renegadesammy:

notebooks-and-laptops:

Hello! I’ll do my best to outline the main points of the current controversy, as well as how this links to her behaviour in the past (although the examples I’m using are not exhaustive). But I would like to point out first that while I stand in solidarity with the trans community, I am not trans myself and I would suggest reading articles on this found online (pinknews is pretty good) as well as focusing on trans responses to the issue. I’m also summing up a lot of my views towards the end on why this is ‘bad’ so if I cover it here, I’m not responding to any other asks on the subject and I refuse to respond to all the anon hate I’ve been getting so don’t waste your breath. 

So her previous TERF comments: 

- in March 2018, JK Rowling liked a hateful tweet which referred to trans women as ‘men in dresses’. While her PR team labelled this a ‘middle-aged blunder’ of her clicking on the wrong thing, her many TERF activities after this would suggest that that is not the case. 

- In December 2019 JK Rowling tweeted in protest of the removal of Maya Forstater, a TERF who was removed from her position due to her bigotted comments, after insisting that a person cannot change their biological sex. 

- In May 2020, JK Rowling tweeted a response to a child’s drawing, accidentally copy-and-pasting a quote from an anti-trans article, which misgendered a trans-woman. This was particularly awful as it was, like I said, in response to a childs drawing. While she later deleted and apologised for the line having found its way into the response, she did not apologise for the misgendering within the tweet itself. 

- And Yesterday, smack bang in the middle of pride month and the Black Lives Matter movement, JK Rowling tweeted this in response to a very netural non-aggressive phrase used within an article. The article used ‘people who menstrate’ which is inclusive of trans-men as not everyone who menstrates identifies as a ‘woman’ like JK Rowling wishes to claim. 

She then went on to pit lesbians and gays against trans people, despite not ascribing to either label herself (a tactic often used by trolls to create in-fighting within a community), and claimed she was right to think this due to the opinion of her lesbian friend, using the lesbian community as a buffer for her views despite, again, not identifying as a lesbian. 

She further implied TERF (trans-exclusionary-radical-feminist) to be a slur (it’ s not a slur - it’s a descriptor which is used to denote feminists who believe that trans women are not ‘real’ women and often claiming trans men are ‘confused’ lesbians and its an important descriptor because it helps to separate feminism that is for equality from feminism which relies on insisting there is a biological divide between men and women that often equates men as ‘evil’ and women as ‘trustworthy’ and ‘kind’ due to their motherly instincts) - and implied that the backlash against her from people who call her a TERF is somehow comparable to women being called ‘witches’ which, as we know, led to the mass murder of women during the 17th and 18th centuries. 

Some further issues with her actions: 

- she chose to do this during pride month, which should be about celebrating trans lives, as well as LGBT lives in general. 

- she chose to do this instead of directing her millions of fans towards support in the Black Lives Matter movement. She clearly doesn’t have a problem getting political on her twitter, as this all shows, but she’s chosen NOW to focus on this instead, meaning that activists have to split their focus even more against the tide of TERFS this has brought out of the woodwork - the focus should not be on this! It should be on Black Lives Matter! Why did she decide to bring this up now of all times? 

- she has a large following of young idols. This is dangerous, as when a person who many young people idolise says something like this it can radicalise those children against trans people or it can cause extreme self-hatred for those trans youth whose idol is now turning against them. 

- she is a very clever woman. Her language is thus chosen very carefully to make her point seem reasonable on the surface unless taken to its logical conclusions. This means that her rhetoric is more likely to get people on side and spewing anti-trans bullshit than if she was just tweeting a simple ‘I hate trans people’. Notice how she claims she supports trans people, despite how her views are decried by so many trans men and women (and non-binary/gender fluid etc. people too)

- this is on the back of her other homophobic actions such as asking for credit for making a morally dubious man gay (even though its never mentioned in the books) and then making him in love with Literal Wizard Hitler, perpatrating the harmful sterotype that gay men are in some ways ‘evil’ or likely to love evil things. 

Many people are claiming that this is fine and she’s just being ‘middle aged’ and not understanding properly but this is NOT like your grandma or your aunt getting something wrong. This is a woman who has claimed to do lots of research, who has come out on the side of TERFS and who has the ability to influence many to be transphobic. Transphobia is awful, look up trans depression rates, or trans suicide rates, and you’ll see just why it’s not okay for someone who has her power to be this hateful. 

Once again, I’m not trans, please look at trans responses to this. And please do your own research. But I hope this clarifies why I am anti-Rowling and anti-TERF in general. If you are a TERF you can unfollow me now. 

I AM trans and I support this ^ message.