J.K. Rowling on the Personal Cost of Standing up to Trans Activists

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Last week the NY Times published an article about trans activists under the amusing headline “Transgender Activists Question the Movement’s Confrontational Approach.” Here’s how it opened.

After a Democratic congressman defended parents who expressed concern about transgender athletes competing against their young daughters, a local party official and ally compared him to a Nazi “cooperator” and a group called “Neighbors Against Hate” organized a protest outside his office.

When J.K. Rowling said that denying any relationship between sex and biology was “deeply misogynistic and regressive,” a prominent L.G.B.T.Q. group accused her of betraying “real feminism.” A few angry critics posted videos of themselves burning her books.

I pointed out that the author, Jeremy Peters was downplaying the reality experienced by people like J.K. Rowling who dare to stand up to the trans activists. Just from reading her tweets I was aware of two death threats she’d received in the previous week. Boiling that kind of rage down to a comment about “real feminism” is missing the forest and the trees to focus on a leaf. In fact, the whole thing feels like a fig leaf being used to cover the ugly reality of trans activism online.

Today, Rowling offered her own response and it’s a doozy. She notes that she has been targeted thousands of times for threats. Even her children have been targeted. And she recalls something I had written about at the time: Dr. Hillary Cass, author of the Cass Review of gender affirming care was advised not to ride public transportation for her own safety.

The rewriting of history begins.

Opponents of gender ideology haven’t merely ‘endured unsparing criticism’. I haven’t simply been told I ‘betrayed real feminism’ or received a few book-burning videos. 

I’ve been sent thousands of threats of murder, rape and violence. A trans woman posted my family’s home address with a bomb-making guide. My eldest child was targeted by a prominent trans activist who attempted to doxx her and ended up doxxing the wrong young woman. I could write a twenty thousand word essay on what the consequences have been to me and my family, and what we’ve endured is NOTHING compared to the harm done to others. 

By standing up to a movement that relies on threats of violence, ostracisation and guilt-by-association, all of us have been smeared and defamed, but many have lost their livelihoods. Some have been physically assaulted by trans activists. Female politicians have been forced to hire personal security on the advice of police. The news that one of the UK’s leading endocrinologists, Dr Hillary Cass, was advised not to travel by public transport for her own safety should shame everyone who let this insanity run amok. 

Lest we forget, gender apostates have been targeted for crimes such as doubting the evidential basis for transitioning children, for arguing for fair sport for women and girls, for wanting to retain single sex spaces and services, especially for the most vulnerable, and for thinking it barbaric to lock in female prisoners with convicted male sex offenders.

Now the political landscape has shifted, and some who’ve been riding high on their own supply are waking up with a hell of a hangover. They’ve started wondering whether calling left-wing feminists who wanted all-female rape centres ‘Nazis’ was such a smart strategy. Maybe parents arguing that boys ought not to be robbing their daughters of sporting opportunities might, sort of, have a point? Possibly letting any man who says ‘I’m a woman’ into the locker room with twelve-year-old girls could have a downside, after all?

Mealy-mouthed retconning of what has actually happened over the past ten years is predictable but will not stand. I don’t doubt those who’ve turned a blind eye to the purges of non-believers, or even applauded and encouraged them, would rather minimise what the true cost of speaking out was, but ‘yes, maybe trans activists went a little over the top at times’ takes are frankly insulting. A full reckoning on the effects of gender ideology on individuals, society and politics is still a long way off, but I know this: the receipts will make very ugly reading when that time comes, and there are far too many of them to sweep politely under the carpet.

She’s right that the media is way off target when taking account of just how vile trans activists often are online (and have been for years). Still, my hope that they’ll dial back their extremism is pretty limited. Even the Times article suggests it’s a question of changing their tone, not their message. They still want to give puberty blockers to 14-year-olds and teach 1st graders that girls can be boys and vice versa, they just want people to stop admitting it for a while until the backlash dies down. But Rowling is right that any improvement in the behavior of trans activists online, even one they don’t really mean, would be welcome.