The receipts will make very ugly reading
JKR has a fine blistering mini-essay about the mass bullying of gender atheists.
The full essay:
The rewriting of history begins.
Opponents of gender ideology haven’t merely ‘endured unsparing criticism’. I haven’t simply been told I ‘betrayed real feminism’ or received a few book-burning videos.
I’ve been sent thousands of threats of murder, rape and violence. A trans woman posted my family’s home address with a bomb-making guide. My eldest child was targeted by a prominent trans activist who attempted to doxx her and ended up doxxing the wrong young woman. I could write a twenty thousand word essay on what the consequences have been to me and my family, and what we’ve endured is NOTHING compared to the harm done to others.
By standing up to a movement that relies on threats of violence, ostracisation and guilt-by-association, all of us have been smeared and defamed, but many have lost their livelihoods. Some have been physically assaulted by trans activists. Female politicians have been forced to hire personal security on the advice of police. The news that one of the UK’s leading endocrinologists, Dr Hillary Cass, was advised not to travel by public transport for her own safety should shame everyone who let this insanity run amok.
Lest we forget, gender apostates have been targeted for crimes such as doubting the evidential basis for transitioning children, for arguing for fair sport for women and girls, for wanting to retain single sex spaces and services, especially for the most vulnerable, and for thinking it barbaric to lock in female prisoners with convicted male sex offenders.
Now the political landscape has shifted, and some who’ve been riding high on their own supply are waking up with a hell of a hangover. They’ve started wondering whether calling left-wing feminists who wanted all-female rape centres ‘Nazis’ was such a smart strategy. Maybe parents arguing that boys ought not to be robbing their daughters of sporting opportunities might, sort of, have a point? Possibly letting any man who says ‘I’m a woman’ into the locker room with twelve-year-old girls could have a downside, after all?
Mealy-mouthed retconning of what has actually happened over the past ten years is predictable but will not stand. I don’t doubt those who’ve turned a blind eye to the purges of non-believers, or even applauded and encouraged them, would rather minimise what the true cost of speaking out was, but ‘yes, maybe trans activists went a little over the top at times’ takes are frankly insulting. A full reckoning on the effects of gender ideology on individuals, society and politics is still a long way off, but I know this: the receipts will make very ugly reading when that time comes, and there are far too many of them to sweep politely under the carpet.
The receipts are going to lengthen the reckoning and make it more painful than corrections from faddish nonsense in earlier eras. In the past, those who bought into something like repressed memory, hypnotic regression, or whatever could quietly and stealthily withdraw their support without significant consequence. In the case of Magic Gender, however, their support has been public and permanently recorded. Preventing the reckoning is therefore an act of self-preservation. Unfortunately, the longer it’s delayed, the more severe the penalty will be when the price must finally be paid.
I really wouldn’t want to be in the position of having to come to terms with having argued for the sterilization of children.
She really can write. I love her essays on this topic, though I’ve never read any of her other writings. She doesn’t mince words.
I don’t like her fiction, but her argumentative writing is really good.
The internet never forgets. J. K. Rowling and the trans activists (It gets very nasty):
https://medium.com/@rebeccarc/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-activists-a-story-in-screenshots-78e01dca68d
The “TERF is a slur” website has more attacks on feminists (again, it all gets very unpleasant):
https://terfisaslur.com/
@Nullius
Thanks to social media, practically everything we ever say or do is on permanent record for anyone to see. This is a scary new thing that society has never had to face before, and we don’t know yet what its effect on politics will be.
I’ve always imagined it could go one of two ways, like a Mexican standoff: either everyone lowers their guns, or no one does.
Maybe we’ll all collectively realize that people’s opinions evolve all the time, and whatever stigma there is about “flip-flopping” or having been wrong in the past will disappear, because we’ll come to understand that we all do it, and we’ll all learn to go easy on each other for it.
Or maybe we’ll each individually become so scared to admit we’ve gotten things wrong in our past that we’ll forever cling to our shitty views, and continually double and triple down on them, on and on. Come to think of it, maybe this helps to explain why our politics has become increasingly polarized: because our views and our tribal allegiances are so publicly visible, we’re motivated to protect our pride by defending our stake in them even at great cost — which is to say, even as we find ourselves moving stubbornly further to political extremes instead of coming together in reconciliation.
Perhaps the fallout from the standoff between wokism and Trumpism will teach society that it’s better to lower our guns next time. If we make it to a next time.
“Gender apostate” is a key term here. Like Islam, transgenderism cannot tolerate apostasy. Islam can accept dhimmis, non-Muslims who live under Muslim rule, but if you are Muslim and then decide you aren’t anymore, the penalty is death. Likewise with the TRAs – there is nobody and nothing they hate more than a desister, because desisters prove, through their very existence, that not everybody who thinks they are trans always will. They might disparage and belittle “cis” people, or “straight” people, but they hate desisters and detransitioners with the fury of Baptist preachers.
@Artymorty: Maybe I’m a pessimist, or maybeI read The Butter Battle Book a few too many times as a kid, but I tend to expect the second option. Shortsighted self-interest is a powerful force.
Jesse Singal:
“Sooooooooo many people are going to pretend not to have said stuff they said and done stuff they did and signed stuff they signed”
https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1863945527936635114#m
Don’t forget Ellie Mae O’Hagan, a member of the CLASS Think Tank, said on the BBC on November 21th 2021
““I actually don’t know why some people are women and some people are men… and anyone who claims to know the answer to that question is a liar.”
https://socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentWhatsAwomanThatsATrickyQuestion.html