The recent anti-trans decision from the UK Supreme Court is a heartbreaking loss for trans people all across the world. By deciding that trans women don’t deserve protection or basic human rights, the UK—following the US’s horrific example—has drawn a clear line in the sand. And JK Rowling is already boasting about her unsavory involvement in the drawing of that line.
In a photo posted after the decision last week, Rowling is seen on a yacht—thankfully far away from her mold-infested Scottish castle—smoking a cigar and drinking a beverage out of a tumbler. While some people originally thought Rowling was seen smoking a blunt in this photo, she was quick to correct us by way of a transphobic joke about a cigar “identifying” as a blunt. To which we say…calm down girl, nobody thought you were that cool. And secondly, no one cares what you’re smoking.
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What we do care about is how goddamn eggy this photo is. It’s giving Don Corleone, which is an interesting visual statement to make as someone obsessed with defining womanhood. It’s giving Lena Dunham’s 3-second cameo in the “Bad Blood” video. It’s giving Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday. It’s definitely not giving feminist icon.
Trans people have long entertained the possibility that Rowling’s transphobic rants have been a way of dealing with her own internalized…identity struggles. For a writer who often writes under a male name (by election, not because she needs a male name to sell books) and wrote an entire series allowing her to vicariously live through the trials and tribulations of a teen male wizard, she sure has a lot to say about women and womanhood.
It’s always interesting to see TERFs fight for an idea of womanhood only to fall back on the most stereotypical male stereotypes of power once they get what they want.
What we’re seeing here is obvious to everyone who’s been paying attention in the past few years. People like Rowling don’t care about women. They care about power. Period.
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