What did JK Rowling do wrong?

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Here's a better view of the Tweets:





She's basically saying what I'm saying in this thread: show me the evidence.

The journalist Jesse Singal also deals with this a lot, he frequently covers transgender issues as a reporter and is regularly accused of transphobia or of a specific rumor that he sends creepy DMs to transwomen, and whenever he demands proof of the accusations this whole defensive reaction starts up with people claiming to have seen the tweets or to have screenshots of them but they're too busy to post them, etc. It got bad enough that his friend Katie Herzog raised $60K for the charity of choice for any person who could actually provide the receipts for what was being claimed about Jesse (IIRC that was when Briana Wu specifically claimed to have proof but wouldn't provide it), and that money is still there waiting to be claimed.

Examples of anti-trans statements (or behavior) by J.K. Rowling, or critiques thereof, that are quoted or otherwise referenced in the thread I mentioned above:

- A tweet linking to this Twitter thread containing a detailed response to what is apparently this essay by J.K. Rowling (the thread contains only a very indirect link ).
- A tweet containing a screenshot of J.K. Rowling's remark about "people who menstruate".
- A tweet containing a juxtaposition of two screenshots, one of J.K. Rowling denying that Magdalen Berns is transphobic, the other showing a blatantly anti-trans remark by Magdalen Berns.
- A tweet linking to this thread about J.K. Rowling's promotion of a store selling some rather anti-trans merchandise.
- A link to Why What JK Rowling Said is Transphobic by Katy Montgomerie, Jun 7, 2020
- A link to Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling’s Justification For Transphobia by Katy Montgomerie, Jun 16, 2020
- A link to a thread containing a tweet linking to JK Rowling speaks out on sex and gender by Clare Flourish, 11th June, 2020.
- The above-linked thread also contains a link to this thread critiquing J.K. Rowling's essay.
- A tweet linking to a screenshot of a PinkNews article titled "JK Rowling criticised for praising 'dangerous' anti-trans film by far-right bigot Matt Walsh". (EDIT: Here is the PinkNews article.)

More later. (I haven't yet read all of the above-linked articles.)

The thread also contains a lot of remarks from Mormons disappointed by her remarks about Joseph Smith and the golden plates.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 01 Oct 2022, 5:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This Twitter thread contains links to various articles by Zinnia Jones debunking claims by J.K. Rowling (plus also some articles about autistic trans people). See also other links in my post above.

More stuff I found in replies to J.K. Rowling's recent Twitter thread:

1) This Tweet with a graphic containing a concise list of several anti-trans remarks by J.K. Rowling.

2) A page about J.K. Rowling on the website of the GLAAD accountability project. (See also this article on the GLAAD site.)

3) A video by Sara Z about JK Rowling's various statements about transgender people:

@Mona

Do you find anything that you're posting convincing? I sure don't, but then I'm also not easily browbeaten by activists.

My impressions so far:

In this essay, JK Rowling went out of her way to sound civil and to sound like she cares about everyone's well-being including trans people's. However, according to various critiques I've linked to above, she said a number of things that are both incorrect and very harmful (not just offensive) to trans people.

The critiques discuss a lot of matters I don't have independent knowledge of. I'm not a trans person myself, nor am I a parent, a family member, or (currently) a close friend of a trans person, nor am I a professional who deals with large numbers of trans people in any capacity. I've had quite a few trans acquaintances (mostly trans women, including a few I dated briefly) over the years, but none whom I'm in regular contact with currently.

It's possible that JK Rowling's trans critics are wrong about some things too, of course, and I'm open to hearing, from credible sources, about any inaccuracies in what her critics say. But I'm inclined to give her critics the benefit of the doubt, at least on most issues. After all, trans people know a whole lot more than I do about what their lives are like as trans people.

Anyhow, before JK Rowling wrote her essay, she also posted some tweets that were far less civil in tone. For example, there were a couple of tweets that seemed to be ridiculing the very idea of inclusive language.

Also, as far as I can tell, JK Rowling seems to have a longstanding habit of retweeting, "liking," or otherwise boosting tweets by "gender-critical feminists" and other anti-trans folks. She also seems to have a habit of denying that these folks are anti-trans, when at least some of them are quite clearly very anti-trans.

Anyhow, one more detailed critique I came across: Everything Wrong with JK Rowling’s Open Letter by Brynn Tannehill, Jun 19, 2020.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 02 Oct 2022, 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I sometimes wonder about this too.

But, when I was a pre-teen, I don't think I would have met today's diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria. I didn't hate my body. I didn't fear or hate the development of my breasts.

Any desire I had to become a boy evaporated, around age 11, as soon as I heard about the existence of what then was popularly called "Women's Lib," which I understood to be a movement against forcing or pressuring women to conform to a particular gender role. Liberation from such pressures was all I felt that I needed.

So, if indeed there is any truth at all to the idea that some kids transition due to "social contagion" (only to regret it later), it seems to me that the solution would be more support for kids who are gender-nonconforming without necessarily being trans. It shouldn't be necessary to make life harder for trans people in order to accomplish this.

Thanks. I'll start reading them.

Re autism and trans. Long before I was dxed with ASD I was strong in my belief I wanted to be a woman. So much so one dx said 'schizophrenia with disorder of gender identity' . It was made very clear ,due to my SMI, that SRS would not happen. On hindsight it was probably the right decision , not because my feelings were false, but because I was ill equipped to cope with the practical side of transitioning. I'd be just as inadequate as a woman, as I am as a man. The vast majority of gender tests online place me as significantly more feminine than masculine. Having said that I'd feel like a fish out of water with both a fairly typical group of men, and of women.

On Sep 26, 2022, JK Rowling posted a very hostile tweet about Mermaids, a U.K.-based charity that offers support (but not medical treatment) to "transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse children, young people, and their families."

Mermaids has been a target of ongoing opposition from both right-wingers and and "gender-critical feminists" in the U.K. Perhaps some folks here who live in the U.K. can fill us in on the background of this controversy?

JK Rowling's tweet links to a Telegraph article, which is behind a paywall (so I can't read it). Here is Mermaids's response to the Telegraph article.

JK Rowling's tweet summarizes the Telegraph article as follows:

Hmm, don't lots of non-medical organizations legally provide information about prescription drugs without actually prescribing or otherwise providing them? And as one commenter tweeted.


And, as another tweeter points out:


As for "binders," they're not a medical device, in the first place. But, as one commenter tweeted:


As for the "parental consent" issue, one person tweeted:


The above was accompanied by a graphic that was unsourced, but I just now dug up the source: here.

I would expect the legalities of this to be similar to the legalities of the afore-mentioned "young people's charities" that "give out advice on contraception."

In the thread following JK Rowling's tweet, I also found a link to another Twitter thread describing some earlier Mermaids-bashing by the press in the U.K. Benjamin Cohen, CEO of PinkNews, says:


(The tweet from The Times, linked here, was deleted.)

JK Rowling occasionally retweets stuff from the "LGB Alliance," a group that is decidedly anti-trans, although it has recently toned down that aspect of its website.

According to the news story ‘Lie of gender identity’ spurred founding of LGB Alliance, court told, Guardian, Wed 14 Sep 2022:

The article begins:


Sure sounds like they are primarily anti-trans and only secondarily about actually defending the rights of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.


Hmm, on this point I halfway agree with them. I would propose a middle-ground definition of sexual orientation, as attraction to people of a particular bodily sex and/or attraction to people of a particular gender identity/expression.

I haven't done a scientific study, but I think it's safe to say that most people experience sexual attraction primarily to people of a particular bodily sex, with gender identity/expression having only a secondary role.

On the other hand, there also do exist people whose sexual attraction is primarily to a gender identity/expression. If I'm not mistaken, there are entire genres of porn aimed at men who are attracted to feminine gender expression regardless of bodily sex.

And people have the right to be attracted to whoever or whatever they are attracted to (as long as they end up expressing it only with consenting adults).

I can see why some lesbians and gay men might feel "erased" by a definition of homosexuality exclusively in terms of attraction to the same "gender" rather than bodily sex. But I think it should be possible to fix this problem without rejecting the very idea of gender identity and without being socially trans-exclusionary.

She's pretty convincing.

I'm honestly very confused as to why you don't find Rowling to be transphobic. So far in this thread you've just repeatedly asserted that you don't find it transphobic to say that trans people don't belong to their gender. Other than that you've not gone beyond contradiction. People will form arguments supported by evidence that Rowling has been transphobic, and rather than forming counter-arguments you've glossed over it.

I set out some of the things Rowling has said and done on page two. Most of these things were sourced from that one article on her website, some were sourced from particularly infamous Tweets that I'm sure you've seen, and a few (relatively minor as far as I am concerned) were sourced from her books. As far as I can tell your only real response to that was "ContraPoints is being uncharitable, and the author in The Ink Black Heart had never commented on trans issues".

Here are some specific quotes from Rowling's article again.

Rowling doesn't go into detail here. But wtf is the "impact on safeguarding" that the "trans rights movement" is having? For that matter, though I'm not concerned about it so much, wtf is the impact it is happening on education? It's very hard to read this as anything other than "trans rights are putting children in danger", which is transphobic for the same reason that "black rights are putting children in danger" is racist, or "gay rights are putting children in danger" is homophobic, or "immigration is putting children in danger" is xenophobic.


This is pretty straightforwardly transphobic. She's concerned about people wishing to transition. There's no evaluation of the costs and benefits, there is simply the assertion that some people wish to "detransition" and therefore it's concerning that any people wish to transition at all. It's like being concerned that some people are left-handed or gay, both of which also underwent a "huge explosion" when the stigma associated with them declined.


Including the full quote for context so I'm not accused of quoting selectively. The real concern here is the final sentence. Some trans people are autistic... so what? It's hard to read this as anything other than an assertion that autistic trans people aren't really the gender they say they are, which is both transphobic and ableist.


Again, this is transphobic because it says that gender identity is not innate like sexual orientation, despite the evidence being pretty clear that it is - see David Reimer for example, or the neurobiological evidence.

Replace "trans" with "gay" and this is clearly homophobic. Ergo, unless someone can articulate a relevant difference between the two, the original version is tranphobic.


The only people who can secure a Gender Recognition Certificate are people who have:
1) a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria
2) have lived as their desired gender for two years
3) intend to continue living as their desired gender forever

(There is a sub-category of people who can be grandfathered in to old arrangements which don't require a diagnosis, but do require gender reassignment surgery so don't meet Rowling's description)

Source.

Rowling's claim is transphobic for a few reasons. First, the obvious one - it misgenders the hypothetical woman. Big deal, no victim... except it materially changes Rowling's argument. "A man" cannot change his gender. You have to have been living as a woman to change your gender.

The less obvious one is that this argument is painting trans women as having malign intent. I don't believe that someone acting in good faith wouldn't read this as scaremongering. The accusation is that people who have been living as a woman for two years, who specialist doctors (who are very hard to access) have diagnosed with a recognised medical condition, are merely men pretending to be women for some nefarious purpose. That's transphobic.


It's weird - this is the same JK Rowling who complained about people talking about the common experiences of female humans on the grounds that they were including trans men and non-binary people. She's actively opposed to a shared, unified political class including all AFAB people. She's also opposed to a shared, unified, cohesive political class of all women. Her ideas of womanhood exclude both trans women (who are not women) and trans men (who don't deserve to be considered when talking about women's issues). There's no way to read this as not being trans exclusionary.

The assertion that gender is not the same as sex is obviously not "deeply misogynistic and regressive", it's just science. When you're calling Judith Butler "deeply misogynistic" then you have a credibility issue. When you're saying that people who want to break down gender stereotypes are being misogynistic then you have a credibility issue. Again, it's hard to read this as anything other than nakedly ideological, with that ideology being transphobia.


Again this is clearly transphobic. It says that trans women view womanhood as a costume and a liking for Jimmy Choos. Obviously if I said "women like Jimmy Choos" then Rowling would be justified in calling me out for perpetuating gender stereotypes. When she says "trans women like Jimmy Choos" she is doing exactly the same thing she accuses imaginary trans women of doing - she's perpetuating the very gender stereotypes she is criticising, except now it is the icky trans women who are stereotypical.


Not sure if I covered this before, but this is also transphobic. Bathrooms and changing rooms are already open to all. Nobody checks your birth certificate, genitals, or haplotype when you try to go in. Making it possible to change your legal gender does nothing to make it easier for predatory cis men to enter these places, because there is no connection between legal gender and changing rooms (and certainly not bathrooms, for Christ's sake).

OK, someone might say, that only shows she's wrong, it doesn't show that she's transphobic. But she's arguing against trans rights on spurious grounds. If I say "giving black people the vote will make it easier for people of all races to be a criminal" then I'm being racist. It's not just a random non-sequitur, it is a pointed one arguing against access to gender recognition certificates.

(While I'm on this subject, notice the circular nature of the argument? Rowling wants fewer trans people to have access to healthcare, she doesn't want people to have access to GRCs until they have accessed healthcare, and she doesn't want people to be able to live as their gender until they have a GRC, even though a GRC requires you to already be living as your gender. I don't want to be alarmist here but in Rowling's world it would become even more difficult for anyone to be trans. You can't start the process by living as your gender, you have to start by going to the doctor, who is probably going to say "I don't want to refer you because you haven't been living as your gender".)


The gender critical movement is solely dedicated to hating trans people. Nobody ever says they're "gender critical" in response to misogyny, they only say it in response to trans people existing.

It's possible that none of the TERFs Rowling has spoken to are prepared to say "I hate trans people", because you've got to be pretty lacking in social awareness to think that "I hate trans people" is an acceptable thing to say (I think this is one of the rare occasions where the famous Lee Atwater quote about Nixon actually applies). It is also relatively easy to go on Twitter and find and deluge of "gender critical" people who are happy to anonymously say that they hate trans people. It's also very easy to find examples of prominent TERFs saying s**t like "we need to reduce the number of trans people" and "every one of them is a threat to the sane world" (Helen Joyce, here), comparing trans people to ISIS (Julie Bindel, in print), or calling trans people "it" (Germaine Greer; don't think the original source has been digitalised but it is quoted here). Allison Bailey (founder of the "LGB Alliance") blamed trans people when her dog found a chocolate bar in their garden; turned out a local child threw it. Fair Play For Women posted some pretty f****d up s**t about the possibility of trans women one day being able to become pregnant. Maya Forstater is currently engaged in a week-long public freakout because a library changed its logo to a gender-neutral alien child. I feel like using Graham Linehan is probably unfair...

These aren't random Twitter accounts. These are the leading lights of the TERF movement. It is not credible to describe them as not being transphobic.

If your definition of "transphobia" doesn't include discrimination and fear-mongering against trans people then it's an inadequate definition.

Okay, that's a lot to unpack, but I think the major issue here is that I do have a higher bar for what I consider to be transphobic, and most of that stuff is reaching and uncharitable at best, there's an awful lot of guilt by association, some straight up untruth, and a whole lot of convoluted reasoning that requires that one buys into the whole of the voguish gender ideology (whatever you want to call it) in order for it to make any sense. I'll address some of it in detail later, but I'm going to say out of the gate that I'm dismayed to see such weak points put forward with such conviction, it reads to me like ideology over reason.

I appreciate that there’s a lot to unpack, but there’s no guilt by association.

The reason people who disagree with you (myself included) speak with conviction is simply because we’ve seen the evidence, and it’s really compelling. When people like Theresa May and Crispin Blunt (who in American terms are the equivalent of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul) are being called “gender ideologues” then the term loses a lot of potency. Feels a lot like 2005’s “the gay agenda” or 2010’s “evolutionist”, accuse everyone who disagrees with you of being ideological as a thought-terminating cliche, rather than engaging with the hard work of looking at evidence.