J.K. Rowling’s Transphobic World

A few years ago, I watched a TV show called Kevin Can F**k Himself. The show is kind of a dark satire of a sitcom. The main characters are Kevin, the husband, who is kind of an inconsiderate moron, and Allison, the wife, who is just fed up of dealing with Kevin. We, the audience, get to see the world from the perspective of somebody who is enthralled with Kevin, and also somebody who understands Allison very well. The result is kind of a tonal whiplash. What is our one-house rule? Yankees suck! And yes, of course, Yankees suck. Allison feels like her whole life has been wasted on this terrible man, serving his whims and his needs, but not really tending to her own, abandoning her goals and dreams in pursuit of making Kevin happy. So she decides she has to get rid of Kevin, and I don't mean with a divorce. She is, in a manner of speaking, going to make him sleep with the fishes. Unfortunately, Kevin has what you might consider to be plot armor. He has sitcom luck. Everything always goes right for Kevin. None of these attempts work, and if anything, they make everything turn out better for him. Kevin even becomes a local hero, because a guy who was sent to kill him gets killed by him instead. This one's on the house. Why? Because the world is going to hell. But you did something about it. Finally, after a long journey, she does the thing we were all hoping she would do. She decides to break up with Kevin. She decides to ask for a divorce. We, the audience, are now given a new view of Kevin. We're now seeing him as she does. We see him through her eyes. You leave me, and you will be back begging for help, or money, or attention before you know it. That's not true. It is true. Because this is just like when you thought we should move, or you should try school, or you had to go to Paris. Eventually, you come to your senses and calm down. So what do you say we just skip this part where you think you want a divorce, okay? Through Allison's eyes, Kevin is terrifying. He is larger than her. He is unstable in this moment. He is drunk as usual because he is a terrible alcoholic, and he is menacing. This is happening. No. No, no. It's not. Because, babe, you're not capable. Well, it's not up to you. Allison, everything is up to me. In this moment, it really seems like anything could happen, and we now understand why Allison couldn't just leave before. But she does leave, and Kevin's luck finally runs out. If you've ever been a victim of a Kevin, this is a feeling you understand very well, and Allison describes it much better than I can. Leave? Like it's easy? Like you just let her take the $194 she has and buy a bus ticket to Jersey? What would you do, sleep on the street? I'd find her anyway. For some reason or another, Kevin Can F**k Himself came to mind when I stumbled across a New York Times opinion piece called In Defense of J.K. Rowling. I'll explain why in just a minute, but first, I want to talk about this article. It is broadly in defense of a new podcast at that time called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. The article tries to paint J.K. Rowling in the best possible light. See for yourself. Trans people need and deserve protection. I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable. I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who have been abused by men. These statements were written by J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, a human rights activist, and, according to a noisy fringe of the internet and a number of powerful transgender rights activists and LGBT lobbying groups, a transphobe. Obviously, this all sounds good, and it's easy to see why people like it. These quotes do sound really nice, but the problem is they kind of mean nothing at all. What do you mean when you say trans people need and deserve protection? What does that mean to J.K. Rowling? Well, we never get any answers here. The author doesn't even bother wrestling with questions like that. What I'm saying is that this kind of language can hide nefarious purposes underneath. Until a person clarifies what a statement means, you really don't know, and you can't just automatically assume the best. To give you just one example, as imperfect as it may be, back during 2020 when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening, I had a friend say that he was very disturbed by the actions of white police against black men. In the past, he had said some things that were not exactly racist, but a little bit suspicious, a little bit suspect, that left me kind of like, hmm, I wonder about that. So when I heard this, I thought, wow, maybe the times really are changing for the better. But then he decided to explain what he meant by that. He explained that there should be blacks-only and whites-only neighborhoods which the other races simply are not allowed to enter, that black people should be in black-only neighborhoods policed by black cops so they're not abused by white cops. And that's insane! It's insanely racist. He turned a statement that initially seemed to be anti-racist into one of the most racist things I've ever heard another person say. Now, I know that media literacy is low and getting lower all the time, so I just want to clarify that I'm not saying J.K. Rowling is racist. The point of that comparison is just that good statements can hide nefarious ends. And, uh, the author goes on to prove my point almost immediately after that. So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely Rowling must have played some part, you might think. The answer is straightforward. Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person's legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like people who menstruate in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalene Burns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people. And I think this is rather revealing because she just assumes that all of this is correct. She never bothers to interrogate whether trans opinions on these subjects could be valid, but there's a strange reason why she doesn't do that. If you believe that trans women are actually women and should be treated as such, she not only believes that you are in the minority among the general population, but even in the minority among trans people. She believes the average trans person would disagree with the idea that trans women are women. And that is, to put it mildly, completely insane. The average trans person does not agree with this analysis, not one bit. The average trans person is not gender critical. The average trans person is not a TERF. The average trans person is not saying these things, but some do, and it seems she is surrounded by them. She dismisses the idea that J.K. Rowling is transphobic because J.K. Rowling agrees that gender dysphoria is a thing that actually exists. It is an incredible non sequitur if you consider any established definition of transphobia. So, to figure out whether J.K. Rowling is really transphobic or not, we need to have a definition of transphobia. I picked one at random, and the one I came up with is the one from Merriam-Webster. Discrimination against, aversion to, or fear of transgender people. This definition tells us the obvious thing that the article doesn't want to reckon with. It tells us that transphobia is about, among other things, how you treat and feel about trans people. In the article, the author points to a woman named E.J. Rosetta. We are told that Rosetta set out to find quotes proving J.K. Rowling was transphobic and just couldn't manage. So, I got a little bit curious how things had evolved since then. Remember, this article was three years ago. Maybe she's changed her opinion as J.K. Rowling has evolved over time. But no, she is fully aboard the J.K. Rowling train and fully aboard the gender critical train. Maybe Rosetta really was a J.K. Rowling critic at one point, but I kind of find it more likely she just agrees with J.K. Rowling and always did. And that kind of sucks, but it also gives us a very low bar to cross. I think the article's primary thesis can be boiled down to, J.K. Rowling has never been credibly accused of transphobia. To prove my case, I should really only have to find one quote of hers that meets the criteria, and I passed the test, crossed the bar, and showed Rosetta didn't try very hard. And I really think that I can do that. Last year, a young trans woman made a post on Twitter that seemed fairly innocuous, but J.K. Rowling had big mad about it. As a trans girl, I use the women's room when I'm out and about. Have for two years now. I thought I'd take the time to share a list of all the times other women have had a problem with me being there. They haven't. Not once. Ever. And I know I probably shouldn't have been, because I have kept up with J.K. Rowling over the years. I know how she is. I know how she talks. I know all about J.K. Rowling at this point. But her response still kind of shocked me for its bluntness. If you were actually a girl or a woman, you'd know exactly why no one's challenged you in the bathroom. Just so the implication is clear, J.K. Rowling is saying, women haven't confronted you because they are scared of you. But J.K. Rowling knows nothing about this person other than, this person is trans and uses the bathroom they feel safest in. Let's be clear. This trans woman has been accused of nothing terrible. There are no abuse allegations. There are no arrests for public indecency. Nothing of the sort. This trans woman is being demonized for making the choice that best suits her safety needs. If men are really as dangerous as J.K. Rowling thinks they are, would this person be safe among men? The reason I brought up Kevin can f**k himself is because I actually see something of J.K. Rowling in this series. I think she never recovered from being abused, and it's hard to hate her for that. J.K. Rowling sees herself as an Allison. She is perpetually engaged in a struggle, not just against those who have actually hurt her, but entire categories of people, including men, and especially lately, trans women, who she believes are men. That final scene of Allison versus Kevin is how J.K. Rowling is experiencing the world at all times. And she also universalizes her experience to be the experience of women everywhere. In the mind of J.K. Rowling, every woman who ever encountered a trans woman in a bathroom is Allison. Remember how we defined transphobia a minute ago? I think this kind of shows that J.K. Rowling is averse to trans people, that she does have an inherent fear of them. But I think we could even take it a step further than that and actively claim J.K. Rowling has taken part in discrimination against trans people. In J.K. Rowling's world, trans people are always guilty of something. There can never be an innocent trans woman. A trans woman who uses the bathroom she feels safest in is doing something wrong. But even in public life, in the roles a trans woman should be acceptable in, she does not accept them. Marks & Spencer is a clothing chain in the UK, and not that long ago, there was something of a dust-up. A mother took her daughter to one of the stores, hoping to get a bra fitting. A tall woman, the mother assumed was trans, came up and asked if they needed any help. The mother declined help, left the store with her daughter, and then began to complain on the internet to anyone who would listen. And one of those people, of course, was J.K. Rowling. It's time for women to vote with their wallets. If stores like M&S continue to flout the Supreme Court ruling on women-only spaces, prioritizing the wishes of men who want to undress near or help fit bras on teenage girls, a boycott seems appropriate. But the thing is, that's not what actually happened. Marks & Spencer employees work all sections of the store. A man, an actual cisgender male, could come up and ask the same question. The only problem here is that the woman was trans. The employee of the store was viewed negatively by default. She was automatically suspicious just because she was a trans person existing in what was perceived as the wrong place. But she didn't even know what the mother and the daughter were there for. Even if she did, there's nothing wrong with her asking, Do you need some help? She is not trained to do bra fittings herself. That is not something she even is able to do. If a trans woman can't do the job she was hired to do, if she can't exist in the place she was hired to exist in, this is essentially saying that trans people should not be allowed in public life at all. J.K. Rowling didn't really know anything about the case other than a mother was asked for help and felt uncomfortable being asked for help because the person was trans, and she decided to try and lead a whole boycott over it. The easy conclusion is that the erasure of trans people from public life is an active goal of J.K. Rowling and people like her. Otherwise, why would they do things like this? The most generous interpretation is that she is simply ignorant. But is that one that we really want to make? That she is hyperfixated on this issue and she is simply ignorant? I think that doesn't give enough credit to her. I think she knows what she's doing. I think she understands the stakes very well. I think all of this is intentional. I think all of this adds up to one simple conclusion. J.K. Rowling is transphobic. She has discriminated against trans people. She has an aversion to trans people. She is afraid of trans people. We can find a million examples of exactly this kind of thing. But where is the J.K. Rowling mentioned earlier in the New York Times article? Where is the one who believes that trans people need and deserve protection? Where is the J.K. Rowling that believed trans people pose zero threat to anybody else? Where is the J.K. Rowling who said she supported the right of trans people to live authentically and comfortably? Where did this person disappear to after the podcast ended? Well, for my part, I suspect that person never really existed in the first place. And I know exactly how she or her fans would respond to that. They would say, she's been abused so much on Twitter by trans people that she's just given up and decided to go scorched earth. But I think that's bullshit. I think, specifically, it's bullshit to blame an entire community of people, an entire community of millions, for the actions of a small percentage of people that have been abusive on the Internet. It's a vanishingly small number of trans people that have ever interacted with J.K. Rowling or even looked at anything she has to say, and yet she blames all trans people for that. The very essence of discrimination and prejudice is to blame an entire community of people for the actions of a few. That's not acceptable in any other sphere of life. Why should it be acceptable when it applies to trans people? So that's all I got. And if that doesn't convince you, I doubt anything will. I doubt there's anything J.K. Rowling could do to convince you she is transphobic. There is no line she could cross that would prove it. It's simply impossible in your eyes. But for the rest of you, I thank you for coming, I thank you for being here, and much love to all the trans homies out there. Transcribed by https://otter.ai