Ms Rowling: insightful critic of gender policy or myopic [insult]

LaurieAG said:

So you agree?

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Yes and you can tell informed opinion with citations and decent references with uninformed ones. On this site, the opinions are largely informed, by the regulars.
You have been on the site for 13 years so you can tell which is which right?

DaveC426913 said:

I think her take on the matter has less to do with being trans-phobia per se than with trans-identifiers somehow "diluting" the trials and tribulations of biological females ....

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But why would you think that?

I mean, at this point in history, sure, go ahead and reconcile that with Rowling's very public bully campaign, last year, against a cisgender female athlete.

Anyway:


In 2019↗, I cynically suggested, "There is a reason why such feminism should be popular among the British, as it strives to help women achieve their proper place and potential under a man. Of course British radicalism aims to serve traditional power." In 2020, J.K. Rowling affirmed that point: "I'm concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition … ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed."

It's kind of like gay rights and the sufficiently invisible lesbian; it was easy enough to argue about gay men, but lesbians were the real problem, because gay men aren't competitors to straight men, while lesbians aren't available for those straight men.

But mostly, it sounds like she just fell down a hole and decided to keep digging. It happens, and quite frequently. So here's a hint for folks who are still confused: If you're not a bigot, but just concerned about this one part of an issue, try addressing that issue in a constructive manner instead of seeking solidarity among bigots. In 2020, for instance, Rowling wanted another go at potty policing, and, sure, it's Britain, so I can see how she missed the part where Americans had just wasted several years on that bit: Y'know, when there weren't enough predators in locker rooms to make the point, so anti-trans activists started sending men to harass women and girls.

And while, sure, J.K. Rowling knows how to write, her 2020 explanation, in her own words, is superstitious, emotionally driven crackpottery, traditionalist and pseudoscientific. At one point, she even appears to blame trans activists for anti-trans words she finds hostile and alienating. J.K. Rowling, in her own words, is utterly full of shit.

Anyway, in her own words, ca. 2023:


This goes a little further than romanticization of feminine milestones.
____________________

Notes:

Gardner, Abby. "A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy". Glamour. 24 April 2025. Glamour.com. 8 May 2025. https://www.glamour.com/story/a-com...e-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy

Morrow, Brendan. "A timeline of JK Rowling's transphobic shift". The Week. 25 April 2025. TheWeek.com. 8 May 2025. https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/jk-rowlings-transphobia-controversy-a-complete-timeline

Rowling, J.K. "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues". 10 June 2020. JKRowling.com. 8 May 2025. https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

Wang, Jessica. "J.K. Rowling says she would 'happily' do prison time for controversial transgender views". Entertainment Weekly. 19 October 2023. EW.com. 8 May 2025. https://ew.com/books/j-k-rowling-would-do-prison-time-for-transgender-views/

Pinball1970 said:

Yes and you can tell informed opinion with citations and decent references with uninformed ones. On this site, the opinions are largely informed, by the regulars.
You have been on the site for 13 years so you can tell which is which right?

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You may note that there are some posters on this thread that appear informed by your criteria but are out and out sophists.

Tiassa said:

But why would you think that?

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Did you catch the first line where I said I should get informed - the implication being I am currently not sufficiently informed?

I'll look over the references you provided, thanks. The third one appears to be exactly what I'm looking for.

Update:

I read Tiassa's reference, thaks again. Rowling, J.K. "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues". 10 June 2020. JKRowling.com. 8 May 2025. https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/


OK, so I've got the rough nugget:

DaveC426913 said:

I think her take on the matter has less to do with being trans-phobia per se than with trans-identifiers somehow "diluting" the trials and tribulations of biological females. eg. having periods, rape, pregnancy, etc.

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That does seem to be the broad strokes of her concerns, albeit via my clumsy, ham-fisted paraphasing. It's clearly more naunced and could do with a lot of reading between the lines, but I'm not way off.

So, in answer to Tiassa's question: 'Why would I think that?' The answer is 'because J.K Rowling herself said so'.

That does not mean I agree with her. I just feel it is important to get the real story from the horse's mouth, before hearing the counter-arguments from her detractors. It is far too easy to read only one side of an argument.

DaveC426913 said:

So, in answer to Tiassa's question: 'Why would I think that?' The answer is 'because J.K Rowling herself said so'.

That does not mean I agree with her. I just feel it is important to get the real story from the horse's mouth, before hearing the counter-arguments from her detractors. It is far too easy to read only one side of an argument.

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Horse’s mouth.
Some have said Rowling's Potter books show Rowling is racist.
Any old negative tag to a name helps with the cancelling of Rowling it seems.

LaurieAG said:

You may note that there are some posters on this thread that appear informed by your criteria but are out and out sophists.

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I think you can tell which you need to ignore, for you that is.

DaveC426913 said:

That does seem to be the broad strokes of her concerns, albeit via my clumsy, ham-fisted paraphasing. It's clearly more naunced and could do with a lot of reading between the lines, but I'm not way off.

So, in answer to Tiassa's question: 'Why would I think that?' The answer is 'because J.K Rowling herself said so'.

That does not mean I agree with her. I just feel it is important to get the real story from the horse's mouth, before hearing the counter-arguments from her detractors. It is far too easy to read only one side of an argument.

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The problem here is that this would be one thing if, say, her remarks in the essay cited constituted the totality of her words and actions on the matter, and they very much do not. When considered alongside her well-documented history of bullying various athletes (including trans athletes, a non-trans athlete, and a high school kid), her vocal and financial support for legislation which strips trans people of rights and protections, and various other conflicting words and actions, the picture is a whole lot more convoluted.

Moreover, even if we consider those concerns (expressed within the essay) alone, we also have to consider that her arguments are contingent upon a whole lotta strawmen of her own design--why would someone, who is presumably intelligent and informed, construct their arguments in such a manner? And that's kinda the eternal question: Is this reflective of ignorance/stupidity/negligence/whatever, or is reflective of malice?

Edit: Consider Tiassa's remarks on Rowling's essay:

Tiassa said:

• Rowling's own words↱, ca. 2020, begin with her lamentation of being a victim, and pretty much reads like typal supremacism: She declares her victimhood and doesn't really say much of substance. Indeed, it sounds like she looked into something, and believed in what sounded most like her own aesthetics regardless of the facts, and in doing so, fell down a hole.​

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There is very much a "down the rabbit hole" quality here, and ultimately everything comes down to the banality of evil. I mean, I think there's an element of malice in Rowling's views but it's not quite on the same level as, say, the anti-trans stuff we're seeing within the Trump regime. What does that mean practically? No clue, but I think that the difference, whether we perceive it as qualitative or more quantitative, matters, I just don't know how it matters.

But, as noted elsewhere (there's a post by CC some pages back that highlights the glaring differences here), Rowling's "radical feminism" is more hodge podge, and less carefully constructed and consistent. To me, this is more suggestive of a person who gets into a thing, perhaps realizies at some point or another that they're not making a whole lotta sense, but then fully commits to this thing, rather than finding a way to gracefully exit, recant, or whatever.

DaveC426913 said:

I didn't see anything on scanning the thread. Can anyone direct me to a good article that encapsulates Rowling's take on the matter in her own words? I'd like to get it from the horse's mouth.

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If you're really interested, I recommend the podcast I mentioned earlier: The Witch Trials of JK Rowling. She was interviewed over two days.

The problem with opinion pieces like the ones Tiassa quoted from above is that many of them come from people who already have a horse in the race, so to speak. You have only to read the authors' additions around the quotes from JK Rowling to see that the authors aren't simply reporting what JKR said. They are often passing judgement and making unjustified assumptions about JKR that go far beyond anything she said or wrote.

James R said:

The problem with opinion pieces like the ones Tiassa quoted

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Is all you need to post on that, got it.

Here is but one example, already posted within this thread (along with countless others, countless times):

According to the UN, female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to trans-identified men competing against them in women’s sporting categories. Girls have been ousted from teams to make way for boys. Women have suffered serious injury playing against trans-identified men (see Payton McNabb, mentioned below).

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First of all, it is very much NOT "according to the UN", but this, again, has already been detailed within this thread (it's a private study, one medal counts as three for some incoherent reason, and they count things like poker (?!) as sports). More pertinent here, note the "trans-identified men" bit--Rowling is referring to trans women, and with regards to McNabb, a 17 year old trans girl. She is deliberately misgendering people--any ambiguity or confusion there? Nope. (Again, more specific incidences can be found within this thread, multiple times.)

Somehow this thread makes me think of William of Baskerville, in The Name of the Rose, where he's saying books are not meant to be believed but to be interpreted. I.e. you don't concern yourself with what they say but rather what they mean.

And I am not sure what Rowling means, in many cases, but perhaps it boils down to something rather simplistic (and as prone to confirmation bias as she accuses Oliver of being). And that is: anecdotes matter to me.

James R said:

The problem with opinion pieces ... is that many of them come from people who already have a horse in the race, so to speak...

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Exactly so. Which is the rationale behind the search for the horse's mouth.

Pinball1970 said:

James R said:

... like the ones Tiassa quoted ...

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Is all you need to post on that, got it.

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Tee hee. But Tiassa did actually deliver, for which I thank him.

The third reference is exactly what I asked for: it is Rowling's own essay on the matter, uninterrupted, in her own words.

She does not make a compelling argument. It is certainly her personal journey, but it doesn't make many good points that might apply on a more objective scale.

One example:
- the sole requirement for someone to demand they be considered a female is that they decide they identify as female.
- gendered washrooms allow anyone in who identifies as female
- this provides a loophole where men (specifically abusers, predators) have access to women's washrooms.
She wants to close this loophole.

That seems to be using a bulldozer to dig up a teacup. You don't solve problems with "Hey, we've got a safety issue in private spaces, therefore everyone in the world must fall into one of exactly two buckets so we can keep y'all sorted out".


It's a terrible red herring argument that (not to put too fine a point on it) is a ploy almost universally used by bigots.

I just heard another one on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight: "If we allow same sex marriage, then next we'll be allowing polygamy, fathers marrying daughters and farmer's marrying their donkeys." (I'm not kidding, This guy really said that.)

DaveC426913 said:

Tee hee. But Tiassa did actually deliver, for which I thank him.

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Nope, not tempted to investigate but nice try Dave.

DaveC426913 said:

- this provides a loophole where men (specifically abusers, predators) have access to women's washrooms.

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This part really annoys me.

1) There are currently no guards or gender-detectors on women's bathrooms. Men are free to walk into them no matter what they look like. Moral men do not, of course - but if they are moral they are not a problem, trans OR cis.

2) If the problem is that the huge threat is that a man can walk into a woman's bathroom - then the big problem is men, not trans people. Cis men outnumber trans people by many orders of magnitude.

TheVat said:

Somehow this thread makes me think of William of Baskerville, in The Name of the Rose, where he's saying books are not meant to be believed but to be interpreted. I.e. you don't concern yourself with what they say but rather what they mean.

And I am not sure what Rowling means, in many cases, but perhaps it boils down to something rather simplistic (and as prone to confirmation bias as she accuses Oliver of being). And that is: anecdotes matter to me.

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Off topic, but very much relates to what you're saying here:

Many, many years ago I had a friend with a father who was an insane academic. He had written extensively about how the secret library in The Name of the Rose was an impossibility, with diagrams and everything. She shared a lot of the details with me, but I was never given access to his actual papers.

Fast forward two years, and I'm a grad student at University of Toronto. I had been having these experiences in Robarts Library wherein I would go deep within the stacks in one area, but I could only get out by seeking another path. This happened several times, and I made all kinds of maps and diagrams which made very little sense when I reviewed them later. I shared a lot of this with a psychiatrist who then immediately informed me that I did not seem to be schizophrenic at all (my previous incorrect dx), but was in fact having seizures. Mind blown.

Anyways.

Robarts Library may have served as a model for the secret library in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Eco spent much of the time writing the novel at the University of Toronto, and the stairwell of the secret library bears a particularly strong resemblance to that in Robarts Library.[5]

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billvon said:

This part really annoys me.

1) There are currently no guards or gender-detectors on women's bathrooms. Men are free to walk into them no matter what they look like. Moral men do not, of course - but if they are moral they are not a problem, trans OR cis.

2) If the problem is that the huge threat is that a man can walk into a woman's bathroom - then the big problem is men, not trans people. Cis men outnumber trans people by many orders of magnitude.

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I mentioned this before, but if we consider the number of times public restrooms are used in a day and the number of people using them, all without incident, and compare that to the number of incidents, we will undoubtedly find that public restrooms are a colossal success story for civilization.

Undoubtedly, assaults happen--committed overwhelmingly by cisgender men--but these are extremely rare all things considered.

billvon said:

This part really annoys me.

1) There are currently no guards or gender-detectors on women's bathrooms. Men are free to walk into them no matter what they look like. Moral men do not, of course - but if they are moral they are not a problem, trans OR cis.

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Well, not to defend it, but I think the idea is, if it's obviously a man, you can throw him out and/or make a big stink to attract help. If it's transgender person, you have no such recourse, since they have a right to be there.

It's weak, and clearly a straw man. The world has a long history of painting groups of people with a broad brush and then attacking them based on the colour of the paint.

billvon said:

2) If the problem is that the huge threat is that a man can walk into a woman's bathroom - then the big problem is men, not trans people. Cis men outnumber trans people by many orders of magnitude.

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Exactly. We spent much of our history looking for labels and then attacking those we label, rather than addressing the actual offenses. That's the heart of racial profiling.

DaveC426913 said:

I just heard another one on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight: "If we allow same sex marriage, then next we'll be allowing polygamy, fathers marrying daughters and farmer's marrying their donkeys." (I'm not kidding, This guy really said that.)

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He actually said, "daddies can marry their little girls"--he made it even more creepy. IOW he abandoned the rational entirely, and went with the basest of emotional appeals. A clear indication of both bigotry and the tendency towards mockery and ridicule when a person likely knows, on some level, that their argument is weak and without merit.

parmalee said:

IOW he abandoned the rational entirely, and went with the basest of emotional appeals. A clear indication of both bigotry and the tendency towards mockery and ridicule when a person likely knows, on some level, that their argument is weak and without merit.

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It's one thing to point out that it's been this way for thirty years, but that's not just exasperation that they're willing to do this part again. I'm just saying, for thirty years, at least, they've been unable to discern the difference.

It's like, thirty years ago they literally refused the distinction of consent in order to call everything they don't like rape. At some point, yes, I accept they really don't believe in consent.

It's one of the reasons I don't trust the anti-trans rape fantasies.

But we shouldn't be surprised that homophobes can't tell the difference between bestiality and consent. Hell, we can find that if we look far enough back in the records at Sciforums.

DaveC426913 said:

[...] I just heard another one on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight: "If we allow same sex marriage, then next we'll be allowing polygamy, fathers marrying daughters and farmer's marrying their donkeys." (I'm not kidding, This guy really said that.)

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The level of "outrageousness" can be relative to the moral POV of the applicable generation of an era, though. Back in even the late 1940s (or certainly earlier, anyway) the majority of people would have considered gay marriage ludicrous slash offensive. Probably most humanities scholars, too (which is what actually matters here), though there would certainly have been a minority of academicians who were gung-ho for anything sex related. With the latter fully blossoming into power during the 1960s.

[...] fathers marrying daughters [...]

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Sexual revolution-wise, akin in magnitude to how Allen Ginsberg was a supporter of NAMBLA even well after the 1960s. Some rebellious intellectuals of that decade were also a lot closer to becoming paladins of incest than the staid or conservative critics/bashers of Theodore Sturgeon's short story (below) and various other publications were:

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?
https://everything2.com/title/If+All+Men+Were+Brothers%2C+Would+You+Let+One+Marry+Your+Sister%3F

Ultimately, it took movies/television and the press, over the 1970s and 1980s, developing a heightened preoccupation with family molestation incidents... To firmly revive the horror of the general taboo enough to emotionally beat down any argument that "it was okay" in consensual context. Or IOW, thoroughly eradicate that tentative social justice ripple from '50s and '60s trend of unbridled thinking.

[...] and farmer's marrying their donkeys."[...]

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Which Peter Singer opened a can of worms on a couple of decades ago. The best defense was apparently the sexual abuse of animals angle. But in terms of consistency or coherence, the lattter falls apart with regard to how the human community approves the rest of the spectrum of atrocities it commits against other species.

So while incest is hopefully off the table with respect to future activism (that could actually be potent), items like bestiality, necrophilia, etc might still loom as crusader possibilities, but wholly lack significant weight because their practitioners are so small in number (thereby being useless for supplementing a politician's base support).

• No heavy petting
  https://reason.com/2001/04/11/no-heavy-petting/
  
  EXCERPT: Singer's essay has been roundly denounced. Interestingly, however, many of his critics suggest that what makes sexual activity with animals immoral is not that it degrades humans but that it exploits animals: Since animals cannot give meaningful consent to sex, bestiality is akin to pedophilia.
  
  Such an argument, however persuasive, raises inevitable questions about other human uses of animals (isn't being butchered worse than being sexually abused?)
  
  It also poses problems for animal rights advocates: If animals can have sex with each other but not with people, that means drawing a clear line between humanity and other species and denying the moral autonomy of animals.
  
  Surprisingly few commentators have challenged Singer's dubious basic premise: that human beings have no special status or worth and that ''speciesism'' is a prejudice not much different from racism. This premise is shared by the animal rights movement, even if Singer's endorsement of bestiality generally is not. But the notion of moral equality between humans and animals is pernicious even if it's not extended to the bedroom.
  - - - - - - -
  
  Bestiality: Animal Liberation or Human License?
  https://www.upc-online.org/010422bestiality.html
  
  EXCERPT: Most people who "raise" animals and who eat them and the products of their bodies, including their young, do so with no more remorse towards their victims than the acknowledged hen rapist feels towards his victim. This connection makes bestiality a core moral issue.
  
  From animal agriculture to zoos, the core of our relationship with the animals we use is our invasion of their sexual privacy and our physical manipulation of their sex, reproductive, and family lives. Historically, animal agriculture has facilitated bestiality, not simply because of the proximity of farmed animals, but because controlling other creatures' bodies invites this extension of a license that has already been taken.
  
  Humans engage in oral intercourse with unconsenting nonhuman animals every time they put a piece of an animal's body inside their mouth. Partly as a result of such eating, people over 50 with enough money in Western culture will soon be, if they aren't already, walking around with half their internal organs having been taken by force from creatures they think it demeaning of our species to have sex with.
  
  Instead of trivializing the case for animal rights or seeking to degrade humans, as some have asserted, Peter Singer's essay on bestiality helps to make the banality of what is truly bad as clear as the fact that parents who know that by feeding their children animal products they are setting them up for preventable health risks and medical bills are practicing child abuse.
  
  The taboo that needs to be shattered is not the prohibition against bestiality, but against caring about nonhuman animals in a respectful, nonpatronizing, and unapologetic way, and against starting one's kids off the right way at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, no matter how much this causes people to talk.