Why do some people view JK Rowling as transphobic?

[Backwardsbinn]

Where do people get the idea that JK Rowling is transphobic from? Where? I’m having this argument with an acquaintance who tells me she’s the most transphobic person on earth but cannot point to one single thing that she’s done or said that’s transphobic. Is this the widest held totally bullshit view ever?

A few years ago, I put "JK Rowling" and "transphobic" into the search box on Twitter. It turned out that she was being called transphobic because she said there were only two sexes.

Proving that TRAs are so thick that I'm surprised they can find their way home every time they leave their houses.

Please feel free to give direct examples of the "hateful pernicious shit which she spews".
Direct quotes from JKR will do, not "he said, she said".
Off you go, shouldn't take long should it?

Unless you are a basketball player. Then they are just pretending and making fun of Trans women.

Apoarently.

Not if you are a male sex offender in orison tjough. You are definitely a wonen and only bigots deny it.

Apparently.

How? A male pen-name is a traditional trope for women writing what women aren't supposed to/expected to write about (eg. the Brontes, George Eliot etc). Also, I am guessing the idea originally was to publish something that was not Harry Potter without the kudos of being JKR but published on own merits? I like the Strike books and there is, in The Silk Worm, a very sensitive portrait of a trans identified girl, and in Troubled Blood a scathing portrait of the realities of prostitution. There is also a very critical piece (not sure which book, I don't own them, but I think it's Career of Evil) about the 'trans-abled' community (Strike is an amputee). Sometimes a bit long but The Running Grave takes apart a cult very well - and ends with the warning that the cult may be down but it is not out (which applies to the trans cult as well).

"Maybe some people on here think that she has gone too far but they never look at their own side and the blatant hatred being spewed."

Precisely.

That doesn't absolve one side or the other, but it goes go some way to illustrate the rigidity of thought, intolerance of attitude, and utter stupidity of many people in this absurd and pointless conflict.

The climate, literally and figuratively, needs cooling down.

I thought JKR was transphobic because she once owned a boat and hired Johnny Depp to put up mouldy wallpaper in the cabin? And the boat's name was Custard Cream, which is transphobic as it doesn't have enough of the letters from TWAW. And she didn't use it to sail to Palestine and end the war.

@KinderOfKinder

The problem with your kind of "less heat more light" sentiment, as also expressed by countless politicians on this issue, is that without the concerted pushback from those people you see as too obsessed, none of the legal or cultural protections that women, GCs, or vulnerable children now have thanks to things like the SC ruling, the Cass review, the Forstater ruling etc would have occurred. We would be in a very bleak place indeed.

JKR reflects British Public Opinion well.

The UK has one of the lowest rates of opposition to protections for transpeople but conversely has the highest rate of nuanced thinking to how we apply this. It still has an comparable level of support for rights as Ireland and Australia.

The only subject we seem to be the outlier on, is on access to single sex spaces.

So basically the whole argument is essentially about the use of women for validation purposes and being able to get changed next to women and girls.

This is where JKR is the devil.

Because she dared to ask the Staniland Question publically.

She doesn't think its ok for a man who maybe still has a beard and declared himself trans last week to waltz into the local leisure centre and get changed next to a bunch of teens. She doesn't think its ok for women to have to share showers in a women's prison with men never mind sex offenders. She doesn't think its ok for a man to rock up to a rape crisis group of traumatised abused women and expect them to suck up their own trauma to include him.

She said it out loud. That's her sin.
And this is apparently controversial.

TPA Read what she said about Imane Khelif, a young Muslim woman in whose country it's illegal to be trans. Look at how she publicly treated her, based upon little more than rumours and Khelif's appearance.
Khelif is a massive inspiration and fantastic female role-model for young girls in Algeria. They love her for that.
JKR's targeting of a brown Muslim woman has been noted by people normally uninterested in her anti-trans comments. She isn't a doctor, or on the Olympic Committee. It's horrific what she's put that young woman (who's lost plenty of matches to other cis women btw) and others through.

Oh dear, TPA, now you've really done it! Bringing up Imane Khelif was an own goal.

Khelif is not trans, never has been trans, has never been considered trans.

Khelif is not a woman. Even Khelif's own 'management' and medical team have admitted that he has some 'chromosomal anomalies' which boil down to having the chromosome that make a person a man, not a woman.

Khelif has failed eligibility tests in the past, but at the time he took part in the Paris Olympics the IOC was not carrying out any tests: a passport that said you were female is all that was needed.

Khelif is indeed held up as a 'fantastic role model for young girls in Algeria', which when you think about it is very sad for young girls in Algeria - role models who are actually female would be much better wouldn't you agree?

I believe [ not a commonly shared believe, but one that I've shared on this board before] that Khelif was mistakenly IDed as a girl at birth and I believe that he was brought up as a girl.

I think it's disgraceful and unethical that when the medical people around him had incontrovertible proof that he was a male with a male DSD, they didn't surround him with the care and support he needed to come to terms with the reality of his biological sex.

Instead, they - and it goes right up to the top in politics and national sporting bodies in his country - pushed him to continue living a lie, so he could 'be a role model', win gold for his country, etc etc.

Of course he should have done the decent thing and stopped boxing against women, but he was too caught up in the gears of the machine that needed him to be a woman, although it knew he was not. 'Being a woman' was also his, and his family's, ticket out of poverty.

What happened to his threatened lawsuit against JKR et al.? That didn't get very far, did it?

Oh and by the way: Khelif lost to women at lower weights, before he moved up to the 66kg category. The fact that he has been through male puberty meant that the extra kilos he put on between the Tokyo and Paris Olympics were mostly muscle, making him a very different physical threat at 66kg [welterweight] than at 57-60kg [lightweight].

Building his body up to 66kg also emphasised typically male physical characteristics which were less obvious when he was younger and boxing at the lower weight. At 66kg, he looked like the man he is.

edited for spelling. Also to specify 'Paris Olympics' as IK also boxed in the Tokyo Olympics.

Pointless?

The Tavistock was closed down because it was found that their 'gender affirming' care did not meet basic ethical standards.

There was a years long campaign to remove the concept of sex discrimination from the Equality Act, which only ended with the Supreme Court ruling last year.

Women almost lost the right to have services like single sex rape crisis centres.

This.

"The UK has one of the lowest rates of opposition to protections for transpeople but conversely has the highest rate of nuanced thinking to how we apply this. It still has an comparable level of support for rights as Ireland and Australia."

Do you have any links to the evidence on this, please?
For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not disagreeing with, or challenging, you; but I'd very much like to read the evidence for myself so I can reference it in future discussions.

Women have the right to campaign to get back that which was given away and stolen from them.

She's a campaigner for woman's rights, 'trans' doesn't come into it, it's not the be all and end all some people would like it to be.

'Transphobia' is something that doesn't exist, it's just used by people who can't take no for answers.

The outrage against her is manufactured, unwarranted and uncivilised. The hate that's directed at her says more about the complete absence of any ability of kiddults to regulate their emotions, their total failure to understand the concept of boundaries and their general high level of 🤢 as humans.

As far as I know they have never shared a platform. The lame activist line is that because she has expressed solidarity with KJK being viciously attacked (both physically to her and threatening her family etc) by TRAs, she’s friends with her/endorses her. The same goes for Caroline Farrow.

Don't forget that "words are literal violence to trans people".

Yes we do. Unlike the other side of the debate which runs on hot air.
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5566286-ipsos-pride-report-2026

Yes. There's a whole thread dedicated to it - a very credible and respected source as it goes. The thread is one of the active ones in this section now.

If you can be bothered to look beyond the end of your own nose rather than just joining in on a 'we all hate JKR fest'. I'm sure if you try you can find it all by yourself without assistance.

Seriously, that question in itself shows up the level of paying attention going on.

Thank you.

I appreciate the link, and the former part of your statement. The latter part was completely unnecessary, but fascinatingly symptomatic of a certain way of thinking. You might like to hop over to this thread, where the discussion on tribalistic thinking and tribalistic 'othering' is a hot topic. Your personal insights on the matter would, I feel, be enlightening.

Who says many of those online trolls leave their houses? It’s a scary world outside the basement.

You should have let them work it out for themselves. The need for spoon feeding absolutely everything is indicative of the wider problem.

Please provide the full link, so people can see what they are clicking on.

Of course. Sorry, I simply used the in-built 'add a link' function that MN provides, foolishly assuming it'd be sufficient!

Here's the full link pasted directly into the chat: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5566447-5566447-tell-me-you-dont-know-what-a-cult-is

Good point!

It’s always a good idea to know what you’re clicking on, “foolish” or not.

JKR has not shown herself rigid at all - and apparently she has a trans friend who she uses 'she' for (not sure I agree with this but it gets forced on me at work as I am in a very woke city and in a very woke sector). She has funded women who ended up in front of tribunals because of their GC views, which is good, no-one else is funding them. The cooling down needs to be done by the trans brigade who are the source of vile threats, peeing protests (only men would do this), openly misogynistic behaviour (eg against KJK and JKR and any woman who opposes them e.g FWS), openly violent behaviour (e.g. Bash Back at Brighton against a conference on Violence Against Women and Girls - that you could not make up!). The women who oppose this sexist ideology have been admirably calm, polite and factual and used the law to protect women's spaces and boundaries.