What Your Trans Friends Hear When J.K. Opens Her Mouth

Hi, friends. This post breaks the usual theme of my blog. I'm writing to let you all know that I contributed a guest post to another blog. The guest post started as a Facebook comment in a thread discussing J.K. Rowling's stance on trans rights, and the FB friend whose page it was invited me to expand what I wrote into something he could put on his blog. Six hours of writing later, I ended up with a monstrous piece of writing that could have served as a chapter in a book on the delinquency of Rowling.

He was kind enough to publish it, despite the length. The post is here: What Your Trans Friends Hear When J.K. Opens Her Mouth

The piece goes into detail regarding the repercussions of two specific aspects of Rowling's views on transgender people. I go over the consequences associated with excluding trans women from women's spaces and some of the consequences for spreading the myth of transness as a social contagion in young people.

I wrote that piece for people who do not know much about trans experience and are unclear on why Rowling is being unreasonable--that is, probably no one who reads my blog. Consequently, I took pains to avoid addressing the issue of whether or not trans women should be considered to be "real women", as Rowling's position is demonstrably abhorrent regardless of the metaphysics of gender. I don't think agreeing on metaphysics should be allowed to be a stumbling block when we're working on discrediting oppressors and bad faith interlocutors.

I also wrote the whole piece without using the term "cis" which I have very mixed feelings about doing. I know that people are being fed nonsense about the term cisgender being offensive or rooted in an extreme ideology. Not using the term at all even though it would have been very useful felt like capitulation, but I think that the piece will be more accessible for it.

The blog belongs to Michael Ventrella who is a writer and lawyer out of PA. He's clever, funny, and predicted a big plot twist on "Game of Thrones". You can check his books out here.

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