Never Meet Your Heroes
*sigh* Just my luck.
I've been wallowing in Harry Potter nostalgia during this lockdown, indulging myself with some long-overdue essay writing, re-reading the books, discovering new fan fiction, etc., and then finding myself really enjoying Rowling's new children's book "The Ickabog." So naturally J.K. Rowling has to choose this time to remind everyone that it's really important to her that people be defined by whichever sex they were assigned at birth. She got upset enough about a headline saying Creating a More Equal Post-COVID-19 World for People who Menstruate that she made a sarcastic tweet saying:
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
This reads to me like a deliberate reference to a sort of feud that has been happening, mostly in the UK, between certain feminists and trans people/trans activists. I don't understand why these feminists think that accepting trans women as women is somehow harmful to cis women or feminism. I read a thing last fall that affected to explain it in a snarky manner, but I still don't get it, except that it seems to be a contingent thing based on personal conflicts and arguments that happened in the past, and built-up resentments from people who consider themselves to be loving and tolerant being yelled at and accused of being hurtful and intolerant.
To me it seems like "people who menstruate" is a much better descriptor than "women" when you're literally talking about menstruation. After all, many women don't menstruate and some girls and some trans men and non-binary-identifying people do menstruate. But apparently in the annals of this feud the phrase "people who menstruate" has been fighting words, or something, and Rowling just had to respond.
To me, the important thing is that trans women passionately want to be women and they have gone through quite a lot to be women and why the hell would any decent person want to tell them that they're not women? I'm sure Rowling and her friends have suffered from trans women or trans advocates saying hurtful words to them but that is no excuse for her using her huge megaphone to hurt lots and lots of other trans people by telling them that they're not and never will be the sex they believe they belong to. Like, why??? To preserve the purity (ha!) of the English language? To keep the "specialness" of having always been seen as a girl/woman since birth? For me, I know that there are quite a lot of people who are biologically intersex in various ways and even more people who do not identify with the sex that matches their externally-visible genitalia at birth and I don't have the slightest problem with taking a person's word for it on whether they are male or female or gender fluid or gender queer or some other identification that seems best to them. I don't see how accepting their sexual identity and using their preferred pronouns hurts me or affects me in any negative way at all, and I certainly do see how denying their sexual identity hurts them.
Rowling went on to say, while defending herself against the massive criticism she received for her first tweet, "It isn’t hate to speak the truth." But I say it certainly can be. When Draco Malfoy taunts Harry for having no parents or Ron for being poor, what he says is true but it's definitely hateful and hurtful. When Rita Skeeter "outs" Hagrid in print as a half-giant it is the truth but it is also hateful and hurtful. It certainly seems hateful and hurtful to me to insist on confronting trans people with the "truth" of their originally-assigned sex. She also said "I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans" which is just laughably ludicrous because ... "if"? I mean, really, IF???
So what is a giggling buttmonkey Rowling-worshipping fangirl to do when her idol has feet and maybe even whole legs of clay? I can certainly understand why many people want to "cancel" her, throw out their Harry Potter books, never read anything new she writes, etc. I'm not going to do that, though! I enjoy her writing far too much to just stop reading it and it would hardly be fair anyway considering how much I read and value far more problematic writers like Georgette Heyer (who would probably have been in favor of whipping trans people at the cart's tail), M. M. Kaye, Dorothy Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, and many others.
I think some people are reacting a bit too strongly to Rowling's shortcomings because they valued her too much, looked up to her too much, idealized her too much. That doesn't really apply to me. I know I had a reputation as an author-worshipper but that was mostly a joke, or at the best an exaggerated effusion of fannish gratitude for pleasure given and anticipated. I've greatly enjoyed her books but she's never been someone I looked up to as a moral inspiration or depended on for moral lessons. Certainly I don't feel betrayed or even very surprised by what I consider to be her harmful opinion and wrongful behavior.
On the other hand, I do feel disappointed, disapproving, and embarrassed to associate myself too closely with her. I certainly don't want to give the impression that my own reading pleasure is more important than the happiness and safety of people who are trans. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think it would actually help trans people in any real way if I refrained from re-reading my Harry Potter books or buying the next Cormoran Strike book. Maybe I'm just rationalizing, but it would be a major sacrifice of enjoyment from me with very little actual good achieved.
I did unfollow Rowling on Twitter (I know! so meaningful!) and I feel distinctly uncomfortable gushing about The Ickabog right now and trying to get other people to read it and discuss it with me, which I was just about to do. But I will go ahead and finish and post the "Epilogue" essay I have been working on, or if I don't it will be because I was too lazy or too busy obsessing over Black Lives Matter protests and the latest Covid-19 numbers, not because I'm expressing my disapproval of J. K. Rowling's prejudices about trans people.
[See UPDATE below]
I've been wallowing in Harry Potter nostalgia during this lockdown, indulging myself with some long-overdue essay writing, re-reading the books, discovering new fan fiction, etc., and then finding myself really enjoying Rowling's new children's book "The Ickabog." So naturally J.K. Rowling has to choose this time to remind everyone that it's really important to her that people be defined by whichever sex they were assigned at birth. She got upset enough about a headline saying Creating a More Equal Post-COVID-19 World for People who Menstruate that she made a sarcastic tweet saying:
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
This reads to me like a deliberate reference to a sort of feud that has been happening, mostly in the UK, between certain feminists and trans people/trans activists. I don't understand why these feminists think that accepting trans women as women is somehow harmful to cis women or feminism. I read a thing last fall that affected to explain it in a snarky manner, but I still don't get it, except that it seems to be a contingent thing based on personal conflicts and arguments that happened in the past, and built-up resentments from people who consider themselves to be loving and tolerant being yelled at and accused of being hurtful and intolerant.
To me it seems like "people who menstruate" is a much better descriptor than "women" when you're literally talking about menstruation. After all, many women don't menstruate and some girls and some trans men and non-binary-identifying people do menstruate. But apparently in the annals of this feud the phrase "people who menstruate" has been fighting words, or something, and Rowling just had to respond.
To me, the important thing is that trans women passionately want to be women and they have gone through quite a lot to be women and why the hell would any decent person want to tell them that they're not women? I'm sure Rowling and her friends have suffered from trans women or trans advocates saying hurtful words to them but that is no excuse for her using her huge megaphone to hurt lots and lots of other trans people by telling them that they're not and never will be the sex they believe they belong to. Like, why??? To preserve the purity (ha!) of the English language? To keep the "specialness" of having always been seen as a girl/woman since birth? For me, I know that there are quite a lot of people who are biologically intersex in various ways and even more people who do not identify with the sex that matches their externally-visible genitalia at birth and I don't have the slightest problem with taking a person's word for it on whether they are male or female or gender fluid or gender queer or some other identification that seems best to them. I don't see how accepting their sexual identity and using their preferred pronouns hurts me or affects me in any negative way at all, and I certainly do see how denying their sexual identity hurts them.
Rowling went on to say, while defending herself against the massive criticism she received for her first tweet, "It isn’t hate to speak the truth." But I say it certainly can be. When Draco Malfoy taunts Harry for having no parents or Ron for being poor, what he says is true but it's definitely hateful and hurtful. When Rita Skeeter "outs" Hagrid in print as a half-giant it is the truth but it is also hateful and hurtful. It certainly seems hateful and hurtful to me to insist on confronting trans people with the "truth" of their originally-assigned sex. She also said "I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans" which is just laughably ludicrous because ... "if"? I mean, really, IF???
So what is a giggling buttmonkey Rowling-worshipping fangirl to do when her idol has feet and maybe even whole legs of clay? I can certainly understand why many people want to "cancel" her, throw out their Harry Potter books, never read anything new she writes, etc. I'm not going to do that, though! I enjoy her writing far too much to just stop reading it and it would hardly be fair anyway considering how much I read and value far more problematic writers like Georgette Heyer (who would probably have been in favor of whipping trans people at the cart's tail), M. M. Kaye, Dorothy Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, and many others.
I think some people are reacting a bit too strongly to Rowling's shortcomings because they valued her too much, looked up to her too much, idealized her too much. That doesn't really apply to me. I know I had a reputation as an author-worshipper but that was mostly a joke, or at the best an exaggerated effusion of fannish gratitude for pleasure given and anticipated. I've greatly enjoyed her books but she's never been someone I looked up to as a moral inspiration or depended on for moral lessons. Certainly I don't feel betrayed or even very surprised by what I consider to be her harmful opinion and wrongful behavior.
On the other hand, I do feel disappointed, disapproving, and embarrassed to associate myself too closely with her. I certainly don't want to give the impression that my own reading pleasure is more important than the happiness and safety of people who are trans. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think it would actually help trans people in any real way if I refrained from re-reading my Harry Potter books or buying the next Cormoran Strike book. Maybe I'm just rationalizing, but it would be a major sacrifice of enjoyment from me with very little actual good achieved.
I did unfollow Rowling on Twitter (I know! so meaningful!) and I feel distinctly uncomfortable gushing about The Ickabog right now and trying to get other people to read it and discuss it with me, which I was just about to do. But I will go ahead and finish and post the "Epilogue" essay I have been working on, or if I don't it will be because I was too lazy or too busy obsessing over Black Lives Matter protests and the latest Covid-19 numbers, not because I'm expressing my disapproval of J. K. Rowling's prejudices about trans people.
[See UPDATE below]