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.

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.

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.

[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:

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

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."

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."

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

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:

This is the activism

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

But what has she ever done that's transphobic?

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.