“Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid on J. K. Rowling - “the bar is pretty high in how evil you have to be,” “ I’m extremely the opposite of everything she believes”

[YankSplaining]

Well, this is disappointing.

”[Reid] has a keen desire not to disappoint her fans, especially when they’re sending her photos of freshly inked tattoos of her words on their skin. ‘I know of another author that a lot of people got tattoos of but then wanted them gone. Like, J. K. Rowling,’ she says. ‘The bar is pretty high for how evil you have to be, but I don’t want to let a single person down.’ I ask if she’s a TERF. ‘No, I’m extremely the opposite of everything she believes,’ she replies.”

Well, too late, she let me down. “Extremely the opposite of everything she believes,” huh? I guess Rachel Reid thinks teenage girls should be forced to undress after PE in front of naked male classmates who gawp as their dicks get hard. Or that female inmates should be locked in cells with male inmates serving time for serial rape.

I don’t expect Reid to agree with Rowling on trans issues. It’s the monstering of Rowling that I take issue with - the “evil,” and the framing of Rowling as so extreme that Reid feels the need to be extremely the opposite of everything she believes.

Edit: title should read “on how evil you have to be”

The numbers are numbers.

Numbers are numbers. Words are words. But numbers and words have meanings.

The point you seem to be missing is that the context is that over the last few years a lot of people (most of whom really should know better) have swallowed and/or are promoting the lie that transwomen are women, & expecting us to play along (“repeat after me” etc).

And one of the MANY ways in which TW demonstrably are NOT W is in their patterns of offending & the kind of offending they do.

Which is nothing like female patterns (yes, yes women commit crimes too, we know: women who identify as men rather more than other women) but very much the same as - and in some areas apparently worse than - male-pattern offending.

Highlighting this fact is essential to pointing out both the flaw in the “TWAW” thought-terminating cliché, and the hideous abuse of incarcerated women caused by the governmental policies of putting men in women’s prisons.

I’m sorry to hear about your child, btw: I hope they get through it without too much permanent damage.

I think they probably are, actually.

Not since I was in my 40s.

The only reason these posters are here is because people engage with them. You aren’t going to win with rational arguments because they’re not rational and they’re not making rational arguments.

What's that saying? You cannot reason a person out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into.
I think that covers what's happening here.
This thread is now very boring.

I think this is a good place to stash Naomi’s latest insight

https://x.com/loudbonnet/status/2027528408322716006?s=46

27/2/26

“Time to retire “gender critical views”. Recognition of material reality is not a quaint niche belief. Gender identity ideology on the other hand is delusional, toxic and incompatible with science, and should disqualify adherents from all responsible posts.

Enough of the false balance. There is no equivalence between truth and lies.”

Really don't care for the opinions of a woman who has written a love story between two men as titilation for the type of young women who use tumblr and fetishise gay male relationships.

Rant incoming.

The ‘MLM’ and ‘BL’ communities on social media are quite rabid, and in recent years incredibly self-righteous. Whilst men are quite rightly ridiculed and perceived as being creeps for having sexual, fetishistic obsessions and fixations, I find that women who engage in parallel behaviours are more readily reframed as harmless, humorous, or that it's somehow even emancipatory.

I mention self-righteousness in these communities because now whenever there is pushback against these ‘Fujoshi’ types, a lot of them pull out the ‘queer’ card to exempt them from accusations of objectifying gay men, or that they think that their objectifying is a sort of show of allyship or activism. As ‘queer’ is a nebulous label that anyone, even heterosexuals, can identify into, it veers into the realm of appropriation. Look at how trans-identified males identify as lesbians and therefore their actually being fetishistic heterosexual men is overlooked as a ‘queer’ ‘woman’ expressing her sexuality. The same phenomena has been increasingly occurring amongst hyper-fixated girls and young women steeped in fanfiction and BL communities who are now identifying as gay men. It's embarrassing.

I would argue that Reid is one of these heterosexual women who launders her fetish for gay men under the guise of ‘queer’ representation. When someone criticises her for objectification, there will be fans who will descend upon the criticism and say “Um, well actually she's queer.” But looking at her bibliography, it's not like she's writing lesbian love stories. It's all gay male smut.

I'm not of the opinion that X aren't allowed to write Y unless they are Y. If an author writes across sex, race, class, sexuality, disability, religion, whatever, do they do it well, or do they default to cliché, projection, and wish-fulfilment? I would argue in Reid's case (and others like her) that it is the latter.

I don't think she's a particularly good writer, but porn and virtue are quite en vogue at the moment so good on her I suppose.

@AsTreesWalkingthanks for erasing bisexual people 👍

Opposite of JK Rowling? Me too. I'm poor 😂

It's just smut for heterosexual ladies who want to bang hockey players.

How does Reid portray the gay men in her story?

I'm always struck by how different the sex lives of the gay men I know are to those of my hetero and lesbian peers: Grindr hook ups continuing even when in LTRs /married; The continued existence of so many outdoor gay sex places, despite presumably there being no barriers to meeting in a more conventional way - I've been surprised at knowing very outwardly "square" men still using them.

I imagine this sexuality is due in part to no threat of pregnancy, less inherent power imbalance between couples, and no monthly cycles with their rise and fall in libido.

I say this with no judgement at all. I don't care what adults do as long as it's genuinely consensual. But I do wonder what young transmen make of all this, if they even know.