Preserved like frozen eddies in the whirlwind of a moral panic are the words of a national journalist, days after J.K. Rowling publishes her essay on the threat of the trans rights movement. Shona Craven’s newspaper article “This Is Why JK Rowling’s Non-Fiction Foray Caused a Twitter Storm,” which associates trans identity with online echo chambers and the hurling of abuse, crystallizes the kind of “vitriolic media campaigns” in the UK identified by the EU’s Council of Europe “in which trans women especially are vilified and misrepresented.” Other warnings, noticeably outside of the UK, also appear: Anticipating what is to come, the US office of the nominally progressive Guardian signs a public letter in protest at the transphobia of its UK editorial line.
Encompassing these events in its 2021 Annual Review, ILGA-Europe describes how “anti-trans rhetoric continued to cause serious damage in the UK again this year,” adding in reference to the biggest trans-related story of all in 2020, “a prime example is repeated transphobic attacks by author J.K. Rowling, on Twitter and in her writing.” All of these warnings reinforce what a slew of recent academic studies have documented, namely that the UK’s legacy media has become something of a safe haven for transphobic voices. Specific to the reporting of the Rowling story in my locality of Scotland, two articles reflect the new moral panic: one by Craven as the columnist and Community Editor of The National, the other by The Scotsman’s Deputy Political Editor Gina Davidson.
By comparison to their influence, I am a quiet participant in this story, a recently out trans woman and PhD researcher with just a few published articles to my name, though moved to say something at the hostility I’m witnessing. Days after the articles by Craven and Davidson that delegitimize trans identity, I write and submit counter-pieces that get rejected by their respective newspapers. Neither paper runs trans-inclusive commentaries during this time, and it appears no article may challenge the framing of trans people as delusional and oppressive.
In my distress at being voiceless, I find clarity in seeing the relationship between power and voice. This is a personal account of the Rowling furor and the media’s transphobia, but it is also about voices. Regarding my own, I like Andrew Anastasia’s multifaceted concept of the trans voice as forming a kind of trinity, as “speech-sound,” as expression of agency, and as a song of collective politicized liberation.
The second and third of these pertain to this essay: I want to share a rare act of agency I undertook during an important irruption of anti-trans sentiment in the UK’s legacy media, namely the Rowling story that peaked in June 2020. We are rendered hostile abstractions in a contradictory narrative: Trans people are not real, only our violence is real. My trans voice changes over this time.
I watch Rowling’s forays on Twitter from 2017 to 2020, and I shrug uncertainly at the “likes” by Rowling of transphobic tweets. I watch the “likes” mutate into increasingly vicious cycles of statements and reactions between Rowling and those engaged in the online backlash against her. Looking back at this period, I understand I was Rowling’s kind of trans person, isolated, quiet, and respectful of concerns.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
