First of all, I would like to stress that while it has only been recently that Rowling's anti-trans Twitter tirades have hit mainstream news, people in the LGBT+ community have long suspected her of holding transphobic views. As far back as March 2018, Rowling was liking tweets that referred to trans women as "men in dresses" - an action which her representatives blamed on a "middle-aged moment" at the time. Many of us had been keeping a sceptical eye on Rowling's social media activity since then, and we watched as she slowly began to move from liking transphobic tweets, to retweeting them, to finally writing her own.
This eventually culminated in Rowling publishing a post on her website, explaining her "reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues". I'm not going to link to the post here, but it's easy enough to find if you want to read it for yourself. The purpose of the post, I imagine, was three-fold: to justify Rowling's recent statements regarding trans issues, to elaborate on her "gender critical" views, and to condemn critics who correctly identified her views as those of a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist). It also showed many of us why Rowling has historically stuck to fiction writing, although I doubt that was one of her goals in writing the essay.
I am not going to explain, in detail, why the things Rowling said are transphobic and harmful. This is not only because many other people, including many trans activists, have broken this down far better than I could, but also because her views are hardly unique. The ideas that trans women are a danger to cis women's safety, that acknowledging the difference between sex and gender will diminish the importance of reproductive rights, and even that supporting transition is in some way supporting a new form of conversion therapy - these are nothing new. Yet the fact that these views are being espoused by someone as influential as Rowling is worrying. Still, as I said, I am not going to get into much detail about that here. I am linking to other informative articles throughout this post, and I will leave a number of links for further reading at the end of it.
All of that said, there is one aspect of Rowling's vitriol which I would like to address, and that is the way she has been referring to queer women. When Rowling mentions cis queer women, she leaves the "cis" unspoken, despite the fact that trans people are more likely to identify as non-heterosexual than those who are cisgender. Rowling's exclusion of this is crucial, as she has recently taken to using cis queer women as human shields in her one-person war against trans people. The first example of this naturally took place on Twitter, on 7th June, when Rowling wrote a post claiming that "If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction", which she soon followed by sharing an article by a lesbian woman who claimed that the LGBT+ community's support of trans people was leading to lesbians being "shouted down" and ignored.
Now, I'd like to quickly point out two things. First, I don't know of a single trans activist who claims that "sex isn't real". All I have ever seen trans activists advocate for which Rowling could possibly be confusing for this is the idea that we should update our perceptions of sex and gender so that they are in line with the most current scientific understanding: that sex is not binary and it is not the same as gender. Secondly, while there are small numbers of queer women who are indeed TERFs (though they apparently don't like to be labelled as such) and don't support trans people, I believe that the majority of us understand that trans people have historically been and continue to be integral to our community. So why, if she has studied trans literature to the extent that she claims, would Rowling choose to focus on a fringe branch of the community despite it not being reflective of the broader group?
The reason, to put it idiomatically, is because Rowling wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants to be able to continue claiming she is an LGBT+ ally while still promoting her transphobic agenda, and the way she has decided she can do this is by presenting the conflict as lesbians vs trans people, with her on the side of the former. This is terribly convenient for Rowling, who can then deflect any criticisms from the LGBT+ community with quotes of one of the few queers who agrees with her or tweets referencing one of her "best mates" who is a "self-described butch lesbian". The shallowness of it all is almost comical. "I'm not homophobic," she might as well have said, "I have a gay friend."
For anyone who doubts that Rowling's supposed LGBT+ (minus the T) support is anything but self-serving, I would like to ask this: would a true ally have written an entire seven-book series without including a single openly-LGBT+ character? Would they have sloppily claimed, post-publication, that one character had actually been gay? Would they have then later, when given the opportunity to make this queerness explicit in film adaptations featuring said character, have chosen to reference it only in vague allusions that would easily be ignored or censored by homophobes who preferred to pretend they hadn't seen it? If Rowling is such a supporter of lesbians, where were the lesbians in Harry Potter? I could be wrong, but I don't recall a single one.
But perhaps, you might argue, she can be an ally without necessarily putting representation in her work. To which I would say, we do not owe Rowling our support as an ally. She does not deserve it simply for claiming she has a gay best friend or once sharing a shallow, rainbow-tinged reference to Harry Potter on social media. If she truly cared about us, she would have put us in her books. She would have donated to charities which supported us. She would have promoted books by other LGBT+ authors. Has she ever done any of these? Furthermore, if she has, has it ever been on anything close to the scale at which she has voiced such disrespect for trans people? The answer is no, because Rowling doesn't care about LGBT+ voices unless they are speaking up in support of her.
I have hesitated to write this post for a while, feeling that adding my voice to those who are speaking out against Rowling was unnecessary at best or speaking over trans people at worst. It was one comment, among many which angered me, that infuriated me to the point of wanting to finally write this. It was Rowling's assertion, which she has in fact made a number of times now (as many other TERFs have done before her), that transitioning is akin to conversion therapy. Her idea seems to be that young queer people are being forced to transition rather than being allowed to accept their queer identity. This idea is absolutely ludicrous. If trans people, as we have established, face transphobia even within the LGBT+ community, then how do you expect us to believe that trans people are now magically more accepted than queer people? I have never in my life met a person who accepted transness but not same-sex attraction; far more often I have met people who supposedly support the LGBT+ community, but who don't accept the T part of the acronym. For Rowling to then make this absurd claim is not only silly, it's disgusting. It is repulsive to me that she would take an experience which has caused so much harm to so many young queer people (and, yes, trans people too!), which she as a cishet woman knows nothing about, and use it to support her own hateful position. A true ally would never do something like that, and the fact that Rowling would shows to me that she never truly supported us at all.
Let me make this very clear. Rowling does not represent the views of queer women. She is not our ally, and she certainly does not have the right to be using us to deflect from criticism of her transphobic agenda. Our trans siblings have more in common with us than a self-serving, cishet faux-ally like Rowling ever will. I am disgusted at Rowling's attempts to co-opt queer women's struggles. What I see in these attempts is that Rowling will go along with a tide of LGBT-phobia as long as she can position it as feminism. I am not oblivious to how much of the anti-trans discourse mirrors old-fashioned homophobia - does Rowling think we don't remember hearing that queer women were threats to straight women, that we shouldn't use the same bathrooms because of our inherent perversity, that we were harmful to the feminist movement? I've heard it all before, and changing your target from cis queer women to trans women has not deceived me. I know that if J. K. Rowling were a prominent feminist only a few decades earlier, she would have directed this same hate at the queer women she claims to support. I hope that every other cis queer woman sees her fake support for what it is: a flimsy attempt to keep herself from being seen as the LGBT-phobe she is.
So, what now? Where do those of us who have spent large parts of our lives loving the HP books (and even, as in my case, Rowling's post-HP writing) go from now? Personally, I will no longer be supporting J. K. Rowling. I have many happy memories connected with Harry Potter, but I know that these are not solely because of the books themselves. I mentioned in my previous post about HP that the books reminded me of home and of my family. I still have those things, and I don't need Harry Potter to maintain their importance to me. Privately, the characters and their stories will likely always hold some sentimental value for me of course, but I will no longer be promoting the books to new readers, buying Harry Potter merchandise, or reading any of Rowling's new books. Instead, I will be trying to support writers of fantasy and children's fiction who don't have Rowling's influence, especially those from marginalised groups, such as trans authors. I will try to lend my support to those authors who deserve it, who will use their influence for good instead of causing harm. Harry Potter has indeed been important to me, but supporting my friends in the LGBT+ community is more important than that. I hope that those of you reading feel the same.
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As I mentioned earlier in the post, I think that the people we need to be listening to most at the moment are those most affected by the situation: trans people. To that end, here are some links to content by trans creators on this subject which I have found informative. I would encourage you to explore these and seek out more perspectives by trans people wherever you can.
- Why What JK Rowling Said is Transphobic
- Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling’s Justification For Transphobia
- Is J.K. Rowling Transphobic? A Trans Woman Investigates
- J.K. Rowling’s transphobia is a product of British culture
- Responding to JK Rowlings Essay | Is It Anti-Trans?
- Where J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia Comes From
- So... Let's Talk About JK Rowling's Tweet | Kat Blaque
- J.K. Rowling wrote a controversial statement about transgender people in response to being called a 'TERF.' Here's what that means.
- JK Rowling is Transphobic... So What? | Kat Blaque
Whilst I might not entirely share your views, I enjoyed reading the article. Nice to read something that is written with conviction. Any article such as this really adds to understanding of a particular point of view. Keep up the good work.
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