The “Harry Potter” author slammed a newly enacted hate-crime law in Scotland in a series of posts on X in which she referred to transgender women as men.
J.K. Rowling shared a social media thread on Monday, the day a new Scottish hate-crime law took effect, that misgendered several transgender women and appeared to imply trans women have a penchant for sexual predation. On Tuesday, Scottish police announced they would not be investigating the “Harry Potter” author’s remarks as a crime, as some of Rowling’s critics had called for.
“We have received complaints in relation to the social media post,” a spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a statement. “The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.”
Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act criminalizes “stirring up hatred” against people based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity.
I’ll risk the downvotes. I actually agree with her. It feels like mockery of my gender when men dress and present as female. They don’t have periods. They don’t experience child birth. They don’t have the risk of ovarian cancer, ovarian cysts, fibroids, and other health conditions. Many of them did not have to suffer the same gender discrimination in childhood, that I, and other born females, experienced. If they traveled to a foreign country, like Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, all they would need to do is dress differently to suddenly have more rights than women who are born female. My mom (woman who raised me) had a male relative that would dress as her and often pretend to be her. I don’t know where she would go, when he was around all of us, but he honestly did not care about women, or women’s rights. He would mock feminism and bully my older sister for being very feminine. For him, it seemed to just be a costume he would wear in order to sponge off of my mother’s role. As her, he would drive her car, use her bed, eat her food, and bully both my older sister and I. Everyone just seemed to think it was funny. I thought it was cruel and disturbing. His sexuality wasn’t changed by his choice of costume. I walked into my mother’s bedroom, when I was a teen, and saw him standing by the bed, in her clothing, with his male appendage protruding upward from the underwear he was wearing. It was her underwear. He didn’t apologize, or cover himself. He had left the door wide open, knowing everyone else was home. He wanted to be seen like that. I think it was his way of trying to assert his dominance. Maybe he thought I would run away from home. Looking back at it, I should have. That would have forced everyone in town to alert the police, and investigate why I had left. I was focused on maintaining my grades and playing sports, as a teen, and didn’t want to sacrifice my future by running away from home, so I stayed.
And now society wants to give that man in a dress the same gender recognition as me. I’m sorry, but I don’t think he deserves it. I don’t think I should have to call him, a “her”.
I’m sorry you had a bad apple around you when growing up, but please do not think every trans person is like that. A lot just want to live their lives and wear what they think looks good on them. Nobody is taking your right to food away just because you didn’t suffer through famine like a lot of poor people either. You’re rightfully mad about male privilege in society, while insisting on your own privilege of being born female.
The person you are arguing with has a nazi dogwhistle username and a post history full of the same…
You have my sympathy, but it sounds like you had a super fucked up childhood and you’re now externalizing that trauma onto an unrelated group of people.
Your uncle was a sexual predator, not a trans woman. Trans people are not usually gender fluid so they don’t switch back and forth like your uncle and they certainly don’t pretend to be a real relative to bully that person’s children!?
Honestly it sounds like your uncle had serious issue with your mother, probably stemming from his own childhood abuse. Abusers are often abused. You don’t mention them, but I’d bet your mothers parents were not great either.
I am truly sorry for what happened to you growing up. That’s really fucked and no one deserves that.
I would caution that you are using this experience to shape the definition of all transgender people in your mind. There’s all types of people, good and bad, this is the same with transgender people. This is assuming the person you described is even transgender, which they may not be.
I’d point out that all of the struggles that you face as a biologically born woman, aren’t erased because somebody else has joined your gender. There are plenty of cis women who don’t experience childbirth, periods, ovarian cysts, fibroids, etc… they’re still women. Your struggles in these areas don’t gatekeep other people from experiencing womanhood. If a country achieves true gender equality, are the cis female population of that country no longer able to call themselves women because they didn’t experience discrimination growing up?
All the things you’ve mentioned aren’t things that define womanhood. They define individual women’s struggles. Just because there are members of the gender that have never experienced this, does nothing to undermine these struggles. Feminism exists to help ameliorate the various struggles that affect women disproportionately. That’s not being threatened here. If anything it’s bringing more attention to it.
A person rejecting the identity of their biology and often their whole social life to be identified as another gender is not done as a mockery. Maybe this did happen in your case. But I assure you that the majority of transgender people want to celebrate the best parts of the gender they are transitioning into and be another person to stand up for them and fight for their equality.
The struggles women are subjected to are brutal. Don’t reject an ally who wants to join you.