It was the most recent article at the moment and easiest to link. I'm not much of fan of Fox, but it was easier than reading through a bunch of other articles to find just the perfect one. I think folks get the point of the situation. 
yeah I had only read the first tweet and the menstrual one ... the rest isn't as bad as the menstrual one but its still pretty bad..
aha and strawman fallacy what a useful term I didn't know existed this makes my life so much easier!
I feel like the more I hear about cancel culture the more I hate it... it feel like a bunch of wild dogs attached to chains that will bite at the heals of anyone who get close... if you slip up for even a second you don't know when they'll strike even if its not actually racist or homophobic you don't know how they'll interpret it ...
of course, that's Rowling's fault for not taking it into account its sad but she shouldn't have said what she did through a tweet ...
thanks again Diego! I've learned so good things!
haha fair enough!
well I hope that reading our debates allowed you to see a good perspective from both sides, so you can form your own opinion.
Have a good day!
This is Rowling we're talking about though. A multimillionaire owner of a billion-dollar franchise. We're very much punching up toward the moon.
Society is everywhere, even in this forum. Every little bit of productive discourse counts towards progress. You say that your opinion hasn't changed (and that's totally valid) but you had fun, you refined your arguments, and you defended them with greater rigor. Those are good outcomes too.
This whole conversation has been very enlightening. I haven't interjected much since I really just wanted to learn how people feel about it. I'm also pleasantly surprised how civil it has stayed for the most part.
you have a good point!
I guess the fastest way to grow and improve your way of thinking is through sharing opinions and debating ...
it has been fun indeed!
This is kinda wholesome, but, thanks a lot for your time!
have a good weekend!
The newest thing that sparked this thread is that her upcoming(or maybe it's already out?) book is a serial killer that dresses as a woman to kill his victims(and is sexually fascinated with women's clothes in general). It's EXACTLY a fictional justification that transwomen are just faking it and harming the feminist movement from the inside, just like the other dangerous stereotype with the t-word. Apparently this also came up a bit on the Robert Galbraith books but I only saw small snippets on twitter.
It's in the air exactly how much of Harry Potter's problems came from ignorance or deliberate attempts at bad stereotypes, but there's no hiding anymore with this new work of hers, since she was so kind as to leave it all over twitter and her blog.
Does Rowling do any significant work with or donates to charities or organizations that help cis women to escape domestic abuse or similar? Or is her entire weight is thrown behind going down on trans community?
Reading that string of tweets, it doesn't seem like the writings of an outright transphobe as much as the writings of someone who doesn't have a way with words. Which is odd, for a writer, but considering the subject matter more than understandable. Half of the words she used have been ascribed multiple meanings by now, and it's easy to get tangled up in your own web of arguments.
As for the new book, I haven't read it, but it sounds more like an attack on transvestites than trans people. It's not like evil cross dressers don't exist, but a story like that usually benefits from showing another cross dresser that isn't evil just to reassure the audience that crossdressing=evil is not the message they should take away from it.
I'm guessing that's just a big fail on her part, rather than malicious intent.
As for her other posts on twitter, most of what I'm seeing is poor word choice, genuine confusion and genuine concern. Is it misguided? Perhaps, i won't be the judge of that. But she's no villain for questioning these things. If it weren't for questioning things, the lgbt community wouldn't be as prosperous as it is today. Adverse arguments provide opportunity for refinement.
It's literally just come out within the past week or so I believe. And given her rants in her "essay" about how men will dress up as women using the "excuse" of being trans to attack women... yeah. Not good optics to put it mildly.
She did openly claim to be helping migrants and would let them stay in her house and everyone else should do the same or you're awful people she... didn't. And then sued everyone who reported it. And she does support child poverty prevention charities and is big on donating MS research (something that comes up in her essay to further prove why she's "right"). Her wiki has an entire section on her charities, but of course, giving to charity doesn't automatically make you a good person. You can't buy not being a bigot. (In many ways it makes it worse that she constantly uses her charity work and that she's been the victim of domestic abuse as a shield to prove that she can't possibly be hurting other people because she's the victim and a good person)
Okay, didn't catch that one. Yikes. it's not like nobody would ever. We should always assume people will take advantage of what they can, but it's really bad to assume it's the norm.
The frustrating thing is... yeah actually, she does. She has been extremely generous in her support of women, particularly single mothers, donating vast sums of money.
She just seems very angry and excessively concerned about a hypothetical scenario in which men pretend to be women to sneak into "women's spaces" in order to abuse them, and applies this logic as a reason to oppress trans women, who she categorises as potentially dangerous because they were "Socialised Male" (ie. she thinks cis women can never be safe around trans women because trans women were raised as boys to be violent, abusive and sexually pushy... like men.... Yeah, it's really problematic and kinda insulting towards basically everyone.) She also claims that cis lesbians like me are frequently bullied by trans women into sex etc. (I have never experienced this or heard any example of it).
If you analyse her texts, Rowling has a preoccupation with bad people pretending to be something they're not in order to get things they don't deserve or sneak into places with vulnerable people. Her new book will be about a man who dresses as women to commit murders, but even if you look at previous Galbraith books, there's a big subplot involving a group for "trans-abled" people (people who have no disabilities but who act like they do, going around in wheelchairs etc.), framing it as though it's a much bigger thing than it actually is. Or Peter Pettigrew pretending to be a rat for decades to take shelter with Ron's family is another example. It seems like Rowling imagines a world where loads of people are pretending to be harmless and disadvantaged in order to get special treatment or to trick people so they can attack.
Ok so I was hesitant to post this because I don't want to spread her stuff, but I lot of people seem to be missing bits and pieces so, much as I don't want to give her attention and much as some of you don't want to watch long videos explaining, I suggest you remember to take this all with a grain of salt (I've already spoken about about why Maya's case is BS) and please know what you're going into pre-reading, if it's going to upset you don't read it. But, for the sake of educating yourselves here is the essay.3
Wait, what? I'm confused. She makes a couple of shaky statements for sure, but where's the blatant transphobia? how is she calling for violence? Most of her argument is just calling for a clear legal definition where relevant, isn't it? Am I reading this wrong?
My takeaway from this is mostly that she doesn't want people to conflate 2a and 2b, doesn't want people to be hasty with big bodily decisions and thinks children are easily influenced. I don't understand how that attacks trans people.
I assume I'm reading this wrong. People clearly have a reason to be upset. If someone can explain, I'd be grateful. I don't want to start spreading bad reasoning.
I'm going to reiterate my previous point about the use of the phrase "cancel culture" because I'm seeing what I was critiquing being used in this same thread. There is no formal definition or consistent ideology for "Cancel Culture", it is literally what you believe it to be. People keep saying "I don't support cancel culture" and citing things like "fans sending death threats over a couple of tweets" but all this does is completely ignore the large number of people who have legitimate grievances with the person being "canceled" and lump them in with the worst people outraged.
The phenomenon of "Cancel Culture" encompasses as wide a range from Harvey Weinstein (who I hopefully believe everyone would agree should have been "canceled") and small creators who may just have a bad way with words. But when the term can apply to so many things, it no longer has any meaning, because the people who associate it with the latter example will just assume everyone who is a victim of "cancel culture" is in the same camp. That's why as soon as you hear "J.K. Rowling is being canceled for controversial views on trans issues" a lot of people immediately think "Oh, that's cancel culture, right? Then she probably said nothing bad and it's people just overreacting." and they don't even bother listening to the countless legitimate critics who have very eloquently explained why Rowling's statements are so volatile in the first place.
I know I'm probably just shouting into the wind, but I'd really like the people who hate the idea of "cancel culture" try to narrow down exactly what they believe it to be and not just assume every instance of someone being "canceled" is the same.
The issue comes from the fact that her essay alone isn't the only thing that she's been sharing and saying. She's also been sharing bad science and ignoring the trans charities and organisations that are trying to show her the scientific evidence that she is overblowing her concern for children on this issue.
Mermaids posted a good letter that explains how she's been harmful towards trans children - Warning: please be aware that the following post discusses issues which may cause distress.
This was followed by this one after her essay:
Thanks for the info! It's a fascinating read, and I'll have to take the time to read it properly. It seems reliable and believable browsing through it.
I also want to add that most people with harmful opinions such as JK aren't going to blatantly tweet "f**k trans people!"
Dogwhistles exist for the sole reason of plausible deniability. You need to listen to the analysis of others over her tweets that CAN come off as seemingly innocent because she knows how to word them. She's a writer. She isn't just confused or bad at getting her point across.
As @KRWright says, it's not the only thing she's written, this was her response to people telling her she was being offensive. I posted the essay because it seems people haven't read it and have only seen her tweets. The video I linked way early breaks down the separate parts of her essay and the issues starting at about 10minutes in. Especially in conjunction with her previous tweets and her new book. It was just me giving another piece of evidence people don't seem to be aware or are just aware of but haven't seen.
And shaky statements is a nice way of saying outright lies. This is why I caveated that you should research her points and look up the videos, because yes the way she worded it can come off as reasonable and just concerned. Because she's a writer. That's her craft. There are plenty of videos other than the one I linked above explaining why she is willfully misinformed at best or (given she insists she's researched this thoroughly) lying at worst and how this harms transpeople.
And let's not forget, a lot of these arguments that seem "reasonable", also once seemed "reasonable" when it came to homosexual people. Would it really be ok if people were worried gay men in men's locker rooms would attack people? Or lesbians in women's locker rooms would assault people? Would it seem reasonable to say "but we might be convincing children they're gay just because they're a bit feminine"? Is it ok to say "but groups of lesbians hang out together and that's suspicious, maybe they're converting each other as a fad"?