Pamela Paul Doesn’t Know What Transphobia Is

The New York Times columnist includes trans men in a group she refers to as “biological women” while declaring J. K. Rowling free of transphobia.

by Evan Urquhart

This will be a post about Pamela Paul’s New York Times column headlined “In Defense of J. K. Rowling.” The column’s defense includes the assertion that “nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.” In order to carefully and thoroughly discuss that assertion we’re going to have to go way, way back and start with some Trans 101: Not all trans people are trans women. Some trans people are trans men. But first, here’s your obligatory Assigned Media screenshot:

screenshot from the New York Times

The above paragraph is not, strictly speaking, true. Rowling quite strongly opposes allowing people to transition—people she refers to as women. It’s clear in her writing, much clearer than many other topics where she seems to have remained purposefully vague.

Perhaps we need to go all the way back to Feminism 101: Women are people. (And yes, this even includes people you’re calling women who are really trans men.)

Trans men and transmasculine people are never mentioned in Paul’s column. However, that does not mean that all or even most of Rowling’s transphobia has been directed towards transfemmes. Rowling has directly targeted the agency and self-determination of transgender people who were assigned female as birth, a group she refers to as “women” and who she includes in the group of “women” who, through her activism, she claims to want to protect. What is Rowling attempting to protect transmascs from? Why, from believing themselves to be trans men. Her protection of women includes, and has always included, an insistence that trans men are really women, and therefore cannot be allowed to exist as men.

Here’s a quote from Rowling’s 2020 essay you rarely see mentioned in discussions of Rowling’s transphobia: “radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary—they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.” Rowling is defending TERFs by saying that misgendering trans men is a form of including trans people. While Rowling does not claim to be a radical feminist herself, her inclusion of trans men (by saying they’re really women who need to be protected and included in women’s only spaces) follows this same form.

Rowling has said she believes a social contagion causes women to falsely believe themselves to be men. She’s never made any exceptions to this or grappled with the existence of any trans men outside of this frame. In her lengthy 2020 essay she praised the work of Lisa Littman, a researcher who used a survey of transphobic parents to promote the social contagion idea. The idea never been supported by any direct observations of trans men, and in fact one recent study of hormone therapy in young people suggested a greater benefit to trans men than trans women.

In 2020, Rowling explained that she believes trans men are really women, like herself, driven by the allure of escaping womanhood.

screenshot from J. K. Rowling’s website

Rowling defenders never reckon with the transphobia, or the sexism, of suggesting that large numbers of women misunderstand their own gender, or that they are in need of protection from their own agency and self-determination. However, it is simply untrue that a person who believes this has “never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care.” Rowling has voiced her opposition to transition very clearly. Her opposition is to the transitions of young trans men.

Paul’s refusal to acknowledge that Rowling’s transphobia could have been directed at transmascs is so profound that she echoes Rowling’s description of transmascs as “biological women” without any hesitation or caveat that trans men even exist.

screenshot from the New York Times

Paul’s reference to Rowling’s skepticism about “phrases like ‘people who menstruate’ in reference to biological women,” is a reference to a tweet Rowling made in opposition to inclusive language used by a health clinic which was attempting to reach out to trans men and transmascs. Rowling tweeted her opposition to the phrase, indicating that she believes all people who menstruate ought to be be called women at all times. But trans men and transmascs are not women. That’s the whole point. To Rowling, and to Paul, transphobia against transmascs isn’t really transphobia at all. The existence of female assigned trans people seems beneath Paul’s notice, and it’s not acknowledged as a possible area where Rowling’s missing transphobia might exist.

Of course, Rowling is not only transphobic against trans men, it’s just that when you look at her transphobia in that area it’s much clearer and harder to dispute. However, by contributing to a false and stigmatizing portrayal of trans women as dangerous to cis women, she reinforces transphobic stereotypes that underlie all of the prejudice trans women face. But Rowling’s campaign against recognizing trans men as men, her advocacy for stopping trans men from transitioning, and her insistence that trans men are women should not be ignored. The relative invisibility and voicelessness of transmascs has allowed Rowling to speak more directly about her views, making her transphobia more clear than it is in other areas, where she’s hedged and made caveats and beaten around the bush.

If we could once and for all remove the obscuring cloud that renders trans men invisible in the discussion about trans rights, Rowling’s transphobia would be laid bare to all for see. Paul’s willingness to echo Rowling’s references to biological women show suggest she shares Rowling’s transphobic views, that trans men are women and transphobia against them does not count.