With this exciting year almost at the half-way point, it is reasonably safe to conclude that coronavirus has not killed off the culture wars after all. Indeed, with Covid-19 still taking hundreds of lives in Britain each week, the political madness of our age has flared up like never before, a whirlwind that howls afresh each day, the crowds making themselves more and more demented at a faster and faster rate.
We are now at the stage where people are expected to denounce friends or, in the case of J.K. Rowling, the woman who made their careers and to whom they owe everything. The author needs no introduction, but perhaps a lucky few among you have managed to miss our howling culture wars. If so, a summary: where Rowling was once universally lauded for her writing, today an element of the online public purports to believe that the Harry Potter author is an evil bigot.
This is because on that issue of minimal importance but maximal rage – the Trans debate – Rowling has taken the same view that the majority of the British public holds. Which is that while trans people should be afforded the same rights and dignity as everybody else, they do not have the right to redefine biological reality. Specifically, in the case of Rowling and many others, they do not have the right to redefine what a woman is.
Last week the author took exception to the use of the phrase “people who menstruate” in a news report — the headline writer clearly trying to get around having to use the increasingly triggering word “woman”. As Rowling wittily put it:
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate https://t.co/cVpZxG7gaA
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
This brought the ire of trans Twitter down upon her. That whole army of people who used to be men who tell women to shut up, and the people who think they are helping trans people by pretending that biological sex doesn’t exist and that the clownfish is a suggestive comparison for the biological make-up of human beings.
So after a few days of abuse, Rowling published a long article on her website explaining her position, a deeply personal, moving and reflective piece from the heart. So of course people who hadn’t read it continued in their campaign to make the creator of the Potterverse into a persona non grata in what used to be called polite society.
All of this is an average week in the cesspool of Twitter. But the most interesting aspect of the rage against Rowling is not the anonymous trolls and freakishly unemployable individuals who spend their days abusing famous writers on social media: it is the fact that all week the Rowling story has been whipped along by the pronouncements of people who to a greater or lesser degree owe their careers to J.K. Rowling.
The first to break was Daniel Radcliffe. Of course, Daniel Radcliffe owes everything to Rowling. He isn’t an especially accomplished actor, even after all these years of practice. He isn’t noticeably good-looking either, or in any other way naturally fitted for the screen. His superstar career has come about because, at the age of 10, the director of the first Harry Potter film spotted him and thought he was perfect for the role.
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