A while back, I wrote this article. I forgot to share it here, so here it is:
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.
Other background:
"JK Rowling made a choice to center herself in the discussion of her work, starting with how her 'rags to riches' story was used to market her novels. ... I don't see how you could want to spend a lot of time living and exploring and playing and adventuring in a world that is so tightly owned and controlled by someone who puts so much of her power toward ensuring trans people don't get to exist in the real world. The whole notion of 'anybody can come and explore this thing I created' feels antithetical to how unwelcoming Rowling is in real life."
— Charlie Jane Anders, J.K. Rowling and "Separating the Art from the Artist", Happy Dancing, February 11, 2023
In the Scottish Times, October 16, 2022, Rowling said: "It is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence."
"A New Podcast About J.K. Rowling Is Already Sparking Backlash": Youtuber Contrapoints has said that 'The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling' doesn't 'grasp that trans people are fighting for our lives.' By Samantha Riedel. Them. February 24, 2023
From that video:
"And when asked why they worship an overprivileged jerk, they balk. How is she transphobic? Fan fave, and I'm glad you asked. The next time you're online and you see someone say, What has she ever said that's transphobic? Because I've never seen anything! ask them what level of evidence they would require to change their mind. Ask them: What's transphobia? Often, their reply won't even be subtle. [For example, they might say] There's no such thing as transphobia... ... The reason they ask you for a list of receipts every time you call her transphobic or a bigot is that they want to waste your time. They want to fight. And unlike you, they likely won't worry about being disingenuous, deceitful, or downright genocidal. It's unreasonable and unrealistic to expect people to have a 20-tweet thread ready on demand for every slug that pupates and crawls out of Mumsnet and slithers over to Twitter. And if you refuse to play their game, it appears to any onlookers that you simply cannot provide any real evidence for your accusation."
(9:33–58, 10:15–45)
In my Medium article, I included this tweet:
Of course she implies she's being witch-hunted, on her "Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling" podcast and elsewhere.
October 2023 article
On October 13, 2023, she tweeted her usual fare: endorsing someone saying 'a woman is an adult human female'.
On October 15, the Telegraph published a short news report saying that Rowling spoke at the FiLiA Women’s Rights Conference in Glasgow. Written by India McTaggart and Ewan Somerville, the article described Rowling as "a widely celebrated feminist" who has "sold more than 500 million books and generated billions of dollars for the box office" and has been "vilified by transgender activists for her views on gender and women’s rights."
They quoted Rowling as saying "This has never been about trans rights," while also (in the article body and headline) describing her as "speak[ing] out about trans issues." That seems contradictory, unless they have some other unnamed "trans issues" apart from "trans rights" in mind.
Whatever "this" might be — the "this" that has supposedly "never been about trans rights" — isn't defined in the article. The article does say, however, that Rowling "has called for women-only spaces to be for biological women only" (trans people generally object to this use of the term "biological" because of how it implies that trans people don't have bodies or that our bodies are invalid). The article also characterizes Rowling and her ideological compatriots as those who "believe people cannot change their sex," a belief that they imply is what has drawn the ire of "trans activists."
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hIYmw5QeoyY/ZUa…D5j_ZCcgDaMdWNGjrMJKrmqoG/w140-h140-p/rowling.pngIn this article, Rowling is quoted as setting up a win-lose schema between trans rights and cis rights by saying: "I want trans people to be safe. I just don’t want women and girls to be any less safe." In other words, Rowling says that some sorts of trans rights are somehow placing [cis] women and girls at risk.
That is Rowling's perennial claim: that trans people's existence poses a danger to cis people. It is that, more so than her claim that people cannot change their sex, that upsets trans people.
Rowling portrays herself as a victim who "take[s] the hit" for her anti-trans attitude and behavior.
A couple days later, she shared this. Was she responding to anything in particular? Had there been some event we missed? No, this photo was five years old. She'd pulled out a five-year-old photo for the sake of being transphobic at the air.
On November 3, Rowling posted a news article regarding an expectation in South Australia that people's pronouns be respected in court proceedings. Rowling's comment was: "Asking a woman to refer to her male rapist or violent assaulter as 'she' in court is a form of state-sanctioned abuse. Female victims of male violence are further traumatised by being forced to speak a lie." Someone replied, urging against “treating trans women like predators when they’re statistically far more likely to be victims.” Rowling called him a “rapists’ rights activists.” And “rapists need brave guys like you.”
Hadn't Rowling just said a couple weeks earlier: "I want trans people to be safe"? If so, she should consider the experiences of trans victims of violence. And if we can see why a victim might be upset by referring to her assaulter as "she," can we also see (please) why a victim might be upset when others call her — not her attacker, but the victim herself — "he"?
This tweet on November 4 made the observation: "And there it is, JK Rowling just straight up calling all trans women rapists."
Also this statement: KJK already openly calls for the killing of trans people, and Rowling looks close to doing so. (More about KJK at the Global Network on Extremism & Technology.
Judith Butler, upon being asked for their opinion, looks up Rowling's latest 2024 tweet:
'Happy Birthing Parent Day to all whose large gametes were fertilized, resulting in small humans whose sex was assigned by doctors making mostly lucky guesses.' I see, so she’s making fun of us.
You know, I’m a parent. I didn’t give birth to anybody. I’m no less of a parent than somebody who did. When she talks that way, she’s putting down adoptive parents, she’s putting down blended families, she’s putting down all kinds of kinship arrangements where kids end up with new guardians or new parents after having lost theirs — in war, or through forcible migration, or any number of issues. It’s deeply insensitive. It doesn’t actually understand that parenting happens in all kinds of ways and that kinship happens outside of those connections with birth mothers."
— Judith Butler Knows What Makes Transphobes Tick, interview by Wren Sanders, Them, April 5, 2024
"After recent rants opposing a transgender-inclusive hate crime law and implying that trans people are criminals who don’t need legal protections, billionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling recently published a 709-word social media post explaining her anti-trans views and what she has decided defines a woman.
Her April 6 post ends with two tired transphobic tropes: that trans women are a violent threat to cis women and gender-affirming care harms children. Neither one is true..."
— J.K. Rowling posts 700-word diatribe trying to justify her transphobia: Rowling's transphobia has only grown more unhinged over time. Daniel Villarreal, LGBTQ Nation, April 13, 2024
On April 10, 2024, "J.K. Rowling suggests she will not forgive her Harry Potter stars for going against her views on trans rights in the wake of a new report criticizing current gender care treatments for young people." When a Rowling supporter said they hoped that former Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson would give a "public apology" to Rowling, "safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them," Rowling replied:
"Not safe, I’m afraid. Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces."
Rowling was simultaneously discussing the Cass report as "a watershed moment."
Rachel Saunders discusses the Cass Report on Medium.
Radcliffe doesn't speak to Rowling. He said in an Atlantic interview published April 30, 2024:
"Jo, obviously Harry Potter would not have happened without her, so nothing in my life would have probably happened the way it is without that person. But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life."
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