James Kirkup: Trans activists hate Rowling because she's a woman

Every woman reading that will remember their own Sloppy Uncle Bert moment and instantly understand why get help is usually too late for the teenager.

Not just women. I am pretty sure almost all older men in my life would read that and rapidly spot the problem.

Yes enraging but also very peaky.

This is a comment under the article, it’s made me feel so angry. It’s is in response to someone saying they don’t want their teenage daughter having to share a changing room with a man.

‘Yes, by all means, let's take the most extreme example and generalise it. Nothing intolerant about that at all.

If a teenage girl feels threatened in any situation, be it in a changing room with an untransitioned trans woman as you suggest, or with a rude and aggressive older cis woman in the same washroom, or maybe just in the home of a drunken relative, I would hope she has access to help and escape.

That we're expected to equate this hypothetical untransitioned trans-woman with an actual threat is, I believe, the real problem with this debate. An equivalency is suggested that is simply unfair and cruel.

Notice I did not assume the drunken relative was an actual threat. Most drunken relatives the vast majority of drunken relatives, I suggest are a threat to no-one but themselves. So, do we demand that drunken relatives must be removed immediately from young women's presence? No, we don't. We assume they're going to be just fine around sloppy Uncle Bert, and if they feel they're not that they'll find help.

By the by, my guess is a teenage girl is going to run into sloppy Uncle Bert or that aggressive cis lady far more often than an untransitioned trans woman.’

Just so offensive in every way!

I believe William Shatner HAS made similar remarks (recently, and far less diplomatically and gently than JK) and was met with.... silence. WHAT A SHOCK!

I can't think of a male comparator in the world of literature even.

Stephen King.

brilliant comments, sometimes heart-warming and funny!

But JKR is one if the most famous people on this planet.

You say 'but' but I'm not sure how you're rebutting my point? Yes, it would be interesting if a man with the same profile were to make a statement like JK's essay (William Shatner? He's pretty famous?) I imagine there would be attempts to cancel them. But I doubt the attacks would be of the same nature as the attacks on JK: fake news in the mainstream press, rape threats, sexualised abuse, a twitter trend of wishing them dead. I've never seen such an outpouring of misogynist abuse in my lifetime.

Similar to the NY Times, when a paywall stops the anonymous anime avatar-ed commenters from brigading, you get near-unanimous support for sex-based protections for women. Very encouraging to see.

There are men being targeted for sure. But it’s not the same level and they don’t receive thousands of rape threats.

I agree. I just felt a bit sorry for Glinner in particular who has taken so much abuse and has lost work for his views. It's clear that the TRAs are driven by misogyny and the one thing they hate almost as much as a woman standing up for herself is a man standing up for women. Probably they regard Glinner, Dreyfuss etc as traitors to their sex.

J k Rowling is driving this into the sunlight. Can’t say how much I admire her for this. I shall be buying her book in my local bookshop it’s good anyway I’m sure but frankly would but it even if about newts or something

I remember when the Harry Potter books first came out. JK Rowling had been advised not to use her first name and many assumed they were written by a man.
There was a lot of disbelief when she revealed that her name was Joanne and she was female.

she's a woman with power and position that she achieved by her own hard work, talent and determination, meaning she's above being sacked or cancelled; their usual route of attack

I think the other part of it is something @DonkeySkin wrote in a brilliant analysis of the abusive acronym that rhymes with Earth. Perhaps some of her most unhinged critics are former child fans who read her growing up and are now furious about her incisive criticism of the trans ideology? Instead of just offering applause like the good mummy figure should? This idea that she has 'betrayed' these fans is, as DonkeySkin said, a misogynistic trope as old as time.

What NearlyGranny said.

I think he missed a couple of triggers that really set the TRAs off with JKR.

It's not just that she's unequivocally a woman and they're not so convinced about themselves; she's a woman with power and position that she achieved by her own hard work, talent and determination, meaning she's above being sacked or cancelled; their usual route of attack. Above even that, she's a woman with a clear, logical, articulate voice that they cannot silence, and she never gets down to their level and screams abuse back.

The person who keeps their temper, maintains courtesy and deals in facts is the antithesis of the Twitter mob. She's untouchable and they can't stand it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

it’s due to their sex

Absolutely it is.
And it shows up the anti-woman Twitter mob’s sexist, homophobic, anti-scientific and anti-reality opinions to be completely self-serving.

How come the people who claim to believe that sex is made up, always know exactly who the women are?
Like whenever they need someone to threaten on Twitter, or to do surrogacy for them..? Uncanny how they just seem to be able to know without asking first..

're people not seeing misogyny, could it be that woman hatred is so common and society is so saturated with it that it's hard to see? In the way that sex/misogyny isn't included in the hate crime legislation because, as the police note, it's so common they couldn't cope with prosecuting it? Hopefully I'm wrong.

A depressingly true article.

Good article.

The most crazy of the crazy seem to come out for JKR. I know they come for others too but they are crazy desperate for this particular woman.

It feels like when an abusive man is livid that a woman is calmly saying something he doesn't like. She has to be shut up. If she persists she must smashed to the ground. And it is definitely all her fault for making him feel bad.

Men aren’t exempt from the attacks but in general nobody threatens to rape or kill them. There is a whole other level of viscousness that is directed at women who are perceived to be anti trans abd I believe it’s due to their sex

Great article and Kirkup has it exactly right. TRAs hate and want to destroy women who won’t entirely capitulate to wherever TRAs have moved the goalposts at that moment. They are narcissistic woman-hating male sexual entitlement activists. They don’t give the slightest shit what they do to anyone else.

Comments are good underneath. Most people can see this aggressive narcissistic rage for what it is and are shocked and offended to hear about how women are being treated for the apparent crime of speaking in public.

James Kirkup has been speaking about trans stuff for a long time - I assume he is speaking from experience when he says men don't get the same kind of abuse. It's fair to say that a couple of men have been targeted and suffered over this, along with many women - but no one has been so relentlessly and viciously attacked as JK. It has been a collaborative act of abuse from thousands of people against one woman.

That is a brilliant article. I really like James Kirkup. I have been astonished by the hatred and abuse that has rained down on JK since she spoke up, although I didn't think I was under any any illusions. As Germaine Greer said, 'most women have no idea how much men hate us.' Well, we're starting to get the picture.

But he's not quite right to say that men have been exempt from attacks

That's a bit the exceptions that prove the rule, isn't it?