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What has JK Rowling said or done that’s transphobic

1000 replies

Ducketta · 08/09/2026 13:26

Another thread has said that they don’t want their thread to be derailed. Y HK Rowling and morals, so I’ll start one. Can anyone please tell me what JK Rowling has ever said or done that’s transphobic? Please be specific and outline how she has been offensive to trans people and not just been protective women and girls hard fought right to separate single sex spaces.

I cannot find anything whatsoever that she has done wrong. Nothing. Nada. And yet this JK Rowling = queen of transphobia myth persists. And it’s bloody tiresome.

OP posts:
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Ducketta · 10/09/2026 10:57

backformoreofthesame · 10/09/2026 10:35

I feel the whole gender identify thing is imisogynistic but generally sexist - enforcing of gender expectations

I can’t see how it can be anything but misogynistic. What the hell is a gender identity? Am I supposed to have some innate feeling towards being male and female? Because I don’t. It’s baffling.

OP posts:
Rollingpinofdoom · 10/09/2026 10:58

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 10:55

He preyed on nurses to validate his delusion. He claimed to be a biological female and stated if a patient requested a female doctor, he would treat them. So therefore nasty and predatory.

All of this is a flagrant, brazen expression of transphobia, and is precisely the kind of attitude systematically promoted by JKR.

Oh nooooo a random on The internet said I was transphobic!!! Whatever shall I do? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

BunfightBetty · 10/09/2026 10:59

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 10:38

Ad hominem attack 🙄 <yawn>. I’m a feminist. I hate MRAs, etc. etc.

And no, that was not “in effect” what the NHS was demanding, nor is it what the tribunal found.

There was no requirement of Sandie Peggie’s employment that she undress in front of Dr Upton — or indeed in front of anyone, woman, man or otherwise.

Saying that the NHS was effectively requiring her to do so is simply silly.

Yes, it was in effect, what the NHS was demanding, as they punished her for refusing to undress in front of him. Peggie was placed in a position where NHS Fife expected her to accept Upton's entitlement to use the communal female changing room while she might be undressing. When she attempted to preserve her privacy and dignity by leaving the room rather than changing in Upton's presence, even that act of withdrawal subsequently featured in Upton's harassment complaint. When she expressly objected to the arrangement, Upton complained about her and NHS Fife subjected Peggie to an employment process.

If somebody is punished by an employer for not doing something, then effectively they are required to do that thing. Saying otherwise is just silly.

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 11:00

Ducketta · 10/09/2026 10:57

I can’t see how it can be anything but misogynistic. What the hell is a gender identity? Am I supposed to have some innate feeling towards being male and female? Because I don’t. It’s baffling.

When you look at yourself in the mirror and recognise yourself as female, that is your gender identity. The fact that it feels completely unremarkable or invisible to you doesn’t mean you don’t have one — it simply means that your gender identity aligns with your birth sex, so you’ve never had any reason to notice or question it.

Thechickenhasmypillow · 10/09/2026 11:00

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 10:50

He is a predatory, nasty man

This is transphobia right here.
DU was a lovely young doctor, who, through no fault of her own, is trans.

He doubled down, lied, intimidated and tried to use his position maliciously to teach her a lesson.
A spiteful, nasty piece of work who deserved the public dragging he got.

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 11:00

BunfightBetty · 10/09/2026 10:59

Yes, it was in effect, what the NHS was demanding, as they punished her for refusing to undress in front of him. Peggie was placed in a position where NHS Fife expected her to accept Upton's entitlement to use the communal female changing room while she might be undressing. When she attempted to preserve her privacy and dignity by leaving the room rather than changing in Upton's presence, even that act of withdrawal subsequently featured in Upton's harassment complaint. When she expressly objected to the arrangement, Upton complained about her and NHS Fife subjected Peggie to an employment process.

If somebody is punished by an employer for not doing something, then effectively they are required to do that thing. Saying otherwise is just silly.

they punished her for refusing to undress in front of him

Don't be silly.

BunfightBetty · 10/09/2026 11:02

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 10:55

He preyed on nurses to validate his delusion. He claimed to be a biological female and stated if a patient requested a female doctor, he would treat them. So therefore nasty and predatory.

All of this is a flagrant, brazen expression of transphobia, and is precisely the kind of attitude systematically promoted by JKR.

Upton stated that even if a female patient had requested to be examined by a female medic, he would examine her.

So he has admitted that even thought the patient has not consented to be examined by a male, he would do so, and would do so knowing that consent for him to examine her had not been given.

That is a matter of public record.

Do you think that's ok?

Rollingpinofdoom · 10/09/2026 11:03

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 11:00

When you look at yourself in the mirror and recognise yourself as female, that is your gender identity. The fact that it feels completely unremarkable or invisible to you doesn’t mean you don’t have one — it simply means that your gender identity aligns with your birth sex, so you’ve never had any reason to notice or question it.

Nooooo that is your sex. Female is a sex. People know they are female or male because of the bodies they have. Bless you for trying though.

Ducketta · 10/09/2026 11:03

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 11:00

When you look at yourself in the mirror and recognise yourself as female, that is your gender identity. The fact that it feels completely unremarkable or invisible to you doesn’t mean you don’t have one — it simply means that your gender identity aligns with your birth sex, so you’ve never had any reason to notice or question it.

I don’t look at myself in the mirror and recognise myself as female. I just see me. A person. Nothing more, nothing less.

OP posts:
BunfightBetty · 10/09/2026 11:04

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 11:00

they punished her for refusing to undress in front of him

Don't be silly.

Repeating the word silly, doesn't make it true, but it is amusing me.

So, in your head, then, what do you identify as being the reason they punished her?

FlirtsWithRhinos · 10/09/2026 11:15

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 09:57

It's been explained very clearly on the first page why people consider JKR transphobic.

Rowling holds gender-critical beliefs under which sex is immutable and trans women remain male, campaigns to ensure that law and institutions treat sex rather than gender identity as decisive in all contexts, and repeatedly has used language that portrays trans female identity as false, performative or male intrusion. People who define transphobia as including systematic invalidation or denigration of transgender identities therefore have substantial direct evidence for calling her transphobic.

The response from the majority of posters has been - yeh but that's just true!

So, yes, do the maths.

Oh we have done the maths.

  • Gender = Sexism
  • Gender Identity = Turning sexism into someone's personality
  • Gender Identity + Forced or Coerced Compliance = Destruction of women and girls'¹ legal rights, social protections and cultural existence
  • "Transphobia" = the bad faith excuse deployed to abuse and marginalise women and girls¹ who do not consent to being redefined as a limited personality group.

¹ In the original sense of the roughly half of humanity that is physically female and who therefore inescapably experience a range of physical, social and economic consequences of being female rather than male, obviously.

The maths is simple.

It is why you seem to think this is a laudable set of equations that escapes me.

Pingponghavoc · 10/09/2026 11:18

Im guessing some posters arent genuine. But the discussion does highlight the theory.

Sex and gender are different.

Sex is complicated, difficult to predict in other people, even ourselves. Sex characteristics can change.

Gender identity is what we know ourselves to be. Some people misinterpret this as sex, but if we found out we are XY instead of XX would we see ourselves as men? Therefore we all have a identity thats takes priority over sex.

When we have single sex spaces, we dont really mean sex because of the above. We use gender identity.

Women and safeguarding argue its not the gender identity but the male sexed body we want segregated from. This talk of gender identity is irrelevant.

akkakk · 10/09/2026 11:26

Pingponghavoc · 10/09/2026 11:18

Im guessing some posters arent genuine. But the discussion does highlight the theory.

Sex and gender are different.

Sex is complicated, difficult to predict in other people, even ourselves. Sex characteristics can change.

Gender identity is what we know ourselves to be. Some people misinterpret this as sex, but if we found out we are XY instead of XX would we see ourselves as men? Therefore we all have a identity thats takes priority over sex.

When we have single sex spaces, we dont really mean sex because of the above. We use gender identity.

Women and safeguarding argue its not the gender identity but the male sexed body we want segregated from. This talk of gender identity is irrelevant.

Sorry - this is wrong…

Sex is not complicated at all - for almost everyone in the world they can simply look between their legs and see what they were born with - something dangling there is a boy / man, otherwise woman / girl…

chopping it off or adding a fake one doesn’t change what you were born with…

yes a few people have slightly different bodies in which case doctors can test them and see which they are…

and it is not difficult to recognise… men and women are pretty easy to spot…

gender is not our internal anything - it is how society describes the stereotypes or man and woman at that point in history - so while we now see pink as a girl colour it used to be seen as the boy colour - it changes but is an external observation of patterns…

there is nothing an individual can do to change either

FlirtsWithRhinos · 10/09/2026 11:28

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 10:15

That's a straw man I'm afraid.

It is not automatically transphobic to say that biological sex exists, that birth sex can be medically relevant, or that there are some contexts where sex matters.
The disagreement is about whether those facts justify treating trans women as fraudulent, ridiculous or inherently threatening, or refusing to recognise their identity.

You can believe that sex matters in medicine, sport or some safeguarding contexts without saying that trans women are simply “men performing femaleness”, or suggesting that recognising them as women is inherently a “foundational falsehood”.

So no, the choice is not “accept anyone with a penis as a woman in every conceivable circumstance or be called transphobic”. There is obviously room for distinctions and competing rights. The question is how people talk about trans people and what conclusions they draw from sex differences, not whether biology is allowed to exist.

You are very naive about the social consequences of biological sex.

No one give a shit about what trans peope are. They can crack on with being 100% themselves with my blessing.

And if trans people had labelled "this thing that is very real but definitely not sex" as a new thing and not taken the words that do mean sex and thereby created the impression that this thing that is definitely not sex is for some never-actually-explained reason also the same as or an evolution of sex and can slot happily into almost all the places where sex used to sit, then literally none of this, all the pain and anger and fear and rejection they may feel at being "misgendered", none of it needed to happen.

But they didn't. They took the language of sex (which is real and has real consequences) and unilaterally decided to use it to mean something else, which while it may also be real and may also have real consequences, is not the same thing and even more importantly doesn't negate or remove any of the reality of and the consequences of sex.

So what people do give a shit about is what trans people are not. They are not the opposite sex and outside stolen language they have no claim on the rights and experiences of the opposite sex, and it is a grave a d deep injustice to force female people in particular, with our own sex based challenges and history of oppression, to pretend they do.

Ducketta · 10/09/2026 11:30

Pingponghavoc · 10/09/2026 11:18

Im guessing some posters arent genuine. But the discussion does highlight the theory.

Sex and gender are different.

Sex is complicated, difficult to predict in other people, even ourselves. Sex characteristics can change.

Gender identity is what we know ourselves to be. Some people misinterpret this as sex, but if we found out we are XY instead of XX would we see ourselves as men? Therefore we all have a identity thats takes priority over sex.

When we have single sex spaces, we dont really mean sex because of the above. We use gender identity.

Women and safeguarding argue its not the gender identity but the male sexed body we want segregated from. This talk of gender identity is irrelevant.

If I found out I had male chromosomes I WOULD think I was a man. What else is there? I would be a man so I would see my self as a man. I mean I’d be surprised, I’ve had 4 kids. There are no other factors, surely? I have no ‘innate’ sense of male or female, and I don’t think I’m odd…

OP posts:
Yetanotherone12 · 10/09/2026 11:42

Ducketta · 10/09/2026 11:30

If I found out I had male chromosomes I WOULD think I was a man. What else is there? I would be a man so I would see my self as a man. I mean I’d be surprised, I’ve had 4 kids. There are no other factors, surely? I have no ‘innate’ sense of male or female, and I don’t think I’m odd…

Really?

so if your 17 year old daughter failed to start her periods and investigations revealed a DSD so she had XY chromosomes but had developed phenotypically female..

you’d tell her she was a man? How far would that go? Change her birth cert, change her name, her clothes, insist she uses the men’s room?

you’d not give any consideration that she’d always known her female body, was facing a lifetime of infertility, hormones, medical management, the psychological impact of discovering you’d never have children..

just, sorry Susie, you’re a man now?

eta: we actually went through similar when my 17 year old needed medical intervention when she hadn’t started her periods. Honestly the last thing that goes through your mind is her chromosomes, it’s supporting a young woman who’s life and future may be very different…

FlirtsWithRhinos · 10/09/2026 11:51

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 10:43

But describing gender identity as simply a “belief” or “mental image” is far too superficial. Being trans really isn’t analogous to believing in a religion or holding an opinion about yourself. That is a misunderstanding of what gender identity is.
Reducing transness to a subjective belief ignores the complex interaction of neurobiology, development and psychology underlying gender identity.

A lot of people don't understand these things and haven't taken the time to look into them, and then easily dismiss being trans as simply another "subjective belief". That's really, really, really, not what it is, it leads to misunderstanding, discrimination and prejudice, and it's the kind of thing that JKR systematically spends her time promoting.

Please. Don't assume people who disagre with you haven't thought as far as you. It's entirely possible (and certainly in my case very likely) they thought through this before you and are looking back at you standing somewhere they already passed through.

Some questions for you to consider:

If sex and gender identity are different, why is it so important to Genderism that they have the same name?

If we assume Men and Women are identities that can arise in either sex, what are the fundamental differences between them such that we feel confident they need to be identified separately?

How do those differences justify segregation along the lines we previously had for sex, and why do those differences override the reasons we previously segregated by sex making that no longer in fact needed?

Do you believe a trans person is mentally the opposite sex, and can be objectively shown to be mentally aligned to the opposite sex rather than their own, or do you believe a trans person was born with a faulty perceptionof their sex (like colourblindness say) which while absolutely a genuine experience for them, does not make them outside their own perception any more like others of the opposite sex than the rest of their actual sex?

Because I have looked into it, and I have thought deeply about a possible "complex interaction of neurobiology, development and psychology underlying gender identity", but ultimately I had to conclude that even if that is absolutely, 100% true, the reality of sex also still exists and still has consequences.

Half of humanity is or has been exploited, abused, marginalised, even treated as propery because of our bodies, and that casts a long shadow even today in how we are seen and how we see ourselves.

And no matter how genuine trans people may be and how real Gender Identity as an innate and true perception of the self may someday be proved to be, that truth doesn't go away.

So again, the issue is not and never has been with recognising Gender Identity as a hitherto underappreciated facet of the human experience - fuck me, the amazing conversations we could have learning from each other and unpicking what parts of our self is Gender, what is Sex and what is Sexism - it is the over-writing and un-existing of the equally true and consequential fact of sex that is the problem.

Literally, that one thing. Just stop doing that, stop denying other people's needs and experiences and Feminism and literally denying fucking history to make women shut up and obey, and maybe we can finally get somewhere good!

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 12:00

Ducketta · 10/09/2026 11:03

I don’t look at myself in the mirror and recognise myself as female. I just see me. A person. Nothing more, nothing less.

But you do know that you are female. You may not walk around consciously “feeling female”, because for you there is no conflict there — it is simply an unremarkable fact about who you are.

However, if everyone around you suddenly insisted you were male, called you a man and treated you as one, I suspect you would very quickly become aware that this did not correspond to your own understanding of yourself.

The fact that something is normally effortless and taken for granted does not mean it is absent.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 10/09/2026 12:01

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 11:00

When you look at yourself in the mirror and recognise yourself as female, that is your gender identity. The fact that it feels completely unremarkable or invisible to you doesn’t mean you don’t have one — it simply means that your gender identity aligns with your birth sex, so you’ve never had any reason to notice or question it.

No, that is not how I and many others experience it at all.

I know myself to be female, a woman, because that's the name for the body I have.

If one day I woke up and the name for the body I had was "bananastan", I would know myself to be bananastan. I'd probably have a bit of a lag where I was used to using the old name, like when the year changes or you change companies and have to get used to a new email address, but I wouldn't think "I'm a woman in a Bananastan body" or anything.

Now, if you are saying if I were trans I'd experience looking in the mirror as seieng the "wrong" body, that is different. But that's not what you said.

Rollingpinofdoom · 10/09/2026 12:03

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 12:00

But you do know that you are female. You may not walk around consciously “feeling female”, because for you there is no conflict there — it is simply an unremarkable fact about who you are.

However, if everyone around you suddenly insisted you were male, called you a man and treated you as one, I suspect you would very quickly become aware that this did not correspond to your own understanding of yourself.

The fact that something is normally effortless and taken for granted does not mean it is absent.

But for someone to “feel female”, there world have to be a consensus in how females feel? Otherwise how does someone know the “feel female”. I mean, people know they are female because of biology. Without using outdated, sexist stereotypes or nebulous feelings, how would a male know he “felt female”?

FlirtsWithRhinos · 10/09/2026 12:04

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 12:00

But you do know that you are female. You may not walk around consciously “feeling female”, because for you there is no conflict there — it is simply an unremarkable fact about who you are.

However, if everyone around you suddenly insisted you were male, called you a man and treated you as one, I suspect you would very quickly become aware that this did not correspond to your own understanding of yourself.

The fact that something is normally effortless and taken for granted does not mean it is absent.

If people were calling me male when my body was female, obviously I'd think they were wrong.

If people were calling me male because I had a male body, I would not think they were wrong.

You seem to be jumping over the gap between "I think my body is wrong" and "other people are wrong to see my body as it is" without making a logical connection to justify it.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 10/09/2026 12:08

It is as meaningless as a guy from Bradford born to UK parents and never having visited Japan or even speaking Japanese believing himself to be really Japanese. Or as meaningless as deciding some oranges are really apples, even though they look, taste and grow exactly the same way as all other oranges.

Changing words doesn't change reality. Sex exists and has consequences whether we allow it its own language or not.

So the only question really is not whether Gender Identity is real or not, it is what justifies taking the language of sex, language in which thousands of histories, laws and cultural analysis have been written, and using it to label GI instead?

Lacksie · 10/09/2026 12:15

Rollingpinofdoom · 10/09/2026 12:03

But for someone to “feel female”, there world have to be a consensus in how females feel? Otherwise how does someone know the “feel female”. I mean, people know they are female because of biology. Without using outdated, sexist stereotypes or nebulous feelings, how would a male know he “felt female”?

Not at all. There is no consensus on, or objective way to, “feel female”. Most of us don’t walk around consciously “feeling female” at all.

But you are aware that you are female. For you, that is simply a completely unremarkable fact about your body and social identity, so it does not present itself as some distinct or noticeable “feeling”.

Gender identity does not require some universal female sensation, personality or set of stereotypes. It is simply a person’s own awareness of themself as male or female.

For a trans woman, despite having been born with male anatomy, they recognise themselves to be female. That may sound impossible or counterintuitive to you — I understand why it does. But there is nothing neurologically or cognitively impossible about it at all.

it is a real phenomenon, with complex biological, developmental and psychological roots. It is not simply an opinion or belief someone has chosen to adopt, as many on mumsnet believe.

akkakk · 10/09/2026 12:15

So... two biological women standing in a room

A-feels depressed
B-feels up-beat

A-loves the fact that as a woman she has breasts to feed her kids - the ability to nurture her offspring is a core part of being a woman - men can't do it
B - dislikes her breasts, they are a bit awkward in sport and she is single with no children, so they serve little other purpose in her mind

A-is confident in front of other people, regularly talking to groups of over 1,000 at conferences
B-doesn't enjoy public speaking

A-is an introvert
B-is an extrovert

A-has high EQ and is compassionate and sensitive to others
B-has a low EQ and is a bit more brusque with others telling them to cheer-up and get on with it...

A-can't stand housework and would rather strip down the engine on her motorbike
B-loves housework, cooking, washing up

A loves dresses and her pink frilly boudoir bedroom
B is more a jeans kind of gal and prefers the minimalism of her bedroom

A works with computers as a ethical white-hat hacker
B works with pre-school children in a nursery

**

A biological man who 'feels that he is a woman' walks into the room - how does he model his approach to be 'feminine' using the two example biological women above...?

The simple reality is he can't because there is no such thing - women come in every form you could imagine - some meeting stereotypical patterns - others completing striding through the stereotypes in their size 12 Dubarrys

Pingponghavoc · 10/09/2026 12:20

akkakk · 10/09/2026 11:26

Sorry - this is wrong…

Sex is not complicated at all - for almost everyone in the world they can simply look between their legs and see what they were born with - something dangling there is a boy / man, otherwise woman / girl…

chopping it off or adding a fake one doesn’t change what you were born with…

yes a few people have slightly different bodies in which case doctors can test them and see which they are…

and it is not difficult to recognise… men and women are pretty easy to spot…

gender is not our internal anything - it is how society describes the stereotypes or man and woman at that point in history - so while we now see pink as a girl colour it used to be seen as the boy colour - it changes but is an external observation of patterns…

there is nothing an individual can do to change either

What fo you understand Gender Identity as?

If we don't understand where they are coming from, we are just talking over each other.

I understand it as someone's self Identity that shouldn't have any impact on my life.

Gender ideology says that I should recognise it.

Many Gender identity supporters believe that both Identity and sex is important. But their obvious blindspot, from what I understand, is they dont want to use sex for safeguarding.

They dont believe that a man undressing and watching women undress without consent it a safeguarding issue.

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