JK Rowling, transwomen and the Labour Party

[HeyRoly]

JK Rowling liked this tweet. I think she might be one of us. Will be interesting to see if this kicks off...

Some men wear dresses.
This is a fact.
Some of those men would prefer I called them women than I speak truthfully.
I'm not going to do that.
As a woman, I won't cede the word 'woman' that I need to describe myself over to any man, regardless of what he wears or what he thinks or feels.

If I refuse to use the word that means adult human female in relation to any man, what would you have me say?

I can just use 'men' the way it is intended, for all adult human males, but that doesn't distinguish at all between men who don't expect to be called women, and men who do.

I've reached my limit of being deferential to the men who are stomping over women's rights. I won't go out of my way to be hurtful, but you've controlled women's language enough.

Men it is.

The word transphobic is bollocks(stating the obvious I know)

I suggest trans realist (might appeal to their scifi sensibilities too as other worldly connotations)

Dictionary definition of a realist is : accepts reality and deals with it accordingly.

Eg. Man is a man whether in or out of a dress. Trans realism.

That's what we are talking about - no phobia at all.

Would be funny it wasn't serious - see me with spiders - that's phobia.

Need to start laughing and pointing at accusations of 'transphobia' it is a ridiculous statement.

That retraction message couldn’t have been much worse. It throws the original tweeter under the bus and is astonishingly patronising towards middle-aged women. Yup, we’re all suddenly incompetent when we reach fifty.

I understand she might want to make a proper nuanced statement, but surely this would have been a good time to do that. Alternatively staying silent, weathering the storm and sending a private apology to the person whose tweet she liked would have shown courage if she is contractually not allowed to do otherwise.

She may well have been heavily leaned on, but the current situation will have offended even more people, without probably undoing the damage. These people aren’t very forgiving.

I don’t blame anyone for being afraid of these people, but sometimes you have to stand up and say what you believe. Even if it costs.

I am curious as to who this woman is who the media has been put forward as her representative to disparage her mental acuity.

Here it is. "Miss Rowling is represented by Edinburgh-based Stonehill Salt PR, run by Rebecca Salt and Nicky Stonehill. "

Jeez, I wasn't expecting Jo to even apologise, let alone pretend it was an accident. No one believes that. But then I genuinely didn't expect her to be on the receiving end of quite so much abuse. Silly me.

Jack Monroe is a piece of work. I thought she'd left Twitter with a "poor me, I get so much abuse" statement just a few weeks ago? It's funny how she can compartmentalise and be all sweetness and light on Instagram, but spent her life on Twitter fighting and arguing with people.

This is terrible. I doubt for one second she wanted to say that. But the fact that she’s in a prominent position in society and felt compelled to pander to the trans ideology is incredibly depressing.

The transgender advocates have become more violent in the past few months so I suppose they are right to be afraid just as the rest of us are.

I really liked and respected JK. Not an ounce of respect for her now.

Really? The woman has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams in what she does, she gives millions of pounds to charity, and you can't find any respect because her views don't happen to coincide with yours? That's almost laughable.

She's a coward. The point is that her views probably are more like ours than yours. But she chose to shove the woman whose post she liked under the bus and walk away. And it got blamed on being a silly middle aged woman. What sexist ageist bollocks. Have you ever heard a man say anything like that?

I don't think she's placated the people she's trying to pander to at all judging by Twitter. They might be stupid, but they're not that stupid.

Oh no, her card is marked now. Terfisness is the buggest crime ever

I am sure there would be a reaction from women if a man endorsed a tweet using certain 'slurs' in such a public way.

Yes there are hordes of stalkers combing prominent men's Twitter favourites for unpalatable opinions. Men like dodgy stuff all the time. I bet most of the time no one ever notices. They are socialised to be able to say whatever they feel like. Men are rarely apologetic about having opinions in the same way women are. They are not encouraged to put the feelings of others before their own.

I am really tired of TIMs coming on here to tell us that what's most important is that women use the words they like and avoid the words they don't like, and that we must at all times be hyper aware of their feelings and allow that to dictate what language we may and may not use.

No. Many of us are saying no. TIMs are quite literally men who may be wearing clothes more commonly associated with women, such as dresses. This is not a slur, it is a statement of fact. We see what you're doing in attempting to make the fact that you're men unspeakable, and more of us are rejecting it every day.

I am really tired of TIMs coming on here to tell us that what's most important is that women use the words they like and avoid the words they don't like, and that we must at all times be hyper aware of their feelings and allow that to dictate what language we may and may not use.

Me too. Typically controlling behaviour IME.

I'm disappointed by the apology, and think it's a shit, ageist, sexist apology, but I still bloody love JKR.

I find it really difficult to blame women for retreating when faced by god knows how many thousands of death threats, etc.

She has kids. There were people calling on Twitter for her to be murdered. Let's let that sink in for a moment.

I don't blame her for backing down. I think the feeble and frankly offensive statement from her publicist was a middle ground between ignoring it and making an abject apology herself.

However I think she will find it won't end there. They will be on her case with increasing viciousness until she submits more explicitly. This is what they do. In the absence of free speech it is impossible to give credence to statements like this one. She has been bullied.

I'm wondering if the apology is sarcastic. "Clumsy and middle-aged " pretty sure JKR would think describing that way is offensive. In the video she talks about Mrs Weasley's abilities and about how the fact she's chosen motherhood doesn't mean she stops being a powerful force. But if she's really had death threats for liking a tweet? FFS why aren't these people being prosecuted?

If you need any more evidence that TRA are not right in the head

twitter.com/search?q=jk%20rowling%20terf&src=typd

I’m a big JKR fan. I am extremely gutted by the tone of that “statement” and I think the PR people have fucked up.

I certainly would love to think it’s sarcastic.

PR: You have to respond, Jo. Your entire reputation is at risk, and all your charity & media partners are worried.

JKR: Fucks sake - tell them I’m a middle-aged white cis woman who has no idea how to use technology. They hate me anyway, may as well.

But I wish she hadn’t allowed a statement like that either way.

The bullying of anyone with an opinion is despicable, truly.

But Twitter isn’t great for nuanced debate - no social media platform is.

I love the term "transmisogyny". Like misogyny, but worse

TRAs already have their word. It's "transphobia". There's no need to take misogyny from us and cheapen it.

The best part of the thread on Twitter someone linked is that the initial cause of their grudge against Rowling seems to be that they'd developed a fan theory that a character was trans, and when somehow that came to her attention she said nope. Which obviously is outrageous - what would she, the mere author, know about her character's "gender identity"? Who does she think she is, asserting ownership over her own fictional universe?

All TRAs are control freaks.

Isn't transmisogny misogny as expressed by trans people?

If it were logical transmisogyny would mean misogyny expressed by transgendered males. However, when men appropriate ideas from women they care nothing for accuracy when repetition, harassment, and threats are so very effective.

For example, there are people in that tweet thread claiming that she does not write transgendered characters despite the obviusly mentally ill transgender and BIID characters in the mystery novels she has written. They don't read her books. It is that simple. They claim to be fans based on children's books they read when they were children or more likely based on the films they watched.
The one thing trans advocates always are, like other abusers, is transparent. We see you, and I betcha Jo Rowling does too.

If it were logical

Heh.