JK Rowling and the Essay of Doom

The link to the podcast version of this essay.

JK Rowling has, of late, been digging an ever-deepening hole concerning her attitudes toward transgender people. As the parent of a trans son, as well as someone who co-led (for 10 years) an interfaith 501(c)(3) educational organization that educated the public and media about the existence of people of faith who support equal rights for sexual minorities, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state, I have felt the impetus to respond to Rowling’s extremely damaging statements but felt too full of grief, initially, to do so.

So, to begin to address this in terms of the most recent statement Rowling has made, I will examine some parts of her statement that particularly moved me to respond. I am working from a Google docs version of it.

This is the first problematic statement I found:

“…last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

According to Andrew James Carter:

This is the real reason that her employment contract was not renewed. (She was not an employee, but a contract worker, an important distinction.) Forstater refused to address trans people at her workplace using the pronouns of their choice, fostering a toxic work-environment. I’m sure that if she had been openly racist, few people would have come to her defense. She simply refused to show the basic civility expected of most people at their place of work. It’s a fairly low bar, and she not only couldn’t clear it, she argued against having to, and JK Rowling supported her.

Rowling began to receive criticism because she “liked” a Tweet of Forstater’s, after this referring to it as her “accidental ‘like’ crime” as if she had accidentally “liked” the Tweet, though it is very clear that it was not an accident.

That’s part of the problem (but hardly the only problem) with someone so high-profile taking a stance that puts lives at risk. For folks who don’t have the kind of platform she does, having her validate their views carries the same weight as when she was validating the views of people who were fighting for equal rights (which she still seems convinced that she’s doing, fighting for women’s rights and equality, despite women around the world also fighting for the same thing disagreeing strongly with her anti-trans stance). It is a stamp of approval from someone millions of people around the world look up to. When she approves of the continued marginalization and negation of a group of people who have to struggle daily to prove they deserve to exist, that is dangerous to them, because those who agree with her have repeatedly acted on that stamp of approval. So, to flippantly complain that someone wrote to her to say, “I was literally killing trans people with my hate…” as if that is a patently ludicrous statement is a complete dismissal of the power that her approval has in the world.

This is what we’ve seen every day since the 2016 election. The day after the election, hate-crimes were already on the rise across the US, and have been ever since. After lying about George Soros financing “the caravan” at the southern border, which was classic stochastic terrorism, a Trump follower gunned down 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Words have consequences. This is not to suggest that JK Rowling is equal to Trump when it comes to hateful rhetoric; Trump targets groups with a clear intent to harm them, and panders to his cult by saying that he hates the same people they do. I believe that she believes sincerely that she is doing more good than harm, and I don’t classify what she is doing as pandering, either. But while the harm is not Trump-level harm—and hopefully it never will be—it is harm, nonetheless.

Rowling has received a lot of support from other anti-trans folks; she says that she was overwhelmed by their support, because, surprise surprise, people like their bigotry echoed and reinforced by famous people of whom they are fans. (Such as, again, Donald Trump.) It tells them that they were right to think you were “their kind” of people. You are validating them by saying what they’re saying.

Historically, bigotry has been cloaked in “worry”. In Rowling’s case, worry not just about women and girls (who have a lot more to worry about from a deeply misogynist culture than from trans folks) but also, supposedly, about trans youth, who are some of the most outspoken Harry Potter fans who have felt attacked and abandoned by Rowling for her statements supporting anti-trans bigots. She writes about: “…the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”

If anyone is fostering a “climate of fear” it is Rowling and others questioning the very right of trans people to exist. This is why it is laughable that she then complains about the TERF label, including saying, “Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.”

That isn’t irony. That is just turning anti-trans attitudes against trans men for a change of pace, rather than trans women, by not recognizing that TRANS MEN ARE MEN. This may seem like a weird idea, but maybe folks identifying as feminists should regard all people who support feminism as their allies and not only the people they deem to be “female” based on their understanding of their biology. There are plenty of cisgender women who are hostile to feminism. It has become painfully clear in the last four years that one of our biggest obstacles to moving forward as a species are women who are misogynists and do not want equality for women, in spite of being women. Just as biology does not dictate to whom you are attracted or love and does not necessarily dictate your gender identity, it also does not dictate your ideology, so continuing to pretend this is true does not reflect reality. Conversely, many ardent feminists are men, cis or trans. Their biology is beside the point; their support of feminism is the point.

Then, as if she thinks this doesn’t make her look even more anti-trans, she says, “Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).”

So, to break this down, she’s a) equating testicles with courage, a classically misogynist/sexist trope; b) acting as though trans men who’ve had bottom-surgery don’t exist; and c) acting as though intersex people don’t exist. Yes, the vast majority of the human species display particular biological qualities that make us, as a whole, a dimorphic species. But not all do. And again, trans men and intersex people exist, as well as non-binary people and those who are gender-nonconforming in their appearance, behavior, or both.

Rowling lists five reasons why she is particularly worried now about trans activism. One is her charitable trust with an emphasis on women and children, as if she is concerned that trans women could benefit from this without being what she considers “real” women; the trust also supports survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, which is good, but trans women also suffer from this and also deserve support. She also cites her support of MS research as a reason; her mother lived for many years and then died from multiple sclerosis, which is, in Rowling’s words “a disease that behaves very differently in men and women,” but she fails completely to explain how acknowledging the existence of trans people puts MS research at risk.

The second reason she cites for her interest now is that she has an interest in “education and safeguarding” as if trans people are not being attacked in educational settings and in places where their safety is supposed to be protected; the implication is that the trans folks are those from whom children need to be protected.

Her third reason is freedom of speech, which she has in abundance; she has a worldwide platform on which to vent her spleen. As she herself has noted in the past, freedom of speech includes the freedom to disagree with someone else’s speech. I know for a certainty that I have in fact defended Jo Rowling’s freedom of speech when she has been attacked for doing things like criticizing Trump. Just because people disagree with her does not mean she no longer has freedom of speech; it just means the people disagreeing also have freedom of speech.

Then she claims that the fourth reason is very personal, which I fail to understand; if anything, it is highly personal to me as the mother of a trans son. She talks about trans men who detransitioned due in part to regrets about losing their fertility. (And she fails utterly to note that trans men who have NOT lost their fertility do indeed still menstruate, and this is part of why the organization she mocked with her snarky response to the phrase “people who menstruate” used that phrase—to be inclusive and kind. Her response to that kindness, inclusion, and accuracy was to be snide and sarcastic.) She also claims that in some cases, trans men being attracted to women but being afraid of homophobia (in the form of attacks on lesbians) led them to conclude that to be in relationships with women but not subject to homophobic attacks, they had to transition to being men, and some of these trans men later realized this wasn’t what they wanted after all; they wanted to be with women as women.

First, here is what Carter has to say about this part of the essay:

And:

Further down the thread:

And:

Now, there have been a handful of anecdotal studies, from the points of view of both trans men and trans women, testifying to how very differently they live in the world after transitioning. Trans women mainly report having to learn to do all of the things most women are accustomed to, feeling the burden of these behaviors to secure their safety and well-being against predators, as well as frustration with men who dismiss and disregard women on a daily basis. Trans men report people paying more attention to their opinions and valuing these opinions more, plus having the freedom to exist in spaces where they wouldn’t have felt safe before.

If homophobia (specifically against lesbians) and misogyny sometimes make being male seem attractive, it shouldn’t be surprising; men still very much rule the world. This doesn’t mean the rights of people who genuinely feel that their bodies need to be male to reflect who they are inside should be disregarded because some people thought the prospect of moving through the world as a man was more appealing than doing so as a woman, specifically, as a lesbian. (And, again, this is a surpassingly small fraction of those who transition.)

But even if, for argument’s sake, there are scads of trans men regretting their decision to transition instead of remaining lesbians (THERE AREN’T—see above), this means we need to fight harder against homophobia and misogyny. Being “concerned” about trans men who transition and regret it doesn’t mean we should make it harder to transition. It means we should support all of our youth and try to rid our society of the type of discrimination and oppression that could lead to someone who isn’t a good candidate for transitioning feeling like that’s what they need to do to have the life they want. That’s not a failure of trans-activism; that’s a failure to eradicate the oppression from which people are attempting to flee.

Rowling goes on to talk about how rampant misogyny is right now. This is true, but not because of trans people. If anything, the testimonies we’ve had from trans people about how differently the world responds to them pre- and post-transition have been incredibly eye-opening and helpful to highlight how much work we still need to do. She writes, “From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”

First, in this passage she seems to be calling “trans activists” men, which means that she’s calling trans women activists men. She is so dedicated to the idea that trans women are not women (and that trans men are not men) that she seems to be incapable of not misgendering trans folks. (Is it any wonder that people are upset?) Also, anyone advocating against rights for trans folks does need re-educating (though punching is never an effective way of doing that.) Second, as mentioned earlier, one of the biggest problems in the fight against misogyny is that too many women are enamored of the status quo. If all women were in favor of equality, plus all men who identify as feminists, we’d be in a great position to move forward, but this is not the case.

Then she writes: “I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body” which is her disingenuous way of coming back to her “sex is sex” argument. She is neglecting to acknowledge that for cisgender people, their bodies and brains match, but just because that is their experience, it is not everyone’s. This is like white folks claiming racism doesn’t exist because they don’t experience it. I’ve seen JK Rowling telling off people who have suggested exactly that. We all experience the world differently. I don’t know why this is so hard for her to grasp when it comes to this topic, since she has shown, in other cases, that she gets it. When those who are supportive of trans folks say trans people have a different experience of this, they are not saying (and I hate this term) “biological women don’t have common experiences.”

Carter says this about Rowling’s choice of words:

Asserting that trans women deserve to be recognized and affirmed is not synonymous with denying the lived experiences of cis women; if anything, as noted, trans women have provided a damning testimony of the misogyny that women live through on a daily basis from the perspective of people who did not always live that. This only supports the fight against misogyny from all sources. She refuses to acknowledge this, saying:

“‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.”

There’s so much horrifying stuff here to unpack. First, trans women know that ‘woman’ is not a costume, a ‘pink brain,’ or a liking for women’s clothing. Second, the organization she snarked at for using the phrase “people who menstruate” was being inclusive, kind, and accurate. It was the furthest thing from dehumanizing and demeaning, which she would know if she weren’t so against calling trans women women, trans men men, acknowledging the existence of non-binary people (who are also ‘people who menstruate’) and acknowledged that women who no longer menstruate or never did for whatever reason are still women, that menstruation is not the sole way to identify a woman. (She is a year younger than I am and I’m coming very close to no longer menstruating. When I do, I will still definitely be a woman. If this has not happened to her yet, it will eventually. And when it does, like me, she will still be a woman.)

If you see someone else’s kindness and inclusion as hostile and alienating, that says a lot more about you than the people you are criticizing for being kind and inclusive (plus accurate). She continues:

“If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.”

Now, it is horrifying for anyone to experience this. It is also horrifying to say that you have experienced solidary and kinship with trans women who have experienced this after saying the things she has said that dehumanize trans women. She refers to a serious sexual assault, something no one should ever have to live through; I know far too many people who have, and I have come terrifyingly close more than once in my life, knowing that it is only through sheer luck that I escaped, because there is only one cause of rape: rapists. Just like black folks who experience police violence, you can do everything “right” and it can still happen. What I fail to understand is how living through that seems only to have cemented her dedication to attacking the vulnerable instead of doing more than giving lip-service to standing in solidarity with trans women. Every attack she makes on trans folks negates her claim of solidarity and kinship.

She also writes: “Late on Saturday evening…I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women.” Again, viewing language that was kind, inclusive, and accurate as “degrading” says more about her than the people she snarked at. I believe that if someone is in need of seeing “nuance” here, it is JK Rowling. She seems particularly offended—and I think that was the point—by this, “You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.” While that may seem an extreme response, let me, as she says, attempt to speak a language JK Rowling might possibly understand.

In the seventh Harry Potter book, the Ministry undertook a pogrom, essentially, to eradicate Muggle-born magical people from wizarding society. People who knew for a certainty that they were magical were deemed inauthentic pretenders and stripped of their wands. How could anyone who didn’t have at least one magical parent be a magical person? Rowling depicted this very clearly as an injustice, a failure to recognize that sometimes magical people cropped up in non-magical families, that your parentage/biology may have absolutely nothing to do with your magical ability, and yet, still, YOU ARE MAGICAL. (She also depicts “Squibs” in the books, people of magical parentage who, despite this, are NOT magical.)

While Rowling may have meant readers to see this pogrom as analogous to the Third Reich (it works pretty well for that) plus “one-drop” laws around the world that decreed that people who had even one-drop of blood from an ancestor who was not considered Caucasian could not access the rights of white people, it also works well as a critique of her own bias against trans people. She continues:

“It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity.”

In this passage, she’s being snarky again, but she also already spoke quite warmly of the love and support she received from people who, like her, are against recognizing that “trans rights are human rights” and “trans lives matter,” no matter how much she slaps these slogans onto an essay that states, over and over, that this is absolutely not what she believes. There is indeed “joy, relief and safety in conformity,” but she’s made it abundantly clear which community she chooses to conform to, whose approval she seeks and revels in, and it is those who agree with her when she demeans people for being kind and inclusive, when she reacts to that kindness with snarkiness, when she misgenders people and, yes, fails to comprehend the message of inclusivity in her own work.

She continues: “Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.”

There’s a meme that regularly makes the round on the internet that goes something like, “Trump supporters were against Obama because they are racists; we’re against Trump because he’s a racist.” This draws the distinction between someone being targeted because of identity versus being targeted because they hold a particular belief. One of these things can be changed; one cannot. If you choose to target a vulnerable demographic like trans people, if you choose to be biased against that group and actively fight to erode their rights, you can also choose to stop believing those things. If you are trans—or gay, or non-binary, or black—that is who you are. Being attacked for who you are means there’s never an escape. This is why black folks march with signs saying, “My black skin is not a weapon.” Being attacked for what you believe, especially when what you believe is that you should have the right to attack another group for their identity and deny their humanity—that’s another story.

We like to believe we are all tolerant of others’ beliefs, but that tolerance cannot extend so far as to tolerate the belief that someone’s identity makes them less than human, less than worthy of equality, less than worthy of existing. Maya Forstater could have behaved professionally. She could have been respectful of her colleagues and had her employment contract renewed. She could have refrained from attacking trans people on Twitter (as Rowling could have also). She chose not to, as Rowling chose not to.

Rowling also writes, “None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives,” but being “sympathetic” in occasional statements is not the same as putting actions behind those words, or even ceasing to spout words that wound and that justify policies that make life harder for trans folks. Plus, the reason they seem to be concerned about trans youth is that they want to stop them from transitioning. That is not “concern.”

At the moment, the world is convulsing due to demonstrations all over the world in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We have seen and heard, every day, the stories of black lives being at risk for simply LIVING, for existing, sometimes in spaces where white people in particular do not wish anyone not-white to exist. For years, various ethnic groups have been stereotyped in a way designed to make them seem frightening, Othering them, keeping them on the margins and somehow “justifying” (it didn’t) the treatment they received for merely existing. That happened very memorably with LGBTQ+ people during the Stonewall riots, a response to persistent persecution by the police against sexual minorities. Trans women of color led that rebellion, and JK Rowling used the name Stonewall High for the secondary school Harry Potter was to have attended, if he had not gone to Hogwarts. Evidently, she didn’t know of the connection between Stonewall and trans women or she might have chosen something else.

Demonizing all members of any demographic for the behavior of a few people in that demographic is what we are fighting against. A particularly vocal group that has been dedicated to this is the HP Alliance, inspired by the principles of equality Rowling enmeshed in the Harry Potter series. The HP Alliance has repeatedly made statements refuting Rowling’s anti-trans stance and does not wish anyone to think that they share that stance because they evidently believe that it is antithetical to the values of the Harry Potter series.

They are not alone when it comes to people linked to the series, whether it’s people, like me, who have written books or created podcasts about it, or actors from the franchise’s films. Below are a number of links to helpful articles and statements from people, who, like me, are disappointed in JK Rowling’s doubling-down on this issue, not least because, in the new essay, she indicates not only a stubborn refusal to consider, for a moment, that her stance might hurt people (especially those who thought a great deal of her and feel that her work changed their lives for the better), but an even more stubborn refusal to try to learn, to see that the way she speaks about trans people is indeed not dissimilar from Umbridge’s work to have “inauthentic” magical people banished from the wizarding world. That time, Harry set them free. Would that Jo Rowling could see the similarities and follow the example of her creation. Until that day comes—if it comes—many of us will continue to delve into the Potterverse on many levels—as independent scholars, literary analysts, podcasters, fanfiction authors, wizard rock bands, and HP alliance activists, among other things—because it is bigger than its creator now. Harry belongs to all of us, and we won’t let anyone take that away from us with divisiveness and bigotry.

Even JK Rowling.

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Links:

Daniel Radcliffe

Emma Watson and Bonnie Wright

Rupert Grint

Jackson Bird’s author page

The HP Alliance