“It’s hard to escape the impression that Rowling is having a lot of fun,” Wheaton writes. This, Wheaton puts down to the fact that “her side seems to be winning.” On that alone, she may be right.
In America, left-leaning commentators such as Bill Maher and Bari Weiss have been unafraid to speak critically of transgender orthodoxy. Recently, even the New York Times has been publishing trans-skeptical perspectives. Times columnist Pamela Paul aligned herself with British “terfs,” including Rowling, arguing that both the far Left (in its transgender policies) and the far Right (in its abortion policies) agree that “women don’t count.” “Even the word ‘women’ has become verboten,” Paul complained. “In its place are unwieldy terms like ‘pregnant people,’ ‘menstruators’ and ‘bodies with vaginas.’” All this, she said, is a “bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.”
For liberals, having right-wing tendencies and sympathies is one of the worst accusations you can face. However, this weapon can be wielded in both directions. In Wheaton’s Politico piece, she takes care to emphasize that on the one hand there are celebrities and Harry Potter cast members, and “on the other side of the spectrum,” Vladimir Putin (who said Rowling was a victim of cancel culture). But popularity contests are not proof of argument. And arguments of “guilt by association” are similarly unserious, as the feminist philosopher and trans-skeptic Kathleen Stock recently wrote: “There are also many on the Left who are not so shallow or contrarian, who can grasp basic humane points about children’s health or women’s rights without waiting to see who else agrees with them.”
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