Transphobic tweet of Rowling: The author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling has again caused a disturbance on Twitter with a transphobic tweet. She has regularly made humiliating remarks on Twitter towards the transgender community and fans all over the world have condemned her for it.
The stars of the Harry Potter film Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have known to have separated themselves from her due to her transphobic view and she was not involved in the HBO special called ‘Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts’.
Now Rowling has shared a Times UK article with the title “Absurdity of police logging rapists as women”. The article talks about the decision of Police Scotland to record rapes committed by criminals with male genitalia as being done by a woman if the offender identifies as female. Sharing the article, she wrote on Twitter: ” War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.”
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A Twitter user responded,” Some cis women are rapists. Worth noting that many GCs also want to record trans women rape victims as men. This is all just moral panic to justify taking away all trans people’s rights. It’s to bypass your rational brain.”
The Art vs Artist Debate
Besides discussion on the legal system of the UK and doubts on whether sexual violence is “inherently male”, Rowling’s tweet once again raised the art vs artist debate wherein people have thought about whether or not it is possible to enjoy someone’s creativity while distancing it from the artist as a person.
If an artist does something that is ethically deplorable but their art is still amazing, is it morally incorrect to consume the art that would ultimately add to the well-being of the artist? Many Twitter users added that they were now not able to enjoy the Harry Potter books with which they had grown.
Support and Critique
Another Twitter user, assenting to Rowling’s remark, wrote: ” This happened to me. My rapist transitioned and now all guilt seems to be gone under the guise of others being “accepting”. Thank you for speaking out about this even though you receive awful amounts of hate. I worry for women that have to deal with these men in their spaces.”
To its response, another user tweeted, “And that would be a different issue. The problem is not that your abuser’s gender was respected, but that the people around them ceased to hold them accountable. Those are two different things.”
According to the critics of Rowling, her denial of self-identification as an important requirement for gender identity and looking at womanhood as something that is decided only biologically makes the author transphobic.
Her supporters, on the other hand, contend that deploring the importance of biological sex might jeopardize women and is not pragmatic for legal as well as safety reasons.
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