J.K. Rowling Accused of “Transphobia” for Stating a Basic Truth About Womanhood
The popular book author has just learned the hard way that crossing “woke” mobs of transgender rights activists has consequences.
Author J.K. Rowling is facing backlash this week from transgender rights activists and their supporters. On Twitter, she supported a British woman who lost her job earlier this year after old tweets surfaced where she stated biological men could not be women.
Here’s what prompted Rowling to weigh in:
There is no legal right to question whether a trans-gender person is a man or a woman, an employment tribunal has ruled.
Maya Forstater, 45, lost her job as a tax expert at the Centre for Global Development in March this year after she was accused of publishing “offensive” tweets questioning government proposals to allow people to self-identify as the opposite sex.
Her legal dispute against her former employer was seen as a test case on whether a “gender critical” view – meaning a belief that there are only two biological sexes – is a protected philosophical belief under the 2010 Equality Act.
However, in the landmark judgment published yesterday, employment Judge Tayler decided Ms Forstater’s view “is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.
Here are some of the tweets that landed Forstater in hot water with both her (now-former) employer and social justice warriors on the left:
This is the woman @jk_rowling was defending today.
She got fired, and then raked over the coals by an employment "tribunal" for these tweets.
Disagree with her and debate, of course, but to claim this respectful expression of her opinion is a fireable offense is dystopian. pic.twitter.com/vZe0nSzaQC
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) December 19, 2019
Forstater’s opinion about transgender rights in the context of a discussion about women’s rights is not uncommon among women, in spite of what the mainstream media and leftists will tell you. As she wrote in a piece defending herself from accusations that she was transphobic, Forstater noted she was “also a feminist” but was “concerned about the impact of self ID on women and girls”:
Like most people I agree that transgender people should not face discrimination and harassment as they live their lives. But I am concerned about the impact of self ID on women and girls, and in particular on single sex spaces and services such as women’s refuges, hostels, prisons, changing rooms and hospital wards, as well as women’s sports.
I am concerned that governments around the world are rushing through laws and policies which say that people with male bodies can become women simply by identifying as women. This is happening without adequate consultation or consideration for the impact on women’s privacy, safety and inclusion.
There is absolutely nothing transphobic about that. Zero. These are legitimate concerns women have about their safety, security, and overall well-being. These worries are also shared by men, especially those who count women among their loved ones.
We should also note that Forstater was stating her personal political opinions on the matter on her own Twitter page. Plus, she wasn’t in a managerial or other position that allowed her to set policy.
She was discriminated against, fired for WrongThink, and for having the audacity to question why people squelched scientific arguments in the transgender rights debate. To make matters worse, an employment tribunal upheld her firing.
Rowling, who is the author of the wildly popular Harry Potter book series, stood with Forstater in a tweet posted this morning:
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
Forstater was understandably excited to receive Rowling’s support:
OMG! We are all crying. This is all i wanted for Christmas https://t.co/5ucPGUHIxY
— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) December 19, 2019
Others, however, were not amused. As a result of that one simple tweet, Rowling has “been officially canceled” according to “woke” leftists on Twitter. “JK Rowling” and the term “TERF” have both trended most of the day as transgender “women,” and their allies unleashed hell on Rowling:
Here’s just a small sampling of some of the hate that has been flung in her direction (language warning):
JK Rowling retire bitch
— Siobhan Thompson, mysterious European heiress (@vornietom) December 19, 2019
Very shitty to hear JK Rowling's transphobic opinions on the morning I post my announcement for @hpvirgins 2020 Harry Potter Readalong. So from now on, any money I make from HP-related content on my YouTube channel will be donated directly to charities supporting trans rights.
— Please do not perceive me ❌ (@readwithcindy) December 19, 2019
OK so @jk_rowling has come out as a full TERF and is gaslighting everyone that doesn't understand what has been going on.
"Forcing women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real" is a false narrative at best, in reality is an outright lie.
Let me explain … pic.twitter.com/xz11Ai4cM5
— MJC (@marcyjcook) December 19, 2019
My favorite part of JK Rowling definitely being a transphobe is that no one can convince me Dumbledore isn't nonbinary.
(Seriously tho, fuck JK Rowling. Trans women are women.)
— ella dawson is writing on patreon (@brosandprose) December 19, 2019
This ain't it, chief.
Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary folks are nonbinary.
The enormous universe of #LGBTQ young people & adults who have been inspired by JK Rowling's work deserve better. pic.twitter.com/eUlbxw1BPc
— Lambda Legal (@LambdaLegal) December 19, 2019
J.K. Rowling has a history of standing beside marginalized communities, and so, I think you'd forgive me for believing that, perhaps, it was unclear to her what's at stake here. No more. Transphobia is part of her true colors. She truly believes that trans people aren't valid.
— Charlotte Clymer ?️? (@cmclymer) December 19, 2019
With her tweet, JK Rowling is the definition of a TERF. https://t.co/FKTmIuFro0
— Out Magazine (@outmagazine) December 19, 2019
TERF stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Tran activists use it as a derogatory insult against women who disagree with them. Still, in reality, it is another word for feminists on the left who oppose certain transgender rights on the basis that they effectively nullify women’s rights.
Rowling, who is otherwise about as far removed from a conservative as you can get, is not the only high profile woman on the left who has faced the wrath of militant transgender rights activists this year. Hillary Clinton triggered the mob in recent weeks for benign comments she made that people equated to “fearmongering,” which some suggested would put transgender lives in danger.
As I wrote at the time, nothing short of total surrender to the trans mob’s demands is acceptable. Tennis great and LGBTQ rights pioneer Martina Navratilova also learned this the hard way back in March when she dared to speak out against allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
As far as what the future holds for Forstater, she wrote a lengthy Twitter thread expressing disbelief over the tribunal’s ruling but is weighing options with her legal team to determine the next steps to take.
Stay tuned.
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Comments
“…crossing “woke” mobs of transgender rights activists has consequences.”
Only if you’re stupid enough to give a fuck what the woke-scolds think or say.
Do you know what tiny fraction of 1% trans are?
Tiny, tiny, tiny….
But enough about Obama…..
Interesting comment from Ace of Spades.
“Apparently a fantasy that everyone is in the thralls of, except the 0.1% of the population which is “trans.”
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=384878
Too good not to pass along.
“It takes balls to “cancel” a woman who could buy your multinational employer, never mind your family.”
Posted by: trev006 at Ace of Spades
As Erick Erickson noted: “You will be made to care”.
You will be MADE to care. The typical person is not a multi-millionaire who is self-employed and is rich enuf to live off their current funds for the remainder of their life. The typical person is – like this lady – required to have a job to live off of. So, yes, the consequences for Wrong Think blowback from Twit(tee) Lynch Mobs are real…
There was a bit of data from Pew Research a while back:
Just 6% of US adults on Twitter account for 73% of political tweets… and they disapprove of Trump.
I wonder how those numbers would turn out if you looked at “woke”
twitstweets? I have a funny feeling I know.Thanks.
That’s good.
Got a link?
Remember the Communist-Globalist-Left also uses Like Farms in Communist China and Iran to fake their minuscule actual numbers…..
Here:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/23/a-small-group-of-prolific-users-account-for-a-majority-of-political-tweets-sent-by-u-s-adults/
Thanks a lot!
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” — spoken by Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel “1984.”
Rowling can, I assume, handle the criticism. But it’s an unfortunate precedent for employment law, esp. assuming the assertion was not made in the workplace.
Apparently mere truth is no defense (not when the Ministry of Truth decide what’s true). And here you thought you might be protected against retribution even for asserting something which many believe is not true (e.g., “Christ is the risen Lord”) let alone something that is obviously and demonstrably true.
We shall see whether or not she can handle it. I will not be surprised to see her sniveling apology appear before sunset.
I will be most happy to be shown wrong.
She’s a dumbass. It’s good to see her getting eaten by her own.
She has taken a stand against the socialist-fascist axis that is notably Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic. On one hand, on the other hand, always and forever.
binary sexes: male and female
binary genders (i.e. physical and mental sex-correlated attributes) normally distributed: masculine and feminine, respectively
transgender (i.e. divergent attributes) spectrum: homosexual, bisexual, neosexual
The transgender spectrum is politically congruent (“=”) under the Pro-Choice religion.
Lets call it what it is .. normalphobic
Or homophobic or generally transphobic: the hate and fear that the transgender spectrum will be tolerated, but not normalized. Pro-Choice is a selective, opportunistic, politically congruent progressive liberal (i.e. monotonically divergent) religion.
Reality-Phobic!
A thing labels itself Twitter.
Society treats the twits/tweets if if they were things of substance.
There must be a Proverb about this.
Or maybe no; the writer of Proverbs might have seen us in the future and promptly went to the nearest Trader Josiah’s and erased the vision with Two Beq Chuck.
Another victim of cancel a.k.a. abortion a.k.a. planned a.k.a. politically congruent (“=”) a.k.a. selective culture… religion (Pro-Choice)? Maybe, but not yet. Good luck.
“the wrath of militant transgender rights activists”.
I am sick of all of these new “rights,” which infringe on virtually everyone’s freedom. Our society is spiraling down.
I know some of these transsexuals…. Many of them (most?) suffered some kind of neglect/molestation/abuse/penetration at a young age. Some, at a VERY young age.
Most of them need therapy. And several kinds of therapy, so that you start with one kind, and when you’re ready, you graduate to EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing – you can find it on YouTube — or you could).
Someone traumatized enough to be in this state needs years of therapy. They also quite possibly have DID or dissociative identity disorder which can mean they have alternate personalities, that don’t usually all get along…. This is where the “they” pronouns come in. The personalities can be jockeying for control of the person between themselves, and consequently, sometimes “lose time.” They are also typically of different ages and sexes.
It sounds complicated, but not really, once you understand the phenomenon.
Anyway, treat these folks with compassion, but whatever you do, don’t re-order the normal world to their manifold mental challenges.
They may not know it, they won’t want to discuss their trauma until they are ready, but they need therapy.
Richard Gartner’s book, “Beyond Betrayal: Life after Boyhood Sexual Abuse” is helpful. so is Eliana Gil’s book, “United We Stand: A Book for People With Multiple Personalities.”
You can get better. It wasn’t your fault. http://www.malesurvivor.org
And everything the Left is doing with them for more of the Left’s Evil “Divide and Conquer” strategy is
real Child Molestation, imo.
Not a member, I put this in the wrong spot:
Agree. Don’t encourage these people to harm themselves. They should be encouraging them to discover the roots of their dysfunction and address it.
It’s hard. I have it on good authority it gets worse before it gets better, but it DOES get better.
I think almost to the last person here, that “trans” would not find anyone who “hates” them.
However we despise how the Communist-Lefist-Democrat Party is using and molesting them for the Left’s own evil ends.
Men in women’s drag, and women in men’s drag don’t scare me or offend me – as long as they stay away from the demented Democrats! Snark.
In short, she’s a wonderful creative author
She’s neither particularly creative nor wonderful. The first couple mf books are a fun romp for ten year olds, but after that her limitations as a writer become obvious. The fact that she quickly became too rich to need an editor sends every volume past #3 into the quality dumpster.
Creative? Please. The whole series is just an outright plagiarization of Jill Murphy, right down to the personality types of the teachers and the two best friends.
She’s wildly popular. She’s not good.
Touche!
Big difference between “popular” and “good.”
Oh– and the rest of the world constantly reminds me why I’m grateful for 1st Amendment, and the 2nd Amendment which helps protect the 1st.
A minor wrinkle added to an old perversion.
Men are Women
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
I don’t feel sorry for Rowling. She is a relatively minor Soviet bureaucrat in the Entertainment Politburo who right now has a bunch of low-intelligence Party street agitators nipping at her ankles.
Rowling’s problems will come later if someone higher up in the Politburo decided to make an example of her. But the Twitter brownshirts going after her are no real threat at the moment.
That’s been my impression of S.S. Comrade Rowling,……
Oh, I feel a lot of sympathy for Rowling (and little for the humorless Wokescolds who constantly nag and harp at her heels). She knows perfectly well what twisted leftists think of anybody who dares voice an opinion that differs even slightly different from their own constantly changing narrative. I’ve read her books from cover to cover when they were released (except for Cursed Child, which is just weird, like a fanfiction written as a FixFic) and understand she’s trying to stay ‘fresh’ with the literary types. For example, Dumbledore being gay is “Oh, that’s why he never had a feminine partner and it explains Grindelwald oh ick!” but not really a surprise. She has gotten no *end* of flack for the Harry Potter books not containing (fill in minority/disability/gender/race), or how it supposedly promotes bullying throughout the series. (Among woke writing fans, Dumbledore is often hated more than Trump)
In short, she’s a wonderful creative author who made a lot of money, so the Libs don’t know how to treat her. Is she an Artist, and therefore untouchable, or a Wealthy Person Who Won’t Give Me Any Money And Therefore Evil? So she gets shots from all sides.
Personally, I look at the Harry Potter series as a world where even the youth carry dangerous concealed weapons at all times, obnoxious busy-bodies in government are given proper disdain, and wizards triumph not because of what race/family/gender they possess, but what they *do* with their lives.
To each his own. I read only the first Harry Potter book. Well, only about 80% of it before I finally lost patience with it and chucked it. Even for a children’s book I thought it was really crappy, and I never liked a story where the characters were so stereotypical and hackneyed that I could predict well in advance what they would say or do.
Rowland’s public attempts to be hip and enjoy the favor of the rich Woker Than Thou Wokety Wokes makes her as edgy as a ball of cotton. Honestly, was their anything dumber and more transparent than announcing that her Gandalf wannabe character Dumbledore was gay?
At any rate, I doubt the this little dustup with the Transtapo will cause Miss Rowland to miss any meals. She has (so far) mastered the art of keeping the commies at bay by throwing them enough red meat to keep the heat off of herself.
OT
Mifsud is dead? Some in Italy maintain he is not only dead, but was a charlatan. Hmmmm
https://www.insideover.com/politics/80-sure-that-mifsud-is-dead-what-has-become-of-the-russiagate-professor.html
Oh sure, and Jeffrey Epstein is still supply Obama and the Clintons with…..
when it comes sexes AND genders, there are 3 options:
Male
Female
Mentally Ill
chose wisely.
Literally, it is
He
She
and if your neuter yourself trying to change, you become an It.
It is refreshing to see the left eat their own. Rowling is a hard left lib who is troubled by make-believe science. She knows that anyone can call themselves anything but what’s under the dress is what really counts. She mostly is a feminist who believes in women’s rights and knows that to allow trannies into that group will destroy any actual woman’s future in sports. It will be interesting to see if she stands her ground or caves.
Agree. Don’t encourage these people to harm themselves. They should be encouraging them to discover the roots of their dysfunction and address it.
It’s hard. I have it on good authority it gets worse before it gets better, but it DOES get better.
I hate to interrupt with facts. Real women give birth. Case closed.
Mercy me. You do know that men can give birth, too, these days. The “pregnant man” stories have made headlines around the world, beginning with Thomas Beatie in 2008.
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7795344&page=1
Thomas Beatie, a married man, gave birth to his second child in Bend, Oregon, in 2008. Thomas underwent sex reassignment surgery in 2002, but kept his female reproductive organs intact so he could have children (his wife Nancy was unable to have children).
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8152999/first-man-give-birth-uk-warns-really-hard/
Hayden Cross, Britain’s first pregnant man, gave birth in 2017. He became pregnant by a sperm donor, three years after gender reassignment rendered him legally male. Cross had put the gender transition on hold to have a child.
It’s easy to dismiss this as the Left just being crazy, but far too many do not realize just how much we are losing the battle of words, and thus the battle for objective reality.
When the transgender movement says “woman”, they define it differently from most (for now) people. They have already successfully defined, from academia to the actual law, “gender” and biological sex to be two different things, and that furthermore all the terms and pronouns we’ve used for one biological sex or the other now apply exclusively to one’s “gender identity”.
This is more insidious than MiniTru from “1984” because they don’t have to cover up the past, just redefine the words to make those words what they want them to mean, and not what they actually mean.
Thus the phrase “a man loves a woman” used 100 years ago, or even now amongst most p0eple, is now made to means “an individual who identifies as the gender ‘man’ loves an individual who identifies as the gender ‘woman'”, rather than a biological male loving a biological woman.
By appropriating these words, they can make transgenderism seem normal because it used normal and common words, while what was normal is made to seem a paraphernalia by not letting any common and normal words describe it. After all, if you say “man” or “woman” when someone asks your gender, you are accepting their definitions. In order to deny transgender terminology, increasingly you have to say that you are a non-gendered individual with particular private parts, and that if you are straight you have to say you are attracted to an individual with different private parts, which makes it sound like some fetish… and this is exactly what the transgender movement calls dudes are into chicks and chicks who are into dudes.
This is far more advanced than most will admit because it hasn’t affected them YET. But it is dominant and its dominance is growing.
Rowlings has $millions, she can’t be fired.
But she can be cancelled. Her apology will come within hours/days, count on it.
And it will go something like this: I am so sorry that I recognized that there are only two sexes in my comment. I was wrong, science is wrong. There are infinite sexes, infinite genders, and anyone can wake up on any given day and proclaim themselves a woman or a man or a nonbinary biped or whatever. I never intended to dewomanize men or to demanize women or to pretend that there are such things as “men” and “women.” I was clearly being backwards in my thinking that science and biology have any role to play at all in defining the sex of anything. Gender is felt, it’s based on feeeeelz, and I just want you to know that I get that, I do. In fact, today, I think I feel very manly and have decided my pronouns are he/him/Mr. Manly. Please forgive my obtuseness and keep inviting me to all the kool kid parties!
Maybe, but I am not so sure. I think Rowland’s Harry Potter books are boring tripe (I thought the first really stunk, and never bothered with any of the others), and the writer herself is rather obnoxious, but she is no dummy. I think that Rowland is smart enough to realize that when Martina Navratilova started groveling before the Transtapo that only brought on more accusations and eventual personal and financial ruin.
So I think Rowland will try to brazen it out, with the Transtapo quickly moving on to their next target before they succeed in breaking her like they did Navratilova. Rowland is rich and popular enough that the Transtapo can’t really harm her if stands firm.
Aw, I liked the books a lot. Are they “literature” in any sense normal, educated people might argue? Likely not. But Rowling never claimed they were. She was writing a very cool story for kids, and that adults latched onto it is hardly her fault (though obviously to her benefit). I loved that series and remember being very stoked to get the final book via Amazon. Is it “literature”? Well, no. But it certainly doesn’t suck, either. There’s a lot worse young adult fiction out there. I would be happy to have my kids read this series. It teaches about the horrors of totalitarianism and the pride in doing the right thing even if it’s hard.
As to Rowling herself? She’ll fold in days and offer an abject apology to all the .0000002% of transgenders on the planet. Not because she believes she’s wrong, but because the “woke” circles she runs in will settle for nothing less.
They are good books, but their cultural roots are an inch deep. For instance, in a culture that seems never to have had religions of any kind, how did Halloween and Christmas become such holidays?
SJW TERF wars.
Also any apology will be seen as an admission of Guilt and for further attacks toward deplatforming.
But Rowling might like when she made Dumbledore gay (what WAS his interest in Harry and Tom? Maybe Tom Riddle became Voldemort because he was abused? We need a trial!)
In book seven, several girls were transfigured into Harry Potter look-alikes. So she must be wrong.
Beware totalitarian whack-jobs.
Rowling the billionaire socialist AND her Transtapo detractors.
It just doesn’t get any better than SJW’s going after each while trying to prove who is more enlightened. Rowling readily attacks anyone that doesn’t agree with her stance on pretty much any subject to it’s fitting that she gets a dose of the nutjob elixir. Contrary to popular Leftist belief and narrative, us “normies” don’t hate people with gender dysphoria. What we DO hate is having our beliefs constantly trampled by .001% of the population that demand we accept their behavior as normal.
This is the French Revolution gone international.
If your aren’t progressive enough, off with your head!
It’s your genes that determine if your a man or a women not your feelings. Trans people go to doctors because they can make them a better disguise. No doctor can change a man into a woman or a man. The real cure is a treatment that allows trans people to accept reality, the reality of their bodies, not to pander to their delusions. The medical community should seek a cure that prevents trans delusions instead of creating better disguised through plastic surgery.
It’s not your genes that determine it, because there are people who are born with one set of chromosomes but the opposite set of genitals. It’s rare but it happens. What determines it is your genitals.
As to whether surgery can change you, that’s a matter of opinion. I believe it can; if you have the commitment to make permanent changes to your anatomy, then you’re who your body now says you are. But you can’t change your sex just by saying so. That’s just ridiculous.
Who knew that Donald Trump and Franklin Graham were Radical Feminists? (RF part of TERF)
I think I have more trans friends and acquaintances than most people do, certainly most people here. And I get along fine with all of them. I respect their feelings by addressing them as they like to be addressed. That’s just being polite. It doesn’t mean I accept their assertions as the truth. So far, at least, none of them have demanded that of me.
Only one, as far as I can recall, has asked me my opinion, and I gave it: I told him (as he prefers to be addressed) that I don’t know what he’s hiding in his trousers, and I have no wish to know, but in my opinion that determines who he really is. If he’s had surgery, then as far as I’m concerned he’s really a man; otherwise he’s a woman pretending to be a man, but I’m willing to play along with that pretense because it would be rude and unfriendly not to. He didn’t like that answer, but he accepted it in the spirit I gave it.
None of my friends and acquaintances are anything like these insane bullies who insist that you acknowledge their truth and deny the one your senses tell you is correct, the ones who think 1984 is a manual. I cannot understand them at all.
Oops. I forgot to close an <i> tag. Let’s try that again.
I think I have more trans friends and acquaintances than most people do, certainly most people here. And I get along fine with all of them. I respect their feelings by addressing them as they like to be addressed. That’s just being polite. It doesn’t mean I accept their assertions as the truth. So far, at least, none of them have demanded that of me.
Only one, as far as I can recall, has asked me my opinion, and I gave it: I told him (as he prefers to be addressed) that I don’t know what he’s hiding in his trousers, and I have no wish to know, but in my opinion that determines who he really is. If he’s had surgery, then as far as I’m concerned he’s really a man; otherwise he’s a woman pretending to be a man, but I’m willing to play along with that pretense because it would be rude and unfriendly not to. He didn’t like that answer, but he accepted it in the spirit I gave it.
None of my friends and acquaintances are anything like these insane bullies who insist that you acknowledge their truth and deny the one your senses tell you is correct, the ones who think 1984 is a manual. I cannot understand them at all.