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3 Bad Ideas Fueling The Fury Against J.K. Rowling’s Critique Of Transgenderism
The Federalist ^ | 12/24/2019 | Emily Jashinsky

Posted on 12/24/2019 11:34:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Three bad ideas are fueling the backlash against J.K. Rowling. The first, that a human’s biological sex can be changed. The second, that believing otherwise tarnishes one’s character. The third, that artists must conform entirely to leftist standards lest their work be deemed unworthy of consumption. Each of these bad ideas is rooted in notions both ascendant and troubling.

Rowling, an outspoken leftist, made headlines just about everywhere on Thursday for tweeting in support of Maya Forstater, an academic who lost her job at a think tank over tweets affirming the reality of biological sex, including, “men cannot change into women.” The “Harry Potter” author used her platform to weigh in:

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 19, 2019

As we noted in June, the far left has long suspected Rowling sympathizes with TERFs, “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” based on Twitter accounts she follows and posts she likes.

I won’t spend much time arguing against the notion that humans can change their biological sex, or that biological sex differences are insignificant and fluid. If this is not abundantly obvious, I recommend considering the work of psychiatrists like Paul McHugh and Allan Josephson. (There’s a reason far-left feminists like Rowling dissent on this issue.) It is, however, worth recognizing Rowling is only in the news because the denial of biological reality has become increasingly normalized, particularly among media members who make coverage decisions.

As to the second bad idea, that people who dispute new leftist teachings on gender are of poor character, Rowling is an instructive case study. While it remains baffling that any of this is a matter of debate at all, there are perfectly decent people on either side of the conflict.

The left, however, insists this is impossible, and has deliberately crafted arguments to cast detractors not as well-intentioned ideological opposites, but bigots. Say something along the lines of “men cannot change into women,” as Forstater did, and you’ve “denie[d] the basic humanity” of transgender individuals or provoked violence.

Thus there is exactly zero space for reasonable disagreement, because disagreement, by this logic, is dangerous. Those who perpetrate such disagreement are willfully complicit or deliberately harmful.

If you accept that line of thinking, you may also believe Rowling’s wrongthink necessarily tarnishes her books, because she’s bad, and bad people should not be among the artists you patronize. Not only is such a standard impossible to uphold, especially given the left’s efforts to equate political disagreement with poor character, but its adoption would deprive the public of countless great works.

Artists are as complicated as any of us, and it’s their ability to explore those complexities that makes them great. I’ve written before that it’s legitimately fair to consider whether patronizing the work of bad people harmfully increases their wealth and power. But as Camille Paglia once noted, “Great art has often been made by bad people. So what? Expecting the artist to be a good person was a sentimental canard of Victorian moralism.”

All this is to say the Rowling backlash is a tangled knot of unfortunate trends: The normalization of ideas that reject biological reality, the leveling of character attacks against anyone who upholds that reality, and the proliferation of a standard that pressures artists to conform to progressivism lest they be banished from polite society along with their work.

Rowling will weather this storm. Will the rest of us?


Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: jkrowling; lgbt; transgednerism
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1 posted on 12/24/2019 11:34:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

are harry potter books being burned yet?


2 posted on 12/24/2019 11:35:28 AM PST by RummyChick
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To: SeekAndFind

bkmk


3 posted on 12/24/2019 11:39:46 AM PST by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: Sergio

Articles written by the psychologists mentioned in the original article above.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/allen-josephson-gender-dissenter-gets-fired/


4 posted on 12/24/2019 11:41:57 AM PST by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: RummyChick
are harry potter books being burned yet?

In Britain the tranny lobby is far more powerful than here. Realizing the enormity of Rowling's comment, they gave her the opportunity to recant them. She declined. So, yes, she's in the process of being "cancelled".

5 posted on 12/24/2019 11:43:55 AM PST by Drew68
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To: SeekAndFind

There is no such condition as Transgender. The word Transgender is a political construct

Any one claiming to be transgender is in fact a sexual deviant and mentally defective


6 posted on 12/24/2019 11:44:21 AM PST by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: SeekAndFind
Rowling helped create the worldview that's turned on her. Will that enter her mind? Nah.


7 posted on 12/24/2019 11:44:56 AM PST by Cinnamontea
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To: SeekAndFind
Transgenders are a sorry lot. How sad to dislike oneself SO much that one "feels" like the opposite sex.

DNA, however, trumps everything. Transgenders will AGE like their born-into gender.
Men-to-women will bald like the male they were born.
Women-to-men will have menopause like the female they were born.

They need a SERIOUS encounter with our good Lord.

8 posted on 12/24/2019 11:46:19 AM PST by cloudmountain
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To: SeekAndFind

At least she is pro-trans species with having characters that can turn from human into animals. (semi-sarcastic)


9 posted on 12/24/2019 11:48:55 AM PST by GreyFriar (Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
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To: bert
1. There is no such condition as Transgender. The word Transgender is a political construct
2. Any one claiming to be transgender is in fact a sexual deviant and mentally defective

1. SO TRUE!

2. Also true. Those deviants have been sold a bill of goods by the Loony Left.

10 posted on 12/24/2019 11:49:38 AM PST by cloudmountain
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To: RummyChick; SeekAndFind

That is a wild thought, her books being burned by secular anti-Christians because she believe that there are only 2 sexes that are unchangeable.


11 posted on 12/24/2019 11:50:35 AM PST by GreyFriar (Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
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To: SeekAndFind

In the past some were burned at the stake for what they believed. Today, they fire you and prevent you from earning your living. Which is worse?

Is it fair to condemn the church for what it did in the past and not to condemn liberal fascists for destroying people today?


12 posted on 12/24/2019 11:55:31 AM PST by I want the USA back (If free speech is taken away, dumb and silent we are led, like sheep to the slaughter: G Washington)
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To: Drew68

That is interesting. She has so much money she can do what she likes.


13 posted on 12/24/2019 12:03:20 PM PST by RummyChick
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To: Cinnamontea

I don’t think she did help create the worldview. She’s just a “post-Christian” humanist - whose books always relied on the basic Judeo-Christian division between good and evil, even though she denied its source - who was too naive to realize that cutting loose from the moorings meant that anything could grab your little boat and smash it.

Like most of the British intellectual class, she’s ravingly anti-American and particularly anti-Trump, but the left has gone full-bore anti-reality ideologically bonkers, so even her past wasn’t enough to save her. I hope some of her fellows at least pause to give thought to the implications of this.


14 posted on 12/24/2019 12:08:13 PM PST by livius
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To: Drew68
In Britain the tranny lobby is far more powerful than here.

It amazes me that the tranny lobby is winning every battle that it fights despite the fact that it represents probably less than one percent of the population. Just as the sodomite lobby has been able to impose its will on the 96 percent of the population which is not sodomite.

15 posted on 12/24/2019 12:09:49 PM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: Fiji Hill

Yes. When Less than 1% of the population seems to be calling the shots, something weird is going on.


16 posted on 12/24/2019 12:10:45 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: ClearCase_guy
When Less than 1% of the population seems to be calling the shots, something weird is going on.

The transgender lobby does not consist of transgenders, it consists of people who want to advance this nonsense for ulterior motives, always political. Most of the people in it are far less interested in the interests of transgenders than they are in the ability to force the general public to accept their dictates, the more outrageous the better. If they can pass laws and ruin people's lives for that, they can for anything, and they intend to.

17 posted on 12/24/2019 12:20:24 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: SeekAndFind

I sometimes wonder had Jeffrey Dahmer or Richard Speck lived long enough to self-identify, what form might they have chosen and who might be threatened with punishment for not accepting them for what they were?

We’ve allowed the socially maladjusted to bully the rest of by threat of fines or imprisonment into living by their rules. This is insanity.

To all the alphabet people:

1) If I need more than three seconds to determine what gender you are, consider me triggered. Prepare to seek a safe space if I have to think about you longer than that.

2) I am not going to learn your pronouns. They are between you and you Creator. Deal with it.

3) None of this means I am “phobic” or a “hater”. It means I’m a thinking, rational human being aware that 99.9% of the people on this earth have genetic markers that define which gender they are and what hormones are naturally allocated to prolong that condition. So sorry you don’t agree but it’s, as liberals say, “settled science”.

4) No amount of public or legal bullying is going to move me off those positions. So sorry. I will come fully equipped with the Holy Bible and Gray’s Anatomy to support my side of the argument. Who you got?


18 posted on 12/24/2019 12:23:06 PM PST by OrangeHoof (The Democrats - Unafraid to burn in Hell.)
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To: Cinnamontea
Paul Joseph Watson - JK Rowling Cancelled
19 posted on 12/24/2019 12:26:18 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
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To: SeekAndFind

Get humans out of this, and imagine studies of female and male animals. Suddenly one believes in biological sex differences.


20 posted on 12/24/2019 12:29:36 PM PST by Yaelle
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