Fuck you, J. K. Rowling (and others)
How can a person do such a thing to their fellow human? At first, this was all I could think, but the more I rolled it around the more I started to realise that the answer was obvious; they didn’t view her as human. But why not? How does a person come to view another person as less than human? I know the answer to that, too, and let me tell ya, folks — I’m angry. So fucking angry. And I’ve had enough of pretending that I’m not. Yesterday Brianna Ghey’s killers were sentenced and the Judge ruled that despite the police insisting that it was not a hate crime, transphobia did indeed play a part.
All I could think when I saw this was, “Yeah. No shit.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or, more likely, purposefully burying your head in the sand, you’ll have figured that one out long before the so-called ‘justice’ system decided to pull it’s finger out and weigh in on the issue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did, but the truth of the matter is that anyone with an ounce of awareness of what’s been happening here in the UK over the last few years knew the role anti-trans thinking played the minute they first heard about the crime.
If you’re confused as to why the police would lie and claim it wasn’t motivated by transphobia, well… police lie. It’s what they do. They are not on your side and they never have been. And moreover, they too are motivated by transphobia. And they’re not alone. I’ll say it again; I’m angry. I’m so fucking angry. And, frankly, I’ve had enough of pretending that I’m not.
As we enter into the post-trial frenzy I find myself wondering: what, if anything, will be learned here? Yesterday, The Guardian published a piece by Zoe Williams in which she notes, “We know that when the rightwing media selects a hate group and constantly demonises it, it has real-world consequences.” This is true. It’s very true. By fanning the flames, as it were, by dehumanising trans people repeatedly, they have successfully twisted us into something lesser. Brianna Ghey wasn’t necessarily targeted because she was trans, but because she was trans she became a target. She was an ‘acceptable’ victim, made so by the ongoing hate campaign.
But the “rightwing media”, as Williams puts it, are not the only ones with blood on their hands. Far from it. And I find it a bit rich for The Guardian of all places to come out with this particular nugget. When they wrote, “The law is now clear: you can’t be punished for having gender-critical views. So why does it keep happening?” did that not also add fuel to the fire? (That article was published in January of this year, by the way) Of course it did. They are just as guilty. Their ‘presenting both sides’ approach doesn’t cut it anymore, I’m afraid. The Daily Mail should burn in hell, yes, but The Guardian should be the fucking kindling. They don’t get to play the heroes of good and justice now their own vicious hatemongering has finally been laid bare in all it’s bloody, murderous glory. I’m not having it. I’m fucking angry. I’m so fucking angry. And, frankly, I’ve had enough of pretending that I’m not.
This is a trend, and it’s catching on quickly. It’s been less than 24 hours since the sentence was handed down, and already the anti-trans brigade are scrambling around to play innocent. Rishi Sunak, our culture war loving, fire fuelling excuse of a Prime Minister, released a statement in which he praised Brianna Ghey’s family for their “courage and dignity”. In October of last year he stood on a podium and said, “We shouldn’t get bullied into believing people can be any sex they want to be,” and that, “A man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”
Not everyone has tried to hide their involvement, to be fair. While many have been desperately trying claw some kind of respectability out of this shit storm of violence and rabid hate they themselves have created, we can always really on the predictably monstrous Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull (aka Posie Parker, prominant anti-trans activist and absolute piece of shit) to say the quiet bit out loud. Responding to a tweet commenting on the atmosphere that led to the crime, the bleached blonde tomato soup enthusiast posted, “Women who enable the transition of their children are evil.” Calling a grieving mother evil for supporting their child… doesn’t she sound charming?
Lest you think I’m placing all my blame on the ‘right’ (whatever the fuck that means here in 2024), let’s turn our attention to the supposed alternative. The Labour Party is so riddled with transphobia that at this point, as a trans person, it might actually be better for me to vote Tory in the next election. There’s Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP whose office is a transphobic cesspool and who says only women can have a cervix. There’s Wes Streeting, who wants to segregate trans people in hospitals. And then there’s the big man himself, Keir Starmer, who — at the time of writing at least — is still yet to speak about the outcome of the trial or, indeed, about absolutely any of the transphobia in his own Party. Fuck you, Starmer. I’m fucking angry. I’m so fucking angry. And, frankly, I’ve had enough of pretending like I’m not.
And it’s not just our media and politicians who breathe fire onto the burning wreckage that is the so-called ‘trans debate’. Ricky Gervais’ brand of comedy turned quickly from insightful observations into a pandering, bigoted rant by a shallow and pathetic little man almost as soon as he was forced to go it alone. I guess Stephen Merchant took all the talent with him. It’s easier to yell “cunt” at your audience while gleefully punching down on trans people than it is to write something of literally any worth. And while he’s busy crying, ‘it was just a joke’ whenever he gets called out for it, there’s always Graham Linehan, the once great comedy writer, there to call people peadophiles and groomers on twitter (he came for me once because, yup, he’s just that fucking sad).
But, of course, the guilt they own is nothing compared to the Queen of the transphobes herself, J. K. Rowling. Her influence alone outshines all of these people. She normalised it. She dragged it kicking and screaming into the mainstream. She moulded the talking points, pushed the public figures, sounded the dog whistles, and validated the army. She is their figurehead, the shield behind which they all hide, safe and secure under her wing of endless wealth and impossibly vast influence. Hers are the bloodiest hands of all.
This is how you turn a minority into a target, by the way. You pile on. You claim you’re just asking question, you’re just giving both sides a platform, you’re just sitting on the fence, or you’re just joking, and before you know it you’ve dehumanised an entire group and now some psychotic, serial killer obsessed monster think it’s perfectly fine to stab a poor, defenceless young girl to death in broad daylight 28 fucking times, singing the rhetoric of those above in violent, naked fury over text! They called Brianna ‘it’. They wanted to know if she’d “scream like a man or a girl.” They took the language, the values, and the ideas of these anti-trans voices and made it physical. Brianna deserved a life. We all deserve a life.
And while The Daily Mail plays the hero and The Guardian plays the voice of reason, while Sunak plays the heartbroken PM and Starmer plays the safe bet, while Gervais plays the jokester and Rowling plays the victim, nobodies like me are being told to kill ourselves, that we deserve to be hung, to be gutted, to be castrated and raped and murdered by those very same people who parrot their words and use them as validation, knowing that at any moment we could be the next. So, yeah… I’m fucking angry. I’m so fucking angry. And, frankly, I’ve had enough of pretending like I’m not. We cannot, nay, will not let this happen again. What is their justifcation? What reason do they have that explains why their cruscade of anti-trans hate was worth the life of a young girl. Explain yourselves. How can a person do such a thing to their fellow human? Because these people, with all the power of their words, let them. That’s how.
