadWritingTakes/status/1636424407710089217
Or look at the article that's referred to:
https://metro.co.uk/2023/03/15/jk-rowling-gender-identity-movement-echoes-warnings-in-harry-potter-18446883/

This is what her comments sound like to us:

Mia Moore (March 17, 2023) tweets: If you're a little faggot and you saw yourself in the characters I created, if they gave you hope to go on living, you read my books wrong. I actually think you're basically a Nazi, 12 year old girl who read my books. I'm sorry that you were too stupid to realize I hate you.

She gave herself the pen name of a man who invented electro-shock gay conversion therapy

Collin Kelly (March 15, 2023) Did you know that JK Rowling's pen-name "Robert Galbraith" is *also* the name the man who invented electro-shock gay conversion therapy!? Why no, she *didn't* google search the name at any point, she just likes those two names put together! It's just a coincidence! Fun!

She compared us to her on Death Eaters

R. Gordon, author of The Betrayer, tweets (April 12, 2023): "Harry Potter isn't being remade for a 'true vision'. It's because the licensing element of Rowling's businesses lost 74% of its income, as Fantastic Beasts flopped, the stage show's been hit by covid, and no-one apart from the BBC wants to adapt the mediocre murder books."

Council of Geeks tweets (March 15, 2023): You know... over two years ago I ended a sketch joking about the idea that JK Rowling would draw a parallel between the villains of her books to trans people. At the time commenters said they had to check to confirm that it hadn't actually happened. And now today... This is in reference to a screenshot quoting someone else: When asked what she would say to people who claim she's become like the villains in her books, Rowling said: 'I would say that some of you have not understood the books. The Death Eaters claimed, 'We have been made to live in secret, and now is our time, and any who stand in our way must be destroyed. If you disagree with us, you must die.' They demonised and dehumanised those who were not like them. I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement, that has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society.

Felicity (March 16, 2023) tweets: People saying Rowling's misinterpreting her own books, here, but I think it's better if we read Harry Potter as an intrinsically evil text. I'll hand her this interpretation."

Rose tweets: 'Look if the dark wizards represent the trans, and the goblins are widely accepted as being antisemitic, the fact they collaborate in the latest venture should raise some questions cause there are some unfortunate implications there joanne' Lacey replies (March 18, 2023): 'I mean, the whole GC movement is built on antisemitism, the questions have all been answered.'

Luxestronk tweeted (March 18, 2023): "Well, Magnus Hirschfeld's gender clinic in Berlin was raided by the Nazis because they believed that there was a Jewish plot to bring down the Master Race™ with 'degeneracy' like homosexuality and transness. Joanne is clearly just a big history buff! 🫠"
href="https://twitter.com/diplogeek/status/1637060011544264704

She refers to trans people using terms we do not use for ourselves

Erin Reed on Twitter, March 26, 2023: JK Rowling is calling trans women 'trans identified males.' This is a well known anti trans slur. TERFs call trans women 'trans identified males' or TIMs. For trans men, it’s TIFs (trans identified females). It’s hurtful, wrong, and mean spirited. She should be ashamed.

This is ridiculous

Rowling originally came out as a transphobe in the context of defending Maya Forstater, and Forstater is someone who gets upset about a cartoon space-alien not having a gender:

Gillian Branstetter on Twitter, September 30, 2022 [screaming, crying, vomiting] 'aliens only have two genders everybody knows this'

This is the activism

Bad Writing Takes @BadWritingTakes tweets: Update: @Oxfam have caved completely. They claim it was a mistake to criticise the TERF hate movement, and apologised to homophobes and transphobes for 'the offence it caused'. Solidarity to all Oxfam's LGBTQ+ staff. At least it took bomb threats to make Target capitulate. Quoting an Oxfam statement including: 'We fully support both an individual's rights to hold their philosophical beliefs and a person's right to have their identity respected...'

Not all original 'Harry Potter' actors agree with her

For example, Miriam Margoyles, who in 2024 is 82 years old, who played Professor Sprout, doesn't agree:

"In 2022, she defended Rowling, calling anger towards the writer 'misplaced.' But in an interview with the Times of London published last year, Margolyes made it clear she did not share what she termed Rowling’s 'rather conservative view' of transgender people.

“It’s a matter of personal happiness for people, and I think that’s what you should concentrate on,” the actor said, adding, “You can’t be fascist about it.” (HuffPost, March 9, 2024)

Stop retweeting Nazis

Neovagina Evangelion @RaeGun2k June 25, 2023: It's super weird how JK Rowling keeps retweeting Nazis. It's almost as if, and I'm saying this with rights freshly reaffirmed by the Canadian supreme court, she's sympathetic with them. Some kind of Nazi sympathizer. And dangerous to be around children, in my opinion.

But what has she ever done that's transphobic?

India Willoughby tweets October 19, 2023: 'Show me just ONE thing that JK Rowling has done that's transphobic': 21,546. Quoting a tweet by Katy Montgomerie: 'Here's JK Rowling liking a petition by a hate group calling for the British Government to remove trans people's legal ID, including passports and driving licenses.'

JK Rowling donates £70k for legal challenge on defining a woman: The author has given money to For Women Scotland, which opposes individuals being able to self-declare their own sex and was granted a judicial review by the Supreme Court. Jeremy Watson. The Times (UK). Feb 17, 2024.

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