Both catechism and crucifix
JKR has one of them there long post items on TwitterX, and as usual it’s a good read.
These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.
An elitist badge of virtue or a desperate measure for the sake of avoiding punishment. We don’t know which are which, of course. I wonder often how real the apparent conformity is – I wonder just how much of it really is fear of fellow pretenders. Maybe all of them are pretending; maybe most of them are.
I often wonder whether the signatories of such letters have to quieten their consciences before publicly boosting a movement intent on removing women’s and girls’ rights, which bullies gay people who admit openly they don’t want opposite sex partners, and campaigns for the continued sterilisation of vulnerable and troubled kids. Do they feel any qualms at all while chanting the foundational lie of their religion: Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men?
Same. So very same.
Maybe they wonder the same about us, when they’re not too busy trying to get us fired or shunned or otherwise punished. I’ll answer the question in my case: No. No qualms. The combination of absurdity and venom killed any possibility of qualms long ago. The claims are so ridiculous and the bullying is so disgusting there’s just no room for qualms. I don’t believe all the howling about how fragile and crushable they are. Look at the broad grin on the face of horrible “Sophie Molly” and try to summon up a qualm. It can’t be done.
I have no idea. All I know for sure is that it’s a complete waste of time telling a gender activist that their favourite slogan is self-contradictory nonsense, because the lie is the whole point. They’re not repeating it because it’s true – they know full well it’s not true – but because they believe they can make it true, sort of, if they force everyone else to agree.
And forcing, or trying to force, everyone else to agree is so much fun. It’s the best fun many of them have ever had.
The foundational lie functions as both catechism and crucifix: the set form of words that obviates the tedious necessity of coming up with your own explanation of why you’re one of the Godly, and an exorcist’s weapon which will defeat demonic facts and reason, and promote the advance of righteous pseudoscience and sophistry.
Five stars; would read again.
It’s all that good. Read on.
Exactly. I don’t quibble though, this is how I see it, and I’m glad JKR and others do too.
The whole fkn thing is illiberal, it’s misogynist, it’s anti-LGB, and let’s face it, it’s a cult of immature know-nothings.
As has been noted elsewhere, it didn’t have to be this way. Condescension, overreach, entitlement, and aggression were choices. Invading women’s spaces, and destroying women’s right and ability to have them was also a choice. Had activists looked to things that actually helped the tiny number of genuinely dysphoric people (like championing third spaces), almost all of this conflict could have been avoided. But this was not what happened. What dysphoric people got was a huge, destructive, pointless digression that hurt rather than helped their cause. This was a top down movement, which was not led or intitiated by people interested in the health and wellbeing of dysphoric people, but used their problems as nothing but a ruse and pretext. This “movement” was dedicated to fulfilling the desires of fetishists, who opened up the “struggle” and allied themselves with opportunistic predators, and misogynists, all while parasitizing and hijacking the LGB rights movement. Whatever conflict of rights that might have arisen in a movement by and for dysphorics, rather than autogynophiles, could have been acknowledged and negotiated, rather than ignored and overidden by genderist diktat. That never happened. What we got instead was the wrong goal, chosen by the wrong people, pursued with deliberately malicious strategies, and odious tactics.
Rowling concludes her post thus:
I can’t help but think that she might have had Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson in mind when she wrote this. They certainly popped into my head on reading this.
This article is about one of the open letters to which Rowling is apparently responding.
https://nypost.com/2025/04/30/entertainment/harry-potter-stars-sign-letter-backing-trans-rights-despite-j-k-rowlings-stance/
Genuinely gender dysphoric people have been the losers here. Their health care needs have been ignored, their mental health left to decline, and their disease used as a cudgel for further the aims of the MRA/TRA/Incel Triumvirate. Collateral damage, that’s what they are.
@4 I think it’s even worse than that – whatever sympathy society in general, and women in particular, once had for people who were genuinely suffering and genuinely felt some mental and emotional relief when people around them were willing to go along with their ‘pretend’ has now evaporated.
Yes, what peaked me years ago was when I realized that I was expected to actually believe human beings could change sex. This is a non-starter for me and many people I talk to about this. Hardly anyone wants this.
Politically, though, I have no idea why Democrats and other liberal parties around the world have decided this is the hill to die on. Or how they walk it back.
Wow.
Turns out JKR is a really good writer.
I mean, I knew about all the books she wrote but seeing it right there on the screen really brought it home for me.