JK Rowling Now Super Best Friends With Lord Swathmalt (By Which We Mean Matt Walsh)

What a pair!

If there is anything that has not gone well, historically, it is when certain "feminists" and the Religious Right get together and team up on an issue. This unlikely pairing has given us prohibition, the porn wars, the Satanic Panic, the whole Tipper Gore PMRC thing, and some truly horrific anti-sex worker legislation .

Lately though, the main common ground they've found is transphobia. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (or as they are now calling themselves "Gender Critical Feminists" which I guess is supposed to be better because it doesn't work as an acronym?) take issue with transgender people because they see their existence and acceptance as some kind of threat to cis-women's existence despite the fact that we've all lived on the same planet for quite some time now, and the Religious Right hates them because, well, that's just kind of what they do. (Time machine back with us to the really frankly shocking time Pat Robertson of all people said trans people were fine, they were born into the wrong body, and there's nothing wrong with that. That is ... no longer the case!)

Because of this, we now find ourselves in a world in which Harry Potter author JK Rowling, someone who purports to be a feminist, and Matt Walsh, a white supremacist and a self-described "theocratic fascist" who has previously advocated for arranged marriage and blamed "single mothers" for mass shootings they don't commit, are having cordial discussions about their mutual hatred of trans people and the best way for them to be giant assholes going forward.

At first, Rowling chastised Walsh for criticizing singer Macy Gray for walking back some transphobic comments she made last week on Piers Morgan, claiming that as a man, he couldn't possibly know the danger Gray put herself in by saying asshole things in public, and thus should not judge her.

Now, I'd like to believe that Macy Gray listened to some people and realized that her comments about gender reassignment surgery were both factually incorrect and crappy, but in the minds of Walsh, Rowling, and others who share their views, Gray was bullied into recanting her statements by "trans activists."

"Sorry but women who publicly renounce the definition of 'woman' for fear of mean comments from trans activists deserve all the scorn they get. That kind of gutless cowardice is exactly what got us into this position in the first place," Walsh tweeted, in response from some transphobic "feminist" group that had criticized Gad Saad for criticizing Gray for the walkback.

In a quote tweet, Rowling responded "Endless death and rape threats, threats of loss of livelihood, employers targeted, physical harassment, family address posted online with picture of bomb-making manual aren't 'mean comments'. If you don't yet understand what happens to women who stand up on this issue, back off."

“Endless death and rape threats, threats of loss of livelihood, employers targeted, physical harassment, family address posted online with picture of bomb-making manual aren't 'mean comments'. If you don't yet understand what happens to women who stand up on this issue, back off.”

— J.K. Rowling (@J.K. Rowling) 1657463950 

I'm gonna need to point out here that JK Rowling's address is publicly available on the Wikipedia page for the goddamned castle she lives in and also that she could lose her entire livelihood right now and still be an absurdly rich human being for the rest of her life. I'm also going to need to point out that people get threats for expressing literally every possible point of view on the internet. I myself have gotten all kinds of threats over my positions on all kinds of things, including a particularly disturbing one after I disparaged homeopathy.

The idea that one would be more likely to get death threats for disparaging trans people than for standing up for them is completely absurd. There are many documented examples of families of trans children getting death threats, and violence against transgender people is on the rise. There is no concurrent rise in violence against bigots.

Walsh then responded to Rowling by saying that those like Macy Gray who change their position on this issue "need to be held accountable."

“@MattWalshBlog And your film did a good job exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory and some of the harms it's done. Many institutions I used to admire have uncritically embraced this dogma, but I reserve my ire for them rather than shouting 'coward' at individual women.”

— Matt Walsh (@Matt Walsh) 1657468360 

Rowling responded by complimenting his terrible transphobic movie, tweeting, "And your film did a good job exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory and some of the harms it's done. Many institutions I used to admire have uncritically embraced this dogma, but I reserve my ire for them rather than shouting 'coward' at individual women."

Hundreds of people responded to Rowling trying to explain to her who Matt Walsh is and his history of racism and misogyny, but it's highly unlikely that Rowling doesn't know about all of that to begin with. She just doesn't care, because she has gotten to the point where literally the only thing she gives a damn about is making the world a less safe place for trans people and the only people willing to associate with her are those who have made careers out of their own bigotry. That sounds like a pretty unpleasant existence to me, even if she does live in a damn castle.

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