Judy Blume is a National Treasure

Conservatives’ have made the bizarre suggestion that Blume, who has been steadfast in her support of LGBTQ+ rights, was “coerced” into fighting back after her comments were taken out of context in the transphobic UK press.

by Evan Urquhart

During a push to publicize upcoming projects based on her work, including a film adaptation of “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret,” author Judy Blume was waylaid by an unscrupulous reporter for the UK’s Sunday Times. The reporter, Hadley Freeman, seems to have falsely portrayed some mildly favorable comments about J. K. Rowling as being broadly supportive of Rowling’s transphobic views.

Freeman quoted Blume as saying “I am behind her 100 percent as I watch from afar,” during a conversation about how, unlike Rowling’s Potter series, Blume’s books don’t feature children who use magic. Freeman then wrote that “Blume is referring to the abuse Rowling has received for speaking up in defence of women’s sex-based rights.”

Blume rejected this characterization completely, taking to Twitter to clarify what she had meant:

screenshot from Judy Blume’s Twitter account

This isn’t the first time this particular reporter has tried a similar trick. In 2022 Freeman harangued Margaret Atwood about Rowling and anti-trans beliefs to the point where Atwood objected that the other woman was “obsessed.” Atwood, like Blume, firmly stood behind diversity and trans rights.

When a public figure makes a statement attempting to clarify or walk back an earlier statement, it can sometimes be hard to know if they’re doing so for public relations reasons, or if they’re speaking from the heart. In this case, however, Blume made her beliefs about trans and LGBTQ+ rights abundantly clear in an interview for Variety just weeks ago. In that interview, Blume was quoted criticizing re-issues of the work of Roald Dah which seek to sand some of the rough edges off of the deceased Dahl’s somewhat dated prose, which at times dealt in ethnic, racial, and other sterotypes. After Blume explains her opposition to bowlderizing older works, she artfully redirected the conversation with Variety to the much more urgent government censorship threats targeting works by LGBTQ+ writers.

screenshot from Variety

When you read the full piece in Variety it’s clear that the effort by Blume, to refocus a conversation about censorship on to state governments that have sought to ban LGBTQ+ friendly childrens books, shows a clear willingness to stand up for LGBTQ+ people in an authentic, spontaneous way. It makes efforts to present her Twitter statemtents in support of transgender people as a PR ploy seem implausible to the extreme.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the right wing press from trying to force Blume into their mold. After all, an 85-year-old author who is best known for a book aimed at girls experiencing their first period is exactly the sort of person they’ve long pretended has been endangered by the existence of diverse gender identities and the movement for transgender rights. (Assigned coverged one ham-handed attempt to cast Blume’s work as threatened by transgender acceptance just last week.)

The Washington Examiner is one of the outlets ignoring what Blume has actually said and focusing instad on what they wish that she believed. One of their editors, Madeline Fry Schultz, that her Twitter statement, which contains the word “bullshit,” had been drafted by her publicists:

screenshot from the Washington Examiner

The anti-trans side has repeatedly claimed to be speaking for (cis) women, or that such women’s voices need to be listened to. That can’t happen if only those women who say what the right wants them too are given the respect of believing that they mean what they say.