de-bunking jk rowling's transphobia
On June 10th, J.K Rowling published a blog post titled “J.K Rowling writes about her reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues”, which solidified her position as a trans-exclusionary ‘feminist’. This blog post emerged after Rowling posted a series of tweets in which she argued that biological sex defines the experience of women, thus implying that transgender women cannot ever be included in this conversation. The twitter thread began after Rowling responded to an article that described the struggles of people who menstruate during the coronavirus outbreak in third world countries, to which she responded: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people.
Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” She proceeded to argue that whilst she does “know and love trans people”, the erasure of concepts of sex undermines the experience of being born a female, and similarly threatens the experience of lesbian women. If the unprovoked twitter rant was not clear enough in Rowling’s intentions towards trans rights, her subsequent blog post spells them out in bleak and unquestionable terms. Rowling discussed her own experiences of domestic violence and sexual assault when arguing that support networks for women should only be accessible to cis-gendered women. Although these experiences are undeniably terrible, and there is a plethora of evidence pointing to the need for continual feminist efforts to end all gender-based violence, this should not have been used to lobby for the exclusion of trans-women from women’s support networks. Rowling equated her own negative experiences at the hands of a man with the presence of trans women in these spaces, thus refusing to recognise trans-women as women at all. She also argued against the need for gender reassignment support, as she believes that gender dysmorphia is something which teens will ‘grow out of’.
This clearly demonstrates how she doesn’t believe that trans individuals can legitimately feel their gendered identity to be different from the sex assigned to them at birth. This trans-exclusionary ‘radical feminism’ is neither radical (there is nothing radical in being transphobic), nor should it be considered feminism at all.
Firstly, however, it’s important to unpick Rowling’s arguments around what trans issues mean in terms of defining sex. Not only is her position offensive and alienating, but her understanding of what it means to be trans, and the agenda of trans rights movements, is fundamentally misguided and factually incorrect. Within her blog post, Rowling stated that “new trans activism is having (…) a significant impact on many of the causes I support because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”. Whilst I’m sure the debate about what gender is, whether it is inherent or learned and how it is significant, will continue to dominate swathes of feminist and cultural discourse for the foreseeable future, the existence of sex is not something that can be denied. Sex is objective, whereas gender is subjective. Trans individuals do not deny that sex is real, but rather that gender identity is fluid. The problem lies with the cultural expectation that human beings should live a binary experience of gender, according to the sex that they are assigned at birth. For some people, the typical social conditioning and gendered expectations of being ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ don’t feel applicable to them, and their gender identity feels unrelated to their sex and the expectations that come with them. However, if we work on the assumption that Rowling seems to believe that the problems involved with being a woman derive entirely from our biological characteristics, it follows that there are inherent ways of living life as a woman, and the same for a man. This is such an archaic method of conceiving gender roles that I am sure even J.K Rowling would fear to prescribe this methodology to her supposed ‘feminism’.
Similarly, Rowling professes a multitude of objections to legitimately recognising trans women as women. These all seem to stem from the arguments she makes about the innate biological experiences cis-women experience - namely, menstruation - and the ability to give birth. She appears to define women as ‘people who menstruate’ (see the ‘Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’ outburst), and therefore interprets sexism as deriving from these biological differences, namely that women menstruate and can carry children. Not only does this analysis of what constitutes womanhood exclude swathes of cis-women who cannot bear children or don’t have periods, but it also ignores the existence of intersex people.
For example, amenorrhea, the absence of periods in adult women, affects 3-5% of American women. This can be caused by genetic predispositions, structural abnormalities, stress, weight, medication, PCOS, endometriosis, and so forth. Furthermore, the experience of periods can vary drastically, in terms of length of cycles, the severity of symptoms, and irregularity in occurrence, especially with the increasing regularity of long-term contraceptives such as the pill, coil, or the implant. With regards to the insinuation that women are potential child-bearing machines, 11% of American women at ‘reproductive age’ are reported to have fertility problems. Even if we ignore the existence of trans-men who still menstruate, or trans-women who don’t, around 1.7% of the population are estimated to be intersex, which is a larger percentage than people who have ginger hair. Many intersex individuals have differences in hormonal balances or reproductive systems than cis-gendered individuals, making Rowling’s definition of women as ‘people who menstruate’ inapplicable for many intersex women. Surely these statistics prove that even outside of the problematic cultural connotations of Rowling’s theorising, cis-women’s biology is too varied and complex to reduce to the archaic ‘childbearing, menstruating machine’ archetype.
Regardless of the scientific disproval of Rowling’s theorising of women as people who menstruate, this reductive theorisation fundamentally overlooks the individuality of human experience. Feminism will never achieve true social equality if a blanket experience is applied to all ‘women’, because such equality requires the needs of the most vulnerable in society to be represented, fought for, and met. If these needs are ignored, these efforts will only serve the needs of white, rich, western women, and thus will simply succeed in restructuring society into another unequal social hierarchy. This reductive mode of theorising the experience of women as a universalised list of distinguishable features is reminiscent of second-wave feminism. Whilst this wave of feminist action and literature was undeniably valuable in the liberation of women’s intellect and the exploration of women’s potential outside of being model housewives, this discourse is predominantly associated with the woes of middle class, American, white women who had the privilege of being bored at home. This essentially expropriated the experience of middle class, western, white women as the universal, whilst overlooking the experience of LGBT women, poorer women, disabled women, or women of colour. This mode of theorising is uncomfortably similar to that which Rowling is trying to justify as a legitimate form of feminism.
Feminist discourse has since transcended these narrow parameters of the demographics it represents, and contemporary mainstream feminist discourse is focused on creating a global, inclusive path for gender equality. This includes, but is not limited to, the eradication of the practice of FGM, the normalisation and legalisation of sex work as a chosen profession, representing the rights of the most vulnerable individuals (such as refugees and trans-individuals), overcoming the limitations created from the imposition of an institutionalised gender binary, and ending rape culture. Rowling’s attack on the transgender community does nothing for social progress, and instead further alienates a group already facing few and precarious rights and freedoms.
Not only was Rowling’s transphobia hateful, alienating for young trans, non-binary or gender-confused fans, it also came at a particularly bad time. June was defined by the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement on a global stage, making it the largest ever movement in history, as well as the annual Pride month. Regardless of how Rowling’s efforts could have been channelled more effectively, her transphobia blatantly disregards the centrality and efforts of transgender members of the LGBT community in securing gay liberation, particularly during the Stonewall Riots. Marsha P Johnson, a black American transgender woman, and Sylvia Rivera, a Latina transgender woman, have come to the limelight in contemporary discourse around Stonewall, due to their involvement in the Gay Liberation movement, marching in the first Gay Pride rally, and attending sit-ins. Marsha and Sylvia will be commemorated for their contributions with a permanent installation in Greenwich Village, New York. The centrality of the transgender community to the historic achievement of gay liberation evidences Rowling’s fundamental lack of awareness of the wider discourse she forced her way into in her alienation of transgender individuals from the wider LGBT community. This is further proven by the examples put forward by a handful of lesbian women who supposedly commented that the presence of trans women in LGBT and women-only spaces is threatening their existence and sexuality. Rowling, a straight woman, universalises these accounts to portray this opinion about trans-individuals as though it reflects the consensus in the lesbian community to justify her own hate-fuelled agenda.
What’s even more concerning is that a few weeks after Rowling’s initially aligned herself with trans-exclusionary feminism, she appeared to be aligning with groups advocating conversion therapy. On June 29th, a Canadian anti-transgender twitter account called We The Females tagged Rowling in the following tweet: “A big thank you from Canada where women’s rights to privacy were flushed down the toilet with Bill C16, & now Bill C8 will criminalize a therapist who counsels a child to accept the body they were born in”, which she then liked. Bill C8 aimed to ban conversion therapy, whilst Bill 16 would ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. Not only is Rowling evidencing her exclusion of transgender individuals from feminist discourse, but she now also seems to be advocating for the erosion of their existence in all public spaces by encouraging the anti-LGBT agenda of conversion therapy.
Furthermore, Rowling began her attack on contemporary trans activism during the exposure of global systemic racism that is being confronted in the Black Lives Matter protests. Rowling failed to even acknowledge the movement with her huge online media influence. Police brutality and systematic racism in America disproportionately affects people of colour, but trans people of colour are even more at risk of police brutality and encountering violence in their lives. According to a 2013 report by the Anti-Violence Project, trans people are 3.7% more likely to experience police violence, and 7 times more likely to experience physical violence when interacting with police compared to cisgender victims. When considering this statistic alongside the increased likelihood of people of colour to be subject to police brutality (black people are three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people in America), it becomes clear that trans people of colour are particularly at risk of becoming victim to police brutality, due to the intersection of racism and transphobia in American institutions, which are felt globally. It is estimated that trans people of colour are 6 times more likely to experience physical violence from the police compared to white cisgender victims. Consider how alarming this statistic is when trans people of colour constitute the largest proportion of victims of hate violence homicide; in the same 2013 report, 67% of homicide victims were transgender women of colour. Transgender people of colour are most at risk of facing violence in their every-day lives precisely because of these intersecting systems of hate and oppression, and they are most likely to face violence at the hands of law enforcement. Perhaps this is why trans survivors only represented 13% of total reports to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. If you think these statistics are only relevant to American society, they aren’t. According to Stonewall UK, 41% of trans people have been subject to a hate crime because of their gender identity within the last 12 months. However, 52% of trans people subject to these crimes did not report it to the police, and when asked why, 22% stated it was due to a fear of being ‘outed’, and 28% stated it was because they didn’t want to inform the police of their trans status.
Clearly, trans people, and particularly trans people of colour, are disproportionately subjected to the risk of violence, both on a personal level and via the racist transphobic structures in which they exist. J.K Rowling took this period of activism, aimed at achieving genuine social, intersectional change, and used it to attack trans activism, ignoring the Black Lives Matter movement, and using her platform to further encourage hate. This may seem like this is grossly overemphasising the influence that she has. Yet, outside of her wide cultural influence, particularly on young children who see her as an idol, Rowling was recently cited by Republican Senator, James Lankford, whilst he blocked a vote on an LGBTQ bill. Evidently then, Rowling has not simply been distasteful and ill-timed in her social media outbursts but is actively contributing to right-wing agendas that seek to erode the already precarious rights of trans people.
J.K Rowling is transphobic, and yet, worryingly, also has huge cultural influence, and is frequently idolised by younger generations, many of whom may well be beginning to question their gender identity. J.K Rowling has no authority or experience to speak on behalf of the trans-community, and yet her freedom of speech has been used to perpetuate hate, and influence global policy on the treatment of trans-people through regression in cultural and legal manifestations. At the time of writing this conclusion, the hashtag #OnlyFemalesGetCervicalCancer is trending on twitter. After a few minutes exploring tweets containing this hashtag, the influence that J.K Rowling’s recent transphobia is having on contemporary public discourse becomes even clearer.
Despite this, an inquiry published by The Independent, which investigated British public opinion on whether transgender people should have the right to self-identify, revealed that the majority were in favour. Only 21% of women were opposed to this right, demonstrating how Rowling sits in the minority by fundamentally refusing to accept that transgender individuals can identify as women without the biological ownership of a uterus. And yet, her cultural impact on social and legal discourse has been disproportionately represented, precisely because of her wide social influence, making this ownership of the label ‘TERF’ appear as something almost culturally acceptable. This acceptance of trans-exclusionary feminism as a legitimate branch of feminist theory at all is undermining the work of intersectional feminism, encouraging divisions within the LGBT community, and grossly overlooking civil movements that strive for significant social change. Instead, this trans-exclusionary feminism encourages social regression and further cultural, social and legal marginalisation of trans communities. J.K Rowling’s transphobia is an attack on a community already vulnerable to violence, discrimination and poverty. That is hate, not feminism.