The Witch Trials of JK Rowling

[CrossPurposes]

An in-depth intervietw with JK Rowling by Megan Phelps-Roper coming next week: twitter.com/meganphelps/status/1625465141046247425?s=20

@Righthandcider Thank you v much for the link; I’ll make time to listen to that 👍 It’s a fascinating proposition that does seem to fit with what I see happening in the world (and with the interviewees in Ep 6) 🤔

That’s a really interesting analysis - it makes sense of quite a few things that have been puzzling me of late, especially the strong negative reactions to both JKR and KJK. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Yes, it does feel like a good explanation for some of the zeitgeist.

Come to think of it, gender ideology as it's taught in schools is entirely built on a foundation of individual 'feelings' isn't it?

I've just listened to the episodes so far over the last few days.

One thing I found really jarring with Noah is how young they are and then re-realising the timelines when they reflect back. They are 17 but only just - they were still 16 when they had a bilateral double mastectomy just 3 months ago.

They talk about going through a phrase of being obsessed with watching transition videos on YouTube at 11! This is a child who has so many mental health diagnoses - anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD - being left to the whims of the Internet. Anyway, that truly shocked me.

Contrapoints, I cannot decide whether they genuinely cannot grasp what JKR has said, as in they lack the intellect, or whether it is a wilful misunderstanding based on malice. I tend towards the latter. They did not come across well.

I think that both Natalie's and Noah's problem is that they think feelings trump biological reality. And that society must bend to accord with their feelings .
Noah sounds like another lost (presumably butch) lesbian. I hope Noah finds happiness but I am not neutralising the language of my biological reality for Noah's benefit.
Natalie seems like a nice person but doesn't respect my boundaries. Natalie is fed up of calling out the bad guys: the ones that record women peeing in the bathroom or film themselves wanking in women's bathrooms. It must be so tiresome because there appear to be so many of them.

I don't think it's a wilful misunderstanding. I think for Natalie it's an inability to do what she wanted JK Rowling to do. She wanted JK Rowling to listen and take her fears seriously. But she didn't offer to listen and take JK Rowling's fears seriously in return. She didn't offer to put aside, even for a moment, her foundational belief that life is so much harder for transwomen than it is for anyone else, for long enough to hear how bad life can be for women, and for long enough to hear how getting what Natalie wants could make life harder for those women who are just as vulnerable if not more so.

Because if Natalie had to accept that so many women are vulnerable in ways that transwomen aren't and that women's fears are genuine and founded on fact, and these fears are not simply the result of failing to listen to Natalie and failing to realise how much more persecuted and deprived transwomen are than anyone else, then Natalie might also have to accept that she really can't have everything that she wants, or at least not ethically.

But if Natalie was able to listen without bursting into tears of self-pity then maybe there would be room for negotation. And then maybe it would turn out there's a way for Natalie to get the things transwomen most need, the healthcare and the protections, without needing the automatic access to everything that protects women. Protection as a transwoman. Well, that's what I hope anyway.

I think hearing Noah speak about this is a very powerful and important part of this podcast. I suspect strongly that parents of teens of that age (11-17) on the coalface of the emotional highs and lows of puberty and adolescence will be pretty aghast at the lack of safeguarding shown, as they are able to listen to what has happened and process it. The fact also that it has been led by the medical profession. It encourages us all to remember the intensity of this period in any person's life - it has always been hard, but now teens are so accessible to those who want to mould and shape them in some way, I think parents can't keep up. Hopefully it is a wakeup call really. Parents can think about this before they need to really address it and start to speak properly to their kids about the lack of coherence in the idea of gender at all.

Very well said, Amaryllis.

I've listened to Contrapoints part. Everything that I wanted to say has already been said on this thread.

Noah, I had to stop listening to when they talked about mental health issues and that it's never been unpacked. I will listen when I feel more robust.

What I thought was quite telling was we find out straight away that it was Noah's dad who put Noah forward for the interview.

There are a lot of parents homeschooling their children around here now and I think maybe, if my children got caught up in the cult, that would be what you'd have to do. As parents we still do have that right.

Of course not everyone can afford that, but for those who can.

This idea that transitioning via drugs and surgery will solve all mental health problems - with absolutely no evidence this is true - is so dangerous.

It's so difficult when a loved one is struggling with mental health. Add into that a fear that this could lead to self harm and even suicide, it's just worse. If someone tells you that not only is there an explanation for the pain, there's a cure, that's exactly what you want to hear.

In my opinion this is the worst part of gender ideology. After "solving the problem" via surgery, your loved one now has a wrecked body and probably still has the original mental health problems too.

Fuckin great.

'They talk about going through a phrase of being obsessed with watching transition videos on YouTube at 11! This is a child who has so many mental health diagnoses - anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD - being left to the whims of the Internet. Anyway, that truly shocked me.'
@MoltenLasagne Yes that is one thing that stood out to me - like my DC at the age would have watched endless youtube given the chance but it's very difficult to censor what's on there so we didn't allow it unless supervised! It's like allowing your children to talk to strangers about anything!

Noah sounds like a delightful young person. I felt a lot of sympathy for the parents as well. How different might the story be if the mum had chosen a different therapist- instead of one with an explicit gender agenda. There were so many mental health issues going on for Noah with gender just a small part or even just a symptom.

I thought Megan's description of how it felt to learn about female puberty for the first time, as a little girl, was excellent. It doesn't mean we are trans to find tubes and periods and bras a shock! That section was the strongest evidence against medical transitioning being allowed in teenagers that I've ever heard.

I felt that Noah should not have been in the podcast due to being under 18 and so vulnerable; but I agree that the inclusion of Noah is going to horrify a lot of people and wake them up to the reality of how cult like this ideology is and how the most vulnerable children are being exposed to it and dramatically changed by it.

I also thought Noah describing watching hours and hours of videos where girls happily described their transition was definitely a form of self-hypnosis. My kids were hardly ever on screens at 11 and definitely did not have unfettered access like this.

This was the first time I couldn’t listen to a whole episode in one go. I found Natalie’s affected, breathy attempt at a feminine voice, and the hideously sneering, nasal, whiny voice Natalie put on when mimicking a woman expressing her concerns, so fucking annoying I had to keep turning it off. It was making me angry without even hearing what was being said.

I listened to this episode and noticed that both interviewees said that they’d been on the internet and ‘realised’ they were trans after reading or listening to people on there. Just after saying that it’s not true that people are being influenced by the internet!

I was sad listening to Noah as well, it’s very disturbing that such young people are being damaged in such a severe and irreversible way.

I felt that Noah should not have been in the podcast due to being under 18 and so vulnerable;

While I instinctively agree, I thought it was a smart move to reflect a demographic of the times. So many young girls in the same boat as Noah now.

Regardless of whether s/he should have been, Noah was able to consent to a double mastectomy so presumably was equally capable of consenting to a podcast interview.

Same. Also, I was listening with mounting horror at Noah’s story thinking they sounded young but perhaps early 20s. When they dropped the comment about being 17 and you realised the mastectomy was at 16, it was so shocking. Illustrative of the certainty these kids experience when they’re right in it, though. It must have been an impossible situation for Noah’s parents.

Is Phelps-Roper (consciously or unconsciously) associating the views she held as a member of the WBC as being equivalent in timbre/character to Rowling’s beliefs/stance?

It cut both ways. Either side is capable of being equivalent to the WBC in timbre and character. By their timbre and character shall they be judged themselves.

Or either side could be wrong in other ways, different from WBC. It is possible to disagree respectfully about abortion, and as it is possible to disagree scientifically and factually about the physical effects of hormones, or from experience of the long-term decision-making capacity of seventeen year olds.

I expect Rowling will listen and take their arguments seriously and answer them seriously. Which is not the same as agreeing with them. If she comes up with counter arguments they will be serious, far more solid than theirs, and without Natalie's emotional manipulation or Noah's naivete. I hope so, anyway!

I have heard episode 7 now which is about putting the opposite point of view to J.K. Rowling and her answering the points raised. She comes across really well. I feel that this was not done in the other direction - although I imagine it would have been difficult to do so.

Just listening back to Noah and his biggest issue with J.K. Rowling is that she shared a story (Maya Forester’s I think) to a large audience which show trans people to be the bad guys. Noah says it is fair to say that they were the bad guys in that story. So I guess the argument is that we should all keep quiet when trans people behave badly? He says it was dangerous for trans people that this was shared shared on a large platform.

In todays episode J.K. Rowling talks about how some trans activists said that gender critical people were pleased when a 10 year old was assaulted by a trans person in a bathroom because it made trans people look bad. I do think similar issues applied in some corners of Twitter when Brianna Ghey was murdered. (Not that anyone was pleased but that they were accused of being pleased by the other side of this debate).

I do think there is extremism and only seeing in black and white on both sides of this and Megan has tried to stay neutral and see if she can ask both sides to consider if they may be wrong but overall it felt like it was biased towards the gender critical argument. This could be confirmation bias on my part or that there are better arguments to be made and that J.K. is more considered and less fundamentalist in her view.

Noah was such a bright, measured young soul. The naïve faith in “the experts” knowing what would help Noah’s mental health broke my heart. I think all of us could see where this is heading.

Poor child.

I’m half way through this week’s episode and I’m struck by the difference in tone: Megan is putting proper questions to JKR and challenging her, very unlike the tone of last week’s episode with Contrapoints and Noah. Although, given how young Noah is, I would expect Megan to take a less challenging tone with a vulnerable teenager.

At any rate, the challenging questions are a good way of allowing JKR to address issues and beliefs head on and I’m very much in awe of her ability to explain herself so clearly and so fully. It’s very obvious that Rowling knows her stuff and has done her research.

Sorry for double-posting but I just wanted to say that JKR’s final statement at the end of the episode gave me goosebumps - the woman has so much integrity.