But, in fact, Rowling has been doing the most rational, empathetic thing possible: She’s been unabashedly standing up for the safety and privacy of females and single-sex spaces, and she’s being smeared for it like never before.
Rowling tweeted Thursday and Friday about Australia’s policy that preferred gender pronouns be used in a court of law as a matter of respect and a way to ensure public confidence in the court.
She responded: “Asking a woman to refer to her male rapist or violent assaulter as 'she' in court is a form of state-sanctioned abuse. Female victims of male violence are further traumatized by being forced to speak a lie.”
When an online user asked if such a thing had actually happened in the UK, where Rowling is from, she responded in the affirmative.
“It has happened. Here's one UK example, where a judge told a woman who was beaten up by a trans-identified male that she showed 'bad grace' by refusing to call her attacker 'she' in court.”
For pointing this out, Rowling was and continues to be ferociously attacked online. One user repeatedly called her a c*** and suggested she have someone taste her food because it should be poisoned and Rowling should “die already.” Ever since she made her stance on abolishing the privacy and safety of females in favor of males who identify as females, she’s been smeared publicly by mobs of online users. This has gone on for years but always seems to escalate even more.
One author who goes by Dan Friedman online suggested a theory for this backlash. Cleverly, Friedman uses the analogy of a bevy of Harry Potter characters.
“The reason a lot of young progressives are so mad at JK Rowling is that they read the books as kids, and they thought they were Harry or Hermione. But they grew up into people like Percy or Dolores Umbridge or Cornelius Fudge or Rita Skeeter. And they know it. And on some level, they’re ashamed.”
Friedman continued. “I’m reading the fifth book with my niece and it’s kind of astonishing how well it tracks to contemporary controversies. And Rowling is on the same side now that she was when she wrote it. Which is the side of people who tell the truth, against people who suppress and deny the truth in service of their ideology.”
In many ways, this seems true. Rowling wrote Harry Potter as a single mom and has enjoyed a massive rise to fame and fortune doing what she loves as a writer. It’s an incredible story of rags to riches and also, frankly, a talented woman making her mark on the world. Harry Potter will remain in the English lexicon for decades, if not longer. This is inspiring for anyone, not just women. The books and characters have endeared themselves to men and women, children and adults, alike. She’s spawned a franchise. Her success is undeniable.
But in the last few years, since she first spoke out on this offering her support to Maya Forstater, a UK woman who lost her job for believing that males cannot truly transition into females, Rowling’s been smeared by some of the very people who adored her. (Forstater ultimately went to court over the issue and recently won. Rowling has been a vocal proponent, backing her the whole time.)
Rowling’s been clear that she doesn’t suffer from “transphobia” but rather, due to personal experiences with abuse, she’s adamant that girls and women still retain their gender, their safety, their privacy, and spaces of their own to accommodate those things. Even though this seems like a common sense, kind view of humanity, progressives have come for her. It’s really shown the fallacy of both progressive thought, which purports to be inclusive, and late-stage feminist movements, which were really derived to enhance choice.
Rowling is now smeared by people who used to admire her because she’s failed to fall into either one of these categories and instead, continues to courageously fight for something no one could have conceived would be an issue today.
Rowling’s an amazing writer but her stance on women might be what separates her from her peers. The way she’s been constantly vilified by people who feel betrayed, because she wrote their favorite book series, demonstrates the fallacy of their own progressive ideas.
