"What about an existential threat such as climate change? What about international conflicts? What about socio-economic equality? Rowling’s cause is an important one, yet it has multiple competitors and some of them are more important."
The "Why do you even care? How does it even affect you? Don't you have better things to think about?" brand of trans boilerplate.
Coming to terms about the nature of reality and the nature of knowledge is the the prerequisite for all those other "more important" causes.
Exactly. That anything could be "more important" than the existence of women does not compute to me, a woman, and why should it? JKR is an unapologetic champion of women’s rights. So? Did anybody ask MLK to focus on nuclear disarmament instead of civil rights when his people were being subjected to segregation? Too many insist on waving at the threat of gender ideology. I'm grateful to those who stay focused and vigilant.
Correction, Joanne Rowling uses one group of women to terrorise women and children. She is NOT a champion of women’s rights. She made her money from the very people she now despises. If you’re selective in support of women and children, you’re not a feminist, you’re upholding the patriarchy
You are deluded. JK is a champion of the rights of women and children and none of your spiteful hate can change that. She is the one who has been terrorized, as have be the poor children poisoned and mutilated by “gender-affirming healthcare.” Actual child abuse.
What you wrote only makes sense if you ignore that heterosexual men are overwhelmingly responsible for assaults against women and children, often in the family home or somewhere else where the victim is eg family gatherings
I think (?) the commenter is saying the “one group of women” she terrorizes are trans “women”? That JKR made her money terrorizing trans people? idk, any wiffs of transphobia in the Harry Potter books (how she became rich)?
Yes. Because reality is important. Women are the largest oppressed minority. If we pretend they don't matter, that they don't exist as a sex class different from all men however they identify then any other cause is lost. As someone else said, no one asked MLK to consider nuclear power when he fought for his people. Women have to fight for their rights. The fight is so long and so arduous and so much constantly a rematch as some seek to take away our rights that their is neither time nor energy for another cause.
I scrolled through your recent articles and didn't find one on Climate Change. Considering that this is the most important issue in the world, your insistence on writing about other stuff is frankly weird and alarming. What is your unhealthy obsession with these secondary issues like transgenderism and immigration?
I agree completely! So many of us have been brought into this issue because of how fundamental it is. If we can't agree on the basis of reality then none of these other things would matter!
Not to be flip, but it's a bit like flat eather running for public office. The question of the earth's shape may not arise as part of their official duties, but do you really trust such a person to set policy on any issue. Regarding surgeries, however, I wonder if a more refined definition of trans is needed for some issues. For example, the debate over access to lockerooms really boils down to whether penises should be allowed. As a result, it might be wise to distinguish between a biological male who identifies as a woman and one who has had vaginalplasty.
If Thomas had advocated putting men with fetishes in women's prisons then you might have a point but since he's not what you say amounts to no more than bluster.
If you advocate for allowing males to claim they're women, then you support that by default because that's exactly what it leads to inevitably and unavoidably.
"Liberalism does not include letting men with fetishes force their lies onto society and be put into women's prisons after committing crimes."
Actualy that is what liberalism is about. It starts off tolerating a silly idea, in this case the notion that womanhood or manhood is defined by behaviours engaged in by average men and women, and then treating that idea as gospel when a few people get very aggressive in support of it. Liberals respect violence. Not being violent themselves, they think that anyone who is prepared to get violent over a cause must be really suffering, because only suffering could cause violence.
Calling a man a man is no insult, even if the called-out cries crocodile tears. It seems to me that JKR’s field of fucks to be cultivated for narcissistic, abusive men is now barren.
The sooner you grasp that there can be no compromise with a destructive, dangerous ideology the sooner you’ll actually be defending liberalism, instead of helping to kick it to death.
I feel Rowling has gotten a bit more acerbic... But is calling a male a man really "mean-spirited?"
I'm not sure why activism in one area demands activism in another -- doesn't that just lead to more tribalism rather than critical thinking on each issue?
Lastly, Rowlings essay gives a "no compromise" vibe. This makes her seem like a zealot perhaps. But is this born out of true zealotry or just that compromise -- at least on the men in women's spaces issue -- may not be functionally possible? Like is California's solution of putting extra people on the podium when a transgirl finishes in the top three really a good solution? Or maybe in community rec centers men who identify as women get use the women's showers on MWF, and must use men's TTS, and they trade off Sundays? Surely this is not workable.
Guess what? It’s not complicated. Allowing “woman” to be defined by men with perversions necessarily leads to relegating women to 2nd class status. It is letting women know they don’t count and have no say in society. And it is exactly what has been happening for years and men like you still think women should be responsible for and self-subjugate to what goes on in a man’s head.
If women don't approve of what men do, they ought not give birth to them. Yet we keep churning out these fragile beasts, so easily captured by ideologies. And why? We could shed all responsibility for what goes on in men and boys heads, if we would only draw a line in the sand, no longer using our bodies to create whole new human (especially male) lives. It's not complicated.
So you're from Oz, are ya? One of those flying monkeys perhaps? Or a munchkin? The scarecrow? I actually invented a Cult of Wizards (or CoW) with just one belief, that Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon is a soundtrack for The Wizard of Oz. It may be the only belief I accept without doubt. Is it a ratbag ideology? Probably. Casting myself as Dorothy and inviting men on journeys of discovery has not resulted in the sense of home I was searching for. Instead, I now reluctantly espouse antinatilist sentiments, knowing life is too painful and unpredictable to justify inflicting on whole new humans.
On the matter of trans ideology, the evolution of my attitudes hasn't been so different from JK Rowling. I started with an openness to understand yet found myself pushed to more extreme positions as trans people and their supporters took a mile when given an inch. For instance, I've learned they lied about considering sex and gender to be different things, as they're pushing to be able to legally change their sex, even though reassignment surgery doesn't grant males the ability to produce ova, nor can females produce sperm.
Yet as a working class person, in order to survive and keep a job that suits me, I must exist alongside a shockingly high proportion of trans and liberal folks. So I maintain compassion towards their life experiences and respect for their freedom of religion. I recognize that if I had walked through life in their shoes, I would likely arrive at the same misguided beliefs. No one is perfect.
I just wish we all could maintain mutual respect when working through our differences on this issue. I am fatigued of trans people insisting they're not allowed to exist, when what they really mean is that they're willing to coerce their comrades to suicide bomb us in an attempt to force the widespread adoption of their cultural preferences, things that have little to do with their ability to survive. On the other hand, those opposed to trans ideology tend to oversimplify it as a mere fetish. Like the person I initially responded to. I might have instead replied:
"If women don't want to be treated like 2nd class citizens, they ought to take more responsibility for what goes on in people's heads, regardless of gender. If women want to be defined by their biological capabilities, that means acknowledging that women gave birth to and raised the very people who are now treating their bodies as inconsequential. Women helped build this whacky culture. So how can women expect to be taken seriously and respected for their biological functions, if they won't take responsibility for and continue to give birth in a culture of confusion? Boiling it down to male perversion is evasion. That may be a component but it's not the whole picture."
Sorry, but I think women being taken to court for calling a man a man and forced to get naked in front of men is more important than the causes you listed. Also, I suggest everyone try reading this and change out the word ‘transgender’ with the word ‘fetishistic transvestite’.
Ah Mr Prosser. Clearly you have no skin in this game. We have all hardened a little as each small gain has resulted in far fewer societal and structural changes than we would have anticipated.
When the unamguous Supreme Court Ruling was delivered, we thought we could see clear water ahead. But look at how our cowardly government has sat on the EHCR advice amd allowed organisations and individuals to squirm and buck at the law's requirements.
The fact that the puberty blockers so called trial is going ahead, instead of gathering and analysing all the already existing evidence will be a blot on this government's reputation in years to come when its results prove nothing that isn't already known.
Then look at today's judgement on the Sandie Peggie case which will, like so many other cases, in all likelihood have to go to appeal for clarity on the discrimination element.
And don't get me started on the universities, most of whom still think they are above the law. As Naomi Cunningham said in an interview a couple of weeks ago, she is going to be very busy for quite some time to come.
Could I ask you to cut and paste your comment there? I'd rather collect all the comments in one place. I'll respond to you then. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks Margaret. I'm very happy about many of these developments. Yet I think they would also have happened had J.K. Rowling stuck to her 2020 position.
The UK High Court made clear the intent of the legislation as passed. It did not say that gender could not be written into legislation replacing or alongside sex. All up the the parliament. Which is a good place to be compared with the US where its Supreme Court does try at times to say what should be.
I can totally understand her - when you notice a specific type of wrong and resist it, you run out of mental energy for the rest. She’s done amazing, courageous work, in the face of extreme hate and threats of violence from the oh-so “kind” progressive left. It isn’t her job to focus on more issues. It’s the work of progressives to be less horrible people than they manifestly are.
She wrote something eminently reasonable, the TRAs launched into her immediately (I think they began by publishing an image of her front door) and since then her tone has toughened a bit, but her position has remained essentially unchanged. Did you feel the need simply to post something?
Many people have difficulty identifying men who are sex mimics, because the behavior evolved to be difficult to detect in humans by other humans - that’s the nature of deceptive traits in humans. Many humans can’t detect when another is lying to them, we evolved to be able to lie to each other.
Men mimic women to avoid male aggression, but also to deceive men and women in order to gain access to female groups under false pretenses.
They leverage female empathy to induce others to hide their state of being male, but have a bad habit of also leveraging empathy by deceit to replace women in female groups.
Rowling fairly consistently identifies male encroachment on female institutions as unacceptable, since it voids social boundaries evolved for the protection of women. Women assume shared life experience provides empathetic safety in female-only enclaves. With a male present, any male, that assumption of safety is taken without consent.
The protection of women’s honors, rights, safety and privileges from men imitating women is a fairly consistent position id say.
Rowling consistently supported the rights of women and girls. The trans community labeled her a TERF. I wouldn’t call her a radical feminist, but Rowling is definitely a feminist. Feminists have always been strongly on the side of liberals. They’ve never been conservative.
This topic is not split between liberals and conservatives. It has clearly split liberals. Yes, conservatives joined one side. That doesn’t make the liberals who agree with them on this one topic any less liberal. Those conservatives aren’t going to support Rowling on her other views of women.
This article doesn’t provide evidence of Rowling’s viewpoint changing, but rather focusing and clarifying. Focusing on one issue as a liberal doesn’t make one illiberal. A single person has limited attention, so we must all decide which causes are ours, and which causes, although worthy in general or in spirit, are for someone else.
And her clarifying and focused language - by calling males men even if they identify as women - is due to the need for clarity of language when arguing for women’s rights. The linguistic landscape here is so muddled and confusing that clear language is necessary for communicating one’s viewpoint. Using reality-based language is not inherently discriminatory.
The only thing I will grant in this article is that those call-out tweets do seem unnecessarily harsh. Mostly the second one. But as compared to death threats that she has received? I think some grace could be extended to her there. There’s truly no comparison between how she has communicated with others in this debate, and the worst of what she has received.
I don’t think JK is under any obligation to be “nice” when it comes to this evil ideology. She’s recognized it for the anti-women, anti-child and homophobic idiocy that it is.
No, she is in no need of any “grace.” She’s just had enough of indulging the pernicious nonsense.
I understand what you’re saying. Mostly what I see in Rowling is that she is weary, and no longer has the patience to attempt using nuanced language that spares people’s feelings while discussing this. I was just pointing out that the second tweet referenced by the OP was directed at a person more than an idea.
I think this is a fair assessment. There's a saying, "The longer you fight someone, the more like them you become." This may have been inspired by Nietzsche's quote, "When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you"; but I suspect the former is a relatively self-evident saying that has been for millennia. Many an army has gone to war intending to be the most righteous of forces, then the reality of years of combat shreds most ideals.
But anyway, I doubt Rowling could have imagined that this battle would still be burning its way through society 5 years after she made her first essay, and that the ideology behind it would be so resistant to being as comprehensively defeated in almost every way as it has been. She has hardened her views a bit, though not a huge amount I think given how much most of those on the other side hardened *their* views in the 5 years between, say, 2017 ("We should try to treat trans-women as women where possible") and 2022 ("Nurses should be sacked if they won't refer to "her penis" when dealing with catheters for convicted paedophiles in jail").
I enjoyed your piece, Thomas, though rather less some of the responses to it. But I can’t agree with what I take to be your central claim – that Rowling has, in some meaningful sense, moved away from a liberal position. I don’t see evidence for that, because nothing in liberal theory, in any of its recognised forms, entails the judgements you make about how she now expresses herself. One might find her tone, or the political wisdom of her interventions, unappealing. That is fair enough. But it has nothing to do with liberalism.
Take the two major strands. First, the procedural liberalism associated with Mill. Second, the more substantive liberalism of Kant or Rawls.
Mill’s view is straightforward: a liberal society interferes with a person’s conduct or speech only when it causes harm to others. And Mill is emphatic that harm must be distinguished from offence. Hurt feelings, insult, shock, disgust or moral outrage do not count as harm; if they did, meaningful dissent would be impossible. On that understanding, I cannot see anything Rowling has said or advocated that breaches the harm principle.
You suggest she departs from liberalism when she says that clinicians involved in gender medicine who have violated professional duties should be imprisoned. That would indeed be illiberal if she meant imprisonment without investigation, without due process, or in disregard of professional standards. But there is no indication that this is what she intends. Saying that professionals bound by an ethical code may face serious consequences if they seriously breach it is entirely compatible with – indeed part of – the liberal rule-of-law.
The other major liberal tradition – Kant’s moral philosophy and Rawls’s political liberalism – does not help your case either. These views have more substantive commitments, but not of the kind that would support your argument. Kant and Rawls both stress the equal moral status of persons as free and rational agents. But nothing in either’s work suggests that liberalism demands politeness, emotional accommodation, or the affirmation of another person’s self-description. These are simply not liberal requirements.
Kant, in fact, is severe on this point. Respect for persons consists in truthfulness and in recognising their rational agency, not in protecting them from discomfort. Indulging a belief one considers false is, for Kant, a failure of honesty, not an expression of respect. He expects civility of principle, not civility of tone. On that view, Rowling’s bluntness may be unwelcome, but it is not illiberal.
Rawls is equally clear in his own way. His theory constrains the basic structure of society, not the day-to-day rhetoric of individuals. Public reason governs the justification of coercive laws; it does not govern personal disagreement. Rawls acknowledges that reasonable pluralism involves deep and sometimes irreconcilable disagreement about morality, identity, and metaphysics. He never suggests that refusing to adopt another person’s metaphysical account of sex or gender amounts to a failure of liberalism. Political liberalism exists precisely because such disagreements are inevitable.
Your appeal to “respect for dignity” needs the same clarification. If “dignity” simply refers to the equal moral standing of persons – the Kantian thought that individuals are ends in themselves – then nothing Rowling has said violates it. She does not deny anyone’s basic liberties or moral status; she disputes beliefs, not personhood. That is fully compatible with liberalism. If, however, “dignity” is understood in a thicker, recognitional sense – requiring others to adopt someone’s vocabulary, affirm their self-description, or refrain from contradicting their identity claims – then the position is no longer liberal. Liberalism requires none of this. It does not oblige citizens to share one another’s metaphysical commitments or to speak in ways that spare others offence. Making dignity depend on agreement collapses the distinction between persons and their beliefs, and smuggles in an interpersonal duty that liberalism does not recognise.
Your suggestion that gender-critical views have become “organised with” conservative or authoritarian ideologies seems to me unsupported. At most, you show that some individuals – Linehan is your example – have taken positions one may well find objectionable. But a movement cannot be judged by its most excitable adherents; on that standard, every political cause would collapse. Nor does occasional alignment with conservatives on a single issue imply ideological convergence. That is how democratic politics normally works: coalitions form around particular questions without entailing broader philosophical agreement.
The language of “organised with” or “arranged with” does a good deal of rhetorical work while being conceptually empty. It hints at ideological contamination without identifying any principled connection. If the claim is that gender-critical positions entail illiberal principles or require anti-democratic measures, then that argument needs to be made. I do not see it here, and I do not believe it can be made. Absent such a demonstration, these associations remain just that – associations, not arguments.
A final point concerns your worry about “single-issue” focus. This seems to me irrelevant to liberalism. Liberal societies contain abolitionists, pacifists, environmentalists, civil-libertarians, feminists and religious campaigners, all of whom have devoted themselves almost exclusively to one question. Nothing in Mill, Rawls or Kant suggests that citizens must distribute their political attention evenly across all public problems. People are free to care intensely about what they judge important, and such asymmetries of concern are a permanent feature of democratic life. The fact that Rowling concentrates on one issue may be electorally unwise or personally unattractive, but it is not, and cannot be, a violation of liberal principle. Liberalism regulates the limits of coercion, not the breadth of an individual’s interests.
What you are really criticising, I think, is a change in tone, temperament, and political style; those may be legitimate objects of concern, but they should not be mistaken for departures from liberal principle.
What happened? Amazingly she stayed sane under an onslaught that would break lesser people. Why are YOU so obsessed with this?
He isn't obsessed. Writing one Substack piece isn't obsession fella.
Following her work for five years (did you even read the piece?) is obsessed. Fella.
Jesus. Is Substack going to just descend into another low quality reddit clone?
"What about an existential threat such as climate change? What about international conflicts? What about socio-economic equality? Rowling’s cause is an important one, yet it has multiple competitors and some of them are more important."
The "Why do you even care? How does it even affect you? Don't you have better things to think about?" brand of trans boilerplate.
Coming to terms about the nature of reality and the nature of knowledge is the the prerequisite for all those other "more important" causes.
Exactly. That anything could be "more important" than the existence of women does not compute to me, a woman, and why should it? JKR is an unapologetic champion of women’s rights. So? Did anybody ask MLK to focus on nuclear disarmament instead of civil rights when his people were being subjected to segregation? Too many insist on waving at the threat of gender ideology. I'm grateful to those who stay focused and vigilant.
Correction, Joanne Rowling uses one group of women to terrorise women and children. She is NOT a champion of women’s rights. She made her money from the very people she now despises. If you’re selective in support of women and children, you’re not a feminist, you’re upholding the patriarchy
You are deluded. JK is a champion of the rights of women and children and none of your spiteful hate can change that. She is the one who has been terrorized, as have be the poor children poisoned and mutilated by “gender-affirming healthcare.” Actual child abuse.
"Transwomen"=trans identifying men=men. All of them, all day, every day. They are no type of woman. I hope that helps to clarify your thoughts.
autogenephiles, mostly, porn addicted pervs
What you wrote only makes sense if you’re counting trans-identified men as women. Of course, they are not women.
What you wrote only makes sense if you ignore that heterosexual men are overwhelmingly responsible for assaults against women and children, often in the family home or somewhere else where the victim is eg family gatherings
I’m sorry, what? I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
I think (?) the commenter is saying the “one group of women” she terrorizes are trans “women”? That JKR made her money terrorizing trans people? idk, any wiffs of transphobia in the Harry Potter books (how she became rich)?
Please could you explain what you mean? I have read this a couple of times and I am not sure to which sets and subsets you refer?
It’s a word salad. It has no meaning because it comes from hysteria rather than thought.
You seem to support neither Ms Rowling nor Ms LaSage above. From this I gather that you are also selective in [your] support of women and therefore…
As I said in the piece, Rowling's cause is important. But do you really think that this issue is more important than climate change?
Yes. Because reality is important. Women are the largest oppressed minority. If we pretend they don't matter, that they don't exist as a sex class different from all men however they identify then any other cause is lost. As someone else said, no one asked MLK to consider nuclear power when he fought for his people. Women have to fight for their rights. The fight is so long and so arduous and so much constantly a rematch as some seek to take away our rights that their is neither time nor energy for another cause.
Yes.
1. People can multi-task.
2. What, if anything, in your mind *is* more important than climate change? That an individual can impact on her own?
I scrolled through your recent articles and didn't find one on Climate Change. Considering that this is the most important issue in the world, your insistence on writing about other stuff is frankly weird and alarming. What is your unhealthy obsession with these secondary issues like transgenderism and immigration?
I agree completely! So many of us have been brought into this issue because of how fundamental it is. If we can't agree on the basis of reality then none of these other things would matter!
Not to be flip, but it's a bit like flat eather running for public office. The question of the earth's shape may not arise as part of their official duties, but do you really trust such a person to set policy on any issue. Regarding surgeries, however, I wonder if a more refined definition of trans is needed for some issues. For example, the debate over access to lockerooms really boils down to whether penises should be allowed. As a result, it might be wise to distinguish between a biological male who identifies as a woman and one who has had vaginalplasty.
Liberalism does not include letting men with fetishes force their lies onto society and be put into women's prisons after committing crimes.
Rowling has realize this cannot be accommodated in any way due to the reality of male nature.
That cannot be reconciled with mealy-mouthed appeals to being a liberal.
Academia is full of cowards and idiots. Now they want to pretend like they're the brave ones.
If Thomas had advocated putting men with fetishes in women's prisons then you might have a point but since he's not what you say amounts to no more than bluster.
If you advocate for allowing males to claim they're women, then you support that by default because that's exactly what it leads to inevitably and unavoidably.
Yes, a complete straw man.
Don't you advocate for "adults can do what they want" and "there's a percentage of true trans"?
How on earth do you think that won't end with men in women's prisons, just like has already happened?
"Liberalism does not include letting men with fetishes force their lies onto society and be put into women's prisons after committing crimes."
Actualy that is what liberalism is about. It starts off tolerating a silly idea, in this case the notion that womanhood or manhood is defined by behaviours engaged in by average men and women, and then treating that idea as gospel when a few people get very aggressive in support of it. Liberals respect violence. Not being violent themselves, they think that anyone who is prepared to get violent over a cause must be really suffering, because only suffering could cause violence.
Tone policing reality. How leftist of you 😂
Calling a man a man is no insult, even if the called-out cries crocodile tears. It seems to me that JKR’s field of fucks to be cultivated for narcissistic, abusive men is now barren.
The sooner you grasp that there can be no compromise with a destructive, dangerous ideology the sooner you’ll actually be defending liberalism, instead of helping to kick it to death.
I feel Rowling has gotten a bit more acerbic... But is calling a male a man really "mean-spirited?"
I'm not sure why activism in one area demands activism in another -- doesn't that just lead to more tribalism rather than critical thinking on each issue?
Lastly, Rowlings essay gives a "no compromise" vibe. This makes her seem like a zealot perhaps. But is this born out of true zealotry or just that compromise -- at least on the men in women's spaces issue -- may not be functionally possible? Like is California's solution of putting extra people on the podium when a transgirl finishes in the top three really a good solution? Or maybe in community rec centers men who identify as women get use the women's showers on MWF, and must use men's TTS, and they trade off Sundays? Surely this is not workable.
I think all the rape threats got to her
I think this is a key point that too often gets hand waved.
“I have concerns that some men may use the guise of trans rights in order to abuse and exploit women”
Trans women: I HOPE YOU GET RAPED AND MURDERED
Well said. And it says it all.
Guess what? It’s not complicated. Allowing “woman” to be defined by men with perversions necessarily leads to relegating women to 2nd class status. It is letting women know they don’t count and have no say in society. And it is exactly what has been happening for years and men like you still think women should be responsible for and self-subjugate to what goes on in a man’s head.
If women don't approve of what men do, they ought not give birth to them. Yet we keep churning out these fragile beasts, so easily captured by ideologies. And why? We could shed all responsibility for what goes on in men and boys heads, if we would only draw a line in the sand, no longer using our bodies to create whole new human (especially male) lives. It's not complicated.
It is well known that women are the people most attracted to ratbag idologies. Liberal white women are the devil.
Source? JK
So you're from Oz, are ya? One of those flying monkeys perhaps? Or a munchkin? The scarecrow? I actually invented a Cult of Wizards (or CoW) with just one belief, that Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon is a soundtrack for The Wizard of Oz. It may be the only belief I accept without doubt. Is it a ratbag ideology? Probably. Casting myself as Dorothy and inviting men on journeys of discovery has not resulted in the sense of home I was searching for. Instead, I now reluctantly espouse antinatilist sentiments, knowing life is too painful and unpredictable to justify inflicting on whole new humans.
On the matter of trans ideology, the evolution of my attitudes hasn't been so different from JK Rowling. I started with an openness to understand yet found myself pushed to more extreme positions as trans people and their supporters took a mile when given an inch. For instance, I've learned they lied about considering sex and gender to be different things, as they're pushing to be able to legally change their sex, even though reassignment surgery doesn't grant males the ability to produce ova, nor can females produce sperm.
Yet as a working class person, in order to survive and keep a job that suits me, I must exist alongside a shockingly high proportion of trans and liberal folks. So I maintain compassion towards their life experiences and respect for their freedom of religion. I recognize that if I had walked through life in their shoes, I would likely arrive at the same misguided beliefs. No one is perfect.
I just wish we all could maintain mutual respect when working through our differences on this issue. I am fatigued of trans people insisting they're not allowed to exist, when what they really mean is that they're willing to coerce their comrades to suicide bomb us in an attempt to force the widespread adoption of their cultural preferences, things that have little to do with their ability to survive. On the other hand, those opposed to trans ideology tend to oversimplify it as a mere fetish. Like the person I initially responded to. I might have instead replied:
"If women don't want to be treated like 2nd class citizens, they ought to take more responsibility for what goes on in people's heads, regardless of gender. If women want to be defined by their biological capabilities, that means acknowledging that women gave birth to and raised the very people who are now treating their bodies as inconsequential. Women helped build this whacky culture. So how can women expect to be taken seriously and respected for their biological functions, if they won't take responsibility for and continue to give birth in a culture of confusion? Boiling it down to male perversion is evasion. That may be a component but it's not the whole picture."
Sorry, but I think women being taken to court for calling a man a man and forced to get naked in front of men is more important than the causes you listed. Also, I suggest everyone try reading this and change out the word ‘transgender’ with the word ‘fetishistic transvestite’.
The Path Not Taken
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Margaret Bluman
2h
Ah Mr Prosser. Clearly you have no skin in this game. We have all hardened a little as each small gain has resulted in far fewer societal and structural changes than we would have anticipated.
When the unamguous Supreme Court Ruling was delivered, we thought we could see clear water ahead. But look at how our cowardly government has sat on the EHCR advice amd allowed organisations and individuals to squirm and buck at the law's requirements.
The fact that the puberty blockers so called trial is going ahead, instead of gathering and analysing all the already existing evidence will be a blot on this government's reputation in years to come when its results prove nothing that isn't already known.
Then look at today's judgement on the Sandie Peggie case which will, like so many other cases, in all likelihood have to go to appeal for clarity on the discrimination element.
And don't get me started on the universities, most of whom still think they are above the law. As Naomi Cunningham said in an interview a couple of weeks ago, she is going to be very busy for quite some time to come.
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Thomas Prosser
2h
Edited
Thanks for your comment Margaret. However, technical problems mean I had to put up a new version of this post: https://www.thepathnottaken.net/p/what-happened-to-jk-rowling-bc0
Could I ask you to cut and paste your comment there? I'd rather collect all the comments in one place. I'll respond to you then. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Thanks Margaret. I'm very happy about many of these developments. Yet I think they would also have happened had J.K. Rowling stuck to her 2020 position.
She put a lot more on the line than you did.
There's no such thing as "transgender."
When the fraud completely collapses, you'll pretend like you always said that in the first place.
Exactly. It's a fraud, from start to finish.
Better to salvage some self-respect now, and abandon the fraud.
The UK High Court made clear the intent of the legislation as passed. It did not say that gender could not be written into legislation replacing or alongside sex. All up the the parliament. Which is a good place to be compared with the US where its Supreme Court does try at times to say what should be.
J. K. Rowling has done a lot of good.
I can totally understand her - when you notice a specific type of wrong and resist it, you run out of mental energy for the rest. She’s done amazing, courageous work, in the face of extreme hate and threats of violence from the oh-so “kind” progressive left. It isn’t her job to focus on more issues. It’s the work of progressives to be less horrible people than they manifestly are.
She wrote something eminently reasonable, the TRAs launched into her immediately (I think they began by publishing an image of her front door) and since then her tone has toughened a bit, but her position has remained essentially unchanged. Did you feel the need simply to post something?
Evolved?
Many people have difficulty identifying men who are sex mimics, because the behavior evolved to be difficult to detect in humans by other humans - that’s the nature of deceptive traits in humans. Many humans can’t detect when another is lying to them, we evolved to be able to lie to each other.
Men mimic women to avoid male aggression, but also to deceive men and women in order to gain access to female groups under false pretenses.
They leverage female empathy to induce others to hide their state of being male, but have a bad habit of also leveraging empathy by deceit to replace women in female groups.
Rowling fairly consistently identifies male encroachment on female institutions as unacceptable, since it voids social boundaries evolved for the protection of women. Women assume shared life experience provides empathetic safety in female-only enclaves. With a male present, any male, that assumption of safety is taken without consent.
The protection of women’s honors, rights, safety and privileges from men imitating women is a fairly consistent position id say.
Rowling consistently supported the rights of women and girls. The trans community labeled her a TERF. I wouldn’t call her a radical feminist, but Rowling is definitely a feminist. Feminists have always been strongly on the side of liberals. They’ve never been conservative.
This topic is not split between liberals and conservatives. It has clearly split liberals. Yes, conservatives joined one side. That doesn’t make the liberals who agree with them on this one topic any less liberal. Those conservatives aren’t going to support Rowling on her other views of women.
This article doesn’t provide evidence of Rowling’s viewpoint changing, but rather focusing and clarifying. Focusing on one issue as a liberal doesn’t make one illiberal. A single person has limited attention, so we must all decide which causes are ours, and which causes, although worthy in general or in spirit, are for someone else.
And her clarifying and focused language - by calling males men even if they identify as women - is due to the need for clarity of language when arguing for women’s rights. The linguistic landscape here is so muddled and confusing that clear language is necessary for communicating one’s viewpoint. Using reality-based language is not inherently discriminatory.
The only thing I will grant in this article is that those call-out tweets do seem unnecessarily harsh. Mostly the second one. But as compared to death threats that she has received? I think some grace could be extended to her there. There’s truly no comparison between how she has communicated with others in this debate, and the worst of what she has received.
I don’t think JK is under any obligation to be “nice” when it comes to this evil ideology. She’s recognized it for the anti-women, anti-child and homophobic idiocy that it is.
No, she is in no need of any “grace.” She’s just had enough of indulging the pernicious nonsense.
I understand what you’re saying. Mostly what I see in Rowling is that she is weary, and no longer has the patience to attempt using nuanced language that spares people’s feelings while discussing this. I was just pointing out that the second tweet referenced by the OP was directed at a person more than an idea.
I think this is a fair assessment. There's a saying, "The longer you fight someone, the more like them you become." This may have been inspired by Nietzsche's quote, "When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you"; but I suspect the former is a relatively self-evident saying that has been for millennia. Many an army has gone to war intending to be the most righteous of forces, then the reality of years of combat shreds most ideals.
But anyway, I doubt Rowling could have imagined that this battle would still be burning its way through society 5 years after she made her first essay, and that the ideology behind it would be so resistant to being as comprehensively defeated in almost every way as it has been. She has hardened her views a bit, though not a huge amount I think given how much most of those on the other side hardened *their* views in the 5 years between, say, 2017 ("We should try to treat trans-women as women where possible") and 2022 ("Nurses should be sacked if they won't refer to "her penis" when dealing with catheters for convicted paedophiles in jail").
I enjoyed your piece, Thomas, though rather less some of the responses to it. But I can’t agree with what I take to be your central claim – that Rowling has, in some meaningful sense, moved away from a liberal position. I don’t see evidence for that, because nothing in liberal theory, in any of its recognised forms, entails the judgements you make about how she now expresses herself. One might find her tone, or the political wisdom of her interventions, unappealing. That is fair enough. But it has nothing to do with liberalism.
Take the two major strands. First, the procedural liberalism associated with Mill. Second, the more substantive liberalism of Kant or Rawls.
Mill’s view is straightforward: a liberal society interferes with a person’s conduct or speech only when it causes harm to others. And Mill is emphatic that harm must be distinguished from offence. Hurt feelings, insult, shock, disgust or moral outrage do not count as harm; if they did, meaningful dissent would be impossible. On that understanding, I cannot see anything Rowling has said or advocated that breaches the harm principle.
You suggest she departs from liberalism when she says that clinicians involved in gender medicine who have violated professional duties should be imprisoned. That would indeed be illiberal if she meant imprisonment without investigation, without due process, or in disregard of professional standards. But there is no indication that this is what she intends. Saying that professionals bound by an ethical code may face serious consequences if they seriously breach it is entirely compatible with – indeed part of – the liberal rule-of-law.
The other major liberal tradition – Kant’s moral philosophy and Rawls’s political liberalism – does not help your case either. These views have more substantive commitments, but not of the kind that would support your argument. Kant and Rawls both stress the equal moral status of persons as free and rational agents. But nothing in either’s work suggests that liberalism demands politeness, emotional accommodation, or the affirmation of another person’s self-description. These are simply not liberal requirements.
Kant, in fact, is severe on this point. Respect for persons consists in truthfulness and in recognising their rational agency, not in protecting them from discomfort. Indulging a belief one considers false is, for Kant, a failure of honesty, not an expression of respect. He expects civility of principle, not civility of tone. On that view, Rowling’s bluntness may be unwelcome, but it is not illiberal.
Rawls is equally clear in his own way. His theory constrains the basic structure of society, not the day-to-day rhetoric of individuals. Public reason governs the justification of coercive laws; it does not govern personal disagreement. Rawls acknowledges that reasonable pluralism involves deep and sometimes irreconcilable disagreement about morality, identity, and metaphysics. He never suggests that refusing to adopt another person’s metaphysical account of sex or gender amounts to a failure of liberalism. Political liberalism exists precisely because such disagreements are inevitable.
Your appeal to “respect for dignity” needs the same clarification. If “dignity” simply refers to the equal moral standing of persons – the Kantian thought that individuals are ends in themselves – then nothing Rowling has said violates it. She does not deny anyone’s basic liberties or moral status; she disputes beliefs, not personhood. That is fully compatible with liberalism. If, however, “dignity” is understood in a thicker, recognitional sense – requiring others to adopt someone’s vocabulary, affirm their self-description, or refrain from contradicting their identity claims – then the position is no longer liberal. Liberalism requires none of this. It does not oblige citizens to share one another’s metaphysical commitments or to speak in ways that spare others offence. Making dignity depend on agreement collapses the distinction between persons and their beliefs, and smuggles in an interpersonal duty that liberalism does not recognise.
Your suggestion that gender-critical views have become “organised with” conservative or authoritarian ideologies seems to me unsupported. At most, you show that some individuals – Linehan is your example – have taken positions one may well find objectionable. But a movement cannot be judged by its most excitable adherents; on that standard, every political cause would collapse. Nor does occasional alignment with conservatives on a single issue imply ideological convergence. That is how democratic politics normally works: coalitions form around particular questions without entailing broader philosophical agreement.
The language of “organised with” or “arranged with” does a good deal of rhetorical work while being conceptually empty. It hints at ideological contamination without identifying any principled connection. If the claim is that gender-critical positions entail illiberal principles or require anti-democratic measures, then that argument needs to be made. I do not see it here, and I do not believe it can be made. Absent such a demonstration, these associations remain just that – associations, not arguments.
A final point concerns your worry about “single-issue” focus. This seems to me irrelevant to liberalism. Liberal societies contain abolitionists, pacifists, environmentalists, civil-libertarians, feminists and religious campaigners, all of whom have devoted themselves almost exclusively to one question. Nothing in Mill, Rawls or Kant suggests that citizens must distribute their political attention evenly across all public problems. People are free to care intensely about what they judge important, and such asymmetries of concern are a permanent feature of democratic life. The fact that Rowling concentrates on one issue may be electorally unwise or personally unattractive, but it is not, and cannot be, a violation of liberal principle. Liberalism regulates the limits of coercion, not the breadth of an individual’s interests.
What you are really criticising, I think, is a change in tone, temperament, and political style; those may be legitimate objects of concern, but they should not be mistaken for departures from liberal principle.
Thanks for this, Colin. I'm going to think about this for a little while and will respond soon, maybe with a new post.
Well, that’s a follow.