Dennis Noel Kavanagh is one of many people who JK Rowling has buddied up with in her pursuit of justification for her own bigotry. She recently welcomed him back to Twitter after a previous suspension in which he ranted about how HIV was a better outcome for children than trans acceptance.
Usually I like to start these with a little profile of the transphobe, describing their usual activity, what their notoriety is and any orgs they have set up to do transphobia from. But I don’t know a lot about Dennis Noel Kavanagh, formerly @Jebadoo2, other than he is an edge lord on the internet and JK Rowling likes him.
Normally I wouldn’t even write about this, trans people are in receipt of violent threats from anti-trans people all the time. Transphobia itself, even in its most politest form, is violence. So why write about this instance in particular?
Easy, because someone made the point that if the shoes were on the other feet; this would be national news. Dennis had around 22,000 followers on Twitter before his suspension, that’s as many as I have. Without a doubt if I had gone on a violent anti-transphobe rant about Dennis or JK Rowling the way he did about us, it would be in almost every paper. A randomer online who posted a Bugs Bunny meme was national news even.
Part of the reason that led me to co-founding TransWrites.World is the fact that the media does not cover our stories equally. Transphobes are given platforms left, right and centre to proselytize their views whereas trans people are told we are only allowed on TV if we’re there to debate a bigot about our human rights. This has gotten less pronounced in recent years, with less transphobes finding space on mainstream TV; but its still massively weighted in their favour. TransWrites.World exists to fill the gap left by a lack of trans representation in media.
Kavanagh could not be reached for comment (his Twitter is banned)
