The 6th June 2020 marked the beginning of JK Rowling’s ongoing vendetta against transgender individuals and contemporary feminist perspectives on womanhood.
With her assertion that the gender-neutral term “people who menstruate” should instead refer only to “women” in an article on global healthcare and menstrual hygiene, responses on Twitter quickly pointed out that she was not only excluding transgender men and non-binary individuals (all of whom can menstruate) from the discussion, but also implying that menstruation is an intrinsic part of womanhood.
How, then, can a woman obtain true womanhood, if for example she has reached the menopause, she experiences fertility-related medical issues, or she is transgender?
Rowling, while not addressing the former two issues, has since published an ongoing series of tweets on the latter, declaring the inherent un-womanhood of transgender women.
In response to the widespread negative response she received to her stance, Rowling geared her argument towards her idea that transgender women present a threat. Allowing transgender women to occupy “real” women’s spaces opens the door for sexual violence. She recounted the story of her own sexual assault to justify her discomfort with allowing transgender women, for example, to use women’s public toilets or changing rooms (although her assailant was not transgender and her assault did not occur in a public space).
While of course sexual violence towards women is a prominent and important topic of discussion in the media, equating all transgender women to male sexual predators does nothing but exacerbate the stigma that they face.
When considering this debate from a feminist perspective, as encouraged in our Machines of Knowledge course, it was useful to refer to Judith Butler’s writing on gender constructivism. Butler highlights the social construction of gender, where a person’s gender identity is a key part of how they live and affirm themselves in the world. Someone’s gender should not be assigned by outward influence; it is an intrinsic part of who they are and how they wish to be recognised in society.
Part of Rowling’s argument is based on her assertion that trans women “deny a biological reality”, where the sex they are assigned at birth is intrinsically tied to who they are. However, contemporary feminist theory overwhelmingly disagrees with this; sex is a biological fact, but sex does not equate to gender, and gender is socially based rather than medically based.
The failure to differentiate between sex and gender compromises Rowling’s integrity as a self-identified feminist, as scholarship negating Rowling’s stance as a biological determinist has existed in feminist literature since the 1960s, if not before. Psychologist Robert Stoller first published research on the disparities between sex and gender in transgender individuals in 1968, and prominent feminist philosophers such as Gayle Rubin have been articulating these complex dynamics since around 1975.
This debate would not have gained such notoriety if Rowling didn’t occupy such a prominent place in social media. Her large following gives power to her voice, and risks her (misguided, under-researched) opinions saturating many less-informed people’s information base regarding trans issues.
Rowling is a staunch biological determinist, and her belief that a transgender woman should not socially or legally have the right to define her own gender is the crux of the issue. “Feminism” is the thinly veiled disguise for her distaste towards transgender individuals, and her platform risks drowning out the voices of transgender activists who wish to create a more informed and accepting climate for themselves and others.
Trans women are women!