JK Rowling, again…
By: Gemma Stone
Tags: United Kingdom, Feminism, Transgender, Equality, Celebrity

A photo of JK Rowling wearing blue and in front of an ad for Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. I’ve been reliably informed that her faical expression is known as an “autogynesmile”.

Once again JK Rowling has decided to do something deemed “very not okay” by the trans community online. JK Rowling originally dipped her feet into transphobia by liking a tweet which referred to trans women as “men in dresses” before her (or her team) blamed it on her being middle-aged. She later showed that to have just been a lie by repeatedly doubling down on transphobic rhetoric including a 4,000 word essay. And she’s done it again folks!

In this outing of JK Rowling acting like transphobia is just okay now, she quote tweeted (no I will not call it a retweet with comment Twitter, go fuck yourself) a trans person. In which she claimed a few things that we should probably just quickly unpack.

A tweet from JK Rowling (@jk_rowling) Judging by the tsunami of supportive emails and letters I’ve received, if women learned anything from the response to my post it wasn’t that they should sit down and shut up. Solidarity to the brave and fabulous @millihill (and i love your books, by the way!)

For clarity; this a quote tweet where I have cut out the person being quote tweeted to protect their identity. Their tweet read: “Milli, you obviously haven’t learned from the response @jk_rowling got from her post. You aren’t incorrect that obstetric violence is sex-based. But how difficult is it to acknowledge that not everyone who is capable of giving birth, identifies with the female or woman label?”

This tweet was itself a quote tweet of Milli Hill’s tweet which reads: “Last Nov I expressed the view that obstetric violence is violence against women. It happens to women ‘because they are female’. The resulting pile on was horrific. I’ve finally decided to tell my story and shine a light on this misogynistic bullying. <Link to her blog post>”

So. What’s going on here exactly? The short story is that Milli Hill is stating that obstetric violence happens specifically to women. Therefore, if you experience obstetric violence you must be a woman. The trans person, who it’s probably relevant to mention is a trans man specifically, is basically saying that they understand the position Milli puts forwards but it isn’t the whole story as many who experience obstetric violence are actually men or non-binary people instead. They just want to be included in the statistics so they can feel like justice is at all possible for the horrific shit they have likely been put through for the exact same reasons and beliefs that put cisgender women through obstetric violence too. They just want to feel seen.

JK Rowling’s involvement comes because as part of the trans man’s comment he referenced the enormous backlash JK Rowling has received as a result of her foray into transphobic bigotry. Her quote tweet attempts damage control, claiming that she received a lot of supportive emails and such but ignores the wider context of children on tik-tok burning her books, the fact she has lost over 600,000 followers on Twitter, all of the Harry Potter kids putting out trans inclusive statements to combat her bigotry and even companies having to put out statements saying they do not support, agree with or endorse the views of JK Rowling despite working on her properties.

Which really makes you think about how much of a bubble she must be living in to genuinely think there hasn’t been a huge backlash to her transphobia. Though denial is an important facet of any bigotry I suppose and this isn’t even the first time she’s claimed most of her fans are onboard with bigotry; something her books for kids had a hand in teaching us was indeed, bad.

“Mudblood’s a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born — you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards — like Malfoy’s family — who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re what people call pure-blood.” — Ron Weasley

(if you don’t see the parallel between this and transphobes claiming they’re the one true real women and trans women aren’t really women at all you’re frankly beyond lost.)

Before we close off, I do want to address something. A lot of people on Trans Twitter are focusing on the fact that JK Rowling has 14 million followers vs the trans guy’s 150 or so. That’s a misdirection and not something we should really be focusing on here in my opinion. JK Rowling could have 150 abusive transphobic followers and the trans guy could have the 14 million. It would still be so much worse than almost 14 million inactive or otherwise apathetic ones.

It’s not the number of followers which matters here, its that those who are following JK Rowling and supporting her explicitly for her transphobia are often vile and abusive people. I have personally been sent death threats and threats to mutilate my body by those calling themselves “JK Rowling’s army”. They seek out transgender people in order to harass and abuse us, they act as if we owe them our time and energy in order to debate every inane bigoted thought that pops into their heads, then they get angry when they don’t like the answers only to then use that anger to continue abusing other trans people further down the line.

JK Rowling either doesn’t know this is happening or doesn’t care and both of these are bad; so much worse than the number of followers each person has. Focus on the state of her ignorance and the quality of her followers, not the quantity. It’s the much stronger argument given the vast amounts of evidence of them being bigoted assholes and her just pretending otherwise.

Anyway, love and solidarity to the trans friend in this story, I’m sorry you’re probably getting dogpiled with a bunch of awful shit right now. ❤