Just a few days before Christmas, author J.K. Rowling unwittingly decided to deliver a present to those of us who have warned for years about ceding too much ground to transgender rights activists in the name of political correctness:
She pushed back against the mob.
On Dec. 19, the popular “Harry Potter” writer logged on to Twitter and tweeted out her support for Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her job for tweeting obvious truths on her personal Twitter account about women’s rights and transgender rights.
“Expanding the legal definition of ‘women’ so that it can include both males and females makes it a meaningless concept and will undermine women’s rights and protections for vulnerable women and girls,” Forstater wrote on her Twitter page in September 2018. It was one of several tweets she posted on the issue.
Forstater was fired for WrongThink and for having the courage to question why otherwise scientifically minded people squelched scientific arguments when debating transgender rights. To make matters worse, an employment tribunal upheld her firing a month ago.
Shortly after Forstater’s firing was upheld on the grounds that her personal opinions were “incompatible with human dignity and [the] fundamental rights of others”, Rowling – who has nearly 15 million Twitter followers, tweeted:
“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”
Transgender women (biological men who identify as women) and their allies unleashed hell on Rowling in the aftermath of her tweet, calling her “transphobic,” the “b” word and every other nasty name under the sun for stating a fact about womanhood. They wanted the author to effectively be “canceled” much like Forstater was for having the audacity to stand up for women’s rights.
Under normal circumstances, by this point the offending person has deleted the tweet or tweets, issued numerous mea culpas and apologies, and has made vows to break bread with those who were so “outraged” and “offended.”
Rowling has not. As of this writing, it’s been three weeks and the tweet is still up.
Contrast this with Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who clicked the “like” button on Rowling’s tweet but then “unliked” it and issued a public apology soon after being questioned about it.
Rowling was even offered the opportunity by LGBTQ group GLAAD for an off-the-record meeting, but her reps reportedly declined the offer.
As I’ve written before, nothing short of total surrender to the trans mob’s demands is acceptable. Tennis great and LGBTQ rights pioneer Martina Navratilova learned this the hard way back in March when she dared to speak out against allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
She was more or less excommunicated out of several prominent LGBTQ groups over her belief that men competing in women’s competition gives the men an unfair advantage, even after she issued an apology and tried to mollify the mob with explanations.
Rowling, on the other hand, looks to be taking a different approach by way of offering no explanation for her opinion — not that it needs one — and no apparent olive branches to cancel culture types.
Both Forstater and Rowling are, in their own ways, providing blueprints for how to move forward in the face of intense backlash for stating inconvenient truths about women’s rights. In the case of Forstater, she has not let the British court ruling silence her. She continues to speak out in spite of the hate directed her way.
In Rowling’s case, it appears her way of fighting back against cancel culture mobs is by way of simply ignoring them and moving on. Good for her.
Stacey Matthews is a veteran blogger who has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to Red State and Legal Insurrection.
