Part of the reason I started this newsletter is to find a non-facebook way to store my longform posts in a medium easier to search than the zuccfeed, and according to Memories it’s the one year anniversary of my response to JK Rowling’s trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) blog post and to be honest, we may as well rebut her nonsense because it is still utter drivel. The perk of reposting: adding proper links!
Originally posted 6/10/2020
maaan there's several things I want to post about (general job update- things are going well! The revived campaign to rename things at Clemson- overdue but now there's momentum! etc.) but 1) I don't want to get spammy in the feed and 2) I have a finite # of time so, priorities and this evening's topic is: Joanne Kathleen Rowling and her transphobic manifesto she posted today on her website.
I have two main points: 1) the existence of trans people isn't a threat to women and her arguments are more reductive of gender binary and 2) Death of the Author and the consumer aka you should read more books and it's okay to let go of childhood things
the tl;dr of her post today is that the mask is off and she describes how she got into TERF-y (trans-exclusionary radical feminism, which is neither rad nor feminist) politics, along with some very tired whatabouts like "men prey on girls in bathrooms" as if the US hasn't had this discussion for years now (and also had the unpleasant side effects of butch cis women getting questioned about their bathroom presence even though they're just there to pee- thinking something similar will happen for Idaho's new trans athlete bill to be challenged in court). There's also some gross conjecture where she assumes trans men are confused, mostly autistic women who can't make their own decisions and ughhhhh it's A Lot of words to say "I'm a bigot who lives in a castle and I'm afraid of one of the most vulnerable communities"
For so-called feminists to turn around and gatekeep who is and isn't women is incredibly hypocritical. To say women should not be put in a box of societal gender expectations and then go, "oh, but based on your sex, you absolutely should get in this box" is holding up the systems while saying dismantle them. The existence of trans women does not negate my own innate sense of being female, and I'm not going to go to trans men and be like "oh you use menstrual products? yessss sisters!" Systemic barriers that affect women also affect trans folks, to a stronger degree- sure, at my last job my salary was $30k less than my male counterpart even though I did more (another story for another day...), I wouldn't be straight up fired simply for existing, which is the case in many states who haven't expanded their discrimination laws (lookin' at you, Idaho).
Rowling lucked out on her publishing- her books happened to release at approximately the same ages as a giant generational cohort, so it felt like growing up with the characters. A lot of the book/movie midnight releases I've gone to were for Harry Potter related things. It's a meaningful part of many people's childhoods, but does it even make sense to financially support anything HP related knowing she'll get residuals in some fashion? Fortunately, there's the Death of the Author concept- after an art creation is released into the world and consumers engage with it, it becomes its own thing no matter what the creators say or intend. There's obviously still DNA between her brain and her work, but you, the consumer can interpret it however you please. Sci-fi folks do the same with Ender's Game and Orson Scott Card. It's also entirely possible to read other books to see if it's the magic school genre you like, or having characters your age, etc. When I think back to midnight releases, I mostly remember hanging out with my friends, sometimes in costume, and then having long conversations afterward picking apart whatever we watched and how it compared to books, etc. It's no loss for me to cut the author out because she wasn't the main thing I remember from those anyway.