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

[Pinball1970]

So you agree?

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?

 

[Tiassa]

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 ....

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:

• Abby Gardner's review of Rowling and transgender↱, for Glamour, starts in 2020, with controversy over a liked tweet.

• Brendan Morrow offers a timeline of J.K. Rowling's "transphobic shift"↱, for The Week, reaching back to a 2018 liked tweet.

• 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.​

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:

It seems J.K. Rowling would rather do time in Azkaban than refer to transgender women as women.

The Harry Potter author has again voiced her controversial opinions on the transgender community and the use of pronouns. This time, she posted a photo on social media that featured the text: "Repeat after us: Trans women are women." In response, she wrote, "No."

When a commenter seemed to reference a report on the U.K.'s Labour Party working to incorporate transphobic abuse — including referring to someone with a pronoun they do not use — under hate crime legislation that would make offenses punishable by up to two years of imprisonment, Rowling essentially said she'd serve her time.

"I'll happily do two years if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex," she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

(Wang↱)​

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/

 

[LaurieAG]

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?

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

 

[DaveC426913]

But why would you think that?

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:

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.

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.

 

[foghorn]

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.

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.

 

[Pinball1970]

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

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

 

[parmalee]

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.

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:

• 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.​

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.

 

[James R]

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.

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.

 

[Pinball1970]

The problem with opinion pieces like the ones Tiassa quoted

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

 

[parmalee]

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).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1858258478629847149

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.)

 

[TheVat]

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.

 

[DaveC426913]

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

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

... like the ones Tiassa quoted ...

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

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.)

 

[Pinball1970]

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

Nope, not tempted to investigate but nice try Dave.

 

[billvon]

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

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.

 

[parmalee]

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.

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]

Robarts Library - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[parmalee]

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.

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.

 

[DaveC426913]

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[parmalee]

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.)

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.

 

[Tiassa]

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.

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.

 

[parmalee]

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.

Actually, what many have said, going back some 20-odd years now (though not within this thread), is that both the Harry Potter books and films are filled with racist tropes. Do you honestly not see anything problematic about the goblin bankers?

Jon Stewart Goes Off on ‘Anti-Semitic’ Caricature of Gringotts Bank Goblins in 'Harry Potter' Franchise

Jon Stewart called out J.K. Rowling for her anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews in the form of the goblins in the Harry Potter franchise.

www.thewrap.com