Transcripts / J.K. Rowling

This is a transcript for the video essay “J.K. Rowling” which can be found here.

Introduction 

🧙‍♀️🍾

Bubble, bubble toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble! Something wicked this way comes! Magical deeds are afoot dear readers, magical darkness— [drops fan] —a must.

Joanne, I wanna talk to you Joanne! What is it about Joannes? I can't catch a break from these people. 

So now that 2020 is finally over, I think we can let the record conclusively show that it was a year whomst is bad. And on top of everything else that was going on, truly the last thing we needed was the author of Harry Potter coming forward to announce there's two things she can't stand: bigotry, and the transgenders. 

Elderberry wand, turgid, with a core of... ice dragon. Lumos! Can we afford spells? Is that in the budget? Expecto Patreon! 🪄

So you've probably heard by now about Joanne Rowling's transphobic tweets. Unless you've been living under a rock in which case, GET BACK UNDER THAT ROCK SWEETIE there is nothing good going on up here, it's not worth it. Or maybe you heard that all Joanne did was say biological sex is real, and now crazy gender ideologues and transactivists are trying to silence her. 

This is cancel culture gone too far, this is a witch hunt. Celebrities are under attack. This is the new Salem. This is Orwell's nightmare. 

This is a painful topic for me all around because, as a transgender woman I am honestly hurt by a lot of the things Joanne has said in the last year. But I also know what it's like to be the target of a Twitter mob. And I realize that to most people, complaining about "being canceled, waahhh", it sounds incredibly whiny and self-absorbed. 

Like you'd especially think that rich and famous people like J.K. Rowling would be above staying up alone at night, reading mean things people say online. But you'd think wrong. See, you underestimate the fundamental sadness of the human condition. And no amount of fame and money is gonna fix that. 

You know fame alienates you from other people, it dehumanizes you in the eyes of the masses, which can actually make you feel more alone even when people are worshiping you as a goddess. Never mind how it feels when they're hunting you as a witch. The truth is that unless you've personally experienced infamy; being shamed and shunned on a scale the human brain can't really even understand, then you just don't know what it's like. And you don't know how you would react in that situation. 

But Joanne knows and when I see her getting trashed on the TL, there's a traumatized part of me that's unironically triggered by watching people cancel her. And I want to protecc. My nurturing and compassionate nature sometimes gets the best of me. But there's also part of me that wants to join the trashing. How could you do this to me Joanne? I did not come out of the cupboard under the stairs for this. 

So what I wanna do in this video is take Joanne's pain seriously, and treat her like a complex human being, while also being critical of the things she's said about "the transgender question". And I also wanna explore where the “Twitter mob” is coming from. Because they're in pain too, and don't they also deserve our understanding? So, without further ado let's go in, with a Mac 2-24 tapered blending brush and see if we can find “the truth”. Swish and flick! 🪄

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So is the author of Harry Potter a bigot? Well she certainly seems invested in the belief that she is not a bigot. 

Interviewer: “What vice do you most despise?” 

Rowling: “Bigotry”

And looking over Joanne's tweets, I don't think the average person would see any problem with what she's said. However, I mean not to be condescending but, I feel like the average person's understanding of “transgender” is still a little bit: "I don't really get the whole trans thing, like why can't you just be a feminine man?”... 

I don't know Amber. Why don't YOU be a feminine man? Who knows, you could be missing out! 😄

So we're gonna go through the things that Joanne has said about trans people, but I don't want this to be just a drama video or a video saying "CANCEL Harry Potter, DRAG her!" Like I wanna try to do something a little bit more meaningful than that. 

So I'm gonna use J.K. Row as a case study in bigotry, and see if we can maybe learn something about what bigotry is. How does it work? And how do otherwise good people get drawn into it? And if we can make any progress on any of those questions, well for once I think I'll actually have earned my Patreon budget. So keeping in mind our very serious and educational purpose, let's spill some shade, throw some tea. 🫖

So this all started in 2018, when Joanne liked a transphobic tweet and followed an anti-trans account. Now in the interest of giving Joanne as much benefit of the doubt as I can, I'm not gonna admit this as evidence because I don't wanna do guilt by association. Strike it from the record. 👩‍⚖️

That was fun. I like hammering things. 🔨🔨🔨🔨

The real story begins in December 2019 when Joanne tweeted the hashtag #IStandWithMaya, referencing Maya Forstater. Maya Forstater is an English consultant who lost her contract with the non-profit she worked for after she did transphobic tweets. And Maya has been kind enough to compile them all for us in her thread titled "Allegedly Transphobic Tweets." Well, let's take a look and see how "alleged" they are:

“Yes I think that male people are not women. I don't think being a woman or female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology.”

“Some people believe that a person with a penis can be a woman, some (a majority) don't. Neither group should be discriminated against in everyday life. But in situations involving taking your clothes off for strangers, integration of the two groups is not possible.”

And there's a cartoon of a hairy-armed, hairy-legged, ｂｕｒｇｅｏｎｉｎｇ trans woman flashing her penis at cis women and saying "It's all right, it's a woman's penis." So we're looking at a standard transphobia starter pack. Everyone born female is a woman. Everyone born male is man. Trans women are predators who prey on women. And I'm being oppressed for speaking “The Truth”. Is this what you want, Joanne? You wanna put the sorting hat on humanity and divide us up into little houses? Well what if I'm a Gryffindor trapped in Hufflepuff's body? What then Joanne, what then? 

Okay, so why does Joanne stand with Maya? Well if the tweet simply said "I stand with Maya" without further explanation, you could give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she just doesn't think people should lose their job for having bigoted opinions, even if she disagrees with those opinions. But if that's all she was saying, I wouldn't be making this video would I? The full tweet reads: 

“Dress however you please. 

Call yourself whatever you like. 

Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. 

But to force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”

Now I'm guessing that to most people, this tweet at first glance doesn't seem transphobic. It might even seem supportive of trans people, since she said we're allowed to dress however we want and call ourselves whatever crazy thing.

But there's a couple things about this that don't sit right with me. First is the phrase “force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real”. "Sex is real" is a pretty dishonest summary of what Maya said in her discrimination complaint, namely:

“I believe that it is impossible to change your sex or to lose your sex. Girls grow up to be women. Boys grow up to be men. No change of clothes or hairstyle, no plastic surgery, no accident or illness, no course of hormones, no force of will or social conditioning, no declaration can turn a female person into a male, or a male person into a female.”

If Joanne had said Maya had been fired for claiming that a person born male can never be a woman, and a person born female can never be a man, that would've been more accurate. But it would also sound contentious, and obviously anti-trans. “Sex is real” is a euphemism designed to present Maya Forstater's transphobia as a simple statement of fact, basic common sense, which only crazy activists and ideologues would oppose. 

Transphobes love to play this game where they pretend that trans people just don't understand basic biology, that's our problem! As if I didn't start taking female hormones because I'm acutely aware that my body is not the same as a cis woman's body, that sex is real. 

You will never be a woman, Nathan. Every cell in your body is male and has a Y chromosome. ⌨️

Really? That's crazy. How'd you learn so much about science? You know I don't really feel the need to have a second X chromosome, I get by with only one, I make it work. I actually like the Y chromosome I think it's a little more dainty, you know? It's a little softer, a little more petite. The X chromosome has a lot of extra appendages, don't you think? And I don't need anymore of those, thanks. 

No trans person thinks it's possible to change chromosomal sex, and to pretend otherwise is to argue in bad faith. When we say that someone is a trans man or a trans woman we're talking about psychological and social identity. So when transphobes say "sex is real", they're not actually contradicting anything most trans people believe. Except by implication. 

When transphobes say "sex is real" what they mean is only chromosomal sex matters. They mean they don't believe in transgender identity, which they trivialize by calling it "dressing up", "fashion choices", "whatever you wanna call yourself”. When Joanne says, "dress however you please", ”call yourself whatever you like", she's belittling what it actually means to be trans, reducing it to a change of name and costume. 

It's similar to the language of casual homophobes. For example the homophobic equivalent of Joanne's tweet might read: “Choose whatever lifestyle you want. Indulge your sexual preferences with any consenting adult in the privacy of your own bedroom. But force Christians out of their jobs for stating that marriage is between a man and woman? #IStandWithKimDavis.”

A penis and a sausage cannot make a baby. Checkmate the gays, it's just science. ⚣

Homophobes trivialize what it is to be gay. They refer to it as "sexual preferences", or "a lifestyle", or "what you do in the bedroom". We don't tell straight people to keep their lifestyle in the bedroom. 

But we should. Clearly, the straights are not oppressed enough.

Being gay is more than “what you do in the bedroom”. It's also who you love, it's part of who you are, part of your humanity, and that's something that stays with you outside of the bedroom. So to dismiss it as "sexual preferences" is homophobic. 

Likewise, being trans is not a costume I take off at the end of the night. It's not a “fashion choice”, it's not a pet name some people call me. It's part of who I am as a person, you know? It's part of my humanity. And it's also the kind of body I have, a transsexual body. So telling trans people "dress however you want" is not really a supportive statement. 

Unless you're supporting YouTubers wearing Louis Vuitton socks in their videos apologizing for being racist, which is not valid and is in fact a hate crime. YouTubers are constantly dragging each other because we see ourselves reflected in the other, and we can't stand the sight of it. 

So after the Maya Forstater tweet, Joanne was silent about trans people for six months. But she took up the cause again in June 2019, first to complain about the use the phrase "people who menstruate" in the title of an article trying to include trans men and non-binary people in a discussion of period poverty. 

That same night– presumably in response to her Twitter mentions being lit up by leftist teenagers who think Stalin did nothing wrong but Rachel Maddow is a war criminal– Joanne tweeted a thread again repeating the slogan that sex is real, adding: 

“It isn't hate to speak the truth.”

And concluding with another backhanded statement of support: 

“I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans."

“If you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans”? “If”? Widespread discrimination against trans people is well documented. In fact the same week as Joanne's tweet, the Trump administration removed nondiscrimination protections for trans people in healthcare and health insurance. So… are you marching with us or not Joanne? 

There's a lot of stuff in these tweets that might seem innocent enough to the average person, but which to someone who understands bigotry against trans people raises a red flag. 🚩

Bigotry always has a history. And in order to understand bigotry, you have to learn that history. Prejudices are made up of tropes, stereotypes, narratives, arguments. Which we aren't born knowing, we have to learn them. No one is born thinking that the gays are destroying the family, or that women are naturally subservient, or that the Jews are trying to control the world economy. So if you aren't familiar with these prejudices you might not notice anything wrong with them. "He never said he hated the Jews, he is simply concerned about the over-representation of Jewish people in media and banking”.

But if you're aware, “woke” if you will, then it kind of rings alarm bells when you hear someone repeating bigoted talking points. When I see Joanne tweeting about how trans people think sex isn't real, and they're erasing same-sex attraction, and they're silencing women, alarm bells are ringing because I recognize these as familiar transphobic talking points. 🚩

Specifically TERF talking points. "TERF" means Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism– God, are we still talking about this? I promise this is the last time.

So TERFism is a hate movement that disguises transphobia as feminism. Bigotry has a history. The foundational TERF text is feminist professor Janice Raymond's 1979 book "The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the Sh*-Male", in which Raymond argues that quote:

“All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.”

She claims that trans women are agents of the patriarchy, who quote:

“Merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women.”

This book set the general tone for feminist transphobia, and I bring this up because I wanna give you a sense of how this kind of transphobe talks when they're not afraid of Twitter backlash.

Typical male narcissist, Nathan manipulates his cultish audience into thinking he's the victim of the ‘big old meanie TERFs’ ⌨️

If you keep calling me Nathan, I'm gonna call you Nigel. Cheerio old chap. Or whatever you people say. 🇬🇧

Here's the thing Nigella. Bigotry can be mean yes, and it usually is when bigots think they can get away with it. But it's vital to recognize that “being mean” is not the essence of bigotry. Bigotry can be hateful, yes, but specifically bigotry is hate that poses a political threat to the target group. 

The fundamental problem with TERFs is not that they're mean. Is that they're politically reactionary, they want to reverse the progress of trans liberation. In the final chapter of "The Transsexual Empire", Raymond lays out her solution to the trans question quote:

“The problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence. I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it–” 

“I would favor restricting the number of hospitals and centers where transsexual surgery could be performed.” 

“The kind of counseling to ‘pass’ successfully as masculine or feminine that now reigns in gender identity clinics only reinforces the problem of transsexualism.”  

She goes on to argue for “alternative feminist consciousness-raising therapies”, admitting:

“I am not so naive as to think that they will make transsexualism disappear overnight, but they would at least pose the existence of a real alternative to be explored and tried.” 

So like homophobes, TERFs have historically advocated a kind of “conversion therapy” aimed at eliminating transsexual identity and behavior. And like the anti-abortion movement, they recognize it's not yet politically practical to completely make illegal a medical procedure they don't like. So they settle for making it as difficult as possible to get one.

In 1980 Janice Raymond authored a report to the Department of Health and Human Services repeating her arguments against transsexualism, which was cited in the 1981 decision that Medicare would not cover transition related healthcare. That decision wasn't overturned until 2014.

So there's real political consequences to bigotry. It's not just a matter of “being mean”. Polite bigotry can be just as dangerous. Unlike Janice Raymond, J.K. Rowling seems totally convinced, and very intent on convincing all of us that she's a totally progressive LGBT ally who loves and supports trans people. While in the same breath spewing transphobic arguments. She's constantly saying things like: 

"I know and love trans people, but” 

"I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time…” 

"None of the gender critical women I've talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth."

A lot of people have a hard time noticing this kind of bigotry, and I think one reason for that is that our common understanding of what bigotry is is very narrow. People think of bigotry as like, judging a group instead of an individual which is of course a horrible thing to do.

I don't care for the English. They're a sick, sick people.

Or people think of bigotry as hate, as something inhuman and monstrous. So when people hear the word “bigot”, they're expecting someone like Lord Voldemort, some uber-Nazi who despises love and friendship. 

But the problem with the Nazis was not that they hated love and friendship. But they believed they were defending German blood and soil against Marxist-Bolshevism and Jewish contamination. And what were we supposed to do? Not defend the Reich against Polish atrocities? That's how a Nazi actually thinks right? It's not that they “hate friendship”. No, they have their own internal logic of victimization and self-righteousness.

So when you reduce bigotry to a caricature of pure hatred, you obscure that bigotry is a deeply human problem. You know sometimes people criticize me for empathizing with bigots. But I believe that understanding bigots is the best defense against becoming one yourself. Because when you dehumanize the villains, you become unable to recognize the villain within. 

How is she, though? She needs a hot toddy is what she needs.🍹

Metal straw because I love the environment. I'm so good, I'm really fucking good. 😇

The idea that bigotry is simply hate I call “The Westboro Baptist Church Theory of Bigotry”. It's the idea that bigots are people who outright say “we hate you, God hates you, and we're all marching around with signs about how much we hate you”. Like the bad guys in that Taylor Swift video. Ugh, Taylor Swift. 

Everyone wants to be a gay icon now. Well I don't. I don't want to be a gay icon I'm just stuck with you people. Just kidding. 😁

"Shade never made anybody less gay." Uhh this isn't shade Taylor, shade is J.K. Rowling telling trans people:

“Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you." 

Bigotry is a lot more complicated than just “hate”. And the video for "You Need to Calm Down" is just so emblematic of this misconception. Taylor takes the subject of homophobia and turns it into yet another song about “haters”. But in the real world, backwoods hillbillies stomping around with misspelled signs are not really the problem. The most dangerous bigots are highly sophisticated and powerful people. And yeah, there still are blatant homophobes who say: "It's an abomination, these perverts are spreading AIDS, they're destroying the family, they're recruiting children." 

But these these days it's much more common to hear: "Of course I love gay people, some of my best friends struggle with same-sex attraction. But it's not ‘homophobic’ to not want LGBT ideology promoted in schools to children as young as three years old. Why, it's a full on assault on religious liberty!" I make a convincing homophobe, don't I? 🙃

There's really two different styles of bigotry. They express the same prejudice, but they're very different in tone. I'll call the two styles “direct bigotry” and “indirect bigotry.” Direct bigotry is openly contemptuous. It's bigotry manifested in slurs, in outright discrimination, in demonizing the target group, in calls for shunning, subordination, or even violence. 

Whereas indirect bigotry manifests as "concern", or "debate" about a host of proxy issues. It's often “defensive” in tone rather than offensive. Frequently the claim is that a once needed liberation movement has now gone too far; that it's now the activists who are the new oppressors, who are disturbing “law and order” with violent and chaotic protests, who are victimizing and silencing innocent people by calling them bigots, who are infiltrating the media and replacing good old-fashioned entertainment with politically correct propaganda. And of course ordinary people are too intimidated to speak out against it because “cancel culture” is out of control and “free speech” is under attack. 

The direct bigot is always frothing at the mouth, ranting and raving about predators, perverts, invaders, rapists, brutish animals, vermin, roaches, rats, contagions. Whereas, the indirect bigot is always defending something, always a knight in shining armor. Defending women, defending the children, defending marriage, defending freedom, defending the family, defending our values, defending common sense, defending tradition, defending civilization itself, defending God.

He's all powerful, but he could really use your help Mary. 🙏

I think a lot of people take a borderline heroic view of themselves, and indirect bigotry flatters that self-image. Indirect bigotry often replaces the actual people it targets with some big abstract concept. Instead of Jewish people, they claim to be against "Zionist Occupied Government". Instead of women, they claim to hate "feminazis" or "the friendzone". Gay people are de-personified as "the gay agenda". Trans people become "transgenderism", "gender ideology", "transactivists". 

What they're really against is equality. But they don't say that, in fact they may not even think it. But they tell on themselves, when they react with instinctive hostility to anyone who agitates for change. "It's not racist to think that Black Lives Matter thugs shouldn't disrespect the national anthem!" 

A book called "The Anatomy of Prejudices" by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl really helped me with this video. One of the points she makes, is that a lot of the time bigotry is backlash:

“Ideologies of desire [a kind of prejudice] are backlashes against movements of equality; they are regressive prejudices that reinstate inequalities and distinctions, when the force of movements for equality has been registered and (often unconsciously) rejected.”

 “Prejudice replaces social barriers of another kind.”

Bigotry is not just the psychological state of hating a group of people. Bigotry is political, it's a reaction to changing demographics, or to liberation movements, or to changing power relations between groups. A lot of casual misogynists don't exactly hate women in the literal psychological sense. It's more that they feel threatened by the prospect of the social and political equality of women. In fact I would argue that “feeling threatened” is the distinctive psychological experience of bigotry, much more so than feeling hateful. 

So bigotry is reactive, and it changes along with the circumstances that it's a reaction to. 1950’s misogyny still has some things in common with 2020’s misogyny. For example a lot of men still feel some need to control women's sexuality and women's bodies. But it's also changed a lot as gender relations have shifted in the last 70 years. The idea that women are naturally suited to domestic servitude is a lot less prevalent than it used to be. 

And transphobia is a prejudice that's getting much louder, because in the last decade trans liberation has increased our visibility. People are running into us at work now, they're having to use our pronouns, they're seeing us in politics or in media, and not just as laughing stocks or monsters like we used to be, but as actual characters. And a lot of people are not very happy about it, they feel threatened. That must be super fucking hard for you.

 “Prejudice replaces social barriers of another kind.” 

So J.K. Rowling frames her position as: "I'm just saying the fact that sex is real. It's not hateful to say a fact, why is everyone so mad at me? A fact can't be bigoted." And I agree that a fact can't be bigoted. But a fact on its own doesn't mean very much. Usually when we discuss facts, we're using those facts to tell a story. And facts can be used to tell bigoted stories.

You know, suppose someone tweets “the fact” that the homicide rate is higher for Black Americans than white Americans. I'm gonna ask, what story are you trying to tell with this fact? What political goals are you trying to support?

One way indirect bigotry works is by camouflaging political struggles as intellectual debates. When Joanne says "sex is real", she sounds like she's staking out a position in "the trans debate". Which is then presented as an intellectual conflict about the metaphysics of gender, instead of what it is really is, which is a political conflict about the social equality of transgender people.

And the effectiveness of that strategy is actually a reason I'm not a huge fan of the slogan, "trans women are women". And this is just my opinion, I don't speak for any other trans people but there's a couple things I don't like about it. One, is trans men and non-binary people matter just as much as trans women. But you don't as often hear, "trans men are men" or “non-binary people are... valid?” Doesn't really work does it?

The other problem with "trans women are women", is it tends to invite the response "well what does it even mean to be a woman? Define womanhood!" And now you're immediately getting baited into some bullshit semantic debate about "what is a real woman?"

A real woman! How do you know you're a real woman Amber? What if you're in the matrix right now, and in the real world you're biologically male? The tables are turned!

It doesn't really matter, does it? This is metaphysics. And life is too short for metaphysics. You know I've been down this road too many times already, and I always end up having these dead end conversations about gender performativity; or worse, conversations about what it means to "feel like a woman". Well the truth is I don't really feel like a woman. I don't think anyone feels like a woman honestly, except a certain subgenre of gay men and possibly Shania Twain. Probably not even her anymore honestly, not since the early 2000s. 

You know, some questions should be dissolved rather than solved. That's what Wittgenstein said. That's right we're dragging Ludwig into this. Sometimes the only way to answer a question is to realize you're asking the wrong question. How do I know I'm a woman? Well look at me. 

I rest my case. 👸

The monitor is over here, that's what I'm looking at when I look over here. I like to check in occasionally, see how I'm doing. 

Look, trans people can't even agree among ourselves what gender is, in fact if you even try to answer the question you end up enraging some part of the community who feels excluded. So no, trans people are not trying to “force an ideology” on people, we don't even share an ideology within our own community. What we share are a common set of political struggles against discrimination, against harassment, against excessive medical gatekeeping, against exclusion from public life. 

So, what would be a better slogan than “trans women are women?” Well ideally something that includes all trans people and something that evades pointless philosophizing about "biology", and "what is gender?" and "who is true trans?" and "what is a woman really?" Something that centers what actually matters, which is freeing trans people from the stigma and discrimination that have historically prevented us from becoming equal members of society. 

So I know it sounds kind of outdated, very 1970’s, but I personally like the slogan, "trans liberation now!" ⚧ ✊ It's short, it's sweet, and instead of prompting "define womanhood!" it prompts people to ask "what do you mean liberation? Liberation from what?" And then you can say, “well I'll tell you!” And now you're talking about politics instead of talking about semantics. Isn't that better? 

I feel like trans culture is just so obsessed with reassuring ourselves that we're “valid”, that we sometimes forget that the end goal of a political movement is not “validity”, it's equality. That's what we're supposed to be fighting for. 

So instead of asking "does J.K. Rowling think we're valid?" Which like, who fucking cares if she thinks we're valid? Well, maybe I care a little bit. But instead, why don't we ask "is she or is she not an ally in our struggle for equality?" Doesn't that just bring reality back into focus? Isn't it so much better to have a concrete political project in front of you, instead of sinking into this scholastic gender theology? 

Trans people are a population of people who have a right to equality, and to freedom from discrimination. We are not an ideology that's up for debate. But that's how J.K. Rowling frames “the trans question”. Not as a struggle for equality that she opposes, but as an ideology that she disagrees with. "I'm just saying that sex is real." Is that all you're saying Joanne?

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Remember that scene in the "Goblet of Fire" in the prefect's bathroom? Moaning Myrtle heyhowareyou? I wonder if that inspired my love of baths. This bath is actually really nice. It's a lot of milk and a lot of rose oil, epsom salts, just kind of everything that's good in baths all together. I don't wanna talk about bigotry, I wanna talk about baths. Can this just be a video about baths from now on? Oh fine, I'll do my job.

On June 10 J.K. Rowling published an essay to her website, which on Twitter she titled "TERF wars," which was just awarded the Russell Prize by the BBC for its brave display of unyielding transphobia I guess. The essay is several pages long and outlines her “reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues”: 

“I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering to cover predators like few before it.” 

Where do I even begin with this one, well let's pick some highlights.

“‘Woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man's head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive.”

Oh… well, my mistake. Here I was thinking I was a woman, turns out I'm just a man who likes expensive shoes. What a whimsical misunderstanding! Okay well that's it everyone, the channel's over. Thanks for the likes and comments, I'm gonna head out now to the Jimmy Choo store and then I guess I'll cut my tits off. 

Joanne? Joanne! This is madness Joanne. 

“When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman– and, as I've said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones– then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”

So look I understand that some women are anxious about the thought of predators in bathrooms. And believe me, I don't wanna share a bathroom with a predator any more than you do. 

Why are all rose petals on this one side? Some of them need to come over here. Come here. I have redistributed the petals. Socialist icon. ☭

But this talking point that gender change on legal documents will enable predators to enter bathrooms, it doesn't really make sense because gender policing in public bathrooms does not involve legal documents. Like, when was the last time you had to present a gender certificate to gain admittance to a public bathroom? This feels like a strangely outdated conversation to be having during pandemic lockdown. Like, imagine using a public bathroom. Imagine being in public.

I've been reading this book called "Female Masculinity" which is about the experiences of butch women. And there's a section in here called "The Bathroom Problem", which describes how women's bathrooms:

“Tend to operate as an area for the enforcement of gender conformity.” - Jack Halberstam

The author, Jack Halberstam, who's assigned female at birth and presents masculine, describes routinely having security called on him for using the women's bathroom.

“Having one's gender challenged in the women's rest room is a frequent occurrence in the lives of many androgynous or masculine women; indeed, it is so frequent that one wonders whether the category ‘woman’, when used to designate public functions, is completely outmoded.”

“Queer literature is littered with references to the bathroom problem, and it would not be an exaggeration to call it a standard feature of the butch narrative.”

And that's very interesting to me because as a feminine trans woman, I have not once been questioned or had the authorities called on me in a women's public bathroom in the entire time I've been using them. Which is several years now. So when Joanne Rowling, a feminine, heterosexual woman calls for more bathroom policing to protect the lesbians or whatever, it just seems ignorant of the way bathroom policing actually works. Like, is she just so famous that she doesn't use public bathrooms anymore and she forgot how they work?

How much could one bathroom entry certificate cost Michael, ten dollars? 

Women's bathrooms are policed according to femininity, not chromosomes. And there's no practical way to change that short of stationing a genital inspector in every stall. You know, just to make sure no one's privacy is violated. That's a very good idea, Joanne. That's very good.

“Ironically, radical feminists aren't even trans-exclusionary, they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.” - JK Rowling

Isn't it ironic that supposedly transphobic feminists think that trans men are women? 

📞 Hello operator? Could you get me Alanis Morissette? I have a new incident to report. 

So look I could keep refuting points made in "TERF wars", which is basically just a series of common transphobic canards we've all heard a hundred times before. But I wanna focus in particular on some passages that I think are very revealing about the psychology of transphobia. What is it about “the transgenders” that some people feel threatened by? Well, Joanne Rowling gives us a lot to work with in answering that question. 

You know, Joanne being a TERF is mostly terrible for trans people but maybe the silver lining is that the most famous novelist in the world having a public transphobic breakdown is providing a wealth of insight about the interior world of a transphobe. In "TERF wars", Joanne claims her interest in the trans issue is "intensely personal". And she has two reasons it's personal. The first, is that she thinks that if she'd been a child today she would have been transed. Someone would transed her! 

You know, people are being transed left and right these days, it's a reasonable thing to be concerned about. Trans people, we’re always on the lookout for the next person we can trans. It's all we wanna do, is trans people. I transed four people this morning, before I ate breakfast. 

She thinks that she would've been recruited by The Transsexual Empire, and forced to take hormones by the dark cabal of endocrinologists. And in support of this speculation, Joanne rehashes a bunch of transphobic tropes about social contagion and a quote:

“4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment.”  

And that sounds pretty alarming right? 4400%? But you have to keep in mind that 10 years ago, only 32 assigned female patients under 18 were referred. And by last year that number was 1,740, with the biggest increase happening five years ago. You know, the "transgender tipping point" year. 

So that is a big increase, but it corresponds to the biggest ever increase in trans visibility so it does make sense. And there's 11 million children in the UK, so let's say 5.5 million girls, and 1,740 is 0.03% of that. And considering that around 1% of adults are some kind of transgender, 0.03% of kids is not really an alarming number to me. If anything you'd expect it to be higher. But part of Joanne's problem here is that she seems not to really understand what being trans is:

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I've read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I've wondered whether, if I'd been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge… If I'd found community and sympathy online that I couldn't find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he'd have preferred." 

“Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it's fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it's OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.”

Okay, so… There's a lot to unpack here. And let's start by making a list of things being a transgender man is not: Having anxiety, having dissociation, having an eating disorder, doing self-harm, doing self-hatred, a viable way to make your sexist father proud, not feeling pink, not feeling frilly, not being compliant, feeling confused, feeling dark, feeling sexual, feeling non-sexual, feeling unsure of who you are. 

Okay, so you can be a trans man and experience some or even all of these things, but none of these things are what being a trans man is. Wanting to take testosterone to masculinize your body and literally live your life as a man is not the same as the typical struggles other girls go through. 

Joanne is projecting her own memories of troubled adolescence onto trans men, and then saying, "oh, clearly they were going through the same things I was, just someone persuaded them to transition." It's a limitation of human empathy that sometimes when we're trying to understand what someone else is feeling, the best we can do is to project our feelings onto them.

And sometimes that's a misrepresentation. Sometimes other people are experiencing things that we've never experienced. So we have to invent explanations about why they're not behaving the way we think they should. "Someone is persuading them to transition!" But this fear-mongering about kids being “persuaded” to transition is just not how things work. 

From the way transphobes talk about it you'd think whenever a little girl on the playground picks up a toy truck, an endocrinologist pops out from behind a tree and says "we've got a non-conformist on our hands Johnson. Standby, I'm gonna trans em!" 💉

But this is the narrative transphobes are pushing, in particular about young trans masculine people. Last year a transphobic screed of a book came out that is essentially to trans masculine people what "The Transsexual Empire" was to trans women. It's called "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters." Chapter One: "The Contagion". Jesus. Laying it on a little thick don't you think, Abigail? 

The argument is that female to male transgenderism is an infectious social disease. Which is literally the argument Hitler made about homosexuality but okay, great. I think a major problem with media coverage of trans issues is that not enough attention is paid to transphobia against trans men. 

Like after the J.K. Rowling story broke, Daniel Radcliffe came out and said "Transgender women are women". And that's very nice of him but, a huge section of Joanne's essay is about trans men. In fact she spends more words on trans men than on any other topic, so I think it's worth looking in particular at that.

Something I've noticed is transphobia against trans men is not the same as transphobia against trans women. There's a lot of similarities, but they're really two different prejudices. And they come from different psychological places, in the same way that lesbophobia is different from homophobia against gay men. 

For trans women, I would say the distinctive experience of transphobia is being simultaneously treated as a pornographic female fetish object and as a dangerous male predator. The ultimate sex demon, this kind of incubus-succubus who will ravish your wife and trap your husband. Your polygamous commune will devastated. 

Whereas I feel like trans masculine people are less vilified, but so infantilized. I guess transphobes view trans men as women, so a lot of misogynistic tropes still apply. So much for transitioning to escape sexism. The story is often that these "vulnerable, confused girls" can't possibly decide for themselves what to do with their bodies, so the courts must intervene to take control. 

Which is exactly what just happened in the UK, where trans youth under 16 will now need not only the approval of a doctor but will need to seek a court order in order to get puberty blockers. And the justification given for this mirrored exactly Joanne's “concerns” about "fragile, vulnerable, teenage girls" being unable to make informed decisions. In her essay Joanne says: 

“I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who's older than I am and wonderful. Although she's open about her past as a gay man, I've always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman… Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass.”

So that's what she wants. She wants "robust systems of medical gatekeeping." Which is the same thing Janice Raymond wants just, Joanne’s more polite about it. 

I wanna make a drink. Sometimes people ask me if I used to be a bartender. No, just drank a lot. Ahh, we're revealing leg again, the scandal! Putting a wet, white chiffon thing over it, is that much more chaste? 😳

Well I'm an extremely chaste woman. I try to honor God with my body, that's why I got a sex change. I'm honoring God with my sex change. I'm not drunk enough for this. 🍸

So I also wanna point out that cis men and cis women are often transphobic for different reasons. A lot of cis men are transphobic against trans women because the thought that a man can become a woman, threatens the certainty of their own manhood. It's similar to the reason a lot of straight men are homophobic, they feel their own masculinity is threatened by it. And of course a lot of straight men are attracted to trans women, and they feel that attraction threatens their identity as straight men. 

Back in my comp-het days when I dated men, for a couple straight guys I hooked up with, going down on me was like crossing the fucking Rubicon.

This is it Mr. Frodo. If I take one more step, I'll be the farthest from heterosexual I've ever been. Okay Samwise. Whatever you need to tell yourself. 🙄

And then afterwards they go into this whole Cartesian spiral. "What have I done?" What does this mean? Who am I?" I think for a lot of cis women, the very existence of trans men sends them into a similar identity crisis. 

I think a lot of women have had to fight a really difficult internal battle to make peace with their own womanhood. And for some women confronting the existence of transgender people, seems to open some old wounds. Like I've noticed in particular that some of the most virulent and obsessive TERFs are older lesbian women on the more butch side of things. And these women see hyper-feminine trans women in makeup and dresses and they say, "that is not what being a woman is. "I've had to fight for my own identity against the idea that that's what being a woman is. These are just misogynistic stereotypes, you are a parody of womanhood, you're a fetishist." 

And when they see trans men they say "you're a traitor, you're a self-loather. Why can't you learn to accept yourself as a woman the way I've had to?" But this is all projection and misunderstanding. Trans women do not think that “wearing dresses” is what makes us women. And trans men do not think that “not feeling pink, frilly, and compliant", is what makes them men. 

These are meanings that J.K. Rowling is assigning to trans people's actions in her own brain. Because she perceives our lives as some kind of commentary on gender, with an implied ideology about what it means to be a man or a woman. But that's your interpretation Joanne, that's a meaning that you are imposing on us. Because it seems you have a lot of traumatic gender baggage of your own, and it's interfering with your ability to genuinely empathize with trans people. 

You know at the end of your essay you say that you “never forget the inner complexity” when it comes to trans people. And that's a nice thought, but until you're actually able to stop seeing trans people as some kind of like– abstract theory of gender, or as a projection of your own adolescence, then you're not really seeing us as distinct individuals with our own experiences and stories. 

And, since you are a self-appointed spokesperson on trans people– sorry “gender issues”. I think it would be good if you listened to the experiences of trans men without, for instance, superimposing your own troubled relationship with your father. 

Oh I should probably talk about the book. Since I did go to the trouble to read all 900 pages, because unlike certain other YouTubers, I do in fact know how to read. 💅

"Troubled Blood" was published in September 2020 by Joanne Rowling under her pen name Robert Galbraith. You know for someone apparently so concerned about her womanhood being erased by the transsexuals. The fact that she publishes under a male pen name is… it's interesting. It's a choice. 

God this thing is huge, it's like the "Infinite Jest" of TERFery. So "Troubled Blood" is a detective novel about the simmering heterosexual tension between two investigators. And that's really what Rowling does best isn't it, simmering? There's a lot of simmering in the Harry Potter universe. And a lot of fans who'd like to raise that simmer to a boil.

Hello Daniel. I love you grown up Harry Potter. Let me show you my love. The only way I know how. 🥛😳

Is there gonna be discourse about this? Look if it's wrong to have comphet feelings about Daniel Radcliffe, I don't wanna be right. I will not be shamed for my shameful fantasies. Get out of here Daniel. This is a final farewell to my heterosexuality. Goodbye Daniel! And your little arm too. You stay out of this Glinda!

So the prime suspect in "Troubled Blood" is Dennis Creed, a cross-dressing serial killer who dresses as a woman to lull his victims, whomst he abducts, tortures, rapes, and murders. Interesting. 

Now I enjoyed this book because like most women, I enjoy books about dangerous perverts. But a lot of trans people– literate trans people, have called this book transphobic. And you might think that's unfair since the character Dennis Creed, this serial killer, he’s not trans. He's a cross-dresser. This has nothing to do with trans people. Why so triggered snowflake? 

Well precious, there's a couple things I think are worth taking into consideration here. One, is that the transvestite or transsexual serial killer is an old transphobic trope. It's a cliche that goes back decades. And I take great offense to the suggestion that trans women are serial killers because I for one, haven't been caught yet.

The trope seems to originate in 1960 with Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". That's just my guess though, I haven't researched this. Who do you think I am, Lindsay Ellis? 

So I don't think "Psycho" is transphobic. The movie ends with a psychoanalytic summing up, where the psychiatrist offers the pseudo-Freudian explanation that Norman cross-dresses because the personality of his dead mother takes over, and out of jealousy kills the women Norman is attracted to. Therefore, the psychiatrist explains Norman is not a real transvestite. You're a fake transvestite Norman. Trender alert! 🚨

But I do think that even if "Psycho" isn't explicitly transphobic, movies can subconsciously implant ideas and feelings into our brains. And I do think it's worth noting that the most famous and most terrifying murder scene in cinema history is of a man in a dress attacking a woman in a bathroom. To quote a popular film critic: “you might not have noticed it, but your brain did”. 

The cross-dressing psycho trope became explicitly transphobic in the campy 1980 "Psycho" ripoff "Dressed to Kill". In which Michael Cain plays a transsexual psychiatrist who yes, dresses as a woman to kill women he's attracted to.

“He was a transsexual.”

“You see there’s some men and women too that think they’re born in the wrong body, they’re called transsexuals… And all they wanna do is have their sex changed.”

It's all they wanna do! The transsexuals! "Dressed to Kill" also ends with a psychiatric summing up, where the doctor explains that Michael Cain is a case of:

 “Opposite sexes inhabiting the same body.”

But it's the female Michael Cain who kills because, and I quote:

“Elliot's penis became erect and Bobbi took control trying to kill anyone that made Elliot masculinely sexual.”

There's often a misogynistic trope hiding behind the transphobic one. It's the woman in the man who does the murders. It's the mother's fault.

“His mother was a clinging, demanding woman.” - Psycho

The most mature iteration of this trope, the crown jewel of transphobic movies, is of course "The Silence of the Lambs". Which is honestly one of my favorite movies, because Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins are just radiant in it. And, also… I hate myself. 🙃

"Silence of the Lambs" is the story of Buffalo Bill, an animal lover and innovative seamstress– 🪡 Buffalo Bill is a transtrender– a transtrender 😆–  who kills women to make a suit out of their skin, because his application for sex reassignment was rejected because, according to Hannibal Lecter: 

“Billy is not a real transsexual.” 

👏Hannibal 👏 Lecter 👏 is 👏 a truscum! 

There's so much gatekeeping of trans people; I just wanna use this opportunity to reassure my trans audience that, even if you've only killed one or two people, you're valid. I entertain myself. That's how I continue to struggle onwards.

Hannibal: “Billy… hates his own identity you see, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage, and more terrifying.” 

More savage and terrifying than being a transsexual? Is that even possible? Okay, it's definitely getting brighter in here because the sun is rising. 

"Silence of the Lambs" differs from its male gazey predecessors, in that it kind of feels like a radical feminist movie. Clarice is a perfect blend of strength and vulnerability, and every man in this movie is a pig. Except maybe Hannibal Lecter, the only one who actually respects Clarice. The only real gentleman, with his Goldberg Variations and his sketches of the Duomo. Chilton's a pig, the entomologist is a swine, even Crawford's kind of a pig, the pigs are pigs, Miggs is pigs, and Buffalo Bill is the ultimate pig. 

Die Überschwein. That's in the original German. What the fuck I'm I taking about?!?! 🤪

And he's obsessed with death's-head moths, this demonization of the most self-congratulatory metaphor for gender transformation. 

I can't believe I've finally emerged as a beautiful butterfly. Show don't tell Lily. Oh my god, I can't wait until trans people have so many rights that it's okay to make fun of us. There's a lot to work with. 

So "Silence of the Lambs" is a good movie. I'm not saying that it's inherently wrong to make a movie or write a book about a transgender serial killer, but there is a real issue of representation. You know for decades there was close to zero good representation of trans people in movies or TV, but a whole host of cross-dressing serial killers. And that has an effect on the way people think. When it comes time to debate bathroom bills and people are subconsciously remembering "Psycho", that has serious consequences for trans people. 

It's getting so bright in here the sun has like, the sun has risen. ✝️🙏

And it's also not psychologically good for us to grow up seeing only monstrous caricatures of ourselves in media. Like even as late as my early twenties I didn't know any trans people, but I'd seen all these transgender horror movies. I think the most positive approximation of representation I knew about was like Frank-N-Furter and Divine. And both of them are also psychotic murderers, just, you know, in a fun way! Should have just gotten her those cha-cha heels. 

So I knew back then I was some kind of trans, but I guess I felt that it was basically the moral equivalent of being a serial killer. Not something you tell other people about that's for sure. And things have changed in the last 10 years, it's a different world for trans people than it was. There's trans people now who are 10 years younger than me who don't even hate themselves. Can't relate.

So this takes us back to 2020 and "Troubled Blood". Joanne has written a book about a serial killer who dresses as a woman to kill women. Groundbreaking. Now this is such a cliche that you'd kind of expect a seasoned writer like J.K. Rowling to subvert it somehow. Give us a remix, turn it on its head, humanize the monster in an unexpected way. You know, give her a little "Half-Blood Prince" moment, or at least do something new with it. But she really doesn't. It's just Buffalo Bill all over again. 

I guess I should read you some passages. I'm reading it on my phone, I'm not bringing the book out and pretending to read from the book. You can see from my little bookmarks that I read the physical book. Yes I'm a YouTuber, and yes I read a book. 🤓

So here's the psychiatrist– there's always a psychiatrist isn't there? Here's the psychiatrist's diagnosis of Dennis Creed:

“He's a classic sociopath, you see, a pure example of the type. He scores very highly on the dark triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Devious, sadistic, unrepentant and extremely egotistical.”

You see he's what we in the medical profession call, the baddie. Quote Dennis:

It excited me, to watch a woman who didn't know she was being observed. I'd do it to my sister, but I'd creep up to lit windows as well. If I got lucky, I'd see women or girls undressing, adjusting themselves or even a glimpse of nudity. I was aroused not only by the obviously sensual aspects, but by the sense of power. I felt I stole something of their essence from them, taking that which they thought private and hidden.”

“He soon progressed to stealing women's underwear from neighbors' washing lines and even from his grandmother, Ena. These he enjoyed wearing in secret, and masturbating in.” 

Remember when she wrote books about wizard school? Ho ho dear readers!

So Dennis Creed is characterized as a narcissistic male fetishist who preys on women. And like okay, there really are men who fetishize women's clothes for example. I mean Freud talked about this right, partialism where sexuality focuses on a body part or an article of clothing. And Freud theorized that fetishes emerge from the unconscious trauma that occurs when men discover that women don't have a penis. Boy have I got news for Dr Freud. 😏

But considering that Joanne has been doing a lot of “gender critical reading” over the past few years, it's kind of hard for me to ignore that "narcissistic male fetishist who preys on women" is exactly the way a lot of TERFs characterize trans women. Remember, the whole "gender critical feminists with concerns about trans youth" routine is obfuscation. These people are bigots.

And it's a pretty common canard among TERFs that trans women are hyper-sexual and hyper-aggressive right? These inherently pornographic sex demons. “But can't we just have a reasonable debate about this?” Are trans women sex demons? Why yes. Yes we are. The bigots are simply correct, we're sex demons. 

You can't even talk to these people, like how do you engage with this level of vilification? I used to take the bait, and argue that no actually I'm not a sex demon– unless you want me to be. 😈

But it's counterproductive to make that argument. Why? Because: 

"My 'Not involved in human trafficking' T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt." - @shutupmikeginn

So I have a hard time believing that the character Dennis Creed has nothing to do with Joanne's beliefs about trans people. And so I also wanna note that Dennis's cross-dressing is described not just as part of the sexual satisfaction he gets from invading women's privacy and invading women's bodies, but also as a deliberate strategy of deception. Dennis says– on page 854 so you know I actually read this fucking shit:

“In a wig, bit of lipstick they think you're harmless, odd... maybe queer... You're the nice man who's safe.”

And earlier he's described as:

“Dennis Creed had been a meticulous planner, a genius of misdirection in his neat little white van, dressed in the pink coat he'd stolen from Vi Cooper, and sometimes wearing a wig that, from a distance, to a drunk victim, gave his hazy form a feminine appearance just long enough for his large hands to close over a gasping mouth.”

So this character, sprung from Joanne's imagination, cross-dresses as a way to disarm his victims. They mistake him for a woman or as, you know, and that causes them to lower their guard. And this reminds me of one of Maya Forstater's "allegedly" transphobic tweets:

“Pronouns are rohypnol: important article by HairyLeggdHarpy.” 

AKA "Vulvamort", she who must not be named. Followed by J.K. Rowling, because of course. “Pronouns are Rohypnol”– rohypnol is roofies– and there's a picture of a pill with "she" on it:

“Pronouns are like Rohypnol. They dull your defenses. They change your inhibitions. They're meant to. You've had a lifetime's experience learning to be alert to ‘him’ and relax to ‘her’. For good reason. This instinctive response keeps you safe. It's not even a conscious thing. It's like your hairs standing on end. Your subconscious brain is helping you not get eaten by the sabre tooth tiger that your eyes haven't noticed yet.” 

“I want to be alert. I want others to be alert. I want people to see the real picture, and I want those instinctive reactions that we feel when something is wrong, to be un-blunted, undulled by this cheap but effective psychological trick. I feel like I owe this to myself, and I absolutely owe it to other women. And more than anything, I owe this to girls. I don't want to play even the tiniest part in grooming them to disregard their natural protective instincts. Those instincts are there for a reason. To keep them safe. They need those instincts intact, and sharp. And that's why I won't use preferred pronouns. Using Rohypnol on others isn't a courtesy.”

Okay. So, these are the thoughts of someone who's been hurt. Speaking of which, let's return now to the other reason why J.K. Rowling feels her interest in trans people is intensely personal. 

III

🎹

🪄🍸

*meowing "Born This Way"*

I was born this way. Born as a fucking idiot. I made a gin martini because I'm 200 years old. It's kind of an Agatha drink. Well I'm a 200 year old witch. That's the plot, pay attention it makes sense. Also a martini, what is a martini but an excuse to drink a glass of gin? I should probably umm, probably eat an olive or this is gonna go straight to my fucking… my brain. Okay we have to be serious now. 

In "TERF wars", Joanne writes:

“I've been in the public eye now for over 20 years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor… On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to do to ‘become a woman’ is to say he's one. To use a very contemporary word, I was 'triggered'. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media… I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my 20s recurred on a loop.. I couldn't shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls' safety.” 

Okay, so for Joanne, her traumatic experience being attacked by a man is psychologically related to her concerns about the legal recognition of trans people. And about trans people saying nasty things about her on Twitter. She feels intensely about this issue, because the discourse around it literally triggers her PTSD. In her own words:

“The scars left by violence and sexual assault don't disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you've made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke– and even I know it's funny– but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven't heard them approaching.”

A common symptom of trauma is hypervigilance. A constant alertness to danger. This is described in a very wise book called "Conflict is Not Abuse" by Sarah Schulman:

“The traumatized person's sense of their ability to protect themselves has been damaged or destroyed. They feel endangered, even if there is no actual danger in the present, because in the past they have experienced profoundly invasive cruelty and they know it is possible.”

I wanna respect that having a trauma trigger response is a real experience of suffering that is not the victim's fault, even in cases where that response is irrational or politically incorrect. For example, if you got mugged by a Black teenager, I wouldn't judge you if you felt a little jumpy around Black teenagers for a while. However, if that jumpiness motivates you to become a campaigner for more militant policing of Black neighborhoods, then you are participating in anti-Black racism. And that I will criticize regardless of your trauma. 

I hope it goes without saying that trans people gaining easier access to legal recognition in Scotland in 2020, is completely unrelated to Joanne Rowling being assaulted by a cis man in the 1990s. This is a non-sequitur. 

So, it's a little odd to me that while Joanne is self-aware enough to recognize that her hyper-vigilance is the result of trauma, and she's self-aware enough to realize that her hyper-vigilance is often irrational to the point where she herself finds humor in it, she's somehow not self-aware enough to realize that her fears about trans people are an irrational manifestation of that hypervigilance. 

And again it's not that I'm unsympathetic to her trauma. And I would be nothing but sympathetic if her feelings about this amounted to simply being triggered by, for example, perceiving someone as male in the women's bathroom. Which is something most trans women are sensitive to. 

Like I've spoken to trans women who are worried they don't pass, or who know they don't pass, and who do everything they can to avoid using a public bathroom because they don't wanna make cis women uncomfortable. So those trans women go through life everyday compromising their own comfort and safety to protect cis women's feelings of comfort and safety. 

But Joanne's transphobia has so outgrown the scope of an automatic trigger response. It's become a fixation for years, to the point where she's written a 900 page novel about a serial killer who cross-dresses to trick women into being less vigilant. And now, the primary political cause she's decided to use her superstardom to champion is opposition to trans liberation. And past trauma is just not an excuse for that.

Like if you're against gay marriage because you were traumatized as a child when your father left your mother for a man, you're still a homophobe, right? You're not less of a bigot because your bigotry has a tragic backstory. In fact bigotry often has a tragic backstory. Bigotry involves feelings of being threatened or attacked, so it's often rooted in trauma. 

After the collective trauma of 9/11, Americans felt threatened not just by al-Qaeda but by the entire religion of Islam. And this was used and is still being used to justify wars, discrimination, travel bans, hate crimes.

Feelings of victimization are often used as justification for aggression. And when the target of that aggression is a marginalized group, the result is bigotry. Now what TERFs say, is that it's actually "the transactivists" who are the real aggressors, who are the real bigots.

Trans women are men, they're agents of the patriarchy, creepy perverts demanding access to female spaces. TERF is a misogynistic slur designed to silence women. It's biological women who are the real victims. ⌨️

The real victim. So often in debates on social issues, we're faced with two opposing sides both claiming to be “the victim”. And we're often told to believe victims, believe marginalized people. Well if it only was that easy. So often, the exact point in question is who is “the victim”? And who’s “the oppressor”? That book I quoted earlier "Conflict is Not Abuse", describes the way:

“the overstatement of harm is used as a justification for cruelty”

In situations ranging from romantic relationships to international affairs:

“Bullies often conceptualize themselves as being under attack when they are the ones originating the pain.”

Throughout Joanne's essay she frequently represents herself as taking a defiant free-speechy stand against:

“Accusations and threats from trans activists.”

“The trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating.”

“Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists.”

And in her subsequent tweets she frames herself as the victim of a witch hunt:

“Sometimes a t-shirt just speaks to you.” (This witch doesn't burn.) 

This is the new Salem. Women are being attacked online for taking a stand against the transsexuals. This witch doesn't burn, let's see what else we have for sale at wildwomynworkshop dot com? 

"Fuck your pronouns" 

"Trans men are my sisters" 

"Sorry about your dick bro"– that's a good one, I'd wear that. 

"Don't call me ‘cis’”– Cis is a vile slur against my tender normality. Must be really hard for you, not being a tr*nny. 

"War is peace 

Freedom is slavery 

Ignorance is strength 

Trans women are women" 

God the sense of persecution. This is Orwell's nightmare, this is how Nazi Germany started. First Hitler told the transgenders they were super hecking valid uwu. Then he burned their books–wait oh… no, that's actually the opposite of what happened. 

Slurs, Feminist t-shirt– nice Trilby, it's very dapper. 

Slurs: “man-hater, feminazi, prude, witch, bigot”. Wait, bigot? Are we reclaiming bigot now? Is bigot a slur used to silence the females? Joanne wrote in her essay that she was standing up in solidarity with:

“women who have histories like mine, who've been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.”

“Slurred as bigots”. There’s something so revealing about the claim that “bigot is a slur”. Because so much of indirect bigotry is an attempt to reverse the roles of victim and aggressor. "Isn't calling people bigots the real bigotry?" That's good, that's very clever. 

A white racist will hardly ever use the phrase "white supremacy." No they say, "white genocide." Always on the defensive. And now transphobes are bemoaning "lesbian extinction". The same conservative media who 10 years ago were portraying lesbians as like, angry, mannish d*kes, have now created this mythology of lesbians as these virginal damsels in distress who are threatened with invasion and now extinction. 

On one front by the dark cabal of endocrinologists, who are somehow coercing them into becoming men. Elliot no! You can't possibly be doing this because you're 33 years old and capable of autonomous thought, clearly you were tricked by the transgender lesbian extinction agenda! 

And on the other front by trans women who, we're told, are "slurring as bigots" lesbians who won't sleep with them. Joanne claims that:

“None of the gender critical women I've talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they're hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives.”

But the only gender critical women she mentions by name are Maya Forstater, who I would not describe as "hugely sympathetic" to trans adults. And Magdalen Berns, about whom Joanne says:

“Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian. Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn't believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises”

Okay, so I agree that it would be awful to call someone a bigot just because they don't want to date a woman with a penis. But are you sure that's why people call Magdalen Berns a bigot? Are you sure she hasn't said anything else about trans women that might lead people to think she's less than "hugely sympathetic”?

“You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You're men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck.” - Magdalen Berns

ℍ𝕌𝔾𝔼𝕃𝕐 𝕊𝕐𝕄ℙ𝔸𝕋ℍ𝔼𝕋𝕀ℂ 🤔

ＨＵＧＥＬＹ ＳＹＭＰＡＴＨＥＴＩＣ 🤔

Because Joanne claims that TERFs are "hugely sympathetic" to trans people and “just don't want to be called bigots”, and because she constantly frames herself as the victim of terrifying trans activists who say mean things online; I think it's fair for me to mention that this, right here is how I'm used to being spoken to and spoken about, by TERFs. 

When you're a trans woman online, TERFs pin you to the vivisection table. They deadname and misgender you, they mock your genitals, they describe your surgery results as necrotic mutilated wounds, they interpret your every feeling and experience as the manifestation of a sick woman-hating fetish. You know, in an unrelated video last year I mentioned being sexually assaulted by a man. And I've since been told by TERFs, essentially:

Trans-identified males get sexual kicks from being treated like women. Nathan probably enjoyed his so-called rape. ⌨️

H҉U҉G҉E҉L҉Y҉ ҉S҉Y҉M҉P҉A҉T҉H҉E҉T҉I҉C҉

I hope I don't even need to say that the idea that trans women can't be raped, because we'll “just enjoy it” is a violently anti-feminist thought. And it's a thought that could only be believed, and believed in the name of feminism no less, by people who have spent days and weeks absorbing the dehumanizing propaganda that TERF forums exist to promote. 

Now, I think if Joanne Rowling was in the room with me right now, she'd say "I'm so sorry you've been treated that way. But I too have been cruelly victimized online by the transactivists". And you know what? I'm sure that's true. 

When I listen to Joanne talk about being victimized by trans Twitter, it's easy for me to sympathize because trans Twitter has treated me the same way. The vilification, the obsession, the fantasies of violence. It's a pretty common occurrence for me to look at my mentions and see people with trans flag avatars posting things like: 

“point of view, you're truscum and Yoshi is gonna beat you to death with a golf club.”

#YesAllGamers Uh, here's a tread where first they call me an anti-semite because three years ago I made a joke about reptilian overlords. And then they get mad because I said I wanted to understand non-binary people instead of just dogmatically believing things, and they conclude:

“So basically; Fuck ContraPoints, I want to bash her over the god damn head with a metal bat over and over again.”

So, this is the level of antipathy that I attract from trans Twitter. So when Joanne says she's been overwhelmed by abusive messages, I'm inclined to believe her. I'm sure her mentions are overwhelmed with anime avatars saying things like– J.K. Rowling is hypocritical trash who literally wants millions of trans kids dead– Harry Potter was always neoliberal garbage and we should've seen this coming– This dumb bitch deserves our empathy she deserves a backhand slap to the face– And tweets like that are abusive. It's not okay, and I don't make any excuses for it. 

I wanna make a dark and stormy. Sorry, I’ll be right back. Okay I’m back! It's good. So I also think that there really is an element of misogyny to it– I have to put the drink down it’s making me laugh. You can't, you cannot talk about misogynistic cyber bullying while holding a tropical drink. It's not possible to do with a straight face. 🍹

So I agree there really is an element of misogyny to this. Misogyny is the most universal prejudice, and trans people are not immune. Angry Twitter mobs are generally more vicious to women, regardless of whether their anger is justified. There is a witch hunt impulse that's still alive in our culture. 

To be a famous woman, is to constantly have every part of your body and soul subjected to endless “critique”. You know if you're one pound overweight they call you a fatty. If you're one pound underweight they say you have an eating disorder. And if you're exactly the right weight? They call you a fatty with an eating disorder! You know, it's a kind of crowd-sourced abuse. There's a reason Taylor Swift is obsessed with her haters. When you're a famous woman, it's hard not to be obsessed with your haters because the haters bring the obsession to you. 

But, it's important to remember that haters are not the same as bigots. Being mean or rude or even abusive is not bigotry, unless it's tied to a history of oppression or a backlash against a movement of equality. So no Mike Huckabee, homophobic is not a slur. And no David Silverman, the word racist is not like the n-word. And no Joanne Rowling, bigot is not a slur, TERF is not a slur, and being canceled on Twitter may be a form of abuse, but it's not a form of oppression. And I say this as someone at this point most known for complaining about cancel culture. Oh God, is this my legacy? 

A lot of trans people have been very mean, verbally abusive even to J.K. Rowling. But most people criticizing Joanne, or criticizing me for that matter, might be hurt and angry but they're not violent. But when you're receiving hundreds or thousands of messages full of hurt and anger and hate, you experience it as one huge tidal wave of loathing crashing over you all at once. And that 0.1% of messages that really are violent, they become emblematic of the way the whole experience feels. And if you've been the victim of abuse before, the experience can be pretty triggering. 

So, it's just not always as simple as “the victim” and “the abuser”. Sometimes victims are also abusers. Sometimes abusers have a history of victimization. Sometimes righteously angry people cross a line into abusive excess. And not all abuse comes from a position of power. Why are so many trans people on Twitter so easily driven to extremes of rage and aggression? Well, there's a passage in "Conflict is Not Abuse" that I think applies just as well to trans Twitter as it does to TERFs:

“People living in unrecovered trauma often behave in very similar ways to the people who traumatized them. Over and over I have seen traumatized people refuse to hear or engage information that would alter their self-concepts, even in ways that could bring them more happiness and integrity… the undiscovered traumatized person's refusal is rooted in a panic that their fragile self cannot bear interrogation; that whatever is keeping them together is not flexible. Perhaps because supremacy in some produces trauma in others, they can become mirror images. And of course, many perpetrators were/are victims themselves.

A lot of TERFs have been treated very horribly by men. And they misdirect some reflection of that abuse at trans people, a vulnerable group who they can mostly get away with hurting. Unlike standing up to powerful men right, which would be dangerous and difficult.

And a lot of trans people have been very horribly treated by men, by TERFs, by strangers on the street, by their own families. And for some of those trans people, canceling celebrities on Twitter is the one kind of power they have. Plus a lot of “extremely online” trans people really don't have a strong sense of conviction in their own identity. Which is why they need constant external validation to prop them up. They need to constantly be told that they're valid; that they really are the gender that they say they are. And if someone even obliquely threatens or questions their fragile self-concept, they lash out. Twitter being their only weapon. 

You know, Joanne, you say at the end of your essay that “all you're asking, all you want, is empathy and understanding”. And I've tried to extend that to you in this video. But trans people also deserve more empathy and understanding than you've given them. 

Some time you should look at some of these Twitter accounts that are always raging against you and raging against me for that matter. In between the raging, look at what they're doing. They're begging. Begging for money to pay for healthcare, begging for money to pay for housing. You are worth hundreds of millions of dollars Joanne, or pounds, or Gringotts, or whatever you people have. And trans people are out here literally begging for healthcare. They're begging Joanne! How powerful could “the trans agenda” really be? Joanne you have so much power and influence, many many times more than what I have. And I have much more power and influence than most trans people.

You know, I am in a very different situation than most trans people. I have a lot of other things going for me in this world. But a lot of them have nothing. They have nothing Joanne. And I just think you should take that into consideration next time you decide to “speak out” about how “transactivists” are oppressing you. Get it together gorg. Are you listening to yourself? What are you doing Joanne? 

You know, a lot of trans people have gone through life being rejected and humiliated and excluded over and over again. So they're traumatized, they're easily triggered by anything that reminds them of past betrayal and abandonment. Which is something I think you could empathize with. 

Joanne, you are famous for writing a book about a neglected and abused boy who lives in a closet until he's whisked away to a magical world where he and his freaky friends find acceptance in each other.

 Hagrid: “I remember when I first met you all, biggest bunch of misfits I ever set eyes on.”

Ron: “We're still a bunch of misfits.”

Hagrid: “Well maybe, but we've all got each other.” - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

So many trans people have found comfort in this story, and an escape from a world that doesn't offer a lot of comfort to trans people. So for you to use your fame and influence to rally the backlash against trans acceptance, it feels like a betrayal to a lot of people. And I don't blame them for feeling that way. I feel it too. 

So Joanne. Jo. Mother. I'm sorry about the Twitter mob, I know how much that sucks so, if you ever wanna take me up on it I'll buy you a drink to apologize for that. But otherwise, I think we're done here. As a trans person I like to believe in the power of human metamorphosis.

But I realize that at this point, you're being constantly love-bombed by transphobes and constantly trashed by trans people so, it would be pretty difficult to change tracks at this point. You'd be one in a million if you pulled that off, and I don't know Joanne, maybe you are one in a million. I mean you wrote "The Prisoner of Azkaban" and that shit got me through fifth grade so who knows, maybe you have another miracle in you. But I'm too old to believe in magic now, so I'm not gonna sit around waiting for a letter to Hogwarts. 

Okay. I guess that's it. Mischief managed. 🪄

🎹