J.K. Rowling is a TERF, Surprising Virtually No One

People have long speculated that J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter and nothing else of note since, is secretly a transphobe. Until today, the strongest evidence was that she had liked a Twitter post referring to trans women as “men in dresses,” which she later claimed had been an accidental slip of her finger. I mean, I think we’ve all done that. But the post was also made to attack the Labour Party and the political left, calling them brocialists, and that’s something Rowling has spent years doing.

Today, however, Rowling dropped her mask and sent a tweet herself that clearly articulated that she doesn’t believe trans women are women.

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 19, 2019

The “I stand with Maya” hashtag refers to the case of Maya Forstater who lost her job over some transphobic comments she made on Twitter. And while I agree with Rowling that Forstater should not have lost job as a free speech issue, the way Rowling states this is deplorable.

Our trans brothers and sisters have enough to deal with just feeling comfortable in their own bodies and they don’t need us making that more complicated. Trans rights are human rights. It does no one any good to use this sort of rhetoric to attack them.

As a purely free speech issue, I believe people should be allowed to say all manner of horrible things without losing their jobs over it and the Index on Censorship sided with Forstater in her court case for a similar reason.

J.K. Rowling isn’t making a principled stand for free expression here, she’s just agreeing with the sentiment that trans women are men.

You may wish to split hairs about biological sex and gender here, and in some contexts that’s a reasonable discussion to have, but it’s not one that either Rowling or Forstater were having as Forstater’s initial tweets were about a law concerning gender identity, not biological sex.

This seems to be a thing with ostensibly left-wing celebrities in the U.K., by the way, it’s not just limited to Rowling. Graham Linehan, creator of The IT Crowd and Father Ted, both of which are excellent sitcoms, hates trans people so much he’s started his own social media site where people are free to say trans women are men and saying TERF will get you banned. Seriously. And Robert Webb of Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb has made multiple social media posts hostile to the idea of letting trans children transition.

There is a bit of a lighter side to this story of your childhood hero being a horrible bigot, though. Trending on Twitter alongside “JK Rowling is a TERF” was Vocaloid avatar Hatsune Miku. It’s become something of a meme to say Hatsune Miku created things people like but dislike the creator of. I personally think this is a little silly and an attempt to avoid dealing the cognitive dissonance that comes with boycotting Chik-Fil-A but not wanting to stop playing Minecraft or watching the Harry Potter movies.

Hatsune Miku is way hotter though, so it’s an improvement.