By David Futrelle
In a series of tweets, followed by a sprawling, combative blog post, J.K. Rowling has gone full TERF on us. There’s a lot that’s wrong about the assorted arguments she sets forth in her post — and others have started dissecting its flaws and its dishonesties already in everything from magazine articles to Reddit posts to Twitter threads.
But there is one small part of her essay that I haven’t seen addressed so far, and I think it desperately needs some critical attention.
In the passage in question Rowling uses a simple but effective bit of rhetorical sleight of hand meant to demonize critics of TERFy transphobia and claim the mantle of true womanhood for those on her side.
While the basic rhetorical technique she uses is crude, she pulls off the execution with flair. She sets up her magic trick deftly with a (well-deserved) rhetorical attack on the misogynist backlash of the past decade. But then her argument takes quite a turn.
“Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now,” she writes.
From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.
What just happened? Let’s break it down.
Rowling is doing three things here. First and most obviously, she’s putting those who fight against transphobia in the same category as the pussy-grabbing president and the murderously misogynistic incels. It’s a rhetorical move that’s breathtaking in its dishonesty, as trans activists, far from being bigots, have been some of the most dedicated and effective fighters of misogyny I’ve run across over the last decade.
Second, she’s erasing trans women speaking for themselves, dismissing them as “men” trying to talk over women. And third, she’s more broadly claiming the mantle of true womanhood not just for cis women but for a particular subset of cis women, those who oppose trans rights, whom she’s claiming are being shut down by an army of men.
But Rowling and her TERF allies don’t speak for all women, or even all cis women. Far from it. In fact, on many of the issues transphobes have fixated on — from bathroom bans to trans people serving in the military — a clear majority of women disagree with them.
Numerous surveys have revealed that cis straight men are considerably more transphobic than their female counterparts. On the bathroom issue, a TERF obsession which Rowling specifically cites, one study of online comments found that cis men were far more likely than cis women to speak negatively about trans women using women’s bathrooms; 72 percent of the male comments in the study’s sampling were negative, as opposed to only 46% from cis women. A survey by pollsters PPRI found a similar (if somewhat smaller) gender gap, with roughly “half (51%) of men support[ing] requiring transgender individuals to use bathrooms corresponding to their assigned sex at birth, compared to four in ten (40%) women.”
In other words, TERFs not only don’t represent all cis women; they don’t even represent half of all cis women. By using the rhetoric she does, Rowling not only erases trans women; she erases most cis women as well — making me wonder who exactly is trying to make whom shut up.
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And we can’t forget the thing she stated about autistic people not being able to know their gender, claiming that trans people are “brainwashing” them into being trans because they’re so naive they can’t possibly make that choice for themselves!
[Massive eyeroll]
Jessie Gender was mentioned in another thread here, and as it turns out, she’s put together another video on this topic:
Someone that I follow on Twitter, Joss Prior, is fond of this chart with her own annotations:
It’s from a British survey.
As for TERFs trying to talk over cis women, this is nothing new. Graham Linehan regularly bashes cis women for supporting trans* rights, especially attacking cis lesbians who date or voice support for trans* women. TERFs refer to cis women who disagree with them as “handmaidens”, which is somewhat ironic seeing as TERFs see more than a bit like the Eyes in Margaret Atwood’s novel, and IIRC Atwood supports trans* people.
A bit scary to see Rowling being so open about this, she’s got 14.5 million followers so I’m a bit worried how many this is radicalizing. Graham Linehan at his peak had about 800,000, so this is much more dangerous. Although this is far from her first time being transphobic, she’s never been quite as blunt or vocal about it.
@Paradoxical Intention
Autistic trans* woman here, that part of her essay is stuff that TERFs have been talking about for a while, but it is scary to see it spewed to such a large platform. Autistic children are already at elevated risk of abuse, this is just compounding that for autistic trans* children (and isn’t good for autistic adults either).
There’s also an inherent contradiction: TERFs claim that being trans* is a social contagion, yet one of the most publicized symptoms of autism is an unwillingness to bend to peer pressure. Therefore, one would think that if being trans* was a social contagion autistic people would have lower chances of being trans*.
This is so difficult to bear.
My licensed HP stuff is going in a drawer. Some of my fanmade stuff too – I can’t stand to see it right now. Keeping Dumbledore in the closet when it comes to canon was bad enough, but the gradual descent into terfy hell has finally overwhelmed me.
I’m nonbinary and as far as I’m concerned, Katie Leung wrote Harry Potter. Peace out, Just Karen Rowling.
Yeah, this whole “offering cover to predators” obsession reminds me very strongly of the homophobic pushback against the emerging gay-rights movement a few decades ago. If we didn’t put our foot down against same-sex attraction being innately unnatural and immoral, we’d have unabashed predators running amok in every locker room. Oh look, that didn’t happen.
I’m sorry that Rowling experienced physical abuse and sexual assault in her first marriage, but that does not obligate me to buy into her nightmare scenario of nefarious male-presenting men running amok in ladies’ rooms because they’re somehow allowed to do that now as long as they say they identify as a woman. I mean, what?
HOW CAN YOU BASH THE CREATOR OF BELOVED CHARACTERS LIKE RALPH WEASLEY?
https://twitter.com/ChickenCaoimh/status/1270837997571891208
At least not all of my childhood authors are garbage. Tamora Pierce, the creator of my first hyperfixation, made several posts supporting trans people.
I wish the less shitty people were more famous. And I wish that Rowling hadn’t decided to let her blatant TERF flag fly and eat up news time that could be spent on more important matters. (By which I mean matters other than the opinion of a random author. Trans rights are very important matters.)
@An Autistic Giraffe
Well, maybe Graham has been writing fanfic and Ralph is his self-insert character. Graham’s a reprehensible excuse for a person, but he can at least have a self insert. /s
@Kimstu
Not only is the rhetoric similar, but it’s the same people. A lot of older politicians who were in favor of homophobic legislation decades ago are the ones pushing transphobic legislation today. I think this is because since homophobia is less socially acceptable, transphobia still is, so they’ve turned to that. They also seem to see it as a wedge, if they can go after trans* rights they’ll quickly turn around and go after the other letters of LGBTQIPA+.
@Naglfar
Plus following his logic doesn’t that mean JKR is also Voldemort, the Dursleys, Umbridge etc…
Chuck Tingle (the National Treasure that he is) has decided to weigh in with his own story
“Ralph Weasley”
LOL.
Well, at least that’s the only time in his life that Graham has mouthed off about a topic he knows nothing about…
…oh, wait.
@An Autistic Giraffe
Oh, she’s certainly Umbridge. I can see it now, JK Rowling standing over a trans* child forcing them to write on their arm in blood “I am a” and their assigned sex at birth.
@Naglfar:
Actually, it’s more like the trial of Muggleborns in the 7th book. “Now then, young man, who do you steal that vagina from?”
Welp, looks like Hogwarts is canceled for the rest of this semester.
@Naglfar It is the exact same people. Here are some screenshots of one of Rowling’s fellow TERFs, the woman she chose to co-chair her charity. She’s transphobic and homophobic, because she feels that allowing gay marriage and letting trans people exist both “devalue the status of women and girls”. She’s also the charming British peer who “joked” that she carries a knife in case she comes across a trans woman in a bathroom. Doesn’t she sound like the perfect person to work with vulnerable children?
I read the first ‘Harry Potter’ novel to help out with bar trivia (my taste in fantasy runs towards old, sometimes problematic authors like A. Merritt, Jack Vance, and Fritz Leiber), but decided that it was mining a vein that Diana Wynne Jones had plumbed before her.
The particularly cruelty of Rowling’s anti transperson bigotry is that her stories seemed tailor-made as escapism for young readers with difficult home lives. Someone growing up in an abusive home, or even just living with ignorant parents/relatives, could identify with a protagonist who overcomes abuse and transitions into a new identity, one in which personal growth and exploration is possible. Her bigoted statements are a fishhook embedded in a candy bar
Rowling utterly failed to live up to her own estimation of her novels: She said she regarded her novels as a “prolonged argument for tolerance” and urged her fans to “question authority”. She could have learned about gender transition… hell, at the very least, she could have said nothing, but she had to be cruel. Basically, she’s saying to her trans fans, “Get back into that cupboard under the stairs!”
I think with the mention of autistic people, it might be drawing on the common fallacy that they’re “less connected to their feelings” (or even “don’t have feelings”), which is considered a masculine trait. The idea being that autistic girls can be more easily convinced that they’re not feminine, because of this, and therefore feel that they’re actually boys. Something along those lines, anyway.
It’s bigoted bullshit in several different ways, of course.
New theory: We autistic people are more likely to be trans because being cis is the result of social contagion. Look at how many friend groups don’t even have a single trans person in them! /silly
Rowling’s utter dip into the TERF pool is pretty saddening. Though I can’t say that I quite saw that coming. After all, she wrote Tonks and the concept of Metamorphmagi into her series and as an NB person, I have to say, a world where sometimes, people just pop up who can shape-shift and change their gender and appearance at will IS a pretty cool fantasy.
Or maybe that’s just me. Disappointing either way.
@TheKND I’ve read a lot of good Harry Potter fanfiction where that concept is explored more fully. My current favourite is called “The Plan”, cowritten by pseudoleigha and inwardtransience on AO3. No one is straight, magical Britain is a racist backwater compared to the rest of the world, and there are genderfluid, immortal metamorphagi running around everywhere. It’s brilliant, and I fully consider that universe to be the new canon HP universe.
My main concern about applying the TERF label to Rowling is that I’m not sure she’s any sort of feminist (haven’t looked into it much, so I could be wrong). She’s definitely a transphobe, though.
Most TERFs aren’t all that feminist (and get angry when you point that out). Another Mammotheer coined the term Feminism Appropriating Reactionary Transphobe which would be a more honest title for most TERFs (also, I find it hilarious that TERF is a term they came up with themselves and they now consider it a slur).
They definitely use the language of feminism to spew their bigotry so I’d say Rowling counts, regardless of how feminist her beliefs actually are.
At that point, the only author that I like and feel is more problematic than Rowling is H.P. Lovecraft.
@Catalpa
I was so happy to see Tamora Pierce’s tweets yesterday. Her Song of the Lioness books were also my first ‘special interest’. I have several copies. My first was ‘In the Hand of the Goddess’, an ex-library book I bought in 1995 that cost me 25p. I still have it, it’s a hardback and the pages are yellowing. Currently, my favourite books are her Kel books. And I really want the second book in the Arram Draper books.
About JKR.
I was never particularly fussed by the Harry Potter books, or the films. The things I know are from what other people have told me and what I’ve seen on Twitter from people unhappy with her. That she’s ND-misic as well as racist and transphobic doesn’t surprise me. I’m an AFAB autistic person, I damn well know I’m not a woman. I’m pretty certain I’m NB – genderfluid, with a masculine leaning. How dare some NT cis woman tell me that I don’t know who I am? How dare she tell anyone else who they are or how they should identify?
@Johanna
Baroness Nicholson is awful in many ways. She also shows exactly what kind of people support astroturf (AstroTERF?) group LGB Alliance, and that’s they are anti LGB almost as much as they are anti trans*.
Is there a way to recall or remove a peer from the House of Lords for their conduct?
@BBBB
There is something cruelly ironic about how her books are instantly relatable for a lot of LGBT people (a boy who lives in a literal closet has a much better life after coming out and finding a supportive community) yet she’s now an awful bigot.
@Penny Psmith
I’ve also seen TERFs play both sides of this idea. In addition to claiming what you described for AFAB autistic trans* folk, they also claim that AMAB autistic trans* people can’t exist because of the debunked “extreme male brain” theory (which also completely erases autistic cis women, who are already underrepresented in the community and under-diagnosed). There’s also an element of traditional ableism in them saying that autistic people can’t make life choices on our own and/or can’t actually understand our gender identities.
@TheKND
You might get a kick out of this satirical essay about Tonks.
@LPO
At this point, TERF has become a catch all term for transphobes who use pseudo feminist rhetoric and often cloak their ideas as trying to “defend women and girls” or something like that. Although it originally meant a type of radical feminist that excluded trans* women from the definition of women, it now describes transphobes who use progressive sounding or feminist sounding language to hide (generally conservative) ideas. Even then, a lot of the people it applies to aren’t even progressive, they just use somewhat progressive language to mask their bigotry.