For her work with her children’s charity
The Guardian reports on Rowling v Kennedy more reasonably than it usually reports on trans issues, but it still can’t keep its thumb entirely off the scale.
JK Rowling is returning the Ripple of Hope award given to her last year by the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) organisation after its president, Kennedy’s daughter, criticised her views on transgender issues.
The award, which is for people who have shown a “commitment to social change”, was presented to Rowling in December for her work with her children’s charity, Lumos…
But earlier this month, Kerry Kennedy, a lawyer and president of RFKHR, put out a statement describing her “dismay” over what “deeply troubling transphobic tweets and statements” made by the Harry Potter author.
In early June, the author wrote a series of comments on Twitter laying out her views on gender identity, including one that said: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.” These comments were condemned by LGBT charities, as well as several actors who have worked in the Harry Potter franchise. Rowling then wrote a highly personal essay revealing her experience of domestic abuse and sexual assault, in which she argued that trans women who have not undergone hormone therapy or surgical transition should not have access to single-sex spaces.
See? There’s the thumb on the scale. “These comments were condemned by LGBT charities” and so on – but they were welcomed by others. But the Guardian somehow can’t be bothered to mention that.
However they do then quote Rowling’s response to Kennedy for four paragraphs, giving her the last word, so…they’re improving. It’s quite possible that this is because of Rowling.
Yes, the full sentence should read “These comments were condemned by some LGBT charities, as well as several actors who have worked in the Harry Potter franchise but welcomed by almost everyone else for bringing much-needed clarity and compassion to what has been, so far, not so much a debate as a steamrollering of women’s concerns by people who were born male. No surprise there, I suppose.
The BBC bulletins on this were fairly even handed as well.
NOT “LGBT charities.” The LGB people in those charities have been jettisoned (or thrown under the bus) in favor of all T all the time.
And after their easy colonization of LGB, it shocks, just shocks, them that they haven’t been able to do the same with feminism. It’s all the fault of those pesky second wave (old, white) feminists; the woke young ‘feminists’ are more than happy to center trans for all trans all the time. Because trans women are…something…but they can’t be women, because we’re not supposed to say that anymore.