The anti-trans crusade wages on in the media with multiple different talk shows having chimed in to debate whether JK Rowling should go to prison. This following a misleading story in the Daily Mail.
So lets just rehash all of this really quick. Right now talk show presenters in the UK are absolutely incensed about the idea that JK Rowling should go to prison for misgendering someone. Such as the ever-animated Jeremy Kyle who frothed wildly about “forced ideologies” and “gender neutral parenting”.
This follows as JK Rowling posted an image of the words “Repeat after us: trans women are women” projected on the Ministry of Justice. Rowling commented “No”. This stunt was widely panned by the trans community for coming across a little bit John Carpenter’s “They Live”, albeit with slightly less extended alley fight scenes.
I know this is old and I'm wasting time sniping LGBT people trying their best, but I fucking hate this and whoever made this choice of wording is an idiot. Optically it's like some sci fi authoritarian brain washing pic.twitter.com/ptsSZuzAZc
— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 18, 2023
Interesting sidenote; this stunt is actually from 2018 and was led by Dazed, as covered here by Pink News. Not sure why the billionaire felt the need to post and comment on a 5 year old stunt aimed at bringing awareness to anti-trans hate crime. A statistic which has risen every year since.
A commenter responded to JK Rowling suggesting that voting for Labour would see her with a 2 year sentence for misgendering trans people. To which the billionaire, fantasist and author responded; “I’ll happily do two years if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and important of sex. Bring on the court case, I say. It’ll be more fun than I’ve ever had on a red carpet.”
The commenter is referencing a story in the Daily Mail headlined “Deliberately calling someone by the wrong gender pronouns may land you in jail for TWO YEARS under Labour”. An article which itself states that all that is being proposed is to bring the law surrounding anti trans abuse into line with that surrounding racist and homophobic abuse.
The article attempts to bury this pretty important fact by summoning a “senior tory politician” to give a comment about how the police are being overzealous with regards to policing anti-trans abuse. A statistic which is outright disproven by the government’s own data
See in the event of a hate crime being reported, the two least likely to result in a summons or a charge for the perpetrator are hate crimes based on sexuality, or being trans. Even when similar offences, that aren't hate crimes, have a significantly higher rate. pic.twitter.com/PLi1rsXXT6
— awash with male pee (@notCursedE) June 28, 2019
So to recap; a minor change in law to bring anti-trans hate crime’s sentencing guidelines in line with that of other hate crimes was referred to in the comments of a Tweet by JK Rowling who was at the time transphobicly resurrecting a Dazed campaign from 2018 and subsequently led to the billionaire bigot roleplaying as a freedom fighter and threatening to go to prison for 2 years which has been immediately jumped on by the outrage generating media to act like trans people are really out here saying JK Rowling should go to prison.
The sum total of which amounts to yet another attempt to generate hatred for trans people. We are framed as vindicitive, compelling speech, authoritarian, forcing ideologies and all sorts of other nonsense crap throughout these segments and media coverage. Yet not one of my friends genuinely thinks merely being a transphobe is a criminal offence.
In fact, most trans people I know are what the media would refer to as “the far left” and believe in things like prison abolitionism. Not least due to the role incarceration has played in the deaths of multiple trans people including Taylor who died by suicide.
But it’s a lot easier to oppose people you think are out to get you. So mainstream media has to continually manufacture these narratives where we are saying JK Rowling should go to prison or whatever else. In reality trans people are more concerned about getting jobs, healthcare, housing and not being attacked in the street. I promise, we don’t have time to do the whole boogeytran act.
So instead of talking about how a report says that 1/3rd of employers openly admit to saying they would discriminate against potential trans employees, we are talking about whether trans people think JK Rowling should go to prison. A thing no trans person seriously said and has actually just been made up by the Daily Mail. Great.
