The argument has never been that transwomen are a threat to women and girls, but that heterosexual, cisgender male predators will abuse gender identity-inclusive policies to pursue their goals.
LGBT activists are once again outraged at JK Rowling over something she didn't do. Writing under a pseudonym, Rowling's newest book, Troubled Blood, follows the story of an investigation into a cold case involving the disappearance of a woman in 1974. The fabricated controversy surrounds the villain of the story, a cisgender man who dresses as a woman.
Editorial Director of the Huffington Post: Personal, Noah Michelson tweeted, "Imagine — just imagine! — how much of a garbage person you have to be to be one of the wealthiest people in the world and be able to spend your time doing literally ANYTHING YOU WANT and then choosing to dedicate your life to terrorizing trans people." Artist Kira Kosarin tweeted to her 274k followers, "RIP JK Rowling, she's not dead, we just don't acknowledge transphobes in this house."
The hashtag #RIPJKRowling trended on twitter with Piers Morgan correctly arguing, "The fact #RIPJKRowling is trending says all you need to know about the woke brigade - they're nastier & more viciously intolerant than anyone they preach about."
LGBT publication, Instinct Magazine referred to the book as "transphobic." LGBTQ Nation boiled down the overall argument stating, "The idea that cisgender men dress up or identify as women in order to access women’s facilities to attack them is an old anti-transgender myth often explicitly used to oppose transgender rights."
Overall, the outrage appears misplaced at best and intentionally fabricated at worst, merely being justified as a means to continue hating the popular author for speaking up against LGBT bullying against critics of gender identity advocacy. To begin with, there is absolutely no indication the villain is transgender or representing transwomen in the slightest.
The fictional character is a transvestite, which if you remember your Rocky Horror Picture Show history is a sexual fetish heterosexual men engage in. Cisgender, as is repeatedly mentioned, indicates the fictional male character identifies as male as well. A transvestite is not a drag queen and is not a transwoman. The issue has absolutely nothing to do with transgender people at all.
Furthermore, heterosexual, cisgender men have stalked and assaulted women in women's restrooms and other private spaces while dressed as women for many years. In 2016, The Daily Signal reported six such examples. In 2018 in South Carolina, a heterosexual, cisgender man was arrested for recording women from an adjacent bathroom stall while dressed as a woman. In July of 2020, a heterosexual, cisgender man dressed as a woman stalked a woman to her home and attempted to sexually assault her at her front door.
The argument has never been that transwomen are a threat to women and girls, but that heterosexual, cisgender male predators will abuse gender identity-inclusive policies to pursue their goals.
A heterosexual, cisgender man who is sexually aroused by the idea of dressing as a woman, stalking and killing women is a perfectly realistic and terrifying setting for a novel. Just as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, demonstrated the difference between transgender individuals suffering from gender dysphoria and the highly disturbed world of a serial killer’s obsession and delusion. Buffalo Bill wanted to own women's bodies and acted out his obsession through literally skinning them to make a female body suit.
Although there has been commentary arguing the movie is harmful to the LGBT community, it was, in reality, a positive social commentary on both misogyny and legitimate transgenderism. Ironically, while Bill's character was denied sex reassignment surgery by his psychologists for his mentally disturbed state, today's LGBT movement would argue he had a human right to taxpayer-paid medical transition.
In the same way, what LGBT activists misinterpret as transphobia, in reality is commentary on the dangers of non-transgender people exploiting the valid interests of the LGBT community. The desire to be angry at Rowling overrides reason and a willingness to engage the context of the story. They just want to hate her and feel victimized while doing so.
As Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid in the iconic Harry Potter movies responded to prior outrage targeting Rowling, "I don’t think what she said was offensive really. I don't know why but there's a whole Twitter generation of people who hang around waiting to be offended."
Demonstrating this fact, Marti Gould Cummings, candidate for NYC Council, District 7, tweeted, "JK Rowling is dangerous. #TransRightsAreHumanRights." But by what logic? All Rowling has done is create a villain with a compelling backstory with a relevant perspective on violence towards women in our society. How is she "dangerous?"
What should go without saying, of course, is that a serial killer can absolutely be transgender just as well as any other person of any other characteristic. It is not transphobic to cast a transgender person as an unsavory fictional character. It does not reflect on all transgender people or put transgender people into any specific harm by doing so. In fact, equality is most readily fulfilled through being treated equally with everyone else, good and bad. However, this particular outrage, as is true with all similar "transphobic" accusations against Rowling is purely manufactured and simply does not reflect the real story.
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