Its association

Concerns over inclooosivity. Concerns, I tell you.

A Harry Potter-themed formal at Girton College has been cancelled after concerns were raised over the event’s inclusivity, due to its association with the book series’ author, J.K. Rowling.

Rowling has been the subject of significant controversy in recent years, due to her outspoken views on trans rights, which many consider to be transphobic.

It’s funny how it’s never put the other way. Trans ideology has been the subject of significant controversy in recent years, due to its habit of trampling all over women’s rights, which many consider to be misogynist. Why don’t we talk about it in those terms for a change? Why is it that Varsity and the Guardian and the BBC would never ever frame it that way? Why are women the people who are not allowed to defend our own rights?

Initial concerns were raised over the Harry Potter formal on the anonymous submissions page Girthfessions, with one user calling the planned event “inherently transphobic”.

Removing JKR from the planned event over this fatuous claim is inherently sexist.

After such concerns emerged, the College’s JCR committee emailed students apologising for any upset caused by the association with Rowling, stating its commitment to creating a safe space for the LGBT+ community, and assuring students that the author would not be profiting in any way from the event.

But what about women? What about a safe space for women? And anyway it’s not “the LGBT+ community,” it is at most the T community. The constant thumb on the scales of adding LGB people to beef up the numbers is cheating. Some people who consider themselves the T community are angry that JKR doesn’t endorse trans ideology, so they get her disinvited and deleted and erased every chance they get, and journalists obediently report this shunning as if it were a courageous civil rights movement.

Speaking to Varsity, the JCR committee detailed that they “endeavour to create a safe and inclusive space for everybody at Girton” and therefore “do not wish to hold any event that causes offence to any member of our community”.

But by bowing to the Transpolice they are creating an unsafe and uninclusive space for feminist women at Girton. You can’t have everything. If you do the bidding of one petulant entitled group then you’re letting that petulant entitled group run things, whether everyone else is ok with that or not.

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