Thread by @SoozUK

THREAD: From Facebook:

Cut & pasted - with permission - from a trans friend who didn't want her name attached because, understandably, she's sick of arguing about this. Basically, she was approached by a cis friend asking Why Are People Unhappy With JK Rowling.

Well done for reaching out to an actual trans person with lived experience and questioning the media's messaging around this story.

People are reacting angrily for lots of reasons but I think the main one is JK Rowling is a white, straight, cis billionaire who is talking over a bunch of minorities here.

She has more followers than there are trans people in the world so it's an astonishing example of punching down. I see why people would read her manifesto and think 'that seems measured' but it's absolute rhetoric, nicely worded. A lot of it is also untrue. Let's break it down.

WHAT ABOUT CONFUSED YOUNG LESBIANS?
Current wait times to be seen by gender youth services is 1.5-3 years. Patients aren't being hurried into life-changing decisions. The issue here is that JKR is presenting being trans as a worst case scenario that kids needs rescuing from.

Several studies have shown allowing teens to adopt their preferred gender is by far the easiest way to improve mental health outcomes. She ignores those studies, obv.

WHAT ABOUT SURGERY?
You'd be about 5 years into transition and over 18 before anyone offered you surgery.

WHAT IF THEY CHANGE THEIR MIND?
Cool. Literally no-one cares. Teens change their minds all the time. They haven't had surgery or started on meds in the majority of cases. That said, less than 2% of trans patients cease treatment. The studies mentioned were debunked years ago.

WHAT ABOUT ADULT LESBIANS?
No-one is saying lesbians are being forced to have sex with trans women. But by implying this, you are insinuating trans women are rapists.

WHAT ABOUT SINGLE-SEX SPACES?
The only reason to worry about them is if you thought on some level trans women are rapists. If cis male rapists wanted to rape women in changing rooms they would. They wouldn't go to the trouble of joining a 3 year waiting list to begin transition.

Also, JKR doesn't mention that trans people have been legally able to use single sex spaces since 2010. Have we seen a bunch of rapists invading these spaces? No.

Some cis women may be 'uncomfortable' at the thought of trans women using these spaces. But that's prejudice and I don't think we should discriminate against trans people who just want to go to Topshop because of that.

'SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE TRANS...'
Speaks for itself. JKR implies there is a 'right' way to be trans. To her, this is a full medical transition while also meekly acknowledging you're not a 'real woman'. Fuck that.

This is about bodily autonomy - trans people should access surgery if they want it, not because society demands it. Not all trans people can have gender confirmation surgery on health grounds, anyway.

IT'S A FEMINIST ISSUE
Most feminists include trans women, acknowledging there is no universal experience of womanhood. Trans women are women, albeit ones who've had a different experience of oppression in childhood.

Remember all trans adults were trans kids and grew up with dysphoria, body issues etc. Very much like cis girls. In fact, by reducing women to menstruators, Rowling has set back the movement to pre 1950s attitudes. Of course women are not exclusively defined by reproduction.

Rowling's experience of domestic abuse was at the hands of a cis man. I don't see how this relates to trans women...UNLESS SHE THINKS WE ARE MEN (which she clearly does).

She even admits herself that trans women - especially black trans women and sex workers - are possibly the most vulnerable group on the planet.

And finally. WHO ASKED HER? Was the world waiting on the Harry Potter lady to decide what makes a woman? No.

HELLO, Sooz here. None of those were my words, those are the words of a trans woman who didn't want to be named. And they are definitely the accounts we should be listening to the most in all this.