Thread by @redlightvoices

Dear @jk_rowling until now you still follow me, which means maybe you found what I had to say of some interest. You're a beloved billionaire children’s author and I'm just a haphazard writer outside traditional publishing but I'd like to say something about harm to trans people

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/839427061966057472

I never said anything before because I thought that you had a right to explore ideas. I thought, perhaps naively, that you were trying to come to terms with things you didn’t understand.

I’ve been there so many times. But every day there has been a new alarming escalation in the anti trans rhetoric. Hurtful and unnecessary for so many. I insist, you are a billionaire. And this matters because of how we all occupy spaces of power.

You can threaten people with lawsuits and you could actually materialize those threats ruining someone’s life for having the temerity of speaking to you in terms you don’t approve of. For having the temerity to go against someone with power.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism, the name of the ideology you are currently amplifying and part of, is a world ordering project. It seeks to hegemonize naming and ordering the world perpetuating relationships of power:

those with power dictate what and who those without power are. Like cis women like you or I dictating the places occupied by trans women. There is a lot of power in naming: colonizers knew it and that is why they impose strict naming categories in every territory they occupied.

European colonizers imposed their taxonomical order everywhere they went. The category of “woman” wasn’t universal until European colonizers forced it everywhere they went.

I invite you to read about how Carl Linnaeus, a white man paid for by the Dutch and Swedish States “invented” the strict category of “woman” you are now so fiercely defending. It was a world ordering project to justify the racial and gender divisions that still plague us today.

In “Why Mammals Are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural History” LONDA SCHIEBINGER explains it way better than I could sci-hub.tw/https://academ…

Naming and assigning categories is the ultimate exercise in power. Is this how you want to use yours? Going after one of the most marginalized groups? I won’t bother you with the statistics because I am sure you can find them on your own

but the material conditions of trans women (and double so for trans Black women and trans WoC) are appalling. I insist on these material realities because I urgently invite you to self reflect on your actions:

is this how you want to use your power and your immense reach? repeating the echo chambers of the anti trans crowd who are in the business of spreading hatred and division to advance bigotry?

You don't need to take my words. You can read the immense Angela Davis on this. Heck, given how powerful you are you could attend one of Angela’s public events to hear her talk about the urgency of trans rights. Like she did last year in Charlottesville dailyprogress.com/news/local/in-…

To close these reflections: I am not hoping to change your mind. I know that is a long process that takes place quietly once we really allow ourselves the possibilities of doubt. Doubt is a wonderful research method.

I invite you to doubt the hegemonic ideas of womanhood you’ve been supporting. I invite you to reflect on why you are now scared of what you don’t know. Billions of children who made you rich deserve such self examination.

One more read on colonial history and the strict binaries: Maria Lugones "The Coloniality of Gender". Link to PDF globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/sites/globalst…

More readings on a topic that seems to be very argued against:

Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality: Reading for Indigenous Liberation. Link to PDF:

muse.jhu.edu/article/706823