TWIBS: Rowling’s Crusade Targets Cis Women
Obsessing over trans people the way Rowling does has its drawbacks! For a woman who insists trans women are men, she can’t seem to tell the difference between cis women and trans women… oops!
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
Alert the press! Somebody contact the media! JK Rowling is wrong about trans people again!
Oh, wait. I am the media. I guess I’ll talk about it, then.
Rowling tweeted on Tuesday about Olympic boxers Imane Khelif, from Algeria, and Lin Yu-ting, from Taiwan, asking the brave and bold question: “What will it take to end this insanity? A female boxer left with life-altering injuries? A female boxer killed?”
Rowling is posing this hypothetical about, nebulously, trans people. Unfortunately for her, as far as anybody knows neither Imane Khelif nor Lin Yu-ting are transgender!
Details are somewhat limited, but what we do know is that the president of the International Boxing Association, formerly in charge of the boxing world championships held at the Olympics, stated that both fighters underwent tests that proved they both “had XY chromosomes.” Mind you, the IBA was derecognized by the International Olympic Committee in June of last year after a series of scandals and misbehavior led to a lack of “integrity and transparency.”
So what the fuck do they know about fair competition?
Assuming the IBA’s remarks about Khelif and Yu-ting’s chromosomal makeup are true, it’s entirely possible that both women could have an intersex condition like Swyer syndrome, in which a person’s body may develop akin to a cisgender woman’s in spite of possessing XY chromosomes and producing no natural estrogen. This would hardly be the first time we’ve seen Olympic bodies harass and unfairly disqualify athletes who fall outside the range of what they consider “normal.”
Regardless, neither woman has ever claimed to be transgender, and Rowling’s assumption that they are speaks to the single mindedness with which she now harasses the trans community.
This leads me to the heart of this piece: Rowling’s current pinned tweet, and her feverish obsession with trans people.
To say this is a misleading statement would be laughable. As I’m writing, Rowling’s most recent tweet is about where she’s spending her birthday; after that, you must scroll past eight tweets spanning more than a week to find a single post that isn’t about trans people. The pattern continues, yielding far more tweets about me and my community than anything else.
It’s safe to say we are more or less the only thing on Jo’s mind these days.
In her pinned tweet Rowling claims to want trans people “alive … safe, and happy,” but her actions suggest otherwise. She jumps for joy at the idea of trans youth being unable to access the puberty blockers that will give them time to decide what’s right for them. She denies that we were persecuted during the Holocaust, despite an absolute abundance of evidence to the contrary. She cites anti-trans activist groups who promote pseudoscientific hate when discussing what she believes to be the best way to harm trans children.
Rowling’s actions over the past several years suggest nothing but absolute disdain and hatred for the trans community. As far back as 2020, in her first big transphobia essay, Rowling praises the late, hateful anti-trans activist Magdalen Berns. Now, let me refresh my memory… what did Magdalen think about people like me?
Oh. Right. Well… all’s well that ends well, I suppose.
Perhaps Rowling fancies herself an underdog soldier in a modern day war being waged against (cisgender) women. She sees us, like Berns did, as men trying to steal from women. I don’t have to guess, either, because she explicitly said trans women aren’t women, trans men aren’t men, and nonbinary people are “whatever” the Tuesday before last. To her, we are the enemy, and no amount of public backlash will convince her she’s wrong. Even when the majority of people who worked on the beloved film adaptations of her crappy books tell her she’s off her rocker.
In the end, I believe Rowling’s legacy will be one of hate. Even if she smartens up, I don’t think she can redeem herself after spreading all this vitriol and bile. For my part, seeing just how badly she’s become hung up on people like me… I don’t think I’ll write about her again for a very long time.
Unless she… I don’t know… denies some other part of the Holocaust, or something.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
