Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Just a quick PS - here's a timeline of some of the things she's said and done https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/jk- ... e-timeline

But of note, it reminded me that her celebratory post wasn't just a pic of her enjoying some champers in the sun. It was after she'd referred to the day's events as "TERF VE Day". Even if the Cass report wasn't coming under increasing scrutiny for potential serious methodological flaws and omissions (which it absolutely is), comparison to the defeat of Nazi Germany says a considerable amount about how she sees anyone not sharing her opinion.

Even when she was stating her 'essay' - which as you say is quite reasonable - she was attacked as a transphobe.
There are bad actors on both sides here, and the 'trans activists' have no reason to feel superior...

I suspect that some remember when she was a generous donor to, and champion of, left wing and progressive causes, and her work in encouraging a generation of kids to read, via a pretty good fantasy series with plenty of adult appeal, made her one of the goodies. Her first non-Potter book, The Casual Vacancy, was a reasonably perceptive look at local government, the surprising high stakes of low level politics, and an often overlooked slice of British life - the rural/small town working/underclass.

I sense that she still has a lot of residual goodwill from those days, and many would like her to be considered an overall good egg once more.

Fargle, on the other hand, has always been a cunt.

It’s a sign that people are complex beasts and hard to pigeonhole. Someone who we think would share our opinions on all things because we know they share our opinion on most things who then turns out to strongly disagree is often more jarring precisely because it just doesn’t seem right. And perhaps that’s what has happened with Rowling - sheer disbelief that someone who has written about marginalisation, bullying, bigotry and essentially fascism can themselves seemingly have a complete blind spot for one marginalised group. And their fans sometimes can’t see it either by proxy (shades of Corbyn and his inability to see antisemitism, even - he can do no wrong and it’s always, always a conspiracy and him being hard done by etc), or as a result of sunk cost fallacy.

Would you seriously -seriously - regard Rowling as as bad as- or worse than - Linehan ?

Linehan's behaviour has been very abusive and very aggressive when pushing his agenda, Rowling however has used her wealth and large social media following to push hr agenda. Rowling has definitely helped to create a hostile environment for members of the transgender community. This hostile environment can often result in violence and abuse being directed at members of the transgender community.

2019: Rowling stands with researcher who lost contract over anti-trans statements
Months later, Rowling came under fire again for coming to the defense of Maya Forstater. At the time, the researcher had been waging an employment discrimination battle, as her contract with a think tank wasn't renewed after she made a series of anti-trans statements. These statements included that people should not be "compelled to play along with literal delusions like 'transwomen are women,'" and she referred to a gender-fluid person as a "man who likes to dress in women's clothes."

In a tweet, Rowling stood with Forstater: "Dress however you please," she said on X. "Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?"

The fact that Forstater won her case is conveniently not mentioned.

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 3:50 pm Just a quick PS - here's a timeline of some of the things she's said and done https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/jk- ... e-timeline

I think Rowling addressed nearly all of that in the original essay. If it is anything, it’s a measure of how social media can perniciously create an image for someone in the public eye that perhaps they do not fully deserve. I’m trying to avoid being an apologist for JK Rowling here, and your comparison with Farage has some validity. Farage liking a racist tweet really would be evidence of him being a disgusting racist himself. But we already knew that. Pink News is astonishingly culpable of this. Tom Felton, another of the actors from the Harry Potter fillums, was asked about his views on JK Rowling. He gave a neutral answer, and I daresay swerved the question by saying that he “wasn’t really attuned” to the controversy, but also praised Rowling for her creative achievements and acknowledged that he’d benefitted personally from same .

Because he had failed to condemn Rowling as a “TERF” or whatever, as his fellow Potter stars had, he was absolutely excoriated, both in the Pink News article, and in the social media reactions that the paper had harvested. Excoriated for not being condemnatory of someone. Eh ? Over the top doesn’t quite cover it.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/09 ... ny-awards/

Abernathy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 8:00 pm Would you seriously -seriously - regard Rowling as as bad as- or worse than - Linehan ?

As bad as? No. She’s certainly not as unhinged as he’s clearly become with his doxxing and fake accounts etc. But she’s definitely on the same curve, so that’s hardly a ringing endorsement. And as Satnav has said, there are different ways to be hostile.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 8:19 pm The fact that Forstater won her case is conveniently not mentioned.

Ah yes, I believe you’ve mentioned this before. Forstater’s comments - misgendering people deliberately, implying trans people (well, trans women - again, trans men get off lightly) are delusional, comparing trans people to Rachel Dolezal - are still unpleasant, and she won her appeal (not her original case) on protected characteristics: the same sort of “freedoms” that allow for things like Britain First to exist and for members to publish dreadful literature. I would suggest none of this is something anyone should be particularly proud of, nor a brilliant defence against claims of transphobia. It simply affirms we live in a country with free speech.

Also, from the case:
The case established that gender critical views are protected as a belief under the Equality Act 2010, while stating that the judgment does not permit misgendering transgender people with impunity.

(My emphasis)

If you get judgements that need to make that sort of statement clarifying that this is not a green light for bigots, again you have to ask yourself what sort of a “win” is this?

She still won the case, and Rowling standing up for her isn't a sign of her being wrong or bad, which is what the laughable article tries to imply.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 9:33 pm She still won the case, and Rowling standing up for her isn't a sign of her being wrong or bad, which is what the laughable article tries to imply.

I think you miss the point a bit. Forstater winning the case is not related to what she said or her attitude being endorsed or acceptable. It’s legal, sure. But not empathetic, considerate, or even just polite or professionally courteous.

And in turn, Rowling can stick up for whoever she wishes. But who she chooses to support and how speaks to her own biases. There’s a big difference between saying you are pleased to see someone’s right to free speech on an issue protected even if you don’t endorse their language, and praising someone outright.

Rowling started off with denials - saying (through a spokesman) she liked anti-trans tweets in error. Then it became saying things but with caveats or additional statements that were more sympathetic to trans people. Now there is no sympathy, deliberate goading and provocation, and activism against trans people. Whatever her views were, they certainly seem considerably further along now. A timeline that the article I linked to shows quite clearly.

It takes a load of statements and tweets out of context to present as one of the bad people. Take this for example.

2022: Rowling publishes a book about a character being accused of transphobia
Rowling released another book in 2022 that drew scrutiny in light of her anti-trans controversies. Again published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, the book, "The Ink Black Heart," follows the creator of a YouTube cartoon, Edie Ledwell, who is accused of being transphobic. "The book takes a clear aim at 'social justice warriors' and suggests that Ledwell was a victim of a masterfully plotted, politically fueled hate campaign against her," Rolling Stone said.

This isn't proof of anything, just that she wrote a book, which some people online say is transphobic.

As for Forstater, she won her case against her employers, who unlawfully dismissed her. Simply saying the ruling says you can't misgender with impunity doesn't take away from the fact that it is legal to hold gender critical beliefs that means you can't be sacked from your job, you can't have be blacklisted from your line of work, have your life ruined and be considered one of the bad people.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 10:42 pm It takes a load of statements and tweets out of context to present as one of the bad people.

1. They’re not out of context. The context is specifically showing a pattern of behaviour. Which they do.
2. The Forstater court case ruled that gender critical language was a protected characteristic and so her employer acted unlawfully. None of that means what she said is right, just that she has the right to say it. Just like Rowling has the right to support someone who thinks it’s fine to say trans people are delusional about their reality.

This is clearly going to go nowhere though, so I suggest we end it here.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 8:22 pm

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 3:50 pm Just a quick PS - here's a timeline of some of the things she's said and done https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/jk- ... e-timeline

I think Rowling addressed nearly all of that in the original essay. If it is anything, it’s a measure of how social media can perniciously create an image for someone in the public eye that perhaps they do not fully deserve. I’m trying to avoid being an apologist for JK Rowling here, and your comparison with Farage has some validity. Farage liking a racist tweet really would be evidence of him being a disgusting racist himself. But we already knew that. Pink News is astonishingly culpable of this. Tom Felton, another of the actors from the Harry Potter fillums, was asked about his views on JK Rowling. He gave a neutral answer, and I daresay swerved the question by saying that he “wasn’t really attuned” to the controversy, but also praised Rowling for her creative achievements and acknowledged that he’d benefitted personally from same .

Because he had failed to condemn Rowling as a “TERF” or whatever, as his fellow Potter stars had, he was absolutely excoriated, both in the Pink News article, and in the social media reactions that the paper had harvested. Excoriated for not being condemnatory of someone. Eh ? Over the top doesn’t quite cover it.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/09 ... ny-awards/

Standard Pink News journalism quote what some random wankers say on twitter and pass it off a s journalism. Felton's crime was that he wouldn't denounce the bad wizard lady. I notice that no one was willing to put their name to this shoddy piece of journalism.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 09, 2025 8:00 pm Would you seriously -seriously - regard Rowling as as bad as- or worse than - Linehan ?

Maybe it's because we expect better from Rowling.

This is a very interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/j ... ning-again

Robert Wintemute is professor of human rights law at King’s College London, a gay man who worked for decades on anti-discrimination test cases and helped draft the so-called “Yogyakarta Principles”, a founding statement of the campaign for self-identification, or the right for trans people to gain legal recognition in their preferred sexual orientation or gender identity without requiring a doctor’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In a 2005 book, he argued that LGB people had “a moral duty to speak out” for the T. His new book, Transgender Rights vs Women’s Rights: From Conflicts to Co-Existence, explains why he changed his mind.


Wintemute was teaching a summer school in 2018 when a student asked why, in law, a married person who transitions must seek their spouse’s consent to remain in what would become a same-sex marriage. When Wintemute said the rationale was protecting the spouse’s rights, he was challenged by a trans student who, he says, walked out when the professor said that trans rights don’t trump all others in law. This student, he writes, “did not seem to have considered that non-transgender people have human rights”.

Wintemute wondered if he had dismissed some women’s concerns about self-ID too quickly. But when he began voicing doubts publicly, a Brussels-based gay rights group for whom he had long done legal work responded by cutting professional ties. “I said, ‘But I don’t work on these rights for you, can’t we agree to disagree?’ But no. It was all or nothing,” Wintemute recalls. For a lawyer used to testing arguments, the “no debate” approach seemed suspicious. “You think the other side’s arguments must be weak if they’re not willing to present them.”

Ostracised by old allies, Wintemute started speaking at events organised by the LGB Alliance, a group formed to oppose Stonewall’s 2015 adoption of trans alongside lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. (Though some trans activists consider the Alliance as a hate group, a legal bid by the trans group Mermaids to block its registration as a charity failed in 2023.) It was a lecture Wintemute planned to give in Montreal, on this concept of “divorcing the LGB from the T”, that sparked first an open letter accusing the university of “actively contributing to the genocide of trans people” by hosting him, and then a full-fledged protest. On the day, Wintemute remembers arriving to a chorus of: “Fuck your system, fuck your hate! Trans rights are not up for debate!” The lecture was abandoned after protesters broke into the room and threw flour.

But if the aim was to shut him up, he says, it backfired: TV interviews he gave about the fracas reached more people via YouTube than the lecture would have, and six days later, publishers accepted his book proposal. He wasn’t silenced, but amplified, and if anything encouraged to double down. These days, he argues that perhaps there shouldn’t even be a right to legally change sex on birth certificates and passports. Perhaps you consider this view extreme enough to justify his attempted cancellation, but it is one shared by a startling 50% of the British public, according to the authoritative British Social Attitudes survey.

A great way to turn people who are somewhat supportive into opponents.

Yes. The parallels with Jo Rowling’s situation are unavoidable.

For clarity, the article he wrote is in The Telegraph, not The Guardian (who I assume had some sort of link to it, but it goes elsewhere now).

Also, he has a book out - hence taking the Telegraph's coin, and it not just being on ideological principles that fit well with the Telegraph's core audience. The Mail has got in on it too and quoted the article.

He's also been a trustee of the somewhat dubious LGB Alliance since 2021. You can look them up for yourself, but suffice to say, they're the LGB equivalent of the Taxpayer's Alliance, and are a lot more about promoting what they want than representing the people they claim to. And I draw that comparison very deliberately, because the LGB Alliance are based at 55 Tufton Street. I invite you to reach your own conclusions on this factoid, but we all know the address is not exactly showered with glory.

None of that excuses him having a shitty time at the sharp end of activists who push it too far. That sort of behaviour closes down reasonable debate. But he also wouldn't be the first person who has had a change of heart after coincidentally observing that holding certain opinions can be quite lucrative. Unfair? Possibly. But I'm not the one with a hot topic book deal, the Telegraph's money in my pocket and a senior role for an organisation linked to US evangelical and right-wing groups that claimed anyone not strictly L, G or B was akin to someone who had sex with animals:



Are there comparisons with Rowling? Sure. But that goes both ways. Not everyone who is challenged on their views decides to go full U-turn, and not everyone who changes their mind also throws in with some really unpleasant types and questionable organisations. Though I suspect that's not the comparison that you were hoping for.