Rowling v. Willoughby? Either way trans people suffer.
Regardless of your thoughts on it, when it comes to the highly publicised spat between J K Rowling and India Willoughby one thing’s certain. From whether or not the Gender Critical movement is coming off the rails (was it ever on them?) through to if misgendering a person is really considered a hate crime, it’s fairly clear that it’s kickstarted a whole bunch of conversations online.
In one sense, this is a good thing. It lays bare the hypocrisy inherent within the rhetoric those like Rowling push and it has dragged things into the mainstream in a way not quite seen before. But still, there’s one very obvious fact about it all that I can’t help but feel is being overlooked; in the end, wherever you wind up falling on the topic itself, trans people are the ones who will suffer.
Here’s the thing, while it might not seem that way, ultimately both Rowling and Willoughby will be fine. Both are successful white women with platforms of the kind most of us could only dream of. Yes, Rowling’s is bigger and more powerful, but Willoughby is hardly a nobody. Both are lawyered to the hilt and both, as bad as it may sound, are kind of benefiting from this. Neither are likely to really take this to a point where they face any real consequence, and neither are representative of the real experiences of people in the real world. Both live fairly privaledged lives.
This isn’t true for many trans people, though. For a lot of us, we don’t have the support of adorning fans and followers, we don’t have the protections of wealth, the security that money brings with it… a lot of us don’t even have friends and family to fall back on. Most of us have to exist within the real world and, unlike either Rowling or Willoughby, that means existing in the same spaces as those who stand against us.
As I wrote in a piece shortly after the whole thing first blew up, Rowling being at the point of obviously misgendering a trans woman like Willoughby means that her followers are already some ways ahead. This has been the case ever since the author first decided to wade into the debate under guise of protecting women and girls. Her massive platform and position within society as a well-respected, hugely successful, beloved public figure lent a certain validation to the Gender Critical movement that it hadn’t had before. As such, transphobia in real-world terms grew more toxic and more dangerous.
Rowling’s constant bigotry pushed these ideas beyond cyberspace and out into politics and further. I’m not claiming she was singlehandedly responsible for this, of course (that would be ridiculous) but it’s hard to deny her voice added a lot of power previously unavailable to the movement. It gave those of the anti-trans persuasion something of a shield, and as she doubled down — donating to transphobic causes, platforming transphobic figures, and generally just being transphobic — those who were already unafraid to harass and bully trans people got worse.
The more aggressive members of the Gender Critical movement have always been several steps ahead of Rowling. They were there before she even had her ‘middle-aged moment’ and once she’d joined them she remained several feet behind. Part of this is, no doubt, because she is such a public figure, her every move discussed and dissected by the world’s media, and so optics have always been something she has had to consider, even when she’s a couple of bottles of wine down on a Saturday night, angrily tweeting about how much she hates us.
In a way, Rowling can be seen as something a gauge for how far the anti-trans folk out here in the real world are willing to go. If she’s saying or doing something publicly, you can bet those beneath her have been doing so for some time already. When she shares her ‘research’ and her ‘facts’, this is where they come from. These things have always been doing the rounds in Gender Critical circles for a while before they make their way onto Rowling’s feed. So, in my mind at least, this begs the question: if Rowling’s at the point of openly misgendering trans people, where are her followers at?
I’m very wary of this turning into fear mongering, that’s certainly not my intention, but it’s hard not to look at the situation and feel that pang of worry. At least, I know I certainly am. I’ve already faced harassment on the streets, and that’s before things got this bad. I’ve already received abuse online, been told to kill myself, been insulted and dehumanised, and again, this is prior to Rowling’s ‘mask slip’ as it were. What can I and other trans people expect moving forward? At what stage are the Gender Critical crowd at if Rowling has reached this point? And, most importantly, while the press turns this whole thing into a royal rumble style showdown between two celebrity faces, what will the consequences be for the regular trans people like me?
