J. K. Rowling Hopes You’ll Debate the Meaning of “Woman”

There is no definition of the word woman that makes hate and discrimination acceptable.

by Evan Urquhart

With yet another controversial tweet, author-turned-activist J. K. Rowling yesterday showed her increasing commitment to making her public persona synonymous with anti-trans obsession. The latest tweet consisted of the word “No” over a picture with the slogan “Repeat after us: Trans women are women.” In the replies, Rowling went on to claim that she’d be glad to go to jail over her refusal to call trans women women, in an apparent reference to right-wing propaganda: The Daily Mail tabloid recently sought to derail reports of increased hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people by suggesting, based on pure speculation, that Labor politicians who have discussed hate crimes plan to send people to jail for misgendering.

The latest tweets are far from the worst or most outrageous Rowling has produced, having previously referred to trans women as “trans-identified males” and linked them to criminality. Before that, in a podcast appearance, Rowling once suggested that she’d like to see trans women physically attacked by cis men if they tried to use women’s restrooms.

In other words, Rowling has made her distaste for trans people abundantly clear, and the tweet yesterday is just more of the same shallow trolling she’s engaged in for months now. However, it is worth talking about the obsession transphobes like Rowling have with language, and how it serves the goal of distracting from trans people’s humanity.

If you look at the priorities for any large transgender group it’s easy to see that changing people’s language barely registers on their list of priorities. For example, the primary function of the UK trans children’s charity Mermaids is to provide support groups, forums, and a helpline for trans youth and their families. The US National Center for Trans Equality lists a number of issues they advocate on, with a focus on violence or discrimination against trans people in employment, housing, and medical treatment.

screenshot from the National Center for Trans Equality

Of course, there’s also the slogan “Trans Women are Women” (and, slightly less often, or as an afterthought or addition, Trans Men are Men".” it’s repeated so many times, by trans people, by allies, and by bigots, that it has come to overshadow the struggle against suspicion, hostility, discrimination and violence that it was once used as a short, pithy stand in for.

Forcing everyone to argue, again and again, about whether trans women are really women has become the dominant purpose of anti-trans activism. You see it constantly, it’s the subject of their documentaries, it’s the main thesis of countless anti-trans articles. It’s useful to transphobes because it provides a level of distance between real trans peoples lives, which are so often marred by violence, poverty, family rejection, and struggle, and the political efforts to roll back any protections that have been gained and by any and all means prevent any future relief from these burdens.

If you believe transphobes, if you believe Rowling, you’ll doubtless believe that the definition of the word woman is the most central and crucial issue in the entire debate around trans rights. This is the big lie of transphobic propaganda, the lie every other lie is based on. People exist in this world who live as members of a gender that’s different from their birth sex: That’s not an opinion, it’s an observation about reality. Saying that people who live this way face more barriers to achieving a healthy and safe living situation, and are more precariously situated if they do find one, on average, is again just an objective observation.

We currently call these people transgender—that’s arbitrary. The slogan “Trans Women are Women” and the objections to that slogan—that’s arbitrary. Transphobes like Rowling want the discussion to be about such abstract and meaningless matters. But the needs and vulnerabilities of the trans community are already losing as soon as we stoop to debating trivialities such as whether some women are realer than others.