Rowling Pretends Trans Kids Don’t Exist
Resident evil Twitter hag JK Rowling has uninvented trans children.
Opinion by Alyssa Steinsiek
Hey folks, we’re back at it again, ringing in the new year with news about our favorite crazy rich author, once inexplicably celebrated as an iconic queer ally for arbitrarily declaring one of her prominent characters gay long after she might actually have to write anything about it, now reviled as a disgusting bigot whose brain is full of worms and possibly mold.
She’s supported nazi sympathizers, she’s targeted Olympic athletes and been sued for it, she’s inexplicably and unbelievably come out against a rape crisis center, and… so much more, holy shit. Jo and I have never spoken directly, much to my relief, but I’m pretty sure I once resurrected her Twitter account after more than two weeks of total radio silence. I don’t think she saw my article and decided to post just to spite me, but she did tweet within two hours of that article’s publication, so I suspect some sort of evil magic is involved.
You know. Considering.
Anyway! What has Rowling done now, you ask? What more can she do, you wonder? Why won’t she just be quiet, you puzzle? I can’t answer the last two questions in any professional way, but I’ll tell you what she’s done: JK Rowling has now publicly stated that there is no such thing as a transgender child.
Like I said, she’s done and said a lot of heinous stuff. She’s even denied that transgender people were targeted during the Holocaust despite the glut of evidence to the contrary. But watching Rowling move from public, targeted harassment to outright eliminationist language is beyond appalling. And make no mistake, eliminationist is exactly what this sort of rhetoric is.
On Saturday, December 28th, Rowling tweeted, “There are no trans kids. No child is 'born in the wrong body'. There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined.”
Rowling’s final accusation in her initial tweet is breathtakingly vile. To compare gender-affirming care for minors to lobotomies or false memory syndrome (a heavily criticized theory in the field of psychological with a very dark history) is not only blatantly baseless and ignorant, but indescribably harmful to young trans children who are already under unbearable scrutiny and horribly harassed by mass media and politicos.
The meat of her statement, that trans children do not exist at all, is easily disproven. We know that trans youth exist, we know that they are suffering, and we know how to alleviate that suffering through medical and social intervention. While there could certainly be more good faith studies performed to better understand every specific need of trans kids (and adults), medical professionals who don’t have an agenda are in agreement about the existence of trans children and their need for gender-affirming care.
Make no mistake, Rowling knows that “there are no trans kids” is a ridiculous thing to say. In my opinion, it isn’t a foolish dig at a community she considers herself at war with. It’s a statement of intent. It is, as I said, eliminationist language. Other transphobes committed to our elimination from public society have said the same thing many times before, and it might be illustrative to add six extra words to that sentence:
“There are no trans kids, not if I can help it.”
Anti-trans activists cannot be allowed to promote this sort of hateful rhetoric. It is an absolute necessity that we combat this vile point of view every chance we get. Trans children must be protected and allowed to make changes in their lives that keep them happy and healthy, like any cisgender child is allowed to do without backlash.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
