Talk:J.K. Rowling and Transphobia

More threads to follow

Some other potential areas for expansion of this article:

• The contrast between how Rowling's views have been received in the UK versus North America. Specifically, how the mainstream British press (The Guardian, The Times, etc.) has published opinion pieces supporting her, but in North America supportive pieces have primarily come from right-wing sources (Breitbart, The Fedaralist, World Net Daily). Could include some background about how transphobic views have gained traction among the British left, while the North American left generally regards such views as reactionary and antithetical to progressive values. Rowling's descent into TERFism, and her stubborn refusal to listen to fans trying to educate her, may be symptomatic of this cultural divide. She may not see anything wrong with her views because they are "normal" progressive opinions in her frame.
• How non-English-speaking wings of the Harry Potter fandom have reacted to Rowling's views. I've read that Russian fans have generally been baffled by the controversy and are supporting Rowling. Would help fill out the "plural point of view" angle.
• The critical re-examination of the Potter books that's happened in the wake of the revelation of Rowling's anti-trans views. Namely, whether Rita Skeeter is an intentional transphobic caricature, or simply the product of the same unexamined internalized prejudices that gave us the "Snape-in-a-dress" gag. Also other instances of iffy and essentialist gender representation throughout the Potter series: women without children are generally evil, evil women are generally ugly, the stairs in Gryffindor Tower let girls into the boys' dorms but not vice versa.

Night Rain (talk) 00:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I like these ideas, but I would say that the top one is not super relevant to Fanlore - it's more about the media and social/cultural perception than fandom. I might include a line about it in the context of a section covering international reactions from fans, but it's important to keep the focus here on fans and fannish behaviour without going too deep into media takes. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 08:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, fair point. I realized that the fine-grained examination of media coverage was probably beyond the scope of a fandom-focused wiki after I wrote it, so I salvaged the portion about transphobia in the UK and moved it to the "Timeline" section to give some context. Night Rain (talk) 19:45, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Cultural Background Section

Regarding this part of the page:

While the North American left has largely rejected anti-trans sentiments, they have become notably entrenched in the British left, especially among British feminists, and have come to dominate mainstream media discourse in the UK.[2][3][4][5] Some have suggested that this is the legacy of the British skeptic movement of the early 2000s and its focus on debunking "junk science," which for many members included the social sciences and not just overtly pseudoscientific beliefs and practices like homeopathy, faith healing, and astrology.[5][4] Others assert that the "middle- and upper-class white feminists" of Britain have not yet faced the same intersectional reckoning as feminists in North America.

While I understand the impulse to explain some of the context around Rowling's transphobia, why does this excerpt only do it in comparison to North America? What about other parts of the world? The problem is that this effectively assumes the reader is using North American leftism/feminism as a starting point for trying to understand Rowling, which isn't the case for every user on Fanlore, so for many it won't be particularly enlightening.

I think it makes sense to have a "context" section, but I would keep it focused on UK culture without using other countries' cultures/ideologies as a comparison point, because that alienates users who aren't from that part of the world. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 08:17, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Changed to "while generally the province of conservatives, anti-trans views...".

The sources specifically compare attitudes in the UK to attitudes in America. As a Canadian, I felt comfortable interpreting that to include my own country, since "America" is often shorthand for "The US and Canada" in "America-vs.UK"-type discussions. But I wasn't comfortable extending it to include other countries that might be lumped together as part of the "Western World" or whatever. From following the controversy, I've gotten the impression that Australia and NZ align with North America in that their progressive and feminist communities generally seem supportive of trans rights, while Ireland seems to share the UK's TERF problem to some extent. Without sources specifically addressing those countries, though, I didn't want to make any in-article pronouncements concerning them, let alone about non-English-speaking countries (for want of a better descriptor).

I still think that the background on the prevalence of anti-trans views in the UK is important to understanding JKR's tranpshobia. Otherwise, someone might come away with the impression that Rowling's transphobia sprang out of nowhere, or that anti-trans views are prevalent among progressives and feminists throughout the world. Night Rain (talk) 19:13, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I think it's best to stick just to talking about the UK in terms of context, because it's impossible to cover every other perspective and it's arguably not that relevant to the page at hand, which is about the fannish response to what Rowling believes. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 22:06, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Dworkin on trans rights

Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity.

Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judg­ment that transsexuality is caused by faulty socialization. More probably transsexuality is caused by a faulty so­ciety. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is un­ able to achieve its natural development because of ex­tremely adverse social conditions.

There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individ­ual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androg­yny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of trans­sexuality will disappear and that energy will be trans­formed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.

- Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (1974), pages 186-187 (Plume 1991 edition)

J.K. vs J. K.

I propose taking the gardener request template off this page asking for the page to be renamed J. K. rather than J.K. Using this page as why. https://fanlore.org/wiki/J.K._Rowling --MPH (talk) 15:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

It's a typo fix, not an actual change to this article's title (and, FWIW, I think this article's current title could be improved). It's like if someone accidentally named Harry's article "Harrey Potter." It’s a mistake. Fixing simple, obvious mistakes is not something that needs to be debated. Night Rain (talk) 18:58, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

J.K. Rowling is how it's spelled on her official website ("J.K. Rowling is the author of the much-loved series..."), and standard Fanlore policy is to use, as much as possible, whatever spelling or other identifier a person prefers. --Elf (talk) 20:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

This page wasn't named by mistake and is not a typo. It was a choice.

It's good we are having this debate on the talk page, as that's what the talk pages are for. --MPH (talk) 21:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia's article has spaces between the initials (so does Harry Potter Wiki's). The absence of spaces creates technical issues with searching and indexing, because it means the initials are treated as a lump (JK Rowling) rather than discrete letters (J K Rowling). How it's formatted on Rowling's website should not have a bearing on how it's formatted on a wiki, especially when that formatting creates technical issues. It's not a considered non-standard individual typographical preference (e.g. bell hooks). It's a formatting choice, and an anachronistic one, at that. "No spaces between initials" is an artifact of the era of typewriters, when spacing produced large, unsightly gaps. On a wiki, in the era of automatic kerning, it is a mistake. Night Rain (talk) 21:53, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Could you specify were this is supposed to create technical issues for indexing? All the categories on this page seem to sort fine. --Doro (talk) 00:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

It creates issues with how articles are ordered alphabetically in categories. This can be resolved, to some extent, with manual pipes or "DEFAULTSORT," but it didn't seem to work with categories added to a page by templates. May also create issues with searching because the autofill menu can be laggy or not work on some browsers. It's been a very long time since I had to deal with this on another wiki, but, basically, it's an unnecessary complication. Easier to just add spaces between initials. Night Rain (talk) 07:01, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Take off "unfolding situation" notice?

While this page can always have more added to it, I propose deleting the "unfolding situation" notice at the top. --MPH (talk) 13:08, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to propose this again. --MPH (talk) 01:45, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable proposal. Most of the events covered in this article happened last year. I don't think the controversy over JKR's transphobic views is ever going to be "done." At least not as long as she has a platform for spreading them. And I do plan to update this article when notable developments occur. But I think it's past the point of being an unfolding situation. Night Rain (talk) 03:08, 5 July 2021 (UTC)