Author JK Rowling has a net worth of over $ 1 billion – she’s richer than the Queen of England – and yet she seems to be getting the most fun these days as a transphobic troll on Twitter. . Go figure it out.
Rowling’s transphobia, long known to those of us who are very online, burst into the wider public sphere in 2020. After Rowling’s transphobic tweets were called out, she quintupled and wrote this which amounted to an anti-trans manifesto on her. website that spans several thousand words. There has been considerable backlash to this and extensive media coverage, but Rowling continues her transphobia relentlessly.
Maybe she’d rather be known for her fanatic essays than work on screenplays for projects like the next one. Fantastic beasts film, after his last was castigated and the film was deemed almost incomprehensible?
Frequent calls from fans to be sensitive on the subject go unheeded, as Rowling seems to see herself as some sort of just crusader. Even after stars of Rowling’s film properties like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Evanna Lynch and Eddie Redmayne speak out against her comments and support trans rights, Rowling still operates in a sphere where she is absolutely right and persecuted for her ” beliefs “.
This billionaire who has more than 14 million people on Twitter will never miss an opportunity to abuse the platform the celebrity has built her. On July 15, Rowling posted a tweet from a trans man who had a few hundred followers on suspense. LGBTQ Nation explains what triggered the situation:
The whole discussion started with Positive Birth Movement founder, author and journalist Milli Hill, who received nasty responses on Instagram when she said obstetric violence – mistreatment and abuse of people giving birth, usually in a medical context – is women in response to someone else who wrote that obstetric violence affects trans men and non-binary people.
Hill has written a long article on the ordeal. From her account, it does not appear that she lost a paid job, suffered physical violence or received death threats. Comments she cited in her article called her “harmful”, “vile” and “transphobic”. A few said they would discourage others from buying his books. She also reiterated that patriarchy is “a system that oppresses and damages women on the basis of their gender” which, she stressed, meant “sex as in biological sex”, as if women trans were not oppressed by patriarchy.
She put the headline “I won’t be silenced” at the top of the article – because of course – then @ftmlorastyrell on Twitter wrote her a short, polite response.
This elicited a polite response to Hill from a trans man on twitter, who wrote: “You obviously didn’t learn from the response JK Rowling got to her post. You are not wrong to say that obstetric violence is based on sex. But how bad is it. difficult to recognize that not all people capable of giving birth identify with the label of woman or woman? “
Apparently, Rowling has nothing better to do than scroll down Twitter for mentions of her name and anything gender-related. She even seems to have taken the time to take a screenshot of the original exchange. Rowling ignores the massive international criticism she has received for her public transphobia, instead claiming that she saw a “tsunami” of support in its wake as apparent justification for staying the course.
Judging by the tsunami of emails and letters of support I have received, if women learned anything from replying to my message, it wasn’t that they should sit down and sit down. to hush up. Solidarity with the brave and fabulous @millihill (and I love your books, by the way!) pic.twitter.com/dLdsYR73Qd
– JK Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 15, 2021
Beyond Rowling’s continued rudeness and the burning of her inheritance, the most mind-boggling thing here is that she considers herself a champion of women. Yet her constant victimization in this regard is regressive, and she and her supporters don’t stand up for women, but bigotry and exclusion.
Could you please explain exactly how using someone’s correct pronouns and having their wishes in childbirth affects you or Milli. How to refer to anyone who gives birth as a woman doesn’t prolong this obstetric violence that you both claim to be concerned about.
– Lucie (@ByrneLuc) July 15, 2021
user @ / ftmlorastyrell: I agree, that violence is based on gender, however people who identify with femininity are not the only ones who can give birth
jk rowling: it’s a violent attempt to silence women! 1 !! 1! https://t.co/7WPjpHncNW– max / luca || wants luca and young royals moots (@willesalberto) July 15, 2021
Based on the 1,000 or so retweets of this, what binds people who write emails and letters of support is not femininity, it’s transphobia. You recommended Magdalen Berns – an abusive transphobe – to 14 million people, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. https://t.co/5qrHGQkwqS
– Aidan Comerford (@AidanCTweets) July 15, 2021
A particularly virulent strain of so-called trans-exclusionist “feminism” has taken hold in Britain. To better understand this, I always direct people to the excellent opinion piece in The New York Times by Sophie Lewis, “How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans.” But Rowling being caught up in a nasty cultural movement in her birthplace doesn’t excuse her behavior. She is a public figure with enormous reach and influence, and she does active damage. With each of her actions, she feeds this rhetoric of exclusion and fuels its dangerous flames.
For what it’s worth, cis women who aren’t convinced by Rowling and her fellow human beings’ obsession with nonexistent “female erasure” will have no role in Rowling claiming to defend them.
The message you captured has nothing to do with telling women to “sit back and shut up” it requires people to be considerate and empathetic. On behalf of almost every cis woman I know, I beg you to stop using feminist slogans to hide your fanaticism… we reject you.
– Clarisse Loughrey (@clarisselou) July 15, 2021
And where is JK Rowling, daring crusader, when anything in fact awful is it going on?
Very interesting to see how JKR remains studiously silent as LGBT people are persecuted in Eastern European countries, and we have a national conversation about racism, only to arise to promote the work of another transphobe.
– Tom (@tomgabion) July 15, 2021
Innit mad that JK Rowling never picked up her phone to comment on the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, but a trans man disagrees with her and she is right on the Samsung to keep the definitions of misogynistic violence?
– Gareth Joyner (@garethjoyner) July 15, 2021
It’s unreal to me that JK Rowling continues to see himself as both a victim and a sort of martyr suffering for his cause. Rather than examining Why “The answer to her post” was so against her transphobic claims, as the most practiced troll, telling her she’s wrong only seems to encourage her. The supportive emails she says she receives from her fellow students are more important than the shameless harm she causes to trans people every time her Twitter finger itches.
No champion who thinks he is good will blithely hurt the innocent. One might think that the author of Harry potter would know.
If there’s one bright spot to take from Rowling’s latest dogpiling, it’s that those she targets can show us what bravery and persistence looks like. The young trans man she retweeted has been very engaged in the ongoing conversation and now has in his biography, “the man the myth the legend behind THIS tweet jkr.”
(image: Rob Stothard / Stringer / Getty Images, Twitter)
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