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I don't like this defense of Rowling. By the same token the actual position of George Lincoln Rockwell, David Duke or William Luther Pierce isn't what their enemies say they are. But everyone on some level understands that these guys are ultimately not on the same team as BLM, the ADL and whoever supports those things.
To play with the context a little bit, and introduce some snark: If I'm not a racist and I fund a homeless shelter for white people only, am I still not a racist? I mean, I have a lot of black friends, and I do want them to have civil rights, just not the same civil rights I as a white person have. I'm just against the excesses of the modern black activist movement.
I think there is a very obvious ingroup and outgroup distinction that people can very obviously see past. It doesn't matter what the fine print says. Ultimately Rowling is not on the 'correct' team. And in the name of the ideological/intellectual wave that carried feminism: Just like a black person need not define what 'acceptable' means by the wants of white people with power, trans people should not need to define what 'acceptable' means by the wants of women with power. Just like, in the past, women said that they need not define what is 'acceptable' by the wants of men with power.
Rowling, and women, have power. If they are choosing to not lend it to trans women they are doing harm to them. The prison example is especially obvious with regards to this.
I don't think there is an ideological/intellectual tradition worse equipped to deal with trans arguments than feminism. The only way that has been demonstrated is to out yourself as a caricature of a conservative that is pulling the ladder up behind him before the poor people show up. That then mocks them as he is up there and they are down there by telling them to hoist themselves up by their bootstraps.
Literally every other group is allowed segregated spaces, so of course you're not? This kind of thing is allowed to exist, and allowed to grift huge amounts of money from government and charity funds, and nobody considers any of this even remotely racist. In fact you're racist if you question it! (You might remember the person operating this charity as the same one who walks around in traditional African garb and then gets offended when people ask where she's from.) We've seen segregated dorms be allowed and even praised. Why shouldn't this be fine?
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I'd say it would be more accurate if you compared it to Oprah Winfrey getting cancelled for opposition to awarding black-only scholarships to transracial people, and donating some of her fortune for a scholarship for "cisblack" people, and then someone making an analogy to Jim Crow in order to attack her.
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Why would that require creating a homeless shelter for white people only? Black people likely suffer much more from these excesses (and the following actions, like destruction of police effectiveness) than white people. If we lived in a world where major cause of white people's homelessness would be black people - then in that world, having such shelter might make sense, but we're not living in such world.
That's like saying if you have money and you don't give it to me, as much as I want and when I want, then you are doing harm to me and I am justified in attacking you.
I didn't say that being against the excesses of the modern black activist movement required you to create a homeless shelter for white people only.
The point being made is that you obviously can't display a certain amount of ingroup favoritism for certain groups without that favoritism being framed as bellicose towards the groups not being favored. Even by Rowlings own standard such a thing would be considered wrong. She would, like most people, consider a white only space to be racist. Yet in her defense of herself she plays that exact same scenario out by making trans people the outgroup and women the ingroup. All the while saying, just like all the racists before her, that she doesn't hate anyone, she just wants to protect her ingroup.
I don't think you have any idea what a world without black people would look like. Considering the massive costs associated with propping up every black population on the planet with the labor of white people. I don't accept your statement.
Welcome to the feminism Rowling supports. Western society has been gearing themselves towards this exact goal on behalf of women for decades. Your preference for arguments, logic and reasoning is, I'm sorry to say, not relevant. The point here is that Rowling supports this stuff on her behalf. She sees no issues with the logic of men handing women their 'money' and that any man who doesn't accept that is a misogynist. But now that she has 'money' as a woman, she refuses to acknowledge the paradigm she would have been arguing in favor for a few decades ago and balks at the notion of being called a transphobe.
Does it work in all directions? I.e. is "promoting women in $thing" obvious sign for hatred of all males? Is NAACP a racist hate organization? Does any affirmative action program have the racial hatred of white people at its core? Is a scholarship available only to women, or only to persons of Native American descent, an obvious mark for hatred of men or all persons who aren't Native Americans? I mean, that's a consistent position, I just want to make sure whether or not it is your position.
Did Rowling actually say any man who is not actively working for a feminist movement is doing harm to women?
That's not how it would work for someone like Rowling. Who ingroups women and minorities.
For someone like myself, yes, the NAACP is a racist hate group just as much as David Duke and his former KKK chapter was. Yes, the affirmative action programs have the racial hatred of white people at its core just like Jim Crow laws had hatred of black people at its core. Yes, a scholarship only for women is sexist and hateful towards men just like men only being allowed into school was sexist and hateful towards women. Now, at no time did either side of any of these issues describe themselves as hateful in any way. But that doesn't change the fact that the victors of history describe their defeated foes that way.
To clarify, I would not use the word hate to describe these things, just ingroup bias. But people like Rowling have been using terminology such as 'hate' for a long time. Since they accept the cultural narrative of the victors. I just think it's fair it gets applied to people like Rowling by the same standard.
I doubt I could find a direct quote. But considering the feminism she supports which demands that men do give their power away to women or be branded whatever slur is popular with the feminists I don't see why I would need to. I think it would be a fair statement to say that people like Rowling believe the patriarchy does harm to women. And we can just work our way back from there.
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I can't tell whether you're saying this as an articulation of what anti-JK-ists believe, or saying it unironically yourself, but either way, it's inaccurate in the same way that "You have money, by not giving it to me you are impoverishing me" is. Not helping != harming.
Within the context of victimary discourse, which Rowling accepts on her end as a woman, there's nothing inaccurate about it. Feminism says men are obligated to do their part in helping women. You might think that this reasoning is 'inaccurate' and have your own preferred outlook on it but that's just a very obviously not congruent with what is happening in reality. Western society is geared towards this. Laws have been written, action taken and Rowling likes this when it benefits her.
But now that the power is in her hands she is a lot more conservative with who gets to benefit from it. Suddenly women should not be obligated to help trans women.
Which is a perfectly consistent position if you believe trans women are men. Which, as far as I can tell, she does, and is the belief which gets her the hate.
If that were the position she takes I'd be fine with it. She could just call herself a transphobe and move on. But she tries to wriggle her way out of the derogatory labels through the same kind of nuance David Duke would afford himself if asked if he is a racist who hates black people. Rowling wouldn't accept that gambit on behalf of David. So I don't see why anyone should accept hers.
People should accept a derogatory and politically damaging contentious label chosen by their opponents....because?
To what end? It's simultaneously possible to be for trans people living as they want where it doesn't conflict with other concerns like safety - and thus not be a bigot by many reasonable people's standards- without accepting the metaphysical tenet that they are women as such, due to the obvious problems it causes.
In fact: this was the sort of tolerance that transpeople got and were happy with until relatively recently when activists thought they'd gained the whip hand.
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Except believing trans women are men isn’t transphobic, it’s a definition question. An important definition question, but one nonetheless.
It is transphobic by any mainstream formulation of the trans movement. There is probably a formulation of transgenderism that doesn't require twaw and a dozen people probably can be found who believe in it but when you lose every single main stream proponent of a cause in your attempt to steel man a position and simply stating your formulation aloud would in fact get you canceled publicly by the movement I'm not really sure what you're accomplishing. There is also a formulation of transgenderism run by right wing conservative trans people, but it would be wrong to then conclude that fighting transphobia isn't primarily a cause of progressives.
That requires you to accept the formulation of the trans movement, which is dumb.
The term transphobia is just a moniker to separate the good and bad people from the perspective of the trans movement. It's just incoherent noise if you don't accept the formulation of the trans movement.
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I'm pretty sure she is being called a transphobe precisely because of that belief of hers. Am I missing something?
But regardless of that:
'Believing black people are dumber than whites isn't racist. It's a question regarding psychological matter of fact.'
'Believing women shouldn't be allowed to vote isn't misogynistic. It's a question of democratic franchisement'
I don't think Rowling would accept that logic. I think she would call anyone who said that a racist misogynist.
It's not about what I, you or any people outside the Overton window think. It's about what Rowling thinks in every other context. This is her world. She broke the rules. And now she wants her case to be heard on grounds she would reject for anyone else.
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Why should she accept her opponent's terminology? The term "transphobe" is derogatory, indicating a bigoted hatred of trans people (never mind the etymology of 'phobe').
Because it's not her opponents terminology any more than it is hers. The only problem she has with it is that she is the target. Outside of that she accepts every single premise around such rhetorical devices. Racist, homophobe, misogynist. That's her home. That's how she judges others.
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I think Amadan's defense was good from a factual position, but I agree that feminism is ill-equipped to fight off the superweapons it created to gain power. One would hope that people will learn a lesson, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Yes, I should have been more clear about the things I do like vs don't like. It's a good writeup. @Amadan
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Well, it's more than that. Those guys might not literally want to bring back Jim Crow, but they clearly do/did not like black people and would prefer we live in a segregated society. I genuinely do not think Rowling has animosity towards trans people or wants their rights curtailed except in the very narrow sense of being able to, for example, coinhabit women's prisons.
I don't think "homeless shelter for white people" works at all as an equivalent.
Well, yes, obviously true.
Regardless of whether or not transwomen should coinhabit women's prisons, whether or not they do or do not seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance. Do you really think Rowling would dedicate as much effort and energy into her activism if she thought problems on this magnitude were the main issues of the trans movement?
Then why do trans activists push for it so hard? Just concede it then.
I should clarify that what I mean is that it seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance to a person who claims to care about women's issues generally. It's clear why this would be a significant issue for trans activists, but not clear to me why it should be a problem of similar magnitude to women's rights activists in general, as Rowling claims to be.
To put it another way, trans activists care about issues that trans people face. They believe that one of the main issues that trans people face is the fact that elements of society do not recognize them as their chosen gender. They believe that this lack of recognition is expressed in many ways, for example in the prison system, via being compelled to inhabit the prison of their biological sex rather than their chosen gender. They might also believe that i.e. trans women who are made to inhabit men's prisons suffer greatly at an individual level, and care specifically about alleviating the suffering of members of their tribe. Thus it seems clear to me how this issue slots into the greater project of trans activists of having society recognize them as their chosen gender rather than assigned at birth gender.
However, JK Rowling claims to be interested first and foremost in women's rights in general. If she perceived the most important problem facing society to be the potential advancement of trans rights, and thus stated that her main mission was the frustration of the advancement of trans rights, in just the same way that trans activists have as their central mission being pro-advancement of trans rights, it would make sense for her to care about i.e. 'should they be assigned to the prison of their chosen gender or not' just as much as trans activists do but in an equal and opposite sense. But JK Rowling doesn't claim to be an anti-trans-rights-activist, or proclaim that the potential increase in trans acceptance is of significant importance in general. She even claims to be for trans-rights in some sense. What she most specifically claims to be is a feminist, and that her main mission is women's rights in general. Yet, she makes an almost disproportionate amount of her online presence and activism about combating these specific areas like trans people being admitted to womens prisons and etc.
A rational person who cared most about women's rights but did not specifically support some areas of trans-rights would still not spend as much time caring or thinking about these specific trans issues as Rowling does: there are bigger fish to fry facing women even in her home country, but especially around the world.
It reminds me to an old shibboleth called "voting against your interests". The story went all these poor rednecks vote Republican, but Republicans push through pro-business policies, while Democrats would have pushed through welfare, therefore the poor rednecks are voting against their interest. Well, I don't think people should get to claim what is and isn't a miniscule in the name of another group, if the group is loudly claiming otherwise.
What you did here ended up being a bit of a sleight-of-hand. Trans women in prison are a specific issue for both sides, but by slipping in "not being recognized as their chosen gender" you're trying to claim it's a general issue for trans people. Well, TERFs can do, and do the same by claiming the general issue is oppression by the patriarchy, and putting trans women in women's prisons is just a specific instance of a general problem.
I would imagine that a rational person who cares about trans rights would not spend so much time caring about putting rapists who had a sentencing-day realization they're trans into women's prisons either, yet here we are.
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That's not clear at all. The caricature of the racist who blindly hates everyone that's not like themselves is just fiction. Most e-celeb racists I know of make a very clear point of displaying themselves as not being that since it's recognized as a dehumanizing trope perpetuated by their enemies. They'd say they like black people just as much as the liberals who keep moving into areas with 'better schools' which coincidentally leaves them living in ever less black neighborhoods. Even the founder of Volksfront, in an interview, said that they don't hate anyone. That it's all about justice and being able to live in peace.
Hell, you might even say that they like white people like Rowling likes women. And that they dislike black people like Rowling dislikes trans people. It's not that they actually dislike anyone. Rowling just recognizes that men are dangerous to women and that trans women are men. I mean, that wouldn't fly past Rowling when David Duke says it about blacks, but here Rowling is going for that gambit anyway. It's just silly.
On a side note, if you offered racists like GLR or WLP a compromise of being allowed the legal and social privileges to treat black people like women treat men, they'd jump on it.
I think it obviously works as a demonstration of bias. You can't deny shelter based on group favoritism without having to answer for the obvious nature of the favoritism. Sure, in modern society you don't have to so long as you favor and discriminate the correct groups. But here in the abstract I think we can recognize the similarity. If you favor white over black or straight over gay or whatever, are you not then, by the vocabulary Rowling would use without hesitation, some sort of -ist or -phobe? I think that by Rowlings position in totality she is by definition a transphobe. A bigot. A hater. And I think it's fair to call her those things considering how she treats her outgroups. It's literally the same script just turned against her.
Even the most comical caricatures of evil racism can rationalize some sort of justifying mechanism or system for why they discriminate against the outgroup. I think people very obviously recognize that sort of thing for the poor cover that it is. Rowling is not an old school liberal just like modern day racists are not 19th century progressives. She is a transphobe like David Duke is a racist.
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