11/07/2024
LGBTQ Nation, the stateside newswire, reports that author J.K. Rowling continued to battle with progressives on social media, asking those who oppose her transphobia whether she could call herself Black if she got into Motown music and wore her hair in cornrows, thus deeply offending many people of African and Caribbean heritage. Ms Rowling, who has devoted most of her social media presence this past year to attacking transgender rights, wrote a post on X over the last weekend calling a trans woman soccer manager a “middle-aged bloke.” The trans woman had never even interacted with Rowling and did nothing to provoke her response or the ensuing harassment she received from Rowling’s somewhat fanatical and slavish followers. But many people, even from sources outside the trans community, seem to be growing tired of the single minded campaign being waged by Ms Rowling. Jonathan Chait of New York magazine responded to Rowling by telling her it’s “basic decency” to “call people what they want to be called.” Another X commentator remarked, "I am not part of the trans movement, but really, doesn't this narcissistic woman have anything better to do?". Meanwhile, black civil rights campaigners expressed horror at Ms Rowling's cheap appropriation of their identities. Sacha Sinclair wrote "With all due disrespect, KEEP THE BLACK COMMUNITY OUT OF YOUR MOUTH! We have real problems without culture vultures using racist tropes to justify their bigotry of other groups. Find another analogy that doesn't involve punching down on Black people." And truerhama on twitter wrote "Dear racists please stop using black people to support your bigoted arguments when your backs against the wall - it's beyond embarrassing." Other comments collated by Alex Bollinger at LGBTQ Nation include "Why do white transphobic people bring Black people into this? Leave us out, please. Plus you’re making a false equivalence between race and gender (even though they are both constructs). But you’re too steeped in transphobia to understand how this works. So, leave us out of it, please". One person also drew attention to Ms Rowling's track record on diversity, noting "So your books’ racist stereotypes DO match your real life racism. Huh.". This is a reference to a long standing critique of the author's "Harry Potter" franchise of books set in a posh boarding school, in which Chinese, Asian, Irish and Black characters are tokenistic and stereotyped. Either way, radical separatist groups that dislike transgender women have long been challenged by African and Caribbean media for their objectification of black men in particular and their perpetuation of racist ideas about people from diverse cultures.
