Juno News - June 14, 2020


The J.K. Rowling controversy, explained


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

162.50693

Word count

1,172

Sentence count

58

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

J.K. Rowling has been accused of being a transphobe and a misogynistic radical feminist, and she's been forced to defend herself against these accusations. But is she a victim of transphobia? And is it even a thing?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Back in 2018, Harry Potter series author JK Rowling was making headlines for liking a tweet
00:00:12.180 that referred to trans women as men in dresses. Responding to the backlash at the time,
00:00:18.540 Rowling's representatives blamed the tweet on Rowling having a clumsy middle-aged moment. Her
00:00:25.480 representative said this is not the first time she has favorited by holding her phone incorrectly.
00:00:31.480 The trans activist types didn't really buy this explanation and still had an underlying
00:00:37.000 suspicion that JK Rowling was a secret transphobe. But the accusations of JK Rowling being a TERF,
00:00:43.540 a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, remained dormant for another year or so. But in June 2019, 0.83
00:00:49.840 all of these people who were, you know, always monitoring JK Rowling's Twitter account found
00:00:55.540 that Rowling followed Magdalene Burns on Twitter. The late Magdalene Burns was a lesbian feminist 1.00
00:01:02.840 YouTuber who pushed back against trans ideology. Then, in December 2019, Rowling tweeted in support 0.97
00:01:11.380 of Maya Forstater, a UK tax expert who lost her job over her gender critical views. In her tweet of
00:01:19.120 support for Maya Forstater, JK Rowling wrote,
00:01:22.160 "...dress however you please, call yourself whatever you like, sleep with any consenting 0.89
00:01:27.520 adult who will have you, live your best life in peace and security, but force women out of their 1.00
00:01:33.200 jobs for stating that sex is real? I stand with Maya." This tweet really ramped up the accusations
00:01:39.840 that JK Rowling is transphobic. But the outcry from the activists and the leftist media back then
00:01:46.000 was nothing compared to what JK Rowling is facing now. On June 6, 2020, JK Rowling posted a tweet
00:01:53.520 that mocked the term people who menstruate. People who menstruate? I'm sure there used to be a word for
00:01:59.840 these people. Someone help me out. Wumpund, wimpund, woomud, she wrote. And she immediately received a whole
00:02:08.080 bunch of replies from people saying they hate her because Harry Potter books were their whole childhood,
00:02:13.200 and their escape and their love for Harry Potter stopped them from killing themselves and that
00:02:17.760 kind of thing. So now they're very upset because they don't like her views. So JK Rowling posted a
00:02:22.960 couple more tweets expanding upon her ideas. She wrote,
00:02:28.000 I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.
00:02:32.880 I'd march with you if you were being discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same
00:02:37.680 time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so.
00:02:43.120 Many of the key actors and actresses from the Harry Potter films began subtly denouncing JK Rowling
00:02:49.440 by tweeting the trans women are women slogan. Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the films,
00:02:56.000 tweeted, trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being 1.00
00:03:01.200 constantly questioned or told they aren't who they say they are. She also announced that she
00:03:06.480 donated to Mermaids UK, which is a nonprofit that transitions children. Rupert Grint, who played Ron
00:03:13.760 Weasley in the films, also chimed in, just repeating the slogan that trans women are women and trans men are
00:03:20.160 men. Then, Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter, released a statement through the Trevor
00:03:27.040 Project, which is an LGBT charity, saying that, again, transgender women are women, strength is found in
00:03:34.160 diversity, and he is deeply sorry for the pain that JK Rowling's comments caused anyone. A few days after her
00:03:41.200 thread of tweets, JK Rowling released a more lengthy statement on her website. She titled it,
00:03:47.120 JK Rowling writes about her reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues. She gives a bit of
00:03:52.320 background as to why she's interested in the trans issue, and partly it's professional, it's for the
00:03:57.440 purposes of her writing, but she explains it is also largely personal because she feels her life
00:04:02.720 experiences have been shaped by her womanhood, whether that is facing misogyny or being a victim of
00:04:10.240 domestic abuse and sexual assault, and she reveals for the first time in the statement that she is a victim
00:04:15.520 of domestic abuse and sexual assault. JK Rowling reveals how, with these accusations of transphobia,
00:04:21.360 she's been told she is literally killing trans people with her hate, she's being called really nasty
00:04:27.760 names, and people are calling for her books to be burned. But she also displays a lot of compassion
00:04:35.520 in her statement. She writes,
00:04:37.520 Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they're most likely to be killed by sexual
00:04:42.560 partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of color, are at particular
00:04:48.800 risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy
00:04:54.160 and solidarity with trans women who have been abused by men. So I want trans women to be safe. At the
00:05:00.000 same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of
00:05:05.920 bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman, then you open the door to 0.98
00:05:11.920 any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth. Now, despite JK Rowling's statement
00:05:18.080 being compassionate and empathetic, one op-ed writer called it a shitty transphobic diatribe. A comic book
00:05:25.520 artist tweeted, Do not read JK Rowling's transphobia manifesto. I already did it for you. Every line
00:05:32.880 is misinformation, fear-mongering, misgendering, othering, ignorance, far-right language, and dog
00:05:38.640 whistles, and pure hate. It's not just ugly. This is hate. Don't ingest this BS, I beg you. The UK
00:05:45.920 newspaper, The Sun, then ran a front page feature of JK Rowling's ex-husband who admits to slapping her
00:05:54.240 and says he's not sorry. Needless to say, the response to JK Rowling's statement has been
00:06:00.000 quite deranged. And to top it all off, a school in the UK was going to name one of its houses after
00:06:06.320 Rowling, but now it's saying it does not wish to be associated with these views, and they don't want
00:06:11.920 to cause offense, and so they're no longer going to name the house after Rowling. So, you know, JK Rowling
00:06:17.920 is someone whose books are generation-defining and are the epitome of creative literary genius.
00:06:24.240 And JK Rowling herself, she's a woman who has overcome sexual assault, domestic abuse,
00:06:30.000 and she became so successful with her talent that she is now a multi-millionaire who is one of the 0.78
00:06:35.360 best-selling authors of all time. But the deputy head teacher of the school that no longer wants
00:06:40.720 to be associated with Rowling says that Rowling may in fact no longer be an appropriate role model
00:06:46.880 for pupils. So, it just shows you can accomplish everything that JK Rowling has accomplished,
00:06:52.320 but if you express a politically incorrect opinion on one of the topics du jour,
00:06:57.680 none of your accomplishments matter anymore, and you are now just transphobic trash. 0.77
00:07:04.400 I'm Lindsay Shepherd with True North. Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you next week.
00:07:10.720 I'll see you next week.