Welcome to Salem
I listened to the recent podcast, “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” as the episodes came out, one by one. I hadn’t understood what Rowling, the famed author of the Harry Potter books, was in trouble for, what she was being accused of. Indeed, she is being accused. I think I do now. I say I think I do, because the issues are fraught and clouded, stoked by wrath.
It’s about “sex and transgender matters,” as Rowling describes it in a blog post from June 2020. It comes down to this, “I want trans women to be safe,” she writes. “At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. 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. That is the simple truth.”
That is, she is against the idea that all a man has to do to be a woman is to declare that he is one. Nothing else is needed, just the assertion. Rowling believes this can, and has, led to women being unsafe. She concludes, “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 cover to predators like few before it.”
This is not uniquely a personal matter. In December 2022, Scotland passed a Gender Recognition Reform Bill that says transgender people as young as 16 will be able to legally change their gender through a self-identification system, with no medical diagnosis required. In January 2023, the British government blocked the bill. The future? Who knows.
I urge you to listen to the podcast and/or read Rowling’s blog post. Make up your own mind.
My point is not to defend or criticize Rowling’s views but to strongly defend her right to express them without being harangued and threatened. “I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since,” she writes. “I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist], I deserved cancelling, punching and death.”
Is that where we are?
Her opponents distort her views and assert that she is anti-trans and that her words and views, because she is so well-known and listened to, will make trans people unsafe. That is not what she is about. She strongly advocates for the safety of trans people. But her detractors do not, or do not want to, acknowledge that. They don’t want to listen.
But wait, there’s more. A lot more. If you choose to go down this rabbit hole, you’ll find other women who have spoken up about this, have simply expressed their views, and have been harassed, threatened, hounded. Cancelled, even, you can say.
I’m thinking of Kathleen Stock, who was a professor at Sussex University — until she resigned in 2021. She holds views similar to Rowling’s and dared to express them openly. In a 2018 interview, she said, “Many trans women are still males with male genitalia, many are sexually attracted to females, and they should not be in places where females undress or sleep in a completely unrestricted way.” She prefaced this by saying, “I am definitely not saying that trans women are particularly dangerous — they are definitely not. Most trans people are law abiding and wouldn’t dream of harming anyone.”
There was a violent backlash. Students at Sussex University (anonymously) declared that Stock was “a danger to transgender people.” They further declared that “We’re not up for debate. We cannot be reasoned out of existence.” (See Stock’s Wiki page.) The local police told Stock she should take measures to ensure her safety. That’s when she decided, after eighteen years at the university, to resign.
Neither Rowling nor Stock, it should be noted, has tempered or altered their views in the face of the tirades, often malicious and threatening, against them. They are courageous and principled.
Again, I’m not here to criticize or defend Stock’s position or Rowling’s. Listen, and make up your own mind. I’m here to vigorously defend their right to safely express those ideas and views. And anyone else who dares speak their mind about the many contentious issues in the world today.
Isn’t that what’s called free speech?
