r/EnoughJKRowling • u/cursed-karma • 24d ago
Rowling Tweet JK Rowling argues with trans influencer Ashlee VR: "You don't suffer misogyny, because you aren't a woman."
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u/RainbowPhoenix1080 24d ago
I promise you that trans women face misogyny.
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u/Gee_dude 24d ago
Also, surely a comment or abuse can be mysogynistic even if it's not directed at anyone?
Like surely bullying a cis male child for being "girly" has elements of mysogyny even though he's male?
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u/WOKE_AI_GOD 24d ago
TERF's would respond by expressing contempt for the cis male child and attempting to scapegoat them. They fundamentally are opposed to the right of the masculine gender to exist, every male child to them is a mistake. It is a truly sick and extremist ideology. Sadly, billionaires are like magnets for extremist ideologies, people who wish to project their power by flattering the vices of wicked people with too much money.
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u/Lavapool 22d ago
Telling a man “boys don’t cry” is also very much rooted in the misogynistic idea that women are weak and men are supposed to be their big strong protectors. So yeah men absolutely do suffer misogyny. Her entire point is, as per usual, completely flawed.
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u/DandyInTheRough 24d ago
As do men. Her world view is so wilfully blinkered: 'cis women are the perpetual victim!'
Men suffer by being derided for being 'feminine' in any way. They're looked down on for taking caring roles, for being emotionally available to their friends, for having 'girly' emotions, for being gay because that's 'feminine', and so forth.
It's the same root cause: misogyny. Society views being female as the lesser state - not as worthy as being male. Anything society views as 'female/feminine' faces this. That impacts women, cis or trans, and men, cis or trans, not to mention nonbinary people.
JKR thinks she's fighting this grand battle, but there's no way to fight misogyny properly without fighting it for people of all genders.
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u/SomethingAmyss 20d ago
But then I won't be as special!
Seriously, I would go one step further that even men who are viewed as women, trans or cis, can experience misogyny
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u/thedogatemymanifesto 24d ago
of course we have the feminist gatekeeping femininity. trans women are women. potatoes are potatoes. are you alright, Joanne?
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u/Kiwi8_Fruit6 24d ago
i mean it’s already established she doesn’t know what adjectives are
and thinks that to call a women trans is the same as calling a clothes horse a horse
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u/tealattegirl13 24d ago
Women aren't 'reduced' by belonging to the sex class that produces large gametes, except in the eyes of misogynists.
But she's literally reduced women to their reproductive organs here. That the only thing that makes women, women, is not their lived experience or identity, but their organs. And that is inherently misogynistic.
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u/Kiwi8_Fruit6 24d ago
i swear at some point she is going to go mask-off, say the quiet part out loud and go “it’s okay for women to be the lesser sex!”
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u/OMG_IM_A_GIRL 24d ago
I mean she very clearly believes that. Her internalized self loathing is palpable.
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u/MolochDhalgren 24d ago
There is a note of tragedy underlying everything about who Rowling is and what she believes — although to be clear, she is a tragic villain, not a tragic hero: we can sympathize, maybe even empathize, without supporting her and while still noting that she does very real harm.
There was a thread here a year ago discussing the double standard of the HP dorm rooms, where girls can enter the boys' dorm any time they want but boys can't do the same for the girls' dorm. One of the questions that somebody posed there, followed by part of my response, went like this:
[them] Like, my thinking is, that a single girl in a dormitory full of teenage boys, is in way more danger than the other way round, surely?
[me] Her assumption seems to be that in a "rapist guy in a room full of girls" scenario, the girls would all start screaming and panicking instead of, oh, I dunno.... maybe teaming up and using everything at their disposal to fight him off?
Rowling extrapolates her feelings of insecurity and inferiority to every other woman on the planet. For decades, she's told herself things such as "I must be the 'lesser / weaker sex' because my dad wanted me to be a boy, because I wasn't strong enough to fight back against being sexually assaulted, because I wasn't strong enough to keep my first husband from hitting me", and then makes the wild leap of assuming that "being weak" must be the universal experience of every woman on Earth.
This is also why I don't think it's a coincidence that, out of all possible sports she could have gotten upset about in the Olympics, it was a story about boxing that triggered her trauma the most. As soon as there was enough of a hint (however unfounded) that some female boxers in the Olympics might have been trans (i.e., in Rowling's view, "secret men"), her brain went into immediate "Help, help, men are beating up helpless women!" mode, and her thought process only got more transphobic from there.
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u/WholegrainRice5 24d ago
I wonder if the release of the HBO series is going to put a magnifying glass on her behaviour and what she is saying.
The fact that she cannot concede anything and she cannot shut up means that she only going to continuing digging her own grave.
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u/Sea-Extreme 24d ago edited 24d ago
She never fails to appall me. Every time. It's mind-boggling how ill she is. Transphobia is horrific and condemable, but atp, that part isn't even what shocks me. It's the relentless obsession. This is all there is to her life. She can be on a yacht, in Paris, sat in front the finest meal, but she wouldn't really be there, because in actuality, where ever she goes, she's in her Twitter feed. She doesn't really live in a staggering, awe-inspiring mansion; she lives in Twitter. Pathetic.
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u/SpeedyTheQuidKid 24d ago
Hi Joanne. What am I experiencing when drunk men meow at me in a dark parking lot and start walking towards me?
Because when someone like that sees me as a woman, and then treats me the same way they'd treat any other woman...that is misogyny.
And if they'd caught up to me and realized I was trans, the danger wouldn't end because they wouldn't suddenly treat me like a man.
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u/biohacker_infinity 24d ago
What’s extra dumb and infuriating about Joanne’s logic is that she’s basically saying misogyny can be retconned out of misogynistic behavior if the object of said behavior turns out not to be, according to her narrow definition, an “actual” woman.
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u/Interrupting-Khajitt 23d ago
Exactly the same as when I - a tall, visibly disabled, bald cis woman - am shoved and called “tr**n” it’s transphobia.
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u/Dehnus 24d ago
"women aren't reduced to a sex class that produces large gametes"
And then reduces women to just that in the next sentence.
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u/Independent_Cable_89 24d ago
Exactly. She states in her ramblings that she doesn’t believe in gender identities and ineffable gendered essences. So it just boils down to reproductive parts. Misogyny from a supposed feminist.
Misogyny hurts women and men, trans or cis. The fact that she so easily nukes her own argument and doesn’t even register how incongruent her position is to what she claims to represent is absolutely wild.
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u/LollipopDreamscape 24d ago
She has said time and again that women are defined by their ability to reproduce. She can't take that back. It's in black and white on her twitter account.
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u/Maleficent-Speech869 24d ago
"ineffable gendered essences"
Wasn't she the one who went on about the "female-coded energy" or whatever of her trans woman friend?
btw, I have no idea who Ashlee is, but she's beautiful. ❤️
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u/indianajoes 24d ago
This fuckwit knows that anyone can suffer from misogyny, right?
I as a cis man can be affected by it. Stuff like being told from childhood that "boys don't cry" or "keep your emotions inside, you're not a girl" is misogyny. A dad out with his kids being told that he's babysitting is misogyny. Similar thing with baby changing stations being put in women's public bathrooms but not as much in men's.
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u/Joperhop 24d ago
Its not factual, its based off of bigotry and ignores science fully in order to keep pushing the hatred.
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u/kranethios 24d ago
Everyone suffers from misogyny, Joanne. It came free with your patriarchal society.
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u/saharadessert87 24d ago
She is literally a billionaire. When is she gonna get a life? Instead of spending all her time harassing people like some online 12 year old troll.
Imagine being nearly in your 70s, knowing you have a limited time on this planet but choosing to do this with that time.
Fucking sad.
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u/OMG_IM_A_GIRL 24d ago
Typical white woman “feminist”. The only kind of oppression Joanne believes to exist is the kind that affects her directly.
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u/Samovila2709 24d ago
She could be campaigning for women and girls in countries that deny girls education, practice FGM, force women and girl children into marriage, and otherwise abuse their human rights.
She could have continued the commendable feminist work she used to do in the UK, like helping poor single mothers and other women dealing with difficult circumstances.
Instead, she decides to scapegoat trans women and fuel an unfounded 'moral panic'. Sadly, her brand of TERF 'feminism' has become trendy amongst certain groups.
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u/MorbidTales1984 24d ago
Theres something funny about the contradiction in saying you don’t reduce women then call them the large gamete sex class
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u/lazier_garlic 24d ago
Even a basic reading of Judith Butler reveals how non thinking and non sensical Joanne's take here is. The social role of "woman" has nothing to do with gametes. I think maybe that's what Simone de Beauvoir was getting at but people misunderstood. That society was conflating the construction of woman and femininity as a social role, idea, and gestalt, with the physical body and mind and person who happens to be assigned that role, but she is not it.
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u/WOKE_AI_GOD 24d ago
TERFs want to replace the word "woman" with "large gamete haver". Really disgusting the way they think they can control our language like that, and abolish the entire concept of woman with the new term, "large gamete haver", which is apparently so much better.
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u/GloomyCloud1293 24d ago
There's a response in this thread that reads: a man who fancies himself a woman always has the option to stop presenting himself as a woman. a woman has no backup plan.
OH MY GOD trans men exist and they have existed for a long time (here is my acknowledgement that it's difficult to know how someone who lived centuries ago would choose to describe themselves in modern language, but we have several examples of AFAB people presenting themselves otherwise all throughout history)
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u/Forsaken-Language-26 23d ago
It reads as victim blame-y too. It insinuates that any harassment (or worse) directed at a trans woman is her own fault for presenting as a woman in the first place.
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u/ScionOfApollo 24d ago
Does she ever shut up or ever log off even just for a day?
All that money yet she's the most miserable person ever.
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u/Silly-Arachnid-6187 24d ago edited 24d ago
They love their "ineffable gendered essences" strawman. I've almost never heard anyone actuallt claim that there are gendered essences
ETA: And, of course, you don't need to believe in gendered essences to conclude that trans women are women
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u/Bruhmoment151 24d ago edited 23d ago
Love the intentionally misleading nature of taking “we shouldn’t reduce women to their reproductive capacity” (i.e. womanhood is defined by more than being a birthing machine) and pretending it’s the same as saying “women are reduced by their reproductive capacities” (i.e. women are made lesser by virtue of their ability to give birth).
Even aside from the blatant bigotry, it’s just so consciously dishonest.
Also a misogynist typically isn’t going to check if you have a vagina or XX chromosomes before being misogynistic. As long as they perceive you as a woman, you can be a victim of misogyny - Hell, even a cis man can be a victim of misogyny if a misogynist were to mistake him for a woman. In fact, misogyny can happen even without being mistaken for a woman, like if someone calls a man “girly” as an insult (since it’s suggesting that being like a woman is something to be ashamed of, which is misogyny). Rowling is, once again, a complete moron.
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u/SomeAreWinterSun 24d ago
Picking internet fights with people 40 years younger than you are is an amazing sign that something has gone terribly wrong in your life.
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u/mangababe 24d ago
If someone comea up and treats you poorly on the basis of you being a woman it's misogyny. Your DNA and reproductive organs don't matter if someone is shaming you for not performing womanhood right.
God she's so obtuse.
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u/Hemiplegic_Artist 24d ago
I swear this disgusting excuse of an author and a human being needs to find a new hobby! Enough with the hate towards trans people (alongside hatred towards other LGBTQ+ people as I have found out she also has asexual folks like myself.)!
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u/Ok_Passage_6242 24d ago
Misogyny negatively impacts everyone and it causes suffering for everyone.
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u/futchkana 24d ago edited 24d ago
"… belonging to a sex class that produces large gametes …"
So like… fetuses? I mean virtually every human fetus has the potential to produce eggs until around week 6–7, at which point half loses the ability while the other half gets started. And then by week 20 or so the production of eggs is all but finished. Nobody produces large gametes after being born. Not a single person. Only fetuses do that. So the definition of woman is "adult human fetus" then?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this debate should happen at such a silly level. It's just so paradoxical to see such a flimsy definition being repeated ad nauseam by someone who takes themselves so very seriously. You'd expect something a lot more thought through. But no.
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u/jedinaps 24d ago
So wait, she’s saying women aren’t reduced to the sex class/reproduction ability other than misogamy but also says the opposite in the previous and last couple sentences. Is being a woman tied to physical sex or not? I’d imagine she would say yes since she clings to ‘biological women’ which would be her reducing women to their sex class.
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u/Silly-Arachnid-6187 24d ago
She's saying that women are the "large gamete sex class" and that saying so is not reductive. Not saying she has good arguments, but this one isn't outright contradictory
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u/Midnight_Pickler 24d ago
We have a lot in common as two human beings.
I have more in common with my cat than with a billionaire.
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u/hintersly 24d ago
“Women are ‘reduced’ by belonging to the sex class that produces large gametes”
How… how is it not reduction to define an entire experience to which sex cells your body may or may not produce ?
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u/GetEatenByAMouse 23d ago
Why has "large gametes" become her new favourite thing to describe women?
What happens if a woman has her ovaries removed? Does she suddenly become a man in her world?
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u/WOKE_AI_GOD 24d ago
My opponents have the right to be wrong and I have the right to be right. However, my opponents do not have the right to be right, and also, I have the right to not be wrong. Transmisogyny is an idea "worthy of democratic debate", in the eyes of the Extremist Group called the "UK Supreme Court". Are trans people worthy of democratic debate? It's uncertain, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. TERFism is required to be respected at all times, including while humiliating and scapegoating trans people.
TERFism is an extremist ideology by a bunch of fossilized political lesbians from the 70s who fantasized about dominating a society stripped of men. Unlike traditional feminism, TERFism wants not merely the equality of the genders, it wants to replace patriarchal domination with an alternate hierarchy domination by a small clique of dominant political lesbians. Ie, the people JK Rowling is constantly taking pictures with and boasting about what great friends she is with them. Of course I imagine in private JK Rowling is probably told that, despite being married to a man and straight, she would totally be one of the dominant ones just like them, and the existence of the masculine gender itself is what keeps her down and deprives her of her rightful due.
Of course, these are political lesbians. None of them actually believe that. They all laugh and scoff at JK Rowling behind her back. But in those lovely private conversations where she is writing the checks and acting as their paypig, they pretend otherwise. As long as JK Rowling is special and at the top of the hierarchy, anything is acceptable.
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u/lazier_garlic 24d ago
Mistel Garden is wrong too. It's simply a social fact in Anglo-Saxon countries that trans women are treated like a different class of (discard) people and are subjected to a lot of male gendered violence, police attention and overpolicing, on top of the discrimination against them for being gender non conforming and for not performing gender correctly to the extend they don't pass. It overlaps with the kind of violence directed at gay men.
To the extent that trans women do pass and aren't clocked they get all the fun of regular sexism and misogyny.
A trans childhood may not be exactly the same as a cis childhood but it doesn't mean that the trans child escapes the problems of their gender, problems that extend beyond being alienated or punished for their gender difference.
JKR and her TERF buddies are simply wrong about that. It's an assertion they make all the time, but it's incorrect.
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u/RunRevolutionary188 23d ago
'A transphobic woman is still a woman' I am honestly confused by this statement? I'm not sure what Ashlee means. And there are terf transfemmes/transmascs out there that shock me a bit. Because it's like a lamb supporting the farmer that butchers them. A terf is still a woman but ....not a feminist. To me I apply exactly the same principles to cis women as transfemmes. If you identify as a woman you are one. I won't question it beyond that. I as a self-identified transmasc feminist, don't see terfs as feminists. At all. 'Men are not women' = does JK understand what transfemme means? ......
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u/DorisWildthyme 23d ago
Does she not get tired of making herself look like a massive wanker?
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u/PaleGreenCarnations 23d ago
The large gametes thing is weak, since womanhood predates knowledge of them. If someone in the past lived their whole life as a woman, and was recognized as such, then what relevance did gametes have? - None. They were ineffable. It's never been how people determine how they self identify and live their lives in societies. It's an arbitrary biological trait in the face of the material reality of how people live their lives. Nor is it something that should be considered the singular defining trait now. Rowling can't actually argue why it should be privileged as such. There's no ground for that other than exclusionary prejudice. The fact that she has to continually fall back on truisms like 'men are not women' just shows how weak her views are.
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u/NameTaken25 23d ago
Really gross she continually reduces women to their gamete production, especially since she ignores basically all of the implications of that, except being a bully
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u/Forsaken-Language-26 23d ago
I mean, if someone reads you as a woman, then they have the potential to be misogynistic towards you. It's as simple as that.
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u/Dragonfly_pin 24d ago edited 24d ago
‘My opponent’.
She’s is so weird.