In Defence of J.K. Rowling | Hacker News Reader

In Defence of J.K. Rowling

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5 pointsjoopxiv12 comments

This seems like someone whose life this doesn't affect wondering why everyone can't just "sit above it all" and approach the topic without emotion, as if it isn't calling their identity and humanity into question and completely emotionally exhausting them

I would say the biggest issue here is that anyone cares what a hack has to say. Public court records show she stole the HP crap stories.

Good one. She’s still a TERF.

The biggest problem with JK Rowling is nobody asked her.

Nobody ever asked her what her opinion was of trans people.

She literally, out of nowhere, started blasting out her opinions about a group of people that have nothing to do with her. Nobody provoked her. She just started with occasional retweets, graduated to tweets, and now writes whole essays about the subject.

Being calm and well-reasoned and doing some research isn’t really an excuse. A lot of people who have opinions that harm other people based on their race or identity can come up with research and sound educated, or even be educated.

People make racist arguments about Black people in America based on things like crime statistics, and they even sound educated and intelligent while doing so.

In my view, all the research she cites is used as a retroactive justification for her underlying and unjustified fear of trans people. The evidence of that is that she talked about being a sexual assault survivor in her anti-trans manifesto. Again, not related to being trans, just TERF bathroom fear rhetoric.

Rejecting her bullshit is not an example society of going off the deep end into some oppressive world that rejects well-reasoned debate. She’s not being oppressed by the government or censored. We are all free to call her what we believe she is: a TERF who won’t shut the fuck up about trans people who have nothing to do with her and her privileged billionaire life.

(And as a disclosure, I have read her entire essay, the first one she posted a few weeks back. I read that whole stupid thing. I’m not speaking out of ignorance on the subject. You really can’t argue with her because you’d be arguing with someone who isn’t speaking in good faith.)

The biggest problem with JK Rowling is nobody asked her. Nobody ever asked her what her opinion was of trans people.

I was not aware that you need an invitation to express your opinion on Twitter.

She literally, out of nowhere, started blasting out her opinions about a group of people that have nothing to do with her.

This whole outrage started when she made a comment about the use of the phrase "people who menstruate". She belongs to that group.

... for her underlying fear that some trans person is going to invade her restroom and assault her

There is absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

The outrage was a lot more than that. She was following and liking people who were spreading hate against trans women.

https://medium.com/@Phaylen/jk-rowling-confirms-stance-again...

This was before she wrote that ridiculous essay (did you read it?)

> So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

Your proof is right there. She doesn’t want trans women in her bathroom because she believes it makes women less safe. Because she doesn’t believe trans women are real women, because they’re just men in dresses coming in to assault her.

It’s right there in her essay, and she tries her best (she is a good writer) to disguise it as sympathy for the vulnerability of trans people.

The completely stupid part of this argument is that nothing actually stops a man from entering a women’s bathroom. And nothing stops a woman from assaulting another woman in a bathroom.

In fact, there are plenty of unisex bathrooms and changing rooms in the world and nothing bad seems to happen en-masse.

It’s just TERF nonsense. And even if I’m totally wrong and it’s not, billionaire author JK Rowling doesn’t need to be defended. She lives a public life and if people don’t like her, that’s her problem. I’m sure she’s got plenty of friends to spend the summer with on her yacht.

> did you read it?

Yes, I disagreed with most of it. But I also think that the response is disproportionate.

Also, the article is not claiming she's right, nor am I. All of what you're saying might be true, except for 1 thing:

who isn’t speaking in good faith

I have absolutely no reason to assume this is true. She could be transphobic or just misinformed, but nothing in her past suggest that she's a hateful bigot.

The evidence of that is that she talked about being a sexual assault survivor in her anti-trans manifesto

If this trauma caused her to become transphobic, is this really the best reaction?

Of course there wasn’t evidence of bigotry when she mostly lived a private life, before she decided to get hooked into the Twitterverse. An analogy: you don’t have evidence of a crime before it happens.

The article is arguing that we should be doing more to help her understand.

This has been done. All kinds of people have made thoughtful criticisms of her essay (much more level-handed than mine).

Her response has been to double down: https://mobile.twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/127975541862187...

One must be willing to learn in order to be taught. She is not a person that can be reasoned with. She believes this thing she believes and feels the need to broadcast it widely, and she has made up her mind.

This is the hill she wants to die on. If she’s factually on to something, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make this less of a stupid thing for her to do.

> All kinds of people have made thoughtful criticisms of her essay

And I applaud that. I hope they don't drown in the noise that the less thoughtful people are making.

> Her response has been to double down

The tweet you linked is a reply to a tweet that's a great example of what's wrong with the response overall.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1279761588438867975

While I don't want to comment on the validity of the comparison, the fact that antidepressants are overprescribed is well documented. She calls doctors unnecessarily prescribing antidepressants lazy.

Saying it calls people who take mental health medication lazy is a gross misrepresentation. Whether it was a deliberate or out of laziness, it poisons the conversation.

> One must be willing to learn in order to be taught. She is not a person that can be reasoned with.

I think that conclusion was drawn way too fast.

Honest question: what the fuck is TERF? I opened wikipedia, and I'm none the wiser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF

> an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Coined in 2008,[1] the term was originally applied to a minority of feminists espousing sentiments that other feminists consider transphobic, such as the rejection of the assertion that trans women are women, the exclusion of trans women from women's spaces, and opposition to transgender rights legislation. The meaning has since expanded to refer more broadly to people with trans-exclusive views who may have no involvement with radical feminism

So is it just women who hate trans folks, or?

Someone who considers trangender women undeserving of feminist support

> So is it just women who hate trans folks, or?

Pretty much, yeah. Fuck TERFs.

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