1. I'm disappointed that An Injustice! would publish an essay that does a "both-sides" on transphobia and that goes so far as to promote the conclusion (in the title, "J.K. Rowling Is Not Transphobic") that the emblem of our decade's most blatant, vicious, harmful transphobia isn't transphobia at all.
I am further disappointed that An Injustice! allows the burden of proof to be shifted to readers who are trans, as per the author's final two sentences that she's aware that her conclusion may be wrong and that her readers should please comment to provide our counterevidence. I've published hundreds of my own essays about transphobia on this platform, yet once again I'm being asked to type a very general thesis about the existence of transphobia into a comment box that is non-monetized for me.
This is a vulnerable decade for us. Right now, not even two weeks post-election of Trump, we're especially exhausted. Yet, having spotted this title in my Medium feed, I feel the need to take time out of my day to explain something. This dynamic is frustrating for trans people in general; I imagine many would agree with me right now.
2. J.K. Rowling published her infamous anti-trans essay in June 2020. If you don't know which one I'm talking about, I discussed it in my essay "The misrepresentation of compassion and solidarity" (9-min read) https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/joyce-rowling-gender-disinformation-840aa234d053?sk=79a136d1d63259122054f4baacd52400
Since 2020, her views have been widely discussed.
So, it's hard to take seriously the opinion of this author who has "spent the better part of the past several hours [emphasis mine] reviewing her [Rowling's] alleged transphobic tweets" when trans people and our allies have been dealing with this for nearly five years. During these years, trans people and our allies have published countless specific, nuanced, grounded, thorough criticisms of Rowling's remarks. Nowhere does this essay engage with anything specific that JK Rowling has said, nor with the specifics of any trans person's analysis of what she's said.
Three years into Rowling's anti-trans crusade, I made some relatively brief remarks summing up her position as I see it: "On the 3rd anniversary of J.K. Rowling’s pledge for trans rights" (6 min)
If you want to get a deeper understanding of JK Rowling's arguments, another resource you could consult (beyond X aka Twitter) is her 7-hour "Witch Trials" podcast. If you don't have 7 hours — or aren't experienced enough interpreting transphobic rhetoric to read between the lines of what she's saying there — I encourage you to read my breakdown: "I’m disappointed in the ‘Witch Trials’" (16 min)
Or, if you prefer another format, ContraPoints (Natalie Wynn) made a 2-hour video about the Witch Trials podcast in which she makes similar points as I do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmT0i0xG6zg
3. I sense that this essay began with the premise that the rights of cis women and trans women are somehow in conflict. Of course, if you begin with that presumption, you're siding with Rowling from the get-go.
Trans people — who are 0.5% of the UK population according to the most recent UK census, as one example of how to count us in one country — are well aware that we share the world with the 99.5% of the population that isn't trans. We generally don't assume that our basic human rights are in conflict with everyone else's, that our privacy threatens people's right to know stuff about us, that our visibility threatens people's right to be blissfully unaware of us, or that we should have to compete for every scrap of cultural space. As we typically must go through an egg-cracking or coming-out process to know that we're trans, we have some insights into what we share in common with cis people and also what we don't, because we can see it from both sides, so to speak.
The scarcity mentality (if trans people gain a scrap of rights and dignity, cis people lose it) is Rowling's premise. It frames trans people as an "issue", "problem", or "threat" to be "debated." It allows for both-sidesing comments like those that appear in this article (e.g., "no side is innocent," "neither side is on the right").
If you're really asking for my perspective: Trans people are not a "side." My gender isn't a political position that I take in opposition to other people's genders. Nor am I co-responsible for everything any other trans person has ever said or thought, any more than cis people are collectively responsible for everything every cis person has ever said.
I don't understand how you can conclude that Rowling is making "hateful statements" and yet say that you "stand with" her. How — to invoke this publication's name — does that represent a position of social justice? If you know that her statements are hateful, you should stand against her.
Your essay uses the word "scared" four times. If Rowling is truly "scared" of trans people, that's the etymological definition of "transphobia," so you need (please) to revise your title that she is "not transphobic."
