J.K. Rowling Is Uncomfortably Right

Don't be fooled. Corporatist concern trolling over trans rights is really the opposite-- intentional "manwashing" of deep disparities in suffering, equality, and choice.

Meet the new sexism, same as the old sexism, but now with a new and shiny cover!

Recently an Ivy League male swimmer (Will Thomas) decided to “transition” into being a female swimmer (Lia Thomas) and is now unsurprisingly “smashing” women’s records left and right.

In the 1650 freestyle final, Thomas didn’t just win and set new program, pool, and meet records. It was total annihilation. Penn’s Anna Kalandadze finished in second place — 38 seconds behind Thomas… “On paper, if Lia Thomas gets back down to Will Thomas’ best times, those numbers are female world records.”

Is this a defeat for women’s competition and progress, or a new assertion of “trans” rights to be any sex/gender you choose in any arena, even one where athletic attributes gained as one sex give outsized advantages over the other?

Couldn’t this simply be a re-inscription of sexist exclusion? As one of Lia’s swim teammates opines:

“When I have kids, I kinda hope they’re all boys because if I have any girls that want to play sports in college, good luck. [Their opponents] are all going to be biological men saying that they’re women,” Thomas’ teammate told OutKick. “Right now we have one, but what if we had three on the team? There’d be three less girls competing.”

Where is this trans push coming from and what is driving it? Who is it harming? Who is it benefiting? Who actually believes it and why? What is the argument? What is the basis of belief? What is most fundamental? Are women’s rights to compete with each other and choose for themselves more fundamental than a man’s right to claim womanhood and literally dive right in?

Let’s look at it from an analogous lens in the wider social realm outside the trans controversy:

Why is it that Tyler Perry or Martin Lawrence (and even more so Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman) NEVER get criticized for impersonating women in their films. It’s supposedly all in good fun. No one calls what they do sexist, or accuses them of appropriating the image of women for massive profit and career advancement even though that’s exactly what they are doing. RuPaul’s Drag Race turns “woman-face” and “woman-dress”, into supposedly campy, fashionable entertainment in a way that could easily be construed as demeaning women, as portraying them to be brainless, shallow, and “fun”.

J.K. Rowling:

But, as many women have said before me, ‘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.

Is this criticism somehow trans-phobic, or is it feminist? Why does RuPaul get a complete pass from the PC-cops? When you examine the hypocrisy squarely you start to see who is directing the show, and it ain’t women. Why is that exactly?

Why is it that when Justin Trudeau adopts “brown face” by dressing up as Aladdin, he ought to be called a racist, but men pretending to be women are not considered sexist for enacting and profiting from their far more exploitative impersonations? Ultimately it’s about power and money, and that is where the corporatism spoons right around the sexism.

This opportunism around and concentration upon symbolic slights, of course, is not confined to men. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. presidential candidate, pretended she was Native American. Even if she did apparently have some traces of Native genetics (6 to 10 generations in her past), she was in no way culturally or genetically significantly Native. In short, she wasn’t a member of the tribe. Similarly, you cannot simply colonially occupy the culture of womanhood with its challenges and opportunity, when you did not grow up that way. You will not have grown up in the “tribe” as it were.

I’ve taken four women’s studies classes as a graduate student, and gone to many “Take Back the Night” marches in addition to the March for Women’s Lives. I’ve been in relationships with a good many feminists, and one of my most influential lenses of analysis is radical (particularly lesbian) feminism. This does not make me QUALIFIED to be a woman. It just INFORMS my solidarity with women, which is more than fine by me. If I for some reason chose female gender reassignment, I would accept designation as a trans woman, but I would be very uncomfortable saying I am a woman, because I have not lived the life formed by female experience (and its prejudices and sufferings as well as joys).

I could not say I am a member of the woman “tribe” without feeling as if I were annexing something that is not mine. That is different than simply wanting a body more in correspondence with my energy and identity. In a similar fashion, as a heterosexual so-called cis-male, I could not and would not speak for trans people’s experience or feel qualified to judge it. Working supportively over a period of time, I could perhaps be an HONORARY member of a biologically female or trans community, but like an honorary degree, I would still lack full qualification. This does not make me an outcast, or a second-class citizen in any group. It just makes me “me.” And that should be good enough.

Think of the absurdity of me choosing to assign myself as a champion tennis player. People would roll their eyes. “You barely play at an intermediate level,” they would rightfully say. I simply don’t have the level of experience, engagement, and performance to call myself something I clearly don’t merit.

Again J.K. Rowling.

Months later, I compounded my (problems with the trans community) by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour… However, as 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… I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate…”

How could it come to this, that empathy for a dying lesbian and her personal choices now becomes hate for trans people? You have to have some serious balls (metaphorically) to accuse a lesbian feminist like Magdalen of transphobia for a personal choice and preference that hurts exactly nobody. One’s attraction to another person and decision-making for the self, especially at such an intimate level, are reserved for the most sacred and consequential autonomous choices. They are not open to the PC peanut gallery. In fact these types of deeply personal decisions should be supported for everyone, including trans people. NO ONE has the right to force their beliefs or deeply personal choices on others.

Let’s bring it back to the issue that opened this essay— that of trans women competing “as women” and not simply in their own unique category. As societies aspiring toward democracy, we generally agree that more choice, more freedom, more equality, more opportunity, more inclusion, more diversity, and more empowerment are good things and signs of progress, but we rarely look at these collaboratively, rather than competitively. Perhaps it is time we do.

In sports, for instance, why not simply have a mixed competitions where the times and records of trans male and trans female athletes are registered on a national trans league board that qualify participants for a trans-Olympics. This would allow full recognition of choice, as well as comparable competition, without unfairly weighing against and dispossessing cis-gender athletes. By not competing directly (and inequitably) with cis-gender groups we have full recognition of all parties without any need to “splain” for, or condemn, other groups, nor dispossess them or their opportunity to fully engage their capacities against a fair standard.

According to J.K. Rowling:

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. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

I saw the same kind of “woke-cloaked” sexism back in graduate school in the 1990’s, there was a trend toward especially older male professors denying mentoring and resources to female grad students ostensibly because they feared being accused of harassment. “Looky there! Now we can have our good-ole-boys club and eat it too! Moral superiority and exclusion all in one fell swoop!” Simply being a non-creepy, generous mentor to all— men and women— never seemed to seriously cross their minds.

Controversies that drive news cycles tend to displace more pressing issues at the actual center of trans struggles. Why are we spending our time on largely token issues like gender-free bathrooms, for instance, when the rate of suicidal ideation among trans teens, for instance, is alarmingly high.

J. K. Rowling had the courage and clarity to summarize this dichotomy well:

The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women—i.e., to male violence—‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences—is a nonsense… 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. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.

Why don’t we adopt this rule:

If you haven’t lived the life and paid the price, you can’t claim it!

We don’t need any more white women pretending to be black. We don’t need any more Jessica Krug’s, Rachel Dolezal’s, or Satchuel Paige’s. Then again, one wonders if men were pretending to be black, they might have been congratulated for their cleverness, and if they had been men who became trans women they might have been defended fiercely as a protected class. Any criticism pointing out the obvious unethical and colonialist appropriation would probably be labeled “trans-hating” in today’s media and cultural climate.

Trying to use your privilege to get the benefit of an oppressed group, without the pain, is moral malpractice and cultural fraud. Trans people ARE an oppressed and often precarious group. The high suicide rates show this, but to pretend this state of being is purely a result of prospective trans people being unable to change their bodies and be fully welcomed into that choice is missing the complexity. It can be quite the opposite: getting stuck in a no-wo/man’s land during or after transition in a way the causes even more strain and dysphoria, something which is rarely talked about.

Gender transition requires A LOT of preparation, time, and maturation do be done successfully, according to Dr. Lauren Cielo, a trans man interviewed by my wife Regina Meredith, on GaiaTV’s Open Minds. Dr. Lauren (who kept her original name) waited until she was 50 years old because of the emotionally fragile nature of the change and physical challenge. He asserted in the interview that this is not something to be done lightly or through any kind of pressure. There are “layers and layers” to unpack and dissonance in one’s own being, family, and friends to address for healthy integration.

The failure to fully regard the gravity of gender transition leads to the perhaps well-intended but potentially damaging tendency to support whoever “wants the change” at whatever age and for whatever reason.

J.K. Rowling again:

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers… I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.

I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The good news is that people are waking up and distinguishing between the neo-sexist thuggery masquerading as trans advocacy, and real trans advocacy which materially and culturally supports the healthy recognition and development of each person’s unique choices and relationship with their own gender. Despite establishment media’s attempts to contort the debate, the vast majority of emails to J.K. Rowling were positive and supportive of her firm, sane stance:

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

Yes, we can get over ourselves. Yes we can become interested in each other’s stories and the things that touch and move us. Yes, we can have each other backs and respect each others fronts. Yes, we can learn in good faith each other’s language, albeit awkwardly, humorously, and riddled with mistakes. A better future invites it.