JK Rowling & the Sex-Gender Strife
A Clarification and a Call for Civility
**Note: I submitted this piece in shorter form to several news outlets as an op-ed submission, including the AJC, USA Today, NYT, NY Post, and others, and now that this is no longer timely, I’ve given up and posted here.
If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s the fact that these are polarized times. Too many of us, too much of the time see flashing headlines and pieces of news and categorize people, places, and events as ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ versus ‘bad’ and thus ‘unacceptable’. For example, a person who says something coded as ‘bad’ is thus a ‘bad’ person, who is justifiably slandered, threatened, and demeaned over social media and ‘cancelled’ (e.g., fired).
A prominent target this week [note written during that week] has been JK Rowling who made sardonically critical comments about the use of ‘people who menstruate’ instead of women. In response, Rowling has been subject to vitriol and threats of violence and rape as a ‘hateful, transphobic, TERF (‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’, not a term of endearment), including quite a few tweets for her to ‘choke on a/my/fat trans cock’ (see here).
Whether it is defensible to target Rowling with violent threats, demeaning words, and the like is a question I leave aside for the moment (but I believe it not). Instead I ask: Did JK Rowling say anything transphobic or hateful? And, I suggest the answer is clearly no. Let me explain.
JK Rowling has noted on several occasions that she believes that (biological) sex exists (it does) and that we all have a right to recognize the reality of sex. As Rowling notes, this by no means implies that one’s sex should limit who one loves, how one acts, or the ways in which one expresses. But, at the end of the day there is a class of persons who, all going well, can gestate humans and who have grown and given birth to every human that has lived (women — adult human females) and a class that produces sperm, all going well (men). Men are, on average, stronger, faster, and able to work without interruptions for pregnancy and childbirth and menstruation.
Sex doesn’t always matter, of course. Speaking as a female, I can say that being female has profoundly influenced my life in many ways. Focusing on menstruation, the issue sparking the latest controversy, most women will spend, in total, 7 years of their lives menstruating. Many women live in ‘period poverty’, a term that refers to the lack of resources to deal with menstruation in a manner that facilitates equal involvement in social life. In some areas, lacking ‘sanitary pads’ or tampons, some women make patties out of cow dung to collect their menstrual blood, while others dig holes in the dirt and sit on those holes for days to bleed into them. Even in the US, some estimates suggest that 1 in 4 women and girls experience period poverty and 1 in 5 young women miss school because of period issues.
I am fortunate to not have period poverty, although for me, like many adult human females, periods are painful, tiring, and limiting. It’s biology, it’s real, and we have to talk about it because these differences matter to people’s lives, especially the lives of females, given that females bear the burden of the reproductive labor. Furthermore, many women continue to experience shame and stigma around menstruation.
Menstruation is a women’s issue (like prostate problems are men’s issues), despite the fact that not all women menstruate, and some people who menstruate do not identify as women. Talking about menstruation — something that has only recently been deemed relatively acceptable to discuss in only in some societies — still taboo and misunderstood in others — as a women’s issue does not imply that ‘all women menstruate’ (they never have) or that all people who menstruate identify as women (they don’t). And, it certainly does not imply any of the following things (suggested by some who have rebuked JK Rowling): that trans women are not ‘real women’; that transgender people do not exist; that transgender people should be murdered; that transgender people are not who they say they are, and so on. Rowling did not discuss or imply any of those things, and those who put those words in her mouth are confused, at best.
There is no doubt that female people have made extraordinary gains in rights compared to males in many parts of the world. Yet disadvantages for many women persist in all areas, and in some parts of the world females remain severely oppressed by men, including remaining under the control of their fathers and later husbands, subject to honor killings, female genital mutilation (FGM), and other abhorrent practices because they were born female in a society that devalues females, abuses female bodies, and views menstruation as something dirty even shameful.
Recognizing that menstruation is a women’s issue says absolutely nothing about the dignity or worth of people who do not identify as women who menstruate (females who identify as non-binary or transmen) or women who never have or have stopped menstruating. Likewise, testicular cancer is a men’s issue, even though not all males have testes. We aren’t denying the existence of males whose testes have been removed when we talk about testicular cancer as a men’s issue.
The idea that JK Rowling is transphobic and hateful only makes sense in a context where recognizing that sex exists is transphobic, which implies that recognizing that females have unique experiences is transphobic as well as same-sex orientations (which on that note, some lesbians have been called ‘transphobic genital fetishists’ for being same-sex oriented). However, recognizing sex is not only not transphobic, it is necessary for females and trans people. Without a recognition of sex, there is no recognition of the sex-gender mismatch or sex/gender dysphoria that many transgender people experience. Seen in this light, a denial of the reality of sex is a denial of the unique experiences of transgender people.
As I understand JK Rowling to be, I am an adult human female whose life has been profoundly shaped by my female biology and the social meanings and expectations imposed on females, including that I, as a female, should be nurturing, self-sacrificing, concerned with appearance, and passive. I respect and support the rights of transgender people to exist, present, live, love and be accorded dignity as the transgender people that they are. We need not erase the rights and realities of sex to support transgender people, and I believe it is profoundly myopic, misguided, and shows disregard for females to believe otherwise. You may disagree. But, let’s disagree with respect and openness to others; let’s avoid putting people into boxes of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. These issues are complicated, and the solutions involve balancing competing rights and interests. I commit to being respectful of others in this debate and remaining always open to new ideas and understandings. Will you join me?
