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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

JKR Didn’t Have an Opinion. She Poisoned the Well

1000 replies

CSIRCP · 28/08/2025 14:32

This post will likely be a little too long for most, but if you can spare the time and have a cuppa handy let's sit down and have a chat, shall we?

Firstly, let’s stop calling this a debate. It’s not. This isn’t two sets of ideas clashing. This is one woman’s fear and confusion being weaponized against an entire community.

What J.K. Rowling has done is not just share an opinion. She’s poisoned the well. And that poison is spreading through politics, education, the media, and even the courts.

At the beginning, it might have looked like a tweet. Then a blog. But what she wrote in that essay was revealing: “If I’d been born thirty years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge.”
That’s not neutral. That’s projection. It was a confession, repackaged as concern. She projected her own dysphoria and personal battles onto the entire trans community and used it as the foundation for a movement built on suspicion and fear.

She said she cared about women’s rights. Then aligned herself with those who believe all trans women are predators.
She liked racist and Islamophobic tweets. She repeated antisemitic tropes. She cast activists as violent men in dresses. She accused anyone who challenged her of misogyny while branding herself the face of feminism.
All the while she built up a devoted audience that now includes some of the most extreme anti-trans voices in Britain and beyond.

This “gender critical” movement is not about safety, and it’s certainly not about truth. It’s about control.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (Posie Parker), one of Rowling’s ideological allies, has welcomed neo-Nazis to her rallies. Actual Nazis. The kind of people Rowling once wrote villains about.
In one case, people connected to this movement were linked to the satanic terror group 764 — a group that has influenced teen suicides and violent attacks in UK schools. Let that sink in. This is who she’s empowering.

She didn’t just turn away when that started. She doubled down. She gave this movement a gloss of legitimacy. She used her fame to funnel people toward disinformation, fear, and cruelty—and dressed it all up as feminism. But it isn’t feminism when it excludes, vilifies, and harms other women. Especially trans women. Especially intersex people. Especially anyone who doesn’t fit into the narrow fantasy of who is acceptable.

Rowling’s language now echoes in government documents. Her phrases like “gender ideology” have been lifted from far right sources, including the Vatican and authoritarian regimes, and mainstreamed into British law. Her influence helped set the stage for the UK Supreme Court to redefine the word “woman” based on sex assigned at birth, stripping rights from trans and intersex people under the Equality Act. That’s what happens when the well is poisoned. People stop thinking. They start reacting.

Meanwhile, her cult chant her slogans as though they are scientific fact. But science says otherwise. Peer-reviewed studies show that trans people’s brain structures do not align with their sex assigned at birth. They show that gender identity forms in the womb, shaped by hormones and biology not ideology. Large-scale DNA studies have found gene variants linked to gender incongruence. And intersex people exist. That is biological fact. Not one of these truths can be erased by Rowling’s fiction.

What makes this so dangerous is how calm it all sounds. Rowling doesn’t scream. She whispers. She calls it “concern.” She says she’s “just asking questions.”
But it’s never neutral to question someone’s right to exist. It’s not a debate when one side is simply trying to live and the other is trying to strip away their legal recognition and healthcare.

This isn’t just a disagreement. This is a slow campaign of erasure, led by someone with a global platform and millions in the bank.

She’s not some deluded soul from MN; she’s a multi-millionaire author whose words shape global policy. She’s not being silenced. She’s being echoed by judges, by pundits, by politicians trying to climb the ladder by stepping on the backs of trans, non-binary, and intersex people.

And let’s not pretend it stops there. Her influence has allowed people to feel safe expressing open homophobia, biphobia, and hatred toward anyone who challenges gender norms. Some of the same people aligned with her have mocked survivors, denied racism, and claimed slavery was “fine” if it was “kind.”
This is not a group grounded in empathy. It’s a movement that thrives on exclusion and resentment. Some of them now openly identify as neo Nazis. That’s where we are.

So next time someone says “she’s just worried” or “she’s not anti-trans” or “can’t we just disagree,” consider these words. Show them what poison looks like. Not just hateful speech but the deliberate seeding of doubt, division, and cruelty, all wrapped in a soft voice and a smug smile. J.K. Rowling didn’t protect anyone. She infected people. And when she’s gone, her legacy won’t be literature it will be the damage she left behind.

You don’t need to cancel her. You just need to see her clearly.
And if you blindly follow Rowling and her ideas then you need to reflect on what you’re really endorsing.

Because ignorance is not an excuse. Not anymore.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
34
ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:06

My song for today is: 'You're so vain, you probably think this board is about you'.

Llamasarellovely · 28/08/2025 15:06

Oh piss off and apologise to your mother.

Boiledbeetle · 28/08/2025 15:06

.

JKR Didn’t Have an Opinion. She Poisoned the Well
SidewaysOtter · 28/08/2025 15:06

ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:04

My, with this patronising bollocks, you are spoiling us, ambassador.

Can we have Tunnocks instead of Ferrero Rocher? Those fiddly little paper cups get on my tits.

Tiswa · 28/08/2025 15:06

@CSIRCP I think what you are missing is yes women do just want to live but it is hard to do so when others do keep on stripping away at your rights and your healthcare and your right to see yourself how you want to see yourself. To be able to run a race and finish where you should. To be able to talk about things that matter to you are a perimenopausal woman without it being questionned. This is about the stripping of rights at the expense of others and that is the whole bloody point

SionnachRuadh · 28/08/2025 15:07

Mate. I know there comes a point in everyone's life when you get bored playing GTA.

But don't despair. School will be back soon.

Steph341 · 28/08/2025 15:07

'This post will likely be a little too long for most, but if you can spare the time and have a cuppa handy let's sit down and have a chat, shall we?'

I mean I love a self absorbed narcissist mansplaining life to us silly little women as much as the next person - but could you be more patronising?

Interested to know what you've done for the world that compares to JK though OP. Perhaps you could mansplain us through that instead.

ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:07

ScrollingLeaves · 28/08/2025 15:04

This thread seems to be back lash from the OP after someone on the Catholic church shooting of children thread posted all the vicious trans tweets against JKR as an example of the fury some men feel when they are told they are not women. This was so as to show how the trans shooter in question may have similarly felt fury against the Catholic church which is known to be against the idea that anyone can change sex.

What, a justification? Ain't women awful, look what you made us do now, type of thing?

ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:08

SidewaysOtter · 28/08/2025 15:06

Can we have Tunnocks instead of Ferrero Rocher? Those fiddly little paper cups get on my tits.

Like pasties?

Edit, I've taken that too literally, haven't I.

Charabanc · 28/08/2025 15:08

It's laughable how TRAs simply cannot accept that actual women might be able to form their own opinions without being led by Mumsnet/JKR/Far right/Christo facists.

No, we must be being manipulated.

Shows you what they really think of us, doesn't it?!

murasaki · 28/08/2025 15:08

SidewaysOtter · 28/08/2025 15:06

Can we have Tunnocks instead of Ferrero Rocher? Those fiddly little paper cups get on my tits.

Don't say that, he'll get all excited.

NImumconfused · 28/08/2025 15:09

Blimey, what a load of condescending drivel.

Like most women, JKR has nothing to do with my opinion on trans issues, they're driven by feminism and safeguarding concerns. I appreciate her ability to support court cases and her charitable foundations, because they're helping to defend women's rights and provide services to women which the likes of Mridul Wadha want to deny them, but my opinions are my own.

Charabanc · 28/08/2025 15:10

SidewaysOtter · 28/08/2025 15:06

Can we have Tunnocks instead of Ferrero Rocher? Those fiddly little paper cups get on my tits.

Now there's an image.

Sammybabes16 · 28/08/2025 15:10

I agree with all those points. It’s interesting that some on here have completely ignored all those facts you’ve posted and just given one sentence replies. It’s almost as if they cannot accept that these facts are true - unless they themselves are members of the far right.

BernardBlacksMolluscs · 28/08/2025 15:10

ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:04

My, with this patronising bollocks, you are spoiling us, ambassador.

You just made me laugh out loud in a meeting

BAD MUMSNETTER

Boiledbeetle · 28/08/2025 15:11

SidewaysOtter · 28/08/2025 15:06

Can we have Tunnocks instead of Ferrero Rocher? Those fiddly little paper cups get on my tits.

There aren't any Tunnocks left I'm afraid

JKR Didn’t Have an Opinion. She Poisoned the Well
ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:11

Sammybabes16 · 28/08/2025 15:10

I agree with all those points. It’s interesting that some on here have completely ignored all those facts you’ve posted and just given one sentence replies. It’s almost as if they cannot accept that these facts are true - unless they themselves are members of the far right.

😂

Greyskybluesky · 28/08/2025 15:11

pontefractals · 28/08/2025 15:05

Oh please, can't we just switch it off and stop there?

Agree, let's just pull the plug.

But then some people would have to think for themselves!

CassOle · 28/08/2025 15:12

Charabanc · 28/08/2025 15:08

It's laughable how TRAs simply cannot accept that actual women might be able to form their own opinions without being led by Mumsnet/JKR/Far right/Christo facists.

No, we must be being manipulated.

Shows you what they really think of us, doesn't it?!

It's all a bit Harry Enfield.

ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:12

Okay, fine. I'll engage- soz for not taking the AI pish seriously.

'Peer-reviewed studies show that trans people’s brain structures do not align with their sex assigned at birth'

Is that 'peen reviewed'? Not got my specs on.

Sammybabes16 · 28/08/2025 15:12

As a woman and feminist I strongly disagree. The vast majority of women are not Gender Criticals. Gender Vriticals use feminism as a shield to justify their bigotry. If you think transwomen are the problem regarding women’s rights you are no different to Trump, Musk and the rest of the far right fools,

ImGoingUpstairsToTakeOffMyHat · 28/08/2025 15:13

That’s a very long way of saying a woman with opinions should STFU

When actually many of us here have spent well over a decade fighting against the abominably regressive notion that being a woman or man is based on if you’re enough of a stereotype of a man or woman. JKR has been a saviour for women, she is the child who point out the emperor was naked. She is the voice for those of us who spent years being told to STFU, called bigots, doxxed and threatened with violence.

She also bankrolled the Supreme Court case, perhaps the most obviously correct legal ruling in U.K. history. The ruling actually didn’t show anything new. No wording changed. It just clarified what all of us already knew - “women” ALWAYS meant the female sex. That means it’s meant female sex for the last decade+. Meaning trans people/men NEVER had the right to interpret it any other way. Rather than moaning now that they’re hard done by they should be on their knees apologising to women for trying to encroach on our rights.

Peer-reviewed studies show that trans people’s brain structures do not align with their sex assigned at birth

Show us then

ArabellaScott · 28/08/2025 15:13

Sammybabes16 · 28/08/2025 15:12

As a woman and feminist I strongly disagree. The vast majority of women are not Gender Criticals. Gender Vriticals use feminism as a shield to justify their bigotry. If you think transwomen are the problem regarding women’s rights you are no different to Trump, Musk and the rest of the far right fools,

Do you, babes, aye?

teawamutu · 28/08/2025 15:14

Patronising bullshit aside (and I don't think 'subtle' means what OP thinks it means) - it's factually completely wrong.

I wasn't persuaded into Terfery by JK Rowling - I was fucking delighted when she spoke up and showed she was one of us.

And the reason she spoke up, was because of the huge numbers of women she knew about who'd been intimidated, threatened and cancelled for doing the same. She chose to be the lightning rod because she's uncancellable.

TL:DR: Your 'well' was full of Koolaid, mate.

ImGoingUpstairsToTakeOffMyHat · 28/08/2025 15:14

CSIRCP · 28/08/2025 14:37

You were warned it was a little too long for some people; perhaps the implication was a touch on the subtle side.

But let's make it clearer for you.

What JKR has done is create a kind of "activism dopamine"; a hate activity which makes people feel like they're doing something without actually doing anything (or actually helping the thing they should be fighting against, in this case the patriarchy).

TERFism generally appeals to women who are enraged at the patriarchy but too comfortable with our current patriarchal society to try to make any changes by deconstructing the concept of gender, by portraying trans people as an acceptable lower class that they can punch down on and feel like they're doing something when actually they aren't. Talia Bhatt has some good writings on this in her book Trans/Rad/Fem.

For JKR specifically, it probably also helps that she can grift more social media attention and money out of being the figurehead for the movement.

TERFS WANT to deconstruct the concept of gender - which BTW is an abstract concept it doesn’t exist, either in science or in common sense

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