JK Rowling is standing up to the mob for all of us

After a weekend that saw JK Rowling hit peak trans and take to Twitter to vocalize her support for women, she made use of her own platform to discuss why she decided now to make it known that she believes in the reality of biological sex.

This was just when the mob hoped JK Rowling would give in and apologize after having tortured her on social media over her support for gender critical women. They hoped she would change her strong opinion that only women are women and transgender women are something different. But in powerful essay she reaffirmed her original statement that caused an uproar. In it, she explained, in further depth, why she feels so strongly about this issue.

She writes about the high rates of young women seeking to transition to live as boys, which has seen a drastic increase over the past few years. She relates to what they are going through, and notes that if she were coming age today, she might feel a similar call to be something other than female. In writing about these trans men, she says:

"The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred."

As she was growing up, she didn't have a choice in the matter, she had to stay female, to accept her fate to grow into a woman.

"As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are."

This speaks to a kind of resiliency that youth isn't asked to engage in today. Instead of telling kids to deal with themselves as they are, we tell them they can be anything, even the completely, absurdly impossible.

Her essay is persuasive and demonstrates why many women have passionate views about the transgender agenda, which is systematically trending toward the erasure of women. I applaud Rowling for her willingness to stand against the mob’s utter hatred of her for “wrong think” and ready response.

Rowling writes, "It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity."

She notes, too, that even those women who have confirmed and affirmed trans identity, that isn't enough for the activists who call upon them to go further and renounce their own experience. "It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies," she says of the ask of the trans movement. "Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves."

Although I highly doubt Rowling considers herself any kind of conservative, she has explained in detail what many women—and even men—are often unable to articulate on this issue. Why does it bother women that men who say they are women can go to women’s bathrooms? Rowling said in Scotland, as in several parts of the world, "A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this."

“All a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one,” she wrote. “I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing"

She has several problems with this and the movement as a whole, and many of these kinds of laws are coming to fruition in Canada and the United States, as well as the UK. Rowling said it was obvious through research that’s often discounted as rooted in bigotry, that the transgender agenda targets kids and is ultimately harmful for them, especially if they transition medically while they’re still young. It disturbed her that this is often ignored and immediately recognized as hatred, when often it’s rooted in concern for young children doing irrevocable harm to their bodies through surgery and hormone treatments.

Rowling said she is also unhappy with the way the movement seeks to totally erase women by its inclusivity. There simply is not room for women and men who believe themselves to be women and her concern for women was deeply rooted in her own personal experiences--as many people’s political opinions tend to be.

Although she is married and of course a successful, brilliant author, she revealed she still fights her own demons. In her first marriage, Rowling said she endured domestic violence at the hands of her husband. She still has flashbacks and what sounds like PTSD when she dwells on horrifying events she endured at the hands of someone she loved.

Thus, it does not sound the least bit okay to her to just allow any man who says he is a woman into a woman’s restroom. She clarified and maintained with verve that this does not make her a bigot or a TERF or any other derogatory term. Her concerns are based in a combination of science and personal experience—experience that many, many women share and are often unable to articulate publicly, least of all with a platform such as hers.

As a conservative woman who has spoken out against the transgender movement for some time, I am relieved to find an ally in Rowling, who is able not only just to explain fully why she has taken the stance for women that she has, but able to remain firm despite vitriol partly because of her own courage and steadfastness. A lesser woman would have given in to the mob and I’m glad to see she has not.

A big part of why she's chosen this time to speak out is because she is sure that "We’re living through the most misogynistic period [she's] experienced," and that "Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else." Rowling is not someone who should be told to sit down, not even by Daniel Radcliffe, who penned his own missive against Rowling's perspective.

In Rowling’s conclusion, she echoed many of the concerns of women around the globe facing this issue as it takes over their schools, churches, and culture. “All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.” That doesn’t seem like too much to ask does it?