Content Warning: J. K. Rowling, language, genetics, definitions of terms regarding trans issues, transphobia, TERF, TERF rhetoric, domestic violence, mention of rape, facts and figures about suicide, mention of suicide, suicide, hate speech on her part, screenshots of her Twitter account, menstruation, body parts, name-calling on my part
If you need this in black and white without coloured text, click here.
There are spoilers in this for her work. There may be tangents. (You kidding? It’s me, of course there are gonna be tangents.) I got emotional and slung names, I know I shouldn’t have, but omg, I feel revoltingly soiled after reading what that TERF said.
Rowling hasn’t ever been anything except, ‘oh that person who wrote those potter books?’ to me. The books didn’t hit big until I was in mid to late university, I was heavily into cosplay and hanging with my friends when I wasn’t working on human skeletons/cadavers as part of my degree work, so I just… didn’t really notice them. I had my favorite authors that I read, and she just wasn’t one of them.
I decided to read that blog post because I can. It won’t hurt me as badly as it might others in my shoes simply for the fact that Rowling was and is nothing to me. I can give my educated opinion based on both what she says and how she says it, as well as do some research into her claims.
I don’t have a horse in the race as far as my emotions about her worlds/characters go, so I’m choosing to read this and give the gist of the important bits to my readers, so they don’t have to read what I’ve been told is utter hatred.
After reading it, I can state, unequivocally, based on her words and basic google searches that she is pushing forward an agenda of hatred. She uses nothing but TERF rhetoric and ‘oh pity me’ tactics. She is dangerous, hateful, harmful, and just a downright awful human being. I hate to even share a species with someone so hateful.
I’m so, so sorry for her fans, people who really loved her world and work. I hope you can separate the work from the creator and keep some of the joy her worlds and characters gave you. She may have created it, but without you, her fans, it wouldn’t have life. YOU breathed life into her characters and worlds, and if you want to (and can) keep that, I think you should.
So. Who am I?
You can call me Kae. I have a habit of fact-checking authors on things they claim. If you’re in autism circles at all, you may recognize my name from me tearing apart TO SIRI WITH LOVE and AUTISM UNCENSORED. I’ve written for both BUSTLE and The NY OBSERVER. I’m a published author, a reviewer and I make my living as a freelance fiction editor. I’m a parent, a life partner, and a bit of a loudmouth about social justice.
I’m speaking as an autistic disabled activist, a bio-anthropologist/forensic scientist, and as a trans person. I’m trans-non-binary, I’m neither man nor woman, I’m both and neither depending on the day. My thoughts and feelings are mine. My words are based on my understanding of these concepts. I am autistic, there’s no hidden meaning behind my words, I’ve used the words I actually mean. Any twisting of them is on you, not me. Twisting words is an allistic thing. If I fuck up, please let me know as I’m truly not trying to. Email is best, as I don’t have comments on my website and no contact forms thanks to massive harassment. Kaelan.Rhywiol@gmail.com
Structure: I’ve used coloured text to highlight definitions that might be triggering, things I felt needed extra oomph, as well as her actual words. If you’re trans, I highly recommend you just read my words and avoid hers, which are in Burnt Orange. I didn’t have a horse in the race and her words still hurt me.
As far as the definitions and concepts, I’ve posted common definitions and clarification of a couple of concepts for people unfamiliar with terms used in anthropology, biology, and yes, by trans people and our allies. It’s also HERE in case you want to have it up in a different window while you read. If you’ve rarely run into these terms and concepts they can be hella confusing.
These are the definitions and concepts I have learned from others in the trans community and from advanced science classes in university. (As with all communities, there will be some who agree with me, and some who won’t. Neither autistic people nor trans people are a monolith.)
If you’re at all confused about the extreme difference between sex and gender, I suggest you read the definitions.
AGAB – Assigned Gender At Birth
AFAB – Assigned Female At Birth
AMAB – Assigned Male At Birth
Cis – you feel like your AGAB
Trans – you do not feel like your AGAB
TERF – An acronym for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist: A social movement focused on excluding trans people from society. They use many methods to gull people onto their side of things with the sole purpose of eradicating any acceptance for trans people in the world.
GENDER – A socio-cultural construct often based on perceived external biological differences but also on social roles within a society, activities, and on unspoken codes and rules: IE Nail polish is only for girls, only boys wear blue (Both of which are patently untrue, men were the first to wear earrings, nail polish, and makeup, high heels, and corsets even, in renaissance Europe. It goes much further back in other cultures. It wasn’t until much later that men let women dress up in all the fancy stuff.)
A June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Source: Smithsonian
Words like woman, man, girl, boy, et cetera refer to gender. They have nothing to do with genetic sex, perceived biological sex, or what functions our body displays. Our genetic sex and the things our bodies do aren’t relevant to our gender. These are two separate and distinct concepts. Anthropologists and other scientists know this. It’s fact. As many people have said, Our Parts Don’t Determine Our Gender.
SEX – genetic sex on the chromosomal level. Whether someone is xy, xx, xxy, xxxx, xyy etc. and how that affects what our bodies can/can’t do. A person can look and feel like a cis male and be xxy. A person can also be a “woman” to everyone’s perception and be xyy. (Not even sex is binary, sorry nonscientists, it just isn’t, 7th-grade biology lied to you. Shocking, I know.) This is the only way in which ‘sex’ matters to anyone, and the only one it matters to is the person who is carrying those genetics, their medical team, and if they have them, their partners. For further reading on this subject here are a couple of twitter threads that make it easy to understand.
GENDER IDENTITY – What one feels inside, their own internal perception of their gender. MANY cultures from all over the world throughout recorded time have always known there’s a distinct difference between gender and perceived biological sex. Scientists in pretty much all fields know it today. It’s only in modern society that people like Rowling have their heads up their rectums about it.
PERCEIVED BIOLOGICAL SEX – What someone looks like to someone else. This is fraught territory because there are butch cis women who look masculine and there are femme looking cis men. The point being, of course, that you cannot tell what someones’ gender or genetic sex is by looking at them. It’s actually impossible.
Utterly impossible, you’d need a compound microscope to see genetic sex/chromosomal sex and I haven’t seen many of those in girls’ bathrooms or boys for that matter. As far as seeing into someone to try to figure out what their gender is? I don’t think we’ve developed telepathy and thought sensing yet, have we? So why don’t we just do the radical thing of believing people are who they say they are with regards to gender? Hmm? Peachy.
I’m a disabled activist. I’m autistic. I’m also trans non-binary, my pronouns are xie/xem/xyr.
Not that many people use them, given what I look like. I doubt I’ll ever be as androgynous as I want to be. I present as (look like) a woman, I’m not one. ‘She/her’ has ALWAYS felt like an itchy, too tight sweater, one that’s likely to cause hives. I loathed being forced to wear dresses, skirts, make-up, and ‘girly shit’ (I had some misogyny to work out) but the only reason I felt that it was ‘girly shit’ is because it was constantly being shoved down my throat. Every time I heard she/her or what is definitely a feminine first (legal/dead, don’t use it even if you know it) name. I cringed. Always.
I remember asking my mom, when I was 4, when I’d get my penis because I was sick of waiting for it. She laughed her ass off, mocked me and I never asked again. It took me until I was 39 to really understand who I am because I didn’t have the language to label it. Now I do. I had to do a lot of internal work to beat back internalized misogyny, massive feminine social indoctrination, trans discomfort, and a whole load of other crap that really isn’t relevant to this post.
Suffice it to say it took me a while to both understand and accept who I am. I’m proud of the work I’ve done to help my true me come out from under the decades of abuse I’ve experienced. My autism played a part in that, but it’s not the part J. K. Rowling wants you to believe. See, the way she talks about it in her post, we poor little autistic girls can’t possibly be trusted to understand our own genders. We need to be protected!
AS an autistic ‘girl’ and the mom of another one, all I have to say about that is if you’ve never tried to make an autistic do anything, you have no idea how very stubborn we can be. We get enough hate, just by being autistic, we’re not likely to add on the trans unless we’re dead sure we are.
Autistics, in general, tend to question everything, so, um, no, Joanne, we don’t need you to protect us poor innocent autistic girls. Fuck. Off. You do not have permission to use my and my daughter’s neurotype as a screen for your bigoted hatred.
I’m AFAB, (Assigned Female At Birth). Some boneheaded doctor looked at my crotch when I was born and told everyone I was a girl. Science knows that even perceived biological sex isn’t a binary. Trust me. I’m not a girl and never was. I’ve always been gender-fluid non-binary. I’m neither or both man and woman. Some days, because I’m fluid, I’m more femme, most days, I’m neither or I’m masc, as I’m definitely masc leaning.
So when it came to light yesterday that J.K. Rowling has once again doubled down on her awfulness against trans people, I tried to ignore it. It’s the same old song and dance from that old culturally appropriating has-been.
She’s stirred up trouble for trans and queer folks for YEARS, the queer community has known about it forever, she retroactively assigned Dumbledore as gay AFTER she wrote the books. Now… if that isn’t reaching for stuff that isn’t hers? I don’t know what is.
It’s not gay if it’s not on the page babe, and honestly, there are queer authors out here who can write it WAY better than you can retcon it. Me included. BUT now she’s getting worldwide attention for being awful to trans people. Katelyn Burns broke down Rowling’s history of transphobia for Vox last year.
So what does she do? The glory hound doubles down and hurts more people with a blog post. Including me. I don’t like her books or her worlds and I never have. I feel they glorify child abuse in an extremely disturbing way. I mean, they KILLED a scared and abused kid at the end of Fantastic Beasts, then went out for tea and it was all done with.
Like, WHAT? How is that… and this is OKAY with people? (And frankly, as an editor, I have no idea how those books got published, they’re extremely poorly written just from a technical standpoint. J.K. Rowling and E.L. James. Two rich and famous authors who can’t write worth beans.)
I’m not generally involved in trans activism for personal reasons.
I am, however, EXTREMELY involved in autistic and disabled activism. So when I heard that freaking glory hound had tried to use autistic girls as a shield for her awful beliefs and words… I knew I had to make myself read that blog post that everyone is talking about.
People don’t think autistic girls exist, did you know that? We’re unicorns. We’re gods damned myths. Except that I’m sitting here with a diagnosis of ASD, (among other things), a vagina/boobs drinking tea, and writing a blog post I don’t really want to write.
I’d rather be playing Animal Crossing.
But no. J. K. Rowling. You do NOT get to use my existence as a way to hurt trans people. There is a HIGH amount of crossover between queer and autistic communities. While I may not have spoken up about trans issues (trans, not trans activist) I absolutely will about autistic ones.
You done fucked up. Bitch.
Dear gods I don’t want to read this.
A note on structure as a reminder: I’ve put Rowling’s actual inflammatory words in BURNT ORANGE. Please don’t read those if you’re trans. You don’t need to see that. I’ve broken down what she said so people can know without having to swim through her sewage.
The blog post, if anyone wants to pollute their eyeballs with it is here. I definitely don’t recommend reading it, it’s really, incredibly painful to read. Go clean your bathroom with your tongue, it’ll be more productive and you’ll honestly probably feel better than if you read that trash. If you do read it, and it sounds logical and reasonable, then you are part of the problem. Please, please educate yourself.
Anyway:
She writes at first that she’s read lots and lots about trans issues. (I guarantee she hasn’t. If she has at all, they’re outdated, falsified, TERF leaning rhetoric.)
She goes on to say:
“On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”
Firstly, that’s a lie. There’s been plenty of tweet threads and people proving that she’s got a long history of ‘absent-mindedly’ liking inflammatory tweets. It’s even been referred to by her publicist that it was a ‘middle-age moment’.
I’m middle-aged. I do not ‘like’ things on social media that aren’t anything I actually support. Whether we enjoy it or not, as public figures (authors are) we need to be careful what we like and retweet because a like or retweet or share from us DOES count as supporting it.
Hey, Joanne, guess what you had to do? All you had to do was say, oops, my bad. And no one would’ve said a thing to you.
Aren’t we all, in western society at least, taught that we should say we’re sorry when we fuck up? She didn’t say she was sorry. Instead, she doubled down.
She talks about willfully supporting Maya Forstater, the woman who even an Employment Court of Britain basically labeled a TERF.
Great choice in icons there, Joanne. She talks about knowing that people would hate her for supporting Forstater. Uh, yeah, J.K. people don’t like TERFs much. Shocker, huh? We don’t like Nazis either.
She whines more about the ‘social media abuse’ for fuck’s sake, this reads like a ‘poor little me, the evil trans people are out to get me’ gags.
She talks about supporting Magdalen Burns. Another known TERF. Just a lesbian one.
“to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, “
Have you ever been hated? I mean, truly hated for something you can’t help? I have. I am. It sucks, a lot actually. And yes. It can ACTUALLY kill. (See what I mean? She can’t write.)
“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive.”
(She needs a comma in front of that last and)
Yep. J.K. There are tons of TERFs just like you. Don’t you find that sooooo comforting? asshole. No. Suppurating, hemorrhoidal asshole.
“They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights.”
(comma before the first and)
So, you… a beloved children’s author with MANY queer young people who adore you, decide to side with the TERFs. Having trouble on understanding the logic there J.K., if all you want to do is protect people.
Billionaire white woman plays the ‘oh my mental health’ card. Holy cow. Sucking hard on the social teat there, aren’t you J.K? (You can be rich and mentally ill, and rich people have more resources to get treatment.)
I’m not mocking mentally ill people. I’m mentally ill. I’m mocking the incredibly common and likely habit of white women, when called on their shit, to whine about some aspect of their mental health. Usually anxiety, cause these days, the ‘pretty’ mental illnesses are anxiety and depression.
Oh, yeah, right, she says she only returned to twitter to share a free children’s book during the pandemic.
Let’s see. She’s quite active on May 25th, and I don’t know if that’s a joke, but dang, threatening to steal people’s pets? Great look J.K. Fantastic. Peachy.
So classy, professional even. (My eyes roll any harder I’m gonna have to get up, fetch them from wherever they land when they fall out of my head, dust the damned things off and figure out how to reattach them.)
Above: Screenshot of J.K. Rowling’s account, showing her posting and threatening to steal dogs because no one told J.K. Rowling (fucking egotist) she couldn’t on May 25th, 2020 (I *think* it’s meant to be a joke, but I don’t think ‘jokes’ about how you’re above the law are funny.)
And here she is posting in April, she posted frequently enough that Twitter found quite a bit.
Above: Screenshot of J.K. Rowling’s account showing her posting in April
March:
She does seem to have been absent for February. Probably licking her pride from having people tell her she’s wrong about trans folks. Sex, biological sex, is not binary. Scientists know this. Egotist billionaire children’s writer’s who shit on their fans do not. I mean, you should see the love people send her way, and she STILL wants more attention? Disgusting.
Hell, I’d be happy to have even a small percentage of that love for me and my books. :/
Instead, she goes and beats on the trans community again when her free children’s book didn’t get enough attention to suit her.
SO. My little data-mining project into her Twitter account (I really need a shower now) proves that not only is she a TERF, she’s a fucking liar too. Great role model for kids. Fantastic.
Back to that awful blog post. I need wine.
“Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.”
Nooo, Ms. Egotist. Activists didn’t swarm back into your tweets until YOU attacked TRANS PEOPLE with this awful tweet.
Screenshot of the tweet that started all of this crap up again. It’s a retweet of an opinion column: Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 World for people who menstruate.
Rowling’s words: “People who menstruate.” I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
She’s not only starting it all up again with that tweet, she’s WILLFULLY attacking anyone who, in her view, isn’t a woman.
Which, like, look in the mirror lady, you were born in 1965, unless you’ve discovered what the rest of us haven’t, at 54, you probably don’t menstruate either. It’s called menopause. Pretty sure you probably know what that is by now.
And I’ve just done a data dive into her account, (shudders) so no, there weren’t any activists in her replies/mentions that I saw, not for months after she popped back in early March like a bad case of head lice you just can’t get rid of. Prior to that tweet, she had the usual outpouring of love from kids and their parents who loved her free book. Lots of illustrations from those kids, her responses to them (which were kind, she was kind to kids, I’ll give her that, just not trans kids. No, no kindness for kids like I used to be.)
Then she goes on to bitch about the term TERF and mislabels its source.
“If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists.”
It was actually coined by Trans-inclusive cisgender radical feminist blogger Viv Smythe who popularized the term in 2008 as an online shorthand. (Wikipedia)
(Difference is that Smythe is a trans-inclusive blogger, not an activist. Smythe isn’t to my knowledge in that circle.)
Rowling is also incredibly wrong that there are ‘many people labeled TERFS who, waaaah, don’t deserve it’. No, Joanne, honey, you have to earn that title with your behavior. Which you most definitely have. Even if none of the rest of it were true, that ONE tweet, the one mocking people who menstruate, makes you a TERF.
Trans-Exclusionary means you exclude trans people from anything, really. Just like you, Joanne, are excluding trans women from womens’ rights, womens’ spaces, womens’ conversations, and womens’ lives.
Trans women are women. Period. Even science backs that up. A transitioning trans woman’s bones, skin, hair, body all become incredibly similar to a cis woman’s. A trans woman’s brain is more like a cis woman’s than a cis man’s EVEN BEFORE TRANSITIONING. Scientific fact. Same goes for trans men.
Woman is a GENDER IDENTITY DEFINITION. It has nothing to do with body parts and whether or not you bleed from them. Frankly, I know a couple penis owning people who menstruate, and they were born with those things, so like… what are they? Aliens?
“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).”
I mean, does she know for a fact she’s a ‘biological’ female? She’s had a chromosomal assay done? Wow. Interesting, she’s more committed to her TERFuckery than I thought. And she’s misused ‘literally’ again. Sigh.
Really, REALLY can’t write.
There’s also no such thing as a biological woman. That’s mixing up the definitions of two very different concepts. People may PERCEIVE her as a woman, she may perceive herself as one, which makes her Cis. Also an asshole, but a cis asshole.
Gah, I’m tired of this blog post already and I haven’t even gotten to the ‘using autistics’ part. We’re still in the ‘shitting on trans people’ part.
“So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?”
She says she’s doing it because someone has to defend the poor innocent children.
No, Joanne, you’re ‘speaking up’ with your bad facts and baseless accusations and your bloody lies because you’re a damned egotistical jerk who isn’t getting enough of the attention you feel is your due. And pardon me, but no, I don’t think you’re capable of research, not after appropriating Indigenous culture for your books (AND NEVER APOLOGIZING) and this bullshit about trans gender people.
Why do I feel that way? Because I’m an ACTUAL scientific researcher. My degrees are in Bioanthropology, Forensic Chemistry, World History, and Education. Trust me, in all that, I learned how to do research and to do it well.
All Joanne here has got is her bad attitude, her prejudice about what makes a woman ‘a woman’, and way, way too much ego.
“Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.”
(Sigh, roles eyes, trans activism isn’t new, she’s just not used to being called on her shit.)
“Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”
Trans women’s brains are much more like a cis woman’s brains than a cis man’s. Oh, and there are sooooo many trans people who are the victims of domestic abuse, in prison, and are victims of sexual assault. If you knew anything about MS, you’d actually listen to the Doctors who would tell you that trans women are valid. Next bad point?
“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”
I’m an ex-teacher too. The only thing hurting trans kids is not being believed, not being able to express their true gender, and later, not having transition care if they need it. It’s foolish to think anyone would or even could ‘make’ a kid trans, or transition. We’re born the way we are.
All of us trans folks, but especially adolescents, already have incredibly high suicide rates, her bullshit is NOT helping.
Joanne my dear, just because you won the author lottery in a big way (we all know it’s not a meritocracy, or you definitely wouldn’t be where you are) doesn’t mean you are the be-all and end-all of things you obviously don’t understand. Just because you have money and can fund a charity… no, just no. You’re utterly HORRIBLE.
My heart bleeds for all those trans kids out there, the ones who thought maybe Harry Potter and Hogwarts had room for them, only to find out that not only does Hogwarts not have room, the author’s heart doesn’t either.
I highly recommend turning to fanfiction. There’s so much wonderful fanfic out there based in her world that you can find exactly what you need without having anything to do with her. There are also a lot of trans authors out here, we write worlds where you are welcome, wanted, and loved. Where you’ll find people similar to you having adventures and joys and happily ever afters. You’ll need to search indie and self-publishing for us because mainstream publishing hates us as much as Joanne does.
“The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.”
You and Trump do make a pair don’t you? Both sharing scientifically disproven bullshit under the guise of caring for someone else when all you want is attention and controversy.
Shame on you, Joanne Kathleen Rowling. Shame. On. You. During the biggest Black Lives Matters worldwide revolution ever, you do this. You’re disgusting.
And again, that’s not hurt talking, I never liked her books, Hogwarts wasn’t ever this special fun place for me, I was in Uni when the books became big, so they just missed me completely. I didn’t lose anything by her being awful.
I feel so horrible for those who did. I’m so sorry my luvs, you’re VALID and her bullshit is exactly that. A steaming stream of grass-fed, medicated cow shit (grass-fed, medicated is looser, wetter, stinkier) splattered across a barn floor. Just toss some hay on that and shovel it out the door. At least cow shit has fertilization usages, her shit is just glorifying her own sad, hateful ignorance.
I can’t even imagine myself being that wealthy so it’s not jealousy either. I mean, hell, she wants to support trans people she can, I’ll happily give her my Paypal address. In the blink of an eye and the click of her finger, she could change the lives of so many trans people if she just bothered.
Most of us have paypals, kofis, many of us have GoFundMes to get out of abusive situations or get our surgeries if we need/want them. Trans creators tend to starve, wither into the unknown, while she in her mighty white rich lady ‘knowledge’ is ‘writing a crime series’ so ‘the topic of trans issues is interesting to her’.
Translation, she’s thinking of stealing a trans author’s place at the publishing table by writing a trans book.
But we all know she won’t do that. She won’t help trans people. She hates us.
Freedom of speech exists, yes. It means you get to say whatever you want unless your government forbids it, yes. It also means you get to take the consequences. Which is people like me loathing you. Knowledge that you’re hurting KIDS, as well as your fans. The people who put you where you are. Your Fans.
I’m an author too, and as I detailed in my thread here, I can’t wrap my head around hurting my fans that badly. Without our fans, we writers are nothing more than extremely odd people in torn t-shirts, messy hair, and skivvies, (if we’re feeling fancy) whispering stories to ourselves in dark rooms.
Without your fans? As an author? You’re nothing but a blowhard. And she’s doing her level best to hurt so many of her fans to stroke her outsized damned ego.
“The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”
Gods, did she pull that out of her toilet? I think she did. It’s nothing more than TERF rhetoric. Precious fertility, beautiful femininity cow crap. She talks about transition care as if people are passing around pills like at the rave parties in the ’90s.
No. That’s not how transition care works. You have to go through SO MUCH to even be able to access transition care. Psychotherapy is just part of that, it’s not something you do on a whim, like she’s painted there. The rates of people detransitioning are extremely low, because of the barriers in place to prevent whims like she’s describing. No, the ones who detransition? They’re almost always the ones who have to rely on intolerant family members for support.
Hey, Joanne, if you’re so concerned about those who have to detransition, why don’t you go to GoFundme.com and give some of your unearned wealth to those who really need it. The ones who have no choice but to sacrifice their true selves so that they can feed their bodies?
But no. We know you won’t do that either.
Oh, our fertility… boo hoo. Transition care doesn’t do that.
As if fertility is all that. JFC, everything she says is TERF rhetoric. EVERYTHING. And somehow she thinks people transition BECAUSE of homophobic family members? I mean, does she really have no idea how much more abuse trans folks suffer from that very hatred? Obviously not.
“The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”
Uh, yeah, there’s A. More people running around earth these days, and B. It’s not quite as unacceptable to be trans as it used to be, so of course, more people are going to be looking for transition care. They just stopped hiding. Duh. Same thing happened when I was a kid and it became less awful to society to be left-handed. (I was taught, violently, to write with my right hand. I’m naturally left-handed.)
As for Autistic girls, unicorns, yeah, there’s HUGE, MASSIVE overlap between queer identities and autism. There’s been a few studies done on it. No, we don’t yet know why, but as an autistic enby, one you’d call a girl, I’ll tell you it’s not because of peer pressure or because I don’t know who I am. I’ve always known who I am. I’ve always been trans. My parents did their level best to turn me into a girl because of my crotch, guess what, I’m not one!
The only confusion I’ve ever suffered about my gender identity? Was thinking I was a girl because I’d been socialized as one. So Fuck Off, Joanne, with that bullshit about autistic girls. You do not have my permission to use people like me and my daughter and so many others as a shield for your TERF actions. Absolutely not.
She mentions in glowing terms a supposed Dr. Lisa Littman who studied ‘growing numbers of youth affected by the echo chambers of social media’. She says the doctor received censure from her colleagues for spreading misinformation.
Now… um, I don’t know about you? But Peer-Reviewed Science is a thing. If that doctor’s peers said she was spreading misinformation and that she needed to be censored? That’s good enough for me and most of the general public. Not TERFs though. Not good enough for the All-Mighty Joanne here. She knows better than all the docs in the US and UK combined! We should really listen to her! Not.
“The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves.”
That’s because they do. You jizz-whistler. Here’s an article from the Human Rights Campaign with facts and figures. It’s not pretty, and guess what you flappy twat, you’ve made it worse.
Here’s one showing that puberty blockers (again, transition care is incredibly hard to get, you have to jump through a LOT of hoops to get it, especially for a kid) REDUCE suicide in trans kids.
Preventing suicide in trans people, by the Trevor Project (I’m pretty sure the Trevor project knows more about trans people than Ms. Fantastic TERF here.)
I could keep going, on, and on, and on, and on with the science. It’s not like I looked into my toilet bowl one morning, figured a particular turd looked nice and decided to smear it all across my Twitter feed like Joanne here did. No, I actually look up resources that are recent, usually peer-reviewed, and relevant.
“In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’”
Bullshit. I call bullshit. I bet that guy was MADE to resign because of his bigotry. There have been MANY peer-reviewed, scientific studies on trans people, and transition care. That’s just absolute, utterly foolish, easily disprovable hogwash. A Google search would tell you that!
You see, kids. You can find support for ANY prejudice on the internet. Joanne here found hers in TERF rhetoric, discredited doctors and psychotherapists… and apparently after a bowel movement.
“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”
No. No, no, no, no, no you yeasty, white-livered harpy.
Every trans person I ever met, when I was going through my own journey to acceptance, both back as a teen who never fit in ‘her’ skin and as an adult… EVERY ONE supplied information, websites, places to find more information on what it feels like to be trans. This bullshit of hers also completely erases the struggles of non-binary people and trans men!
Trans folks advised caution, to wait and sit with it to make sure it fit.
We don’t go around trying to convince others to join us like some freakish cult. Thanks for that insult you damned soggy noodle. No, I’ll leave that kind of cultish behavior to you and your TERFy friends.
It’s well known in the queer community that Tumblr especially, but also Reddit are blood-chummed feeding grounds for TERFs looking for young queers to radicalize AGAINST trans people. Including young trans people. It’s awful.
It works too, that’s the sad part. And Joanne’s self-aggrandizing chicken scratch doesn’t help that.
EVERYTHING Joanne here has said as ‘proof’? It’s TERF rhetoric. Here, don’t believe me…
How to spot TERF Ideology, from the University of Cambridge, UK.
“…although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.”
Joanne dear, was it published this century? Did you forget your glasses? You’ve got the numbers backward, darling. Almost exactly backward. 60-90% of trans teens either commit suicide or attempt to commit suicide. They don’t ‘outgrow’ anything, except maybe their asshole parents who didn’t listen to them. If they don’t transition, they tend to do so in adulthood if they can.
Oh, and few of us speak to the parents who denied us who we really are. I certainly don’t.
“Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass.”
Another lie, if anything, it’s harder to access transition care now. To my knowledge, trans kids have the exact same transition schedule, if not LONGER than an adult does.
How many of these am I gonna have to debunk before I get to the autistic part? (Note; I had already passed the autistic part, she was just using us as a shield. Dehumanizing our minds and taking possession of our bodies as a way to make herself look good.)
“We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls.”
What a bloody prude. Uh. Nope again. I have a daughter. I see what her life is like. I weigh it against everything I experienced as a kid in the 80s, yes dear, we grew up in the same decade, and no, absolutely no, this generation is far easier on girls than it was on people dubbed ‘girl’ in that time. Just the existence of so much indie porn is a sign that the world is NOT more misogynistic. Female presenting people have more freedom to express themselves in any way they want, including sexually, in this century than ever before.
You’re a fool. Joanne. A dyed in the wool fool. You’ve bought into TERF rhetoric in a big way and you’re too damned egotistical to admit you were wrong and apologize for hurting so many people.
“Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”
Yeah? Do you forget, Joanne dear? It was followed by a backhand in the ’80s. Maybe a belting with dad’s belt if we didn’t conform. Been there, done that, have the godsdamned scars to prove it. You, you… lying bitch.
“The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion (of womanhood) concerns many others just as much.”
Sure. Sure, Joanne, when someone with your reach starts shitting out TERF rhetoric on your Twitter feed, you’re gonna get a lot of TERFs reaching out to you expressing their ‘concern’.
There are A LOT of TERFs, Joanne. You are ignorant, you’re dangerous, and I wish to gods you’d get kicked off Twitter.
“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.”
Sighs forever. I’m reasonably good looking Joanne, I look like a woman, I’m not, but that hasn’t stopped the slurs, the catcalls, the sexual assaults, the rapes. Plural Joanne, Plural. Rapes. Sit with that.
I still use gender-inclusive language and you know what? It’s not only ACCURATE (or aren’t you a woman anymore you post-menopausal crab?) It keeps people from KILLING THEMSELVES.
So a bunch of biddies who never got to do anything in their lives because of sexism don’t like the terms. Sorry not sorry? I’d rather have a few people uncomfy with the changing times than see another single trans kid dead.
You weren’t much to me, I knew your name, saw the Potter movies once cause I was bored, tried to read your awful books to my kids (Kids asked me to stop by the way, I was willing to soldier on for them). Then I saw, over time, some red flags of queer hatred.
Turning Dumbledore gay only after the fact? Not even close to cool. I started to not like you much before this most recent painful mockery, Joanne, but now? I hate you. With every fiber of my being. I wish nothing good for you for the rest of your life.
For someone like you to fall into TERF rhetoric, and then to not only just… quietly believe it… (not good, but sure, you want to believe that shite and keep it to yourself? Whatever. Not on me) but to publicly, as a beloved children’s author, as a Queen’s Companion of Honour, as a billionaire, as a celebrity… my gods, just… my gods. You have no idea of the harm you’ve done and continue to do. The Peter Parker principle applies, with great power comes great responsibility. J.K. Rowling has not only abandoned that responsibility, she’s used her might to support and push forward the beliefs of an awful edge group of so-called feminists who wouldn’t know feminism if it bit them. She’s used her power to HURT.
Realistically, TERFs are quite good at making people believe them, at making all these so-called talking points of yours sound reasonable. They’re not reasonable. It’s hatred, Joanne. You’re spewing hatred on all your fans. Trans and Cis alike. My gods. You’re utterly revolting.
I have no idea how many deaths among the trans community you’ve caused with this egotistical braying, but I guarantee you there have been some. Their blood is on your soul. Pay for it forever through time as far as I’m concerned.
Onwards. I really wish I could drink wine right now. REALLY, REALLY wish I could. This is fucking painful.
This is her last “reason”
“I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.”
So what? What the honest rotating hell does your abuse have to do with you shitting on trans people and causing so much harm?
I was abused too, Joanne. I was beaten, I was sexually assaulted, I was raped as both a child and an adult. I was emotionally abused, gaslighted, harmed in just about every way a human can be harmed, and still fucking survive.
When I tell people, or when I used to tell people because I don’t anymore, about my past, about the things that happened to me… they ALL, Universally, get this look of abject horror on their faces… then they whisper, ‘how, how… are you even alive?’
I earned my unfortunate chops as far as abuse goes and no. It has nothing to do with trans people. It has nothing to do with me being trans. It has nothing to do with your hate. These are entirely separate issues that you are conflating to muddy the waters of your harmful beliefs.
I lived in domestic violence from the time I was born to the time I got away from my parents. YEARS. DECADES of abuse.
Your abuse is irrelevant to your hatred of and abuse of trans people. Period.
“I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.”
I suppose I don’t count in that ‘women who have histories like mine’ crap.
Bigot.
Ignorant bigot at that.
Hateful, ignorant bigot.
Sigh. How many people go where they aren’t wanted?
We can tell when we’re not wanted, most of us, right? I mean, even my autistic ass gets it eventually and I utterly SUCK at social skills.
So… does any actually reasonable person think that a trans woman is going to hang around where she’s obviously not wanted? The answer is obvious, it’s a big fat No.
I can’t even get my trans women friends out of their homes half the time to meet up for coffee. (Gee, I wonder why? Massive eye-roll) You honestly think they’re gonna go pollute themselves at your biddie teas? Nope. Enh. Gameshow buzzer noise.
(I’m no longer applying reasonable to old Joanne here, TERFS have her brain in a jar somewhere. Probably behind the toilet where she gets her ideas from.)
Shit, Joanne, you really could’ve warned your readers you were gonna talk about Triggery shit regarding domestic violence. And I’m out of my anti-anxiety meds too. Great.
“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.”
No. No, we wouldn’t, Joanne. Because if you can spout words like I’ve seen on your blog page and on your Twitter feed? You have no solidarity for trans people. You have no kinship to offer. You have only hatred, mockery, and nastiness.
I said I hate her already, right?
Good, cause if I hadn’t? This would’ve done it.
“On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’.”
Gods, she’s such an asshole.
- Triggered is not a contemporary word.
- Contemporary: Of or referring to taking place in the present
- Triggered was first used in medicine in 1918. (it’s a medical term Joanne, some of us mentally ill people NEED that word to describe certain issues. You using it like that threw us under the bus.) Physicians were trying to deal with figuring out ‘war neurosis’ from WW1. The etymology of Triggered.
“Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown,…”
OMG you liar! I scanned your twitter feed, I saw NOTHING ahead of you posting that awful tweet about people who menstruate. Relentless attacks my right tit! Prior to that, yes you were actually being nice to children. Good for you.
I mean, you do know your Twitter feed is a matter of public record and that anyone with the skills can search through it pretty much at will, right?
“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.”
Yeah. Joanne, that’s how they get you. TERF radicalizing action plan 101. They’re the ones doing the doxxing. They’re the ones making trans people lose their jobs. Their livelihoods. Their lives. They got you, and now you, with all your privilege and power are doing their work for them. Brava, lady. Bra-fucking-va.
I almost feel sorry for you now. But you have hurt too many people.
Arrogant, ignorant, with money and a large following. Why haven’t people de-platformed this wretch yet?
“I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers,…”
Oh, you mean those young gay kids you’ve hurt? Who you’ve made choose between their community and their beloved author? Those young gay kids? (SMDH, they got her good, didn’t they?)
More TERF rhetoric, it’s damned nauseating.
“I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.”
Darling, you couldn’t write an emotionally complex character if someone sent you a starting kit with a paint by number guide, an AI, and a thesaurus.
She meanders off with more TERF rhetoric, and that’s the post.
I have not felt this unclean in a long, long time. (Whole body Shivers).
I saw nothing in that blog post that wasn’t TERF rhetoric. They got J.K. Rowling good, and the sick, sad thing is she doesn’t even know it. Or if she does, she actually believes that shite and doesn’t care who she hurts with it.
It would’ve been bad enough if she’d just quietly believed all that awfulness. In spreading it on her Twitter feed, she’s given TERFs a famous, obscenely rich, utterly ignorant tool to wield against any trans person, but especially trans kids.
And that is utterly reprehensible in so many ways.
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For further reading:
On ‘biological sex’ and why it’s bullshit (Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity by Katherine J. Wu HARVARD)
WHO: Gender and Genetics.
Sex and gender identity by Planned Parenthood
J. K. Rowling’s transphobia isn’t a surprise VOX
Eddie Redmayne criticizes J.K. Rowling over ‘transphobic’ comments
Daniel Radcliffe responds to J.K. Rowling’s tweets on gender identity: ‘Transgender women are women’
TOR: An open letter to J.K. Rowling
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