As reported by the BBC:
Two US Quidditch leagues are to change their names in order to "distance" themselves from Harry Potter author JK Rowling, following a trans row...The joint statement from USQ and MLQ said they hoped the name change would help them to "continue to distance themselves from the works of JK Rowling", who they say "has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions in recent years.""Our sport has developed a reputation as one of the most progressive sports in the world on gender equality and inclusivity, in part thanks to its gender maximum rule, which stipulates that a team may not have more than four players of the same gender on the field at a time," the statement continued...Rowling initially sparked controversy in June 2020 for posting tweets which took issue with the phrase "people who menstruate" - she objected to the avoidance of the use of the word "women".The author was also criticised by some for disputing the idea that male and female sexes do not exist."If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives," she tweeted.In a lengthy follow-up blog, she wrote her interest in trans issues stemmed from being a survivor of abuse and having concerns around single-sex spaces.She has continued to speak out. Last week, Rowling shared a news article about an MP who had branded as "absurdity" the idea of police saying they will record rapes by offenders with male genitalia as being committed by a woman if the attacker "identifies as a female"...Rowling's comments were applauded by some but criticised by others, and many high-profile people associated with her have distanced themselves from her comments about trans issues.
The Wikipedia page on cancel culture is relevant background material:
Cancel culture or call-out culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". The expression "cancel culture" has mostly negative connotations and is used in debates on free speech and censorship.
Addendum: A tip of the blogging cap to reader Lones Smith for providing this link with details of the controversy.
Given the BBCs record on transphobia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg) It's not surprising to see that this article does not give an accurate account of the controversy surrounding Rowlings increasingly aggressive remarks.
ReplyDeleteAt a base level: language is not static, terms and definitions change, use changes. I feel that language should enjoyed and not fetishized. It feels like what is being fought over is a past notion that cannot be abandoned. We can enjoy the past use of language and accept the present. The future of language will not be determined by us but by others with their own sense of their language according to their times.
ReplyDeleteThis is less an evolution of language and more a forceful redefinition.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
DeleteThere's been a serious rise in violent attacks on transgender people in the UK with at least 375 murdered in 2021 alone. So who's the real victim here?
ReplyDeleteI found your statement incredible, Christopher, especially since there were only 627 homicides in all of the UK last year -
Deletehttps://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingjune2021
But with a quick search I was able to find your number. There were 375 transgender murders in the WORLD last year -
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2021/11/11/375-transgender-people-murdered-in-2021-deadliest-year-since-records-began/?sh=257ffe96321c
- with 70% of them occurring in Central and South America. This article
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-many-trans-people-murdered-uk
gives estimates for the UK -
According to these figures, there was one trans person murdered in the UK in that time, and a total of nine trans people were murdered in the UK between 2008 and 2017. That’s an average rate of one victim per year."
This is a sensitive enough topic without roiling the water with inaccurate data.
Thanks for chasing that down. Exhausting. Identity hyperbole.
DeleteThank you, I appreciate the correction. However part of my point still stands: there has been an alarming rise in attacks on transgender people in the UK, a place many once thought of as safe.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a sensitive issue, and sensitivity should mean understanding that transgender people face much worse than any criticism Rowling is getting.
I can't speak to the UK. But, acceptance of once hidden and persecuted sexual identities and practices has increased exponentially in the States in my lifetime. (65 years.) I'm happy to say I've been in support of this greater acceptance all my adult life. If someone were to say there is an "alarming rise " of attacks here in the States (and they do) my response is, How is this position supported? As in, what is the quality of the evidence? I would ask: Are there more trans people per capita now? (Yes.) Do we report crimes differently now? (Yes.) And, when a crime against any person is reported, do we carefully record the context and include nuances in statistics? (No, we don't. For example,how much violence against transgender people is perpetrated by other transgender people? Is that a hate crime?) Mostly though, there are just plain more people identifying as trans and that's going to yield different numbers, both in terms of the number of victims and the number of perpetrators. And every other thing. There may be an "alarming rise" in the number of trans people buying cars. None of this would be of much importance to me if I thought our hyper-focus on phenotypic and divisive identity issues was very useful in the face of major problems, which can only be addressed by a united working class. A class that could potentially be unified along economic and environmental lines. This article simply supports my contention that many more people are identifying as LGBTQ: https://news.gallup.com/poll/329708/lgbt-identification-rises-latest-estimate.aspx
DeleteI live in a California city of 100,000. It's actually small enough to become known well enough to be canceled by a swath of leftists and know the very people who are doing the canceling. As in, personally. I think there's a tyranny on the left. We can't argue about identity without exposing heresy. Heresy is only possible where there's DOGMA. I listen to a bit of right wing radio. (Know your enemy.) This example of police classifying anatomically male perps as female is the sort of raw meat they throw to the blue collar guy driving a truck. He sees this as insane and votes for Trump, thinking at least Trump will recognize sexual dimorphism as a real thing. This is visceral, primal stuff. I can see us fighting a civil war over it. Hell, wasn't a 30 year war fought over transubstantiation?
ReplyDeleteYes language is not static, usage of words change, “happy and gay” for example is not your grandma’s happy and gay. However male, female, man, and woman are words that are above average in importance in they can clarify paragraphs and pages of text. Their use in written laws and legal precedence is unparalleled. So if you have a penis and want to wear dresses have at it, but expect pushback if you try to twist the English language to your liking. Even if you win you will have alienated a large group of citizens who were previously neutral or at least ambivalent.
ReplyDeleteThe attacks on Rowling are sad. To those who support them, thinking it would reduce violence to trans, am baffled. How would increasing intolerance to her comments reduce violence?
ReplyDeleteShe made a variety of comments that come from a loving heart speaking what she feels are facts. Is she right or wrong? I tend to agree with her, but that begs the question. Violence and intolerance from far right canNOT be fought (successfully) by the reverse. That's like saying the real solution in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is another missile attack or bomb explosion.
www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy
Not yet. And also waiting for the King Williams College Christmas quiz to be posted. Have checked several different sites, including one that used to offer early access.
ReplyDeleteFor those interested in learning about the perspectives of those most affected by these issues, there is plenty of content on YouTube where actual transgender people carefully explain why Rowling's comments reflect a degree of intolerance that should not be dismissed casually. One of my favorites is ContrPoints: https://youtu.be/7gDKbT_l2us
ReplyDeleteI'm so tired of people feeling outrage over issues they didn't know existed five minutes ago. How many people knew that Quidditch leagues existed in the US before landing on this story? Could you tell me how many participate in those leagues, with an error of less than 50 percent? If you don't know such basic things, why do you feel confident putting forward an opinion? Why should your judgement come before the people who actually play the sport?
I find it interesting that the Quidditch leagues want to distance themselves from her, but Rowling is the only reason their activity exists.
ReplyDeleteI read the Glamour article/addendum. This is another identity debate ignoring oppression by class. Rowling’s popular version of feminism ignores class–all we need do is compare the lives of affluent women, at any point in history, with the lives of poor men. (This holds equally true today.) And, I’m willing to bet most of the violence visited on LGBTQ people happens in the context of poverty–and more specifically, in the context of desperation driven activities like prostitution. Upper class LGBTQ people as victims? In 2021? Little to none. The billionaire Rowling a victim, due to her gender? Please.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of "cancel culture" being this uniquely modern, left wing-thing is just laughable, as the Wikipedia article says in the section on criticism. But that's not the half of it - we are much, much more civilised about this than in the past. JKR still lives in Edinburgh, a city known in the past for its mobs. Eighteenth century cancel culture could involve the mob breaking into your prison cell and lynching you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porteous_Riots
ReplyDeleteI want to be extremely clear: I am not calling for violence against JKR (or anyone else for that matter). I *am* pointing out that wailing about cancel culture is total rot.
I could talk about why Rowling is wrong on a number of levels, but I will only mention one thing: this harms cis women too. The "gender critical" movement make a lot of noise about protecting cis women and single sex spaces for cis women. However, what they mainly do is make those spaces unsafe for cis women like me who for, whatever reason, do not come over as "feminine". I have, since my teens, been intermittently misgendered. I have on a couple of occasions (not recently) been told to get out of a ladies' loo; this was before the current trans panic, and saying that I was in the correct loo was enough to defuse that. I am now genuinely worried about that happening again in the current climate. From my point of view, those attacking the right of trans women to be in women's spaces are also attacking my right to be in women's spaces, and any cis woman who because of genetics or medical conditions or personal choices does not appear to be a transphobe's definition of "woman".
Leftist cancel culture is a very real thing. I think being on the receiving end gave me an appreciation of its viciousness. It also made me think less of humanity–but I agree that humanity has long practiced shunning and exhibited mass hysteria in many other forms. As to your restroom example: I’m really at a loss. You were confronted by women in a women's restroom because they thought you were male? Isn’t that what you’d expect from empowered women? Certainly not acquiescence. Were I to walk into a woman’s restroom, being male looking, I’d expect some backlash–no matter how female I felt that day. Same with the women’s locker room at the local sports club. I guess we can integrate all these spaces. Is that the solution? If not, or in the meantime, I fully expect that 99% of people will be conscious of who inhabits gendered space. I’d expect, on rare occasions, a person in transition will be questioned. This is not, in my opinion, a matter of persecution. It’s a matter of mores. Is it impossible to imagine a person, having transitioned, questioning an interloper in the space they now “own” as a member of the “opposite” sex? To think otherwise is to conjure a world where we all enter gendered spaces as gender blind–even those who go to the, often, considerable effort to change gender. How any of this disempowers women is beyond me.
DeleteWe are seeing more and more of this issue in the UK, and the 'intolerance' isn't one way as some would portray it. For example, an acquaintance attended a feminist meeting that didn't even discuss trans issues, but it was picketed by activists shouting obscenities referencing their 'obligation' to get into intimate relationships with self-identified women who happen to have penises. (Incel rantings about being denied sex come to mind.) And another acquaintance's trans daughter (with penis) who is attracted to women is unhappy that lesbians don't necessarily want to be intimate with her. That's just people I know. Really, this seems to revolve around license to get whatever one wants from others, not the right to be free from persecution - as with so much in our dysfunctional UK. And it feels like just another way to denigrate biological women. Which has little or nothing to do with the privileged Rowling, and a lot to do with ordinary women and their hard-won (and again under attack) status.
ReplyDeleteAny mainstream media source cover these extraordinary news events?
DeleteDoesn't J. K. Rowling own some kind of copyright of Quidditch? So they would have to invent a whole new game, and not just change the name?
ReplyDeleteAnd shouldn't Quidditch be banned altogether? Running around with a broom stick that is rubbing against ones privates - does that provide sexual stimulation? Is that something we want to see done in public?
Thank you Kolo. I'm on it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I expect the Guardian to post the KWC quiz tomorrow morning GMT.
I applaud J.K. Rowling for being brave enough to say that the emperor is actually naked. We have lost our way when we think that simply "identifying" a certain way makes it so. As one cartoon put it: A major league baseball player who identifies as a six-year-old will rule the tee-ball league.
ReplyDeleteWhile we should not purposely disrespect those who have do feel they are in the wrong body, neither should we disrespect the truth...or ourselves, by saying what we believe to be wrong--or even a lie--because of the current fad.
In your analogy, the “emperor” is one of history’s most hated minorities, and the “child” is a fabulously wealthy author whose utterances reach and influence millions of people. You haven’t just misunderstood the fable you’re referencing, you have got the relationships in it completely backwards.
DeleteDo you really think that transexuals undergo social ostracism, painful surgery, and much more because they want to do something equivalent to winning a tee ball game with an unfair advantage?
I honestly expected better of the readers of your blog than the comments on this post. It's disappointing.
ReplyDeleteTYWKIWDBI is read by an international audience with an immensely wide range of knowledge, experience, and opinions. Expecting uniformity in a comment thread here will always be disappointing.
Delete