#reminds me of segregationists who thought they had 'nothing against' Black Americans

[darkfrog24]

A few weeks ago, I read Pamela Paul’s defense of JK Rowling in the New York Times. According to Paul, Rowling only said a few things about trans men and trans women, and they were very mild. With all this hate on J.K. Rowling for being anti-trans, I figured I should probably find out what she actually did. I found this article in Glamour.

JKR wrote a joking post in which she implies another post that says “people who menstruate” should have just said “women.”

JKR posted, “I don’t hate trans ppl and would march with them, but I think sex is real and has consequences.”

So far so not that bad. This is similar to what Paul said JKR said. But the Glamour article goes on to cite a post on her own website where we see Rowling’s views straight from the source.

Rowling says she’d been researching trans issues for a book, including taking notes on Twitter posts, and she accidentally hit “like” instead of just taking a screenshot on one of them. She doesn’t say what this Tweet said but does say that she was harassed after that, so I’m guessing it was transphobic.

Again on Twitter, she followed a then-dying lesbian who’d been (JKR’s words) a “a great believer in the importance of biological sex” and supporter of lesbian women’s right not to date “trans women with penises.”

She says TERFs shouldn’t be considered trans-exclusionary because “they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.”

She cites stats on people detransitioning out of regret that strike me as probably inaccurate. I heard elsewhere that most people who detransition do it because of prejudice from the outside, not belief that their transition was wrong.

She cites parents claiming that whole peer groups of girls decide to transition at once. That strikes me as questionable.

She seems to think that girl-presenting young people transition to male roles because they want to “escape their womanhood” and the sexism it entails.

She acknowledges that transition is the right choice for many people, acknowledges the increased risks of violence they face, and says she knows and likes at least one trans woman and thinks of her as a woman.

She says that women and girls are in danger from policies that allow “any man who says he’s a woman” to enter bathrooms. It’s my understanding that men don’t pretend to be trans women to enter bathrooms to harass women.

Okay, so in this essay, she seems sincerely afraid for other women, but the thing she’s afraid of—predators pretending to be trans women—isn’t real, and it would be relatively easy for her to learn this. What I’m drawing from this piece is that 1) Rowling doesn’t think she’s anti-trans. 2) She is anti-trans access to women’s spaces. 3) She has a number of misconceptions about trans people, many of them harmful. 4) She claims to support trans people in terms of protection from violence.

Back to Glamour.

Rowling deleted a Tweet praising Stephen King right after King made a pro-trans post and blocked King.

Rowling claimed there were fake Tweets on Twitter attributed to her.

Rowling said gender affirming care was like conversion therapy and that doctors were pushing it on teens.

Rowling wrote a fictional book about a man who disguises himself as a woman to kill women, which matches her fear of men pretending to be trans women.

The article cites Tweets in which people send death threats and say nasty things to Rowling.

Here’s my take-away: Rowling’s not the cartoonish proud anti-trans Mel-Gibson-style ranter I was expecting. She’s someone who’s anti-trans but doesn’t think she is. Not everything she says about women and trans people is wrong, to the point where I can understand why she doesn’t understand how any of it is wrong. She has indeed been harassed and hounded online. This is consistent with posts I’ve seen claiming that Rowling went through a process similar to the one that turns teenaged male netgoers into incels and fascists. They say something somewhat offensive out of ignorance, then they’re met with hostility, and then they allow themselves to be driven away from facts and toward self-justification. The difference is that those boys are children who can be forgiven for not knowing better and Rowling is an adult.

If Rowling comes back from this, it’ll be by putting her money where her mouth is: She claims to feel solidarity with trans women because they’re at risk of domestic violence like she was. JKR could follow up on that by supporting legislation, advocacy groups, and other organizations that protect trans people from violence. However, even according to Paul, JKR has argued that trans women should not stay in the same domestic violence shelters as cis women.

In the United States in the 20th century, many whites voted for laws that said “separate but equal.” I can’t think of an example of even one who went to bat and demanded that Blacks be given equal facilities and resources as the law seemed to demand.

This does not address the concerns about Rowling and antisemitism.