Conversations about JK Rowling

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

I'm friends with a group of women who are mainly based in the US and Canada, and all politically left leaning. I deliberately do not mention anything to do with gender because I know that they are all very TWAW and would be horrified to learn that I am not. A particular subset of this group are big fans of Harry Potter but by common consensus do not talk about JK Rowling because they're all so disappointed about her stance on this issue.

Recently, however, one of them started a private conversation with me about JK Rowling. We had previously talked about the Cormoran Strike series and in particular about how Troubled Blood is not a transphobic book and the people claiming it is have clearly not read it. Then recently I sent her a message saying that the title of the next book has just been announced.

Out of nowhere, she said she wished JK Rowling would stop being transphobic so everyone could just go back to being a fan. I'm fairly sure that my friend had sensed that my views aren't aligned with those of the rest of the group and was testing me.

I didn't want to lie to my friend, and more importantly I didn't want to take the coward's way out and pretend that I also think JK Rowling is a hateful bigot when she has been so brave in sticking her head above the parapet in front of the entire world on this issue.

So I started by asking my friend whether she had actually read JK Rowling's essay. She replied that she had skim read it, but really, she was just appalled by the whole thing. I said I had read the whole thing because when people started accusing her of transphobia I wanted to find out what she had actually said, and judge for myself. I said I didn't agree that she was transphobic, but that she has serious concerns about women's rights and child safeguarding. I also said that in the UK, the idea that women should have some single sex spaces and sports is one that most people support. My friend said she actually agreed with that.

My friend then said that whilst there might be valid arguments to be made around single sex spaces, the way JK Rowling has expressed her views has been really harmful, especially given the context of the way LGBTQ people are being treated in many parts of America.

I responded by saying that context is important. JK Rowling doesn't live in America, she lives in the UK. In the UK we have no political equivalent of the American right wing, because even our Conservatives are more akin to the US Democrats on both economic and social issues. JK Rowling does not live in America, she doesn't vote in their elections and she's not responsible for who the American people elect to represent them or what they do. She is, however, entitled to have an opinion and to speak about what is happening in her own country, i.e. the UK and more specifically, Scotland.

I then went on to list some of the most concerning things that have happened in the UK and particularly in Scotland over the last few years, with a particular focus on prisons, rape crisis services and Maya Forstater. I told her about what had led to JK Rowling deciding to set up and solely fund Beira's place, and that trans activists had been trying to have it forced to accept male survivors or shut down. I told her all about Mridul Wadhwa, quoting extensively from the horse's mouth.

I also said that JK Rowling is far from the only person to be concerned about irreversible medical interventions being performed on trans identifying children, and expressed my private belief that puberty blockers are likely to be banned across Europe within a few years, given that the UK and France are now following the lead of the Scandinavian countries in putting the brakes on some of these practices, because the long term evidence in favour of them is really not good.

She said she understood all of that but wished that JK Rowling had not chosen this hill to die on, and that even though these issues are important, she feels that the harm caused to the LGBTQ community has been greater than the small benefit to other groups from speaking out. I said I disagreed, and that for female prisoners and rape survivors, as well as children who will now hopefully get more ethically responsible healthcare, these are not small matters.

I finished by picking up on a particular point she had made about JK Rowling suggesting she "doesn't believe trans women are women" and I said that I think the "trans women are women" mantra is actually really harmful to women because we all have our arms twisted to say it, and then the fact that we have said it is used as a justification for taking away our single sex rape crisis support or letting male athletes compete in our sports. I said that a few years ago I would have said that trans women are women but now I think it's a lot more complicated than that and if she's being honest with herself, so does she.

She never replied to that last message but she is continuing to engage with me in the group chat. I am not planning to talk to her about this issue again unless she specifically brings it up. But I privately believe that the message hit home and now she doesn't know what to do with it.

I think we also underestimate as a species just how powerful social norms are.

Indeed.

Many times in our evolution and social development our lives have literally been dependent upon being a close member of the group. That's why it is so difficult to swim against the stream - our lizard brain recognises the need to be part of the group.

Just in the same way that a woman's lizard brain is able to spot the threat of an unknown male even when that unknown male is dressed as a woman. Everything about him screams "possible danger" and our lizard brain tells us not to be alone/ vulnerable around him.

I worked in a hospital department with many transgender individuals (all M to F), and every single one of them was very aware that they were men, and always would be men no matter how much they had in the way of hormones and surgery. They were just desperate to be as comfortable with themselves as possible, and get on with their lives. Some of them were beautiful; most of them looked like blokes in a frock. That didn't matter. They treated women respectfully; women treated them respectfully. They never had a problem using the gents' facilities, and nor, from what they said, did the other men in there object. Most, though, preferred to use disabled loos when they were available because they felt self-conscious (not because they felt threatened). They were very unlike the aggressive, demanding TRAs we see front and centre now. They just wanted to live and let live, as almost all of us do.

This is very interesting. I feel very sorry for trans people who do not agree with the TRA agenda and just want to get on with their lives.

I think you were Brave @MissScarletInTheBallroom

I have friends and family with adult transchildren. I respect them and their adult children.
It is just that biological sex is such an important fact for all of us. If it wasn’t, why would they need to transition their social gender to try and be similar to the opposite sex?

I can be compassionate towards those with body dysphoria without needing to lie about biology. I do insist on single sex provision, and would happily welcome Third spaces for those who feel they fall between. I know they do not actually fall between, as that is impossible, but I can acknowledge that their dysphoria makes it seem so to them and I think Third spaces are reasonable accomodations.

I do NOT want gender neutral, mixed sex, and I want the single sex provisions to stay untouched. Good on those who are happy to share; they can utilise the Third spaces and be butt naked with anyone they like.

They are the ones who are going to suffer in the end @DisappearingGirl - the ones for whom this is an opportunity for misogyny or advancement, or "kink", will slink back under their rocks. The genuinely dysphoric individuals can't do that, and will get all of the backlash.

It is, as you say, very sad, and knowing how difficult their lives as men were for them, I feel very sorry for them, too.

Well done for speaking the truth, even if your voice (fingers typing) shakes.

I have hope for the future - I think teens are losing interest in the trans trend, on the whole, and want to move on from the self-absorbed navel gazing that goes along with it all. At least the teens I know.

I think you've done brilliantly OP. ❤to you. You've stuck your neck out and that's what we need. You are brave honest and strong. A true woman x

Total respect to you OP, you planted a seed and did a fine job.
The US is ridiculous even before the Trans business, I was a libertarian-conservative Republican (pre-Trump) lesbian. I'm in agreement with UK Social Democrats. Anyway I had to hide it from my lesbian social group if I wanted a social life. Interestingly my conservative friends were okay with me having developed socialist economic views .

That's the thing. The US left is the side that's quite intolerant. My leftie feminist California cousin ( who doesn't believe TWAW) has to toe the line otherwise she'd be a pariah and she's not prepared to make new friends... Frankly I'm in a better situation dealing and arguing for my beliefs. So I'm more resilient and not afraid to modify my opinions and make new friends.

OP your friends might be educated and clever but they're unable to think for themselves and are deeply intolerant. I increasingly believe people on the "left" are less tolerant of different views than those on the "right". I started noticing this with the response to Brexit and it's continued through the fight over women's rights/gender ideology. I've used inverted commas because I believe the terms left and right wing are unhelpful - they just put people into boxes that render them unable to listen to the opinions of others.

I find the views of your friends who say they're fine with TW using women's spaces particularly thoughtless - can they not conceive that some women aren't fine with that and they may have perfectly valid reasons (religion, sexual abuse survivor etc)? That they cannot speak for all women? Your friends' narrow-mindedness extends to not being able to understand other cultures and that JKR is living in the UK and specifically Scotland.

FWIW your friends might have a different perspective if one of their children decides the only way they can be happy is to take hormones and remove healthy body parts. I have a trans-identified child and it's horrific trying to reason with someone who's mentally ill that taking hormones doesn't automatically resolve anxiety and depression. I'm in a support group with other parents, many of whom are liberal Americans in despair. One of them is trying to gather other GC Democrats to fight back. Your friends are supporting an international medical scandal as well as the dismantling of women's rights and you're better off without them.

@MidgeGreensteet I'm fairly sure that if one of their kids said they were trans they would immediately affirm them. The conversation started with one of the members talking about how her MIL has a problem with her son wanting to have long hair and paint his nails (he is only just about to turn 3) and she was saying she was worried about how her MIL would treat her son if he turns out to be "not cis". Which, for the record, I think is totally valid. I wouldn't want family members to be shitty to my trans identifying child either, however I felt about their transition. Then someone mentioned JKR and it all kicked off. Proper daily hate stuff.

During the course of the conversation it turned out that someone in the group has a trans sibling and another person is a doctor who carries out facial feminisation surgery on trans women. So yes, this is very close to home for a lot of them.

But JFC, we don't make law and policy at the expense of women and girls on the basis that your trans sibling/child/patient has had a tough time.

The woman with the trans sibling said that she just wasn't able to engage in an intellectual argument about this subject when her sibling is a real person whose real life is affected by all of this. I understand that. I do. But I, on the other hand, am concerned we are having an intellectual discussion about how gender is more diverse than previously thought and biological sex is less binary than previously thought and language evolves over time when there are real rape survivors and real female prisoners and real female athletes whose lives are also affected by this.

I understand that your sibling is a real person. Why can't you understand that Sarah Summers is also a real person?

Most young people's feelings of gender dysphoria dissipate which is why watching and waiting is more important than affirmation. I imagine the most vociferous supporters of trans rights are the parents who cheer lead their children into medicalisation (see Susie Green) - you wouldn't be able to sleep at night if you allowed yourself to think for one minute that it had been a mistake.

No amount of nail polish or long hair turns male into female. Your friends are sadly complicit in this immoral and fucked up mess.

I think one of the biggest confusions in all this for the general public is the difference between "trans" and "gender non-conforming".

I've seen so many well-meaning people say things like "so what if a boy wants long hair and nail polish, if he turns out to be trans that's okay". Or books for kids saying it's okay for girls to like football or boys to like cooking etc, then sliding into the fact that some people are trans or non-binary. I think people struggle to separate the two, i.e. that it's fine not to conform to gender stereotypes, but in most cases that doesn't mean kids "are trans" and need medical treatment or to start using the other sex toilets etc.

People seem to think you either support kids transitioning, or you agree with rigid gender stereotypes. As the OP says, this is particularly true in the US where there's a much more conservative viewpoint about gender roles.

Just to clarify, as far as I'm aware that woman is not encouraging her son to believe that he is a girl, just to have long hair and wear nail varnish if he wants to. But he's not yet at the age where he might get the idea that he is a girl and tell her that he thinks he is a girl, so it could easily happen. I don't think she would put the idea in his head though.

You're absolutely right.

My son is a walking gender stereotype who is not interested in much except cars and trucks.

But if he were more like her son, and wanted to have long hair and wear nail varnish, like her I would say it was absolutely fine for him to have long hair and wear nail varnish.

Where she and I diverge, I think, is that if her son went walking around in the world with his long hair and nail varnish and people told him he was a girl and he went to her and said, "I want to be a girl", she would tell him he can be a girl if he wants to. Whereas if that happened to my son I would explain to him that he is a boy because of his body parts, not because of how he likes to dress, and that he shouldn't listen to anyone who tries to tell him he is a girl.

I had the most open chat with my friend who is a social worker ever today, whereby she was spouting forth about the importance of single sex spaces etc.

She knows how I feel, but I've never really spent a great deal of time talking about my specialist subject on it with her; it was nice to be spoken to as if 'granny sucked eggs!'

I understand that, but the "be-kind", ill-considered views these people are displaying makes that leap far more likely.

What's it like among social workers? Are they utterly captured or a bit more grounded in reality given that they have to understand safeguarding?

I've been thinking about this situation again overnight and have some things which I would really like to say to the person I had my original conversation with, but I don't think it would be a good idea, so I am going to say them here instead.

(With apologies in advance to a couple of posters in this thread who appear to be American.)

Firstly, I am a left wing feminist who believes that women should be allowed some single sex spaces and politely tried to explain to them that there is a political context to JKR's recent tweets, of which they, being American and not up to speed on UK/Scottish politics, are entirely ignorant. If they are so wedded to their own viewpoint that they refuse to listen to or talk to me or have anything further to do with me after I revealed that I don't share their point of view on ONE ISSUE, the chances of them being willing to listen to or engage with people on the conservative side of the political divide in America are basically zero. But they need to engage with those people in order to get anything done. If they want their right to an abortion enshrined in federal law, for example, or a legal right to paid maternity leave, they need to win over large numbers of people who do not currently agree with their point of view. They're not going to do that by dismissing those people as ignorant and bigoted and refusing to talk to them. So if the women in that group are representative of what "progressives" in America are generally like, it's no wonder they can't fucking make any progress.

Secondly, they need to grow the fuck up. Every last one of those women is the mother of a three year old. Some of them have older children. But I felt like I was being ganged up on by a group of 15 year old girls. A sizeable group of them are huge Harry Potter fans and have a dedicated WhatsApp chat where they share Harry Potter memes and photos of their kids dressed up in Harry Potter merchandise. When the daily hate started in the main WhatsApp group, several of them started moaning about how they love Harry Potter and are trying not to let the fact that its author has become an evil bigot ruin it for them. One person said they will never buy any of JK Rowling's books again and only buy unofficial merchandise so they can be sure they're not putting any money in her pocket. Another confessed to buying the Hogwarts Legacy game but said that they made a sizeable donation to a trans charity at the same time by way of penance. (It's not fucking carbon offsetting, you plonker!) Now, I would have thought that if you were a huge Harry Potter fan and genuinely loved and admired JK Rowling, you would have taken the time to actually go and read what she has written about this issue and judge for yourself whether you think she has said anything transphobic or not, rather than just jumping on this bandwagon. Given how much joy she's given you over the years, surely it is the least you could do. That is what I did, which is why I don't agree that she is transphobic. But even if you didn't want to do that, or you genuinely did read what she has written and still think she is transphobic, maybe it's time to move on from Harry Potter. It's a children's book published 20 odd years ago. You're 35. Many other wonderful books have been published in the meantime, including books which are actually written for adults, which is what you now are. So maybe start behaving like one.

I feel that I've managed to behave with dignity so far, which is why I am dumping these thoughts here rather than sending an, "And another thing!" message to the women whose phone numbers I still have.

Taking the high road and all that.

But I think they are absolutely pathetic. I have lost nothing of any value here.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom that is a very lucid rant, better than I would manage under such provocation.

I just do not understand people having nothing to do with those they disagree with. I deal regularly with people who I know or am 90% sure have politics very different to mine. This is probably why I don't think that all Tories are evil...

You're right, they do need to grow up!

Now, I would have thought that if you were a huge Harry Potter fan and genuinely loved and admired JK Rowling, you would have taken the time to actually go and read what she has written about this issue and judge for yourself whether you think she has said anything transphobic or not, rather than just jumping on this bandwagon. Given how much joy she's given you over the years, surely it is the least you could do.

Such a good point, MissScarlet - back when I knew very little about the trans debate, I couldn’t understand why JK was suddenly being painted as a terrible hateful bigot. Despite hearing from many trusted sources about her awfulness, I just couldn’t take it at face value. I had to go away and read everything she’d said, and judge it for myself. As you say, it’s the least I could do, as an admirer of her work.

People need to make their own informed decisions but they need to want to do the work. For some people, the glow of feeling that they’re the good guys is enough for them to not bother delving below the surface of this controversial issue. They can just repeat what other good people have told them. Why is JK going on about this disadvantaged marginalised group, has she nothing better to do, etc.

It might have been worth sending the WhatsApp group a link to the Jonathan Pie video about the hate crime bill - a short and sweet satirical takedown. But now that you’ve been ousted, hopefully some of the quieter ones on the WhatsApp chat will be spurred on to explore the issues in more depth. A group member being kicked out during a reasonable discussion is something that will not be easily forgotten by any fence-sitters, I suspect.

I was thinking about my own feelings towards Philip Pullman. I've been a fan of his work since my early teens but thanks to Twitter I now know that he has personal views which I find abhorrent. When I first became aware of him getting involved in the debate, I made a point of finding out exactly what he had said. I thought it was important to at least give him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately I ended up concluding that he is a pompous, misogynistic windbag with an over-inflated sense of his own importance. This is particularly disappointing given that he created one of my favourite female characters of all time. I couldn't believe, and still can't believe, that the man who imagined Sally Lockhart into existence 40 years ago could fail so utterly to understand the gender critical perspective. I also strongly suspect that he has taken the position that he has in part because he is jealous that JK Rowling has been so much more commercially successful than him. Which is stupid. I mean, he's still Philip Pullman, one of the best known British children's authors.

But I can still enjoy his books whilst being disappointed by the man.

The difference is that no one cares whether or not I like Philip Pullman's books or whether I agree with his personal opinions.

I have not constructed a huge part of my personal identity around his books. I don't own shit ton of Sally Lockhart merchandise. I didn't have a Dark Materials themed wedding. And most importantly, he hasn't become a hate figure in the eyes of everyone I know and I am not required to participate in a ridiculous permanent ritual of hate against the man in order to have permission to continue to enjoy his books.

And thank fuck for that.

I am from, and live in, a country where I am allowed to like whatever books and authors I like, and agree or not agree with the opinions of public figures, and the people in my life respect my right to do that. They respect my right to have different opinions, as I respect theirs.

I feel sorry for the people who, in a different life, might be more like the women on this forum, but because of the society they live in, are not free to be.

Well done OP you have behaved with dignity and integrity. How awful to be kicked out of a group just because you have a different point of view. What a world 😥

I am constantly struck by the hypocrisy of the people judging JKR and her works. Do they still watch films directed by convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein? Do they give the same critical consideration to the creators of their other media or is it only JKR that gets judged in this misogynistic, virtue signaling way?

If the former, why do they consider rape to be less serious than offending TRAs? If the latter, why the hypocrisy?

Men aren't even judged on their actions half the time. Women are judged on their words. Such double standards.

"I was thinking about my own feelings towards Philip Pullman. I've been a fan of his work since my early teens but thanks to Twitter I now know that he has personal views which I find abhorrent. When I first became aware of him getting involved in the debate, I made a point of finding out exactly what he had said. I thought it was important to at least give him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately I ended up concluding that he is a pompous, misogynistic windbag with an over-inflated sense of his own importance. This is particularly disappointing given that he created one of my favourite female characters of all time. I couldn't believe, and still can't believe, that the man who imagined Sally Lockhart into existence 40 years ago could fail so utterly to understand the gender critical perspective. I also strongly suspect that he has taken the position that he has in part because he is jealous that JK Rowling has been so much more commercially successful than him. Which is stupid. I mean, he's still Philip Pullman, one of the best known British children's authors."
@MissScarletInTheBallroom are you me 😅
I feel exactly the same way.

I like you even more now

This was tweeted by Philip Pullman back in October 2018: “Am I alone in finding the trans argument impossible to follow? If someone could tell me which side I should be on, it would save a lot of worry.”

I think he wanted to be shown what the good people on the so-called right side of history believe, so he could nail his colours to the correct mast. It is disappointing.

Disappointing when someone with obvious intelligence claims to be unable to follow/grasp the salient points.

Some years ago I worked in a university with researchers from many different countries. Those from the US were always the ones who had little or no idea that things worked differently in different countries. Anyone else came expecting to learn how things worked in a foreign country. The ones from the US just assumed their system was the norm everywhere.