In Offense to JK Rowling
Before you read: This article contains discussion about sexual assault, rape, and transphobia.
Today I read this J.K. Rowling tweet, which is a bad thing to do in any case, and thought a lot about it.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.
There’s a problem with this statement, the least of which is the fact that George Orwell is probably thrashing in his grave. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Linked below J.K. Rowling’s tweet was this article: ‘Absurdity’ of police logging rapists as women. (It has a paywall. That’s fair. We should all be supporting journalism more.)
Let’s take a look at how the article starts off, shall we?
Police have been criticised for saying they will record rapes by offenders with male genitalia as being committed by a woman if the attacker “identifies as a female”.
Police Scotland said that they would log rapes as being carried out by a woman if the accused person insists, even if they have not legally changed gender.
Two things to note here. Firstly, this is most certainly a British publication, because they spell criticize with an s. Secondly, this is a hypothetical. This is not a report on a case in which a rapist with male genitalia claims to identify as female. This is an article addressing the backlash of a future possibility.
J.K. Rowling exhibited a trait scientifically known as “taking things to the next level when it is completely unnecessary” (see also: rising blocks in platform games) when she pressed Send tweet.
“The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” No. No, this has not happened. Stop trying to incite the wrath of public opinion by phrasing things in a misleading way. Rowling’s intention is to defend her twisted notion of ‘women’s rights,’ and she’s more than willing to do so by using the transgender community as a scapegoat.
But let’s be generous, and say that Rowling, at the end of the day, is looking to ‘protect women.’ While J.K. Rowling has the ulterior — if not poorly carried out — motive of protection, other people who oppose these types of policy-changes and mindsets have other agendas in mind. Speaking out against trans-friendly movements often goes hand-in-hand with lamenting the modern liberal society, who cares too much about pronouns and not enough about traditional values like monogamous heterosexual marriage.
And so-called ‘feminist’ groups are speaking out against trans-friendly movements, presumably because if we start letting just anyone identify as female, it dilutes the limited resource of pure untouched femininity that they store in a cave and guard zealously day and night. And if you speak out against them, you’re easily labelled as ‘anti-feminist’— or dare I say ‘misogynist’?
I can practically hear the counterarguments to that point: “So you’re just letting rapists identify as women? You know how disrespectful that is to women?”
No. I don’t. It doesn’t work that way. Sit down.
Circling back to J.K. Rowling’s tweet and this specific controversy, though, here’s the funny part. (By which I mean, you know, here’s the part that sparks Don’t Look Up levels of depression.)
Focusing on the issue of AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) rapists potentially identifying as female completely works against the whole ‘women empowerment’ movement.
You are not giving women more rights by not letting rapists identify as women. You’re instead shifting focus from the actual issue — rape — to something completely different.
And maybe it’s just me, but I find the fact that people focus on the genitalia of literal rapists just hilariously funny in the most cynical way possible. Why do some people exhibit more disgust about the trans factor than actual rapists?
But fine. Let’s gloss over the rape. Let’s gloss over actual sexual misconduct and abuse and assault in real life, completely disregarding how there is and always has been a serious issue regarding the way rape/sexual assault cases are handled (which is badly, mind you), and make fun of trans people again because it’s an easy joke and they don’t have a leg to stand on in mainstream media.
People don’t want to address rape seriously. If it’s a female victim, there will always be the “She was asking for it,” “She dressed in that way,” “She didn’t fight back” comments. If it’s a male victim, it’s then “How was he overpowered?”, “He’s weak,” “No way,” “I don’t believe he got assaulted.” (And let’s not talk about trans people in the mix, because that’s a whole other issue.)
And in a lot of sexual assault cases, it boils down to the classic “he said/she said” argument. Inevitably, it comes to some sort of stalemate and — in my opinion — prosecutions that are far too light, if the aggressor is even punished at all.
But are we focusing on that? Are we going to talk about victim-blaming and power imbalances and the sheer joke that is society’s way of pushing the ‘crude’ subject of rape aside, because it affects people’s delicate sensibilities?
Nah. But we’re going to be caring a lot about whether or not the aggressor has a penis though. Let’s dig up this other problem, one that more people are likely to be united against, this whole other can of worms. Let’s blame the liberals, how they’re so sensitive and ridiculous. Let’s blame the trans community, how they’re the ones preaching this new, heathen lifestyle that allows rapists to get off the hook.
Let’s not talk about how the trans community is so marginalized that we become the scapegoats of what ultimately is the bigger problem of bigotry and misogyny. Let’s not talk about how easy it is for rapists to get a lighter sentence — or no sentence at all — if they have money, influence, and power; leaving the victim traumatized, undefended, and scared for the rest of their life.
No, god forbid we think about the actual problems.
And also: The LGBTQ+ community — or to generalize it in the way a conservative would, the liberals — has been pushing for changes for years. Pushing for more open-mindedness, for policy changes, for acknowledgement. And it’s not for nothing.
The Scottish government wants to remove medical checks for those seeking a gender recognition certificate and shorten the time people have to live as their new gender before it is legally recognised.
That’s a policy change. That’s progress.
But even this small victory is enough to be… threatening, I assume. Because people leap on it, beat and tear at it with criticizing insults and wary looks. They ignore the thousands of people this progress benefits, and mask their close-mindedness by feigning concern for the few people this progress harms.
“Few people,” by the way, is not an underestimation or brushed-aside statistic. The Scottish police have said themselves that the “trans ID issues are not a priority,” because they haven’t encountered a single case in which the ‘trans problem’ proves to be true.
So it is not a trans thing. It is not a feminist thing. The problem is how easily rape culture can be brushed aside and watered down with other variables. The problem is that the world is not safe, simply because people refuse to acknowledge it.
Rowling wants, very badly, to make the world feel safer for herself and other (cisgender) women. But she cannot have that sort of security and comfort by lounging in her country estate and luxuriating in her paychecks. So instead of raising awareness for sexual assault or advocating for a better justice system, she rallies her fans and followers to a cause that will make them feel as if they’re making a difference.
And she’s very good at it — at making her stance seem honorable. I read her piece J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues. The whole ‘addressing myself in third-person’ thing aside, JKR talks about some interesting topics. Her personal experience and trauma with sexual assault, for one. The alleged misunderstanding over how the whole controversy started. And again, her recurring motif to “protect women.”
But one thing in particular stood out to me.
All I’m asking — all I want — is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.
Now, we toe a very delicate line here. On one hand, Rowling is undoubtedly referring to our previously mentioned point of rape and sexual assault cases being dismissed and ignored. On the other hand, Rowling is also undoubtedly playing the victim card when it comes to scapegoating the transgender community. Clearly, she’s not the one at fault for demonizing transgender people. No, it’s not that she isn’t demonizing them; it’s that she’s very sad that she can’t demonize them without backlash.
Rowling does not care about the transgender community. She might be pushing her agenda of protecting women, and I don’t doubt that she does want to keep women safe. But the problem comes with her definitions and her methods — the fact that her savior complex is fueled by the ostracization of a marginalized community.
As a conclusion, I’ve taken the liberty to sum up my three most important points for you. No, it’s alright. No need to thank me.
- By watering down the problem of rape culture with other subjects, we’re enabling more aggressors to brush aside the consequences.
- It was never about gender. People just like to make it about gender.
- JKR probably hasn’t read 1984.
Thanks for reading, dear reader. Have a good day. Go drink some water.
Edit as of July 2022: People who still try to debate the trans rapist issue — very ironically enough, you’re part of the point I’m trying to make. It is not about trans people. Rapists are, in and of themselves, their own big problem, perpetuated by power imbalances and — very frankly — sheer male audacity. Once again: it was never about gender.
