Stop Talking About Her
Enough is enough...
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Well, it’s the first day of 2025 - and this is my first blog entry of 2025, so I guess it had better be a good one. It had better be something funny, informative and lightly provocative - which sets up how I intend to go on for the rest of the coming year. It had better not be shit, that’s for sure! Please don’t be shit…
The main thing that’s been on my mind over the past couple of days, irritatingly, is JK Rowling. But this time, it isn’t because I’m fuming about some characteristically transphobic nonsense she’s spouted - it’s actually because I’m just sick to death of hearing about her at all. See, whenever JK Rowling decides to say something awful about trans people (and in this particular case, it was trans kids) that isn’t actually an unusual event anymore. ‘JK Rowling Hates the Trans Community’ is hardly an interesting headline of note when it’s become her actual status quo.
I get why there is an impulse to talk about her from trans people - because it’s upsetting. She has a lot of money and influence, and she’s chosen to put it towards damaging our rights, so don’t think that I’m trying to say that ‘holding her accountable’ isn’t important. But, if I’m being completely honest with you, I suppose I do have some doubts about just how useful it is these days. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a lost cause, and I know some people don’t like to imagine that scenario, but I feel like she’s given us a pretty good overview of her character by now - she’s demonstrated who she is, and even if she were to have some sort of ‘Come To Jesus’ moment, with all the damage she’s already done, I don’t think I’d be too open to hearing it. Not that most trans people are naive to think she’d be capable of such a thing, but a lot of the ‘discourse’ around her does come with this idea that she has had some ‘fall from grace’ - which implies there might be hope. I don’t think there is.
If we’re really being honest, I find her to be a borderline evil person - capable of intellectual honesty, but too stubborn and nasty to entertain it - and I think that some online ‘queer news’ outlets, whether intentionally or not, do the trans community a disservice by hyperfocusing on her. Again, I understand the idea that ‘light is the best disinfectant’, but there is a residual, depressive effect that can come along with too much exposure - I know from personal experience that the constant reminder of her existence, and the myriad ways in which she’s harming us as a community, does nothing positive for my mental health.
You might disagree with this outlook, I don’t know. You might think that ‘good activism’ can only be achieved by looking head-on and unflinchingly at every single instance of intolerance. Good luck with that. I remember when I was 15 I thought that it was ‘important’ to see the ‘uncensored’ news reports found on Live Leak of terrible catastrophes, so I had a ‘better understanding’ of how things really were… but you know what? I just ended up with PTSD.
I think it’s ok to be an ‘imperfect activist’. I think it’s ok to not seek out sadness. God knows there’s enough of it well within clear-view already.
How about, going into 2025 - we just experiment a little bit with taking our eyes off JK Rowling. Not completely! Like a horrible, spoilt little child, we still have to keep her in our peripherals… but I don’t know, maybe let’s not keep giving her the bad attention she clearly runs off of.
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