#J.K. Rowling stands up for feminism against trans extremism

COVID-19 may have canceled the Pride Month parades, but LGBT activists have found another way to celebrate: vilifying J.K. Rowling.

The zillionaire “Harry Potter” author recently earned the wrath of the trans movement when she averred that biological sex is real. After reading an article that referred to “people who menstruate,” instead of “women,” Rowling took to Twitter: “ ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” She added: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. . . . I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

Her take launched a thousand denunciations from trans activists, who declared Rowling a transphobic, bigoted TERF (“trans-exclusionary radical feminist”). It’s tough to “cancel” a household name, but her detractors are trying their best. Several employees at Hachette, Rowling’s publishing house, have said they may refuse to work on her forthcoming book, “The Ickabog.”

Even the young actors who owe their ­careers and platforms to Rowling publicly condemned her. “Transgender women are women,” announced “Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe. Never mind that Rowling is, as he admits, “unquestionably responsible” for the course his life has taken and, therefore, might deserve a tad more consideration.

But Rowling was merely noting that the trans agenda — and the distortions of language it demands — is a form of misogyny, yet another means of demeaning women. Men who transition don’t share the common experience of biological females. It is an offense against women to claim that they do.

In a follow-up essay, Rowling elaborated. “ ‘Woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. . . . The ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanizing.” Brava.

The writer revealed that she is a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault and so is particularly worried that the trans movement endangers women (Exhibit A: bathroom bills that permit men to enter female-only spaces on the basis of subjective mental states alone). Another concern: the increasing numbers of young girls who try to escape femaleness by transitioning, but then regret it and de-transition — often after they have irreparably deformed their bodies and reproductive organs.

“I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class,” she wrote, “and offering cover to predators like few before it.”

Rowling’s commonsense arguments are welcome. But the backlash is, in part, the logical terminus of her own beliefs. Since the “Potter” series’ final installment came out 13 years ago, many have called it too “heteronormative,” and Rowling has repeatedly politicized or revised her story to suit the ­sexual-liberationist causes du jour — whether by declaring President Trump worse than her villain Voldemort; stating that Remus Lupin’s affliction as a werewolf was an intentional metaphor for HIV; or disclosing that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay.

In 2007, she revealed the wizard had an “incredibly intense” sexual relationship with another character, Gellert Grindelwald (the recent “Fantastic Beasts” films are partially based on this backstory). The 2016 screenplay “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which she co-wrote, featured a homoerotic subplot for Harry’s son ­Albus and the seemingly bisexual Scorpius Malfoy.

After years of working messages of queer affirmation into her stories, and retroactively revising her tales to reflect progressive causes, it should be little surprise that some expected her to take this just a step further. She has been toeing the woke line for a long time.

Still, kudos to Rowling for choosing to take a stand here. Though she remains trans-affirming — “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable” — her critics care not a whit. The mob demands total submission, even from those with a history of queer celebration; nothing less will do.

Rowling’s defense of women is cheering. More heartening still is how she is exposing the incoherence of trans ideology and its naked hostility to embodied femininity. In the name of liberation, that ideology has wrought cancellation, violence, misogyny, verbal abuse and too many girls consigned to lives of regret or painful de-transitioning.

Radical freedom, it turns out, looks a lot like bondage.

Ramona Tausz is associate editor of First Things. Twitter: @RVTausz