J.K. Rowling Once Again Got Shit On Twitter For Anti-Trans Tweets
If I wrote a series of influential, best-selling books and birthed countless iconic literary characters as a result––oh, and made over 1 BILLION DOLLARS in the process––I would buy myself a couple of islands, pack up my shit and you’d probably never hear from me again (hell, if I wrote one book and it sold 12 copies, I still wouldn’t want to talk to people). But not J.K. Rowling.
J.K. has taken a break from throwing piles of money onto the fire in one of her many castles and resurfaced with a few of her trademark messy opinions on transgender people. On the plus side: she’s now probably earned some new fans in the form of those fundamentalist Christians who wanted Harry Potter banned for promoting witchcraft.
Variety is reporting that the Queen of Young Adult Fiction is at it again, dabbling in some transphobic tweeting after commenting on a post featuring an Op-Ed article from Devex, a media platform for the global development community. The story, about menstruation, seemed to have rubbed J.K. the wrong way and she absolutely had to say something… in the middle of protests and a pandemic. Dumbledore, please come get this mess…
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate https://t.co/cVpZxG7gaA
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
People immediately called her out, clapping back with a reminder that transgender, non-binary people and gender-nonconforming people can menstruate, too. But it didn’t stop there as J.K. doubled-down on her comments by referencing a page in her handbook, Karens Who Are Certain They’re Always Right: UK Edition and throwing out that tired old chestnut: “I respect [insert marginalized group here], BUT….”
The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – ie, to male violence – ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences – is a nonsense.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
What is happening?! It’s not as if somebody even posed a question to J.K. and waited for a response––she took it upon herself to throw out her ideas that LITERALLY nobody asked for. This IS the hill she wants to die on for some reason. J.K. went on to deny claims that she’s a TERF––a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’.
Times change. Woman-hate is eternal. https://t.co/R6YlRFEvgG— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
And has not yet responded to a cautionary statement from GLAAD:
JK Rowling continues to align herself with an ideology which willfully distorts facts about gender identity and people who are trans. In 2020, there is no excuse for targeting trans people.
— GLAAD (@glaad) June 7, 2020
J.K. has yet to release an apology or a further nonsensical breakdown of what she “really meant”. But given her history of controversial tweeting, nobody is really holding their breath. BTW, the irony is not lost on me that J.K.’s name is a joke in itself.
Pic: Wenn.com