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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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