Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling released a lengthy essay in response to the mounting attacks she’s received from transgender activists forcing an effort to erase womanhood and targeting the Harry Potter author for refusing accept their logic that a man can “become” a woman merely by asserting that he has done so.
Rowling has been branded a hater, even a “terrorist” who “wants trans kids to die” because she disagrees with the far left’s transgender agenda. In the essay published on her website, Rowling notes that her beef with the trans activists began when she started researching the transgender issue for a new book, as well as for her various charities.
The bestselling author explained “TERF,” a particularly vile new attack radical trans supporters are using to silence biological women:
‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.
But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).
Rowling then went on to explain that she has several charities that cater to at-risk women and children and the radical trans movement is only putting these vulnerable people at still more risk of being abused at the hands of men claiming to be women.
Moreover, Rowling says she’s concerned that the radical activists have been allowed to become mainstream and that undue inculcation of the trans agenda into among the youth is causing an explosion of sudden transitioning among children — and mostly girls — because of peer pressure and not for medical or mental health related reasons.
“It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender,” Rowling said. “Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”
Rowling quoted researcher isa Littman, whose 2018 study about Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria rang the tocsin of warning: “Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors,” Rowling wrote quoting Littman.
The Harry Potter scribe next warned readers about the extreme hate visited upon anyone who opposes trans activism. The activists have even successfully cowed people into accusing opponents of “wanting kids to die” over their opposition to the radicals.
The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’
Rowling does not dismiss transgender transition entirely. But what she is warning about is that the long transition periods filled with checks and balances, safeguards, and mental health evaluations are being done away with in favor of quick transitions that often end up being destructive to biological women.
I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.
Rowling added that the current regime of trans extremists are far more misogynistic than any old time sexists have ever been.
“Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else,” she wrote.
Rowling also opened up about the abuse she suffered at the hands of a violent first husband.
Finally, Rowling added another point that coincides with her support for biological women and that is the right to freedom of speech. With radical feminists and extremist trans activists seeking to have her publishers and film associates ban her from earning a living, she understands how the radical left seeks not to merely disagree with their opponents, but to destroy them utterly as human beings.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.
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