She’s angry, and rightly so.

Another Do it to Julia.

Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne has joined Harry Potter lead actor Daniel Radcliffe in criticising JK Rowling’s recent comments about trans people.

In a statement to Variety magazine, Redmayne said: “Respect for transgender people remains a cultural imperative, and over the years I have been trying to constantly educate myself.”

Why is it a cultural imperative? And what does he mean by “respect” anyway? And why is he implying that JK Rowling is disrespecting trans people?

Redmayne, who in 2015 starred in The Danish Girl, a biopic of Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery, added: “As someone who has worked with both JK Rowling and members of the trans community, I wanted to make it absolutely clear where I stand. I disagree with Jo’s comments. Trans women are women, trans men are men and nonbinary identities are valid.”

Well thank fuck he’s spent years educating himself so that he can come up with that deeply thoughtful and incisive formula which we’ve only heard a billion times before. Also, the first two are false and the third is meaningless.

Anyway, thanks for ticking the box, movie guy.

White privilege something something JK Rowling something tethered to something.

Yet, as the inequity of capitalism and its inextricable link to white privilege are brought into focus, JK Rowling instead devoted her enormous Twitter platform to discussing the use of gender-neutral terms last Saturday night.

She what? She chose her own subject to talk about at a particular moment? How shocking! Of course so did most people on Twitter, but, you know – any stick to beat a woman with.

The timing of her social media tirade is telling. In the context of a collective reckoning with how our economic, political and social systems have dehumanised black lives for centuries, it seemed the fantasy-writer turned billionaire had decided an equally pressing issue was making grand claims about the estimated 1 per cent of the population who identify as trans.

It wasn’t a tirade. It was a woman saying some things. It’s funny how men always think women are doing most of the talking when in reality they’re doing about 20%. (There are studies on it.) By the same token, if a woman talks at all, it must be a tirade. Women not supposed to talk, ok?

Transphobia is tethered to the malign structures of white supremacy. 

No it isn’t. That’s just jargon, and it’s not true. Furthermore, what Rowling is saying is not “transphobia.”

So, as we harness this political moment to dismantle centuries of inherited racism, we also have a duty to understand its relationship with the kind of discourse that is, quite frankly, making life hell for trans people.

Do we? Wouldn’t that be changing the subject? Do genuine anti-racism activists actually want to change the subject that way?

Also, if we must change the subject, what about the subjection of women? What about that discourse? Why are trans people the cool kids who are welcome to usurp anti-racism while women are just transphobes who have to be shut up?

The whole piece is dreck and the Independent should be embarrassed for publishing it.

Sigh.

Rowling writes about her reasons, starting by explaining why she is interested in trans issues.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

She didn’t expect the avalanche, because we don’t see much of this kind of thing, and we don’t see much of it because…of that very climate of fear. People are afraid to say it in public because they don’t want the inevitable monstering. We’re caught in this horrible loop. If we point out the horrible loop we are instantly told all about our crusty dusty stinking holes.

[A]ccusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

…

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else they will be told they are Karens, bitches, cunts, whores, stinking dusty dried-up holes.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

And I’m just not going to do that. I can’t, and I also don’t want to. I can’t because it isn’t true and I see no way I can convince myself it is true…especially since I don’t want to in the first place.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

And the activists’ way of persuading us otherwise? To spit degrading slurs at us! To rant and rave that we stink, we’re crusty, we’re dusty, we need to shut our crusty dusty lips.

It’s funny, in a way (not really haha funny) that they do this, because it betrays the fact that men (all too many of them at least) have a visceral disgust and loathing for women despite wanting to fuck them. Ooh that creepy hole, the one we all get pushed out of, the one straight men like to put their dicks in, but at the same time the one that…who knows…maybe it has toads in it, or rats, or maggots, or razor blades, or rotting smelly fish. Maybe we could genetically engineer it to get away from the horror? Make it smell of lavender or orange peel or cedar shavings?

Just one from Rebecca’s compilation yesterday:

What I wonder now is how people who see themselves as progressive, woke, pro social justice, on the left, reconcile that with the whole “cunt bitch whore skank does ur pussy stink” theme.

I mean I really wonder, not just I say it rhetorically and move on. I really wonder and I would love to know. A lot of former friends of mine who were targets of abuse of exactly that kind, and did not for a second see it as progressive or woke in any way – how do they line these things up in their heads?

Good, Rebecca’s post collecting a sample of the abuse leveled against Rowling is getting attention.

The Washington Post:

Chinese authorities have been trying for three years to reverse the devastating imbalances of their one-child policy and coax couples to have more children.

Trying and failing. The birthrate remains low and – plot twist! – there are far more men than women.

Eh, what? Why’s that? A low birthrate doesn’t equal more men being…oh wait yes it does. If you can only have one it HAS to be a male, amirite? Nobody nobody NOBODY wants an only child who is a [retch gag puke] female. (Why not? Well, come on, I ask you – they’re so disgusting – they do all that gross pregnancy stuff and then milk-producing stuff. Ew. Men are clean and tidy.)

But now, an economics professor at Fudan University in Shanghai has come up with another — and, unsurprisingly, controversial — solution: allow women to have multiple husbands, and they will have multiple babies.

Oh they will, will they. Is he sure about that? Women who wanted no more than one child will automatically want one per husband if they decide to have several? Dream on, bro.

In China today, home to 1.4 billion people, there are 100 million only-children under the age of 40. But the traditional preference for sons — and the associated practice of aborting girls — means that there are about 34 million more men than women.

Oops.

So they prevent about 34 million women from existing, and then they want existing women to make up the slack by pushing out more babies for them. That’s a big NOPE, comrade.

His suggestion to solve the oversupply of men is to allow involuntary bachelors — known as “bare branches” in Chinese because they cannot bear fruit for their family tree — to share the relatively scarce supply of women.

Yes but women aren’t a “supply” and women are not things for real people to “share” among themselves. Thanks anyway.

Plus, it would just be more efficient, he continued, suggesting that women would have no trouble meeting the physical needs of multiple husbands.

Sure. They can just lie there. What difference does it make if it’s one or ten?

“It’s common for prostitutes to serve more than 10 clients in a day,” Ng wrote, before taking off on another offensive tangent. “Making meals for three husbands won’t take much more time than for two husbands,” he added.

How about twenty? Fifty? Let’s get really efficient.

Ng is steeling for a fight. He wrote that his next column aimed at redressing gender imbalances would be about legalizing brothels.

Because China’s gender mismatch has caused a fierce competition among men looking for wives, he said, “a man’s right to achieving sexual satisfaction is being severely violated if legal sex work is not allowed.”

Heyyyyyyyy, that’s what Amnesty International says! Also Elliot Rodger, also incels on Twitter shouting at women for existing.

RR-C did some collecting – just a small sample, she says. It’s all screenshots, no text. It’s thematic – the themes are

1. shut the fuck up
2. cunt
3. hag
4. suck my dick
5. slag / whore / tart
6. disgust – stink, dried up, stench
7. smack, punch, piss in her cold dead eyes

Do they do this to, say, Graham Linehan? Not that I’ve seen.

There was also this:

Dude tells Cornel she’s wrong, in fact he says she’s lying.

Like this one:

“Other genders” that have labia. Hi, please be quiet while I interrupt you on the subject of female genital mutilation in order to talk about “other genders” i.e. people who have female genitals but are too important and special to be just boring old females. That’s the important thing – not female people with mutilated genitals but preening “activists” who want to talk over them.

“not all labias, clitorises and vaginas belong to women” – so hand them over, you greedy selfish bitches, share them with everyone else!

But but but that never happens, beardy guy said so.