Roasting Marshmallows as Rowling Burns
Was Hermione a Gender Tesla?
A year or so ago a popular Christian radio host complained to Christianity Today that he could not even mention Harry Potter anymore—“it brings out crazy.”
Ah, for those innocent days of youth! I could never have imagined what would happen when the whole country turned into a call-in talk radio show.
He was referring to the witchhunt of JK Rowling, now four years in torchlight. Even those who have never read the Hogwarts fantasies may know that Rowling, a “broke, abused, and depressed single mother—writing in longhand at cafes across Edinburgh while her baby girl slept in a stroller beside her” spun children’s stories that made her a millionairess. But then it became un-woke to feminize the noun, millionaire.
The Harry Potter book series scrawled on those notepads in Edinburgh sold over 500 million copies worldwide, generating approximately $7.7 billion in gross revenue. The merchandise associated with the franchise, including toys, board games, and name use, has companies like Lego and Hasbro banking tens of billions in sales. Rowling's earnings from endorsements, combined with her royalties from book sales, film rights and translations, have swelled her net worth to around $650 million. At her Harvard Commencement speech in 2008, her wealth was never mentioned. She was praised for her social, moral, and political inspiration.
Then she made an online remark, “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. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”
In the same sequence of posts on X, she mocked popular gender language memes. “People who menstruate, I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
That might not have been a problem for anyone who did not have 14.2 million followers, but for Rowling, the response was swift and cruel. She was a “TERF”—Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.
Rowling’s words led to a “revolt” among the staff at one of her publishers, an outcry from some of her most ardent fans, and a torrent of negative headlines in news outlets around the globe. Actors who had grown up on the Harry Potter film sets—people she had known since they were children—distanced themselves from her. Many of Rowling’s former fans began calling for boycotts. They removed photos of her from their websites and Potter tattoos from their bodies. TikTokers started a trend of covering her name on books and book jackets, and tore her books apart. Players of Quidditch—the fictional sport she invented—ultimately changed its name to dissociate themselves from her. The abhorrence of Rowling has at times been so intense that it’s led to the actual burning of her books. A recent novel even includes a scene where Rowling herself is killed in a fire.
I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I'd understand.
It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There's joy, relief and safety in conformity.
— J.K. Rowling
One can go down the Rowling Rabbit Hole (to mix childrens fiction metaphors) as deep as one likes. A Spotify podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling descends into the hotter levels. There are nonfiction books on her plight and articles in journals of medicine and psychology.
Russell Moore, the radio host, now editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, commented:
Political scientist John G. Grove observed in National Affairs that extreme illiberal “wokeness” and extreme illiberal “anti-wokeness” are remarkably similar…. He writes, “This idea of enforcing the outer signs and symbols of religion bears striking resemblance to the kind of coerced virtue signaling that makes woke causes appear to be universally accepted, even by those who don’t truly believe the dogma.” But saying whatever shibboleths need to be said to stay in your herd is a poor substitute for original thought. Doing so represents a dangerous lack of the literal meaning of integrity—of “holding together.”
***
Lacking this kind of integrity can lead us to give up on debate, argument, and persuasion. Ultimately, it can lead us to join the mob in calling out the witches from among us, even when we can see there are none—just fallen, fallible, wrong-headed people like us. And once that happens, it’s a short trip from Hogwarts to Salem.
Rowling did not shy away from integrity. She used her platform on X as a sounding board for the larger gender discussion. In a post written four hours before this one, she said, “Women and children are casualties in the uncompromising campaign waged by trans activists,” linking to a guest post in the Gender Clinic News.
To be clear, The Great Change has covered the science of homosexuality and transgenderism for several years. “Witch-hunting with Jesus” opened with the quote from Senator Marsha Blackburn in the Katanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings: "Can you provide a definition for the word “woman?”
Today, if a high school or college biology teacher in Texas were to use a textbook printed after 2009 that mentions the mosaic pattern of gender assignment or informs her class that sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy, whereas sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy and that hormonal misassignment in that second half is not uncommon, perhaps 10 percent of the time, she could be jailed….
As a result, parents are being informed by high school principals and elementary teachers that to avoid arrest, from now on their children will no longer be referred to with gendered pronouns but instead the neutral "they" or “them," and that all discussion or mention of subjects that potentially refer to sexuality will be banned from school, including heterosexual relationships and families. Texas teachers are carefully following the law by avoiding all mention of gender and sexuality issues.
Rowling got witch-hunted because she complained that trans people, whom she had elevated in stature as role models for children by her extensive writings over many years, had taken a turn to the dark side in their strident butchery of the English language. In an open letter published in Harper’s magazine in which she was joined by Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, and 140 others, Rowling said the “free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”
The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.
In a 2009 NIH paper, Queer Diagnoses: Parallels and Contrasts in the History of Homosexuality, Gender Variance, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Jack Dresher called out some of these strategies:
“Adopting and insisting upon the use of normative language to replace medical terminology (‘homosexuals’ become gay or defiantly queer; ‘gender dysphoria’ becomes gender dissonance; ‘gender-reassignment surgery’ becomes gender confirmation, gender-affirmation surgery, genital-reassignment surgery, or bottom surgery);
“Labeling theories that contradict affirmative perspectives as unscientific;
“Ad hominem and ad feminam attacks on professionals who believe homosexuality/transgenderism is an illness or who use pathologizing language to make sense of homosexuality/transgenderism.”
To claim that marriage should be between one man and one woman is no less racist than to claim that one should not be permitted to marry someone who was assigned a different skin color while they were still in the womb.
In 2018, the American Psychiatric Association listed 14 different genders, some identified by Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist and co-founder of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center in California, who came up with various names including “Gender Tootsie Roll Pops.”
Gender Tootsie Roll Pops. Children who exhibit one gender on the outside but experience another gender on the inside. To follow the metaphor, the crunchy outside is often the gender that accommodates to the expectations of the surrounding world, and the soft, gooey inside is the stuff of authenticity and realness. The hard candy is in place to protect or shield the inside chewiness from an unaccepting world or an internalized unaccepting part of one’s own self. It should be noted that the gender Tootsie Roll Pops, if not provided with resilience building, are often the most at-risk [transgender and gender-expansive] children.
Gender smoothies. Gender smoothies are a variation on the theme of gender fluid. As one teenager vividly described it, ‘You see, you take everything about gender, throw it in the blender, press the button, and you’ve got me—a gender smoothie.’
Gender Teslas. The gender Tesla is the transgender state some children reach after a stint being a gender hybrid or gender ambidextrous. Some simply go from zero to 60 to get there, meaning from the sex assigned to them at birth to their affirmed gender identity. Some go more slowly. We could say that any child in the transgender category would count as a Tesla, but we are preserving this term for children who are in motion toward an all-one-gender status.
In 2024, the University of Rhode Island’s Gender and Sexuality Centre provided a list of 26 gender identities, including—
Girlfag. A woman who is attracted to bisexual or gay men. The woman may even feel, to varying degrees, as though she is a gay man living in a woman’s body.
Guydyke. A man who is attracted to bisexual or lesbian women. The man may even feel, to varying degrees, as though he is a lesbian living in a man’s body.
Transfag. A transman who is attracted to other men.
All of this is to say that gender lies on a spectrum and late hormonal assignment has a lot to do with where you may find yourself. To claim that marriage should be between one man and one woman is no less racist than to claim that one should not be permitted to marry someone who was assigned a different skin color while they were still in the womb. As I discussed in my earlier posts, sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy, whereas sexual differentiation of the brain (hormone assignment) starts in the second half of pregnancy. Hormonal assignment is a spectrum that fosters wide differentiation in emotional preferences.
In 1980, the diagnosis of “transsexualism” first appeared in the standard diagnostic manual, DSM-III as a disorder. In DSM-5, issued in 2013, the term “gender dysphoria” replaced “gender identity disorder.” It was no longer a disorder, but rather a condition.
The challenge to our thinking is that transwomen are in fact NOT the same as any other women and transmen are NOT the same as other men. In this, the Christian (and Muslim) opponents are sort of right, although they are very wrong in a larger sense. Clinical psychologist Sandra Perot explains:
Like any good advertising campaign, trans activists have developed a list of catchy phrases that are used to counter any challenge to trans ideology: “no debate;” “killing trans people;” “most vulnerable community;” “transwomen are women….” (#TWAW).
In her 2016 book, Conflict Is Not Abuse, Sarah Schulman argues that social reformists often mislabel conflict as abuse and act as victims without recognizing their own responsibility. Both those who enjoy and resist some form of social supremacy suffer unresolved trauma. They may “refuse information and communication that could alter their concepts of themselves,” and “may conceptualize themselves as ‘weak’ or ‘endangered’ unless others around them are controlled, repressed, punished or destroyed.” For the supremacist, she maintains, a refusal to engage with other perspectives arises from a sense of entitlement; for the traumatized, it arises from a sense of fragility. She told NY Times podcaster Ezra Klein:
One of the insights of Conflict Is Not Abuse is that dominant cultural people feel threatened by difference, but so can traumatize people feel threatened by difference. And the consequences can resonate. So if you’re raised in a dominant position, you don’t want the discomfort of having to question yourself.
And if somebody else is asking you to be self-critical, you feel like they’re abusing you. How dare you? How dare you ask me to question myself. But sometimes when we’re traumatized, it’s so hard to just keep it together, that the additional questioning of the self, or the need to be self-critical, feels absolutely impossible. And when that is presented by somebody else’s difference, it could feel like an assault or abuse, but it’s not.
***
It’s not really what I was focusing on, but younger people got interested in the book because it resonated with this kind of over-accusatory subculture that they were experiencing. And as I started to tour with the book, I started to see younger and younger and younger audiences because they were extrapolating from my arguments. But it was primarily about the idea that when people with AIDS or Palestinians or any oppressed group fight back, they become accused of being an aggressor when actually they’re not. They’re responding to oppression.
It was in challenging the counterproductive overreach that Rowling found herself marched to the stake to be burned. “I never set out to upset anyone,” she told her Spotify podcaster. “However, I was not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal.” In her initial response essay, she said that as “endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode 'woman' as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.” Her essay noted the exponential rise of transitioning women over men, especially among teens, and suggested that it was as much a response to a teen identity search as to sensing biological imperatives.
I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I'm also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I've been told to 'just meet some trans people.’
***
So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman – and, as I've said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.
***
I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who're standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who're reliant on and wish to retain their single-sex spaces.
Rowling is giving the best possible advice to her persecutors. Shut up and sit down. Or keep on hashtagging TWAW and what you will get are politicians ridiculing people who don’t fit into their two-gender binary, blaming them for Easter falling on the same day as International Transgender Day and saying you trans people are indoctrinating pre-schoolers. Just in the last year, US pols filed 652 bills targeting transgender civil rights across 43 states. Of those, 47 have passed, with more than 100 still pending.
At the Republican Convention, Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who heads the fundraising arm for Senate Republicans, said, “Back in Montana, we know the difference between a bull and a cow.”
“Left-wing activists are pretending to be educators, teaching our kids that there are 57 genders,” Donald Trump said in his acceptance of the nomination. “But they can’t even define what a woman is.”
Rowling’s plight speaks to more than the loss of our ability to have civil, nuanced discussions in the era of unfettered social media. It bespeaks a decline in “civilization” in the true sense of that word.
References
Cohen-Kettenis, Peggy T., and Friedemann Pfäfflin. "The DSM diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorder in adolescents and adults." Archives of sexual behavior 39, no. 2 (2010): 499-513.
Drescher, Jack. "Queer diagnoses: Parallels and contrasts in the history of homosexuality, gender variance, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual." Archives of sexual behavior 39 (2010): 427-460.
McFarland, Michael J., Matt E. Hauer, and Aaron Reuben. "Half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 11 (2022): e2118631119.
Rosner, David, and Gerald Markowitz. "Building the world that kills us: The politics of lead, science, and polluted homes, 1970 to 2000." Journal of Urban History 42, no. 2 (2016): 323-345.
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#RestorationGeneration.
當人類被關在籠内，地球持續美好，所以，給我們的教訓是:
人類毫不重要，空氣，土壤，天空和流水没有你們依然美好。
所以當你們走出籠子的時候，請記得你們是地球的客人，不是主人。
When humans are locked in a cage, the earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is: Human beings are not important. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.
We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the great old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. It is not too late. All of these great works are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.
One of my favorite essays, actually a chapter in a book, is by E.O. Wilson in 'On Human Nature', on altruism. He thinks the biological tendency to gender dysphoria (not a word he used) stems from the need to have aunts and uncles for raising children, especially in our 200,000 + years of hunter-gatherer existence. LGBTQIA etc. might just be beneficial for social cohesion. Learning to get along without bashing each others positions on issues is also beneficial. Thanks for the piece on this topic. It is easy to push too far when the disagreement is really minor.
Dear Mr. Bates,
Thanx mucho for the info. Information about Ms Rowlings (very) slowly filtered in but since it had been several decades since I enjoyed her books, I didn't pay too much attention. Now I find that it has been much ado about nuttin'. Well, perhaps it is nothing to me because I'm old. There have been a few times, recently, when a conversation mentions an individual that is subsequently referred to as 'they' or 'them' and I get confused and genuinely utter, "Wait a minute. There is more than one person involved?" And subsequently receive withering looks. I really don't think I care much about all the gender hullabaloo, but I do get bothered by the arbitrary changes made to language.
dann-0