22/01/2025
Orion Rummler, writing at The 19th, an independent serious online newspaper, says that the attacks by motormouth Joanne Rowling on sportswoman Imane Khelif show that extremist anti-trans people are now trying to police women's bodies, as well as those of effeminate men. Indeed, they are a new fascist threat that wants dominion over all women, especially women who were born women. Rummler writes "Really what we’re talking about is the spectacle of surveillance on women of color’s bodies, especially when they’re winning and performing in ways that exceed the expectations of White women,” said Treva B. Lindsey, a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Ohio State University. Gender policing, or enforcing traditional gender norms and roles through the punishment of those who don’t conform, ignores cultural variations, spectrums of self-expression, gender fluidity and nonbinary identities, said Toni Newman, director of the coalition for justice and equality across movements at the National Minority AIDS Council. And these variations are not exclusive to transgender people. Now, attacks levied against transgender women are being used to attack cisgender women, she said. You’re policing now not only transgender people who transition, but you’re policing straight people,” Newman said. “So now we’re going to start policing masculine women and now we’re going to police feminine men? I mean, where are we going with this?” It should be noted that black feminists have long called out white feminists for their racist tendencies. Rowling is just the latest. Earlier in the year, Rowling drew the ire of many African-American people for her ill considered "Steve Wonder" jibe at transwomen. Some people pointed out that Rowling has a history of white supremacy, evidenced in the series of derivative and poorly written fantasy novels she wrote twenty years ago, in which Irish, black and Chinese characters and people with neurodiversity are stereotyped and given names such as "Shacklebolt" and "Chung". To read the full article by Rummler and more on LGBTQIA+ and women's rights, visit https://19thnews.org/
