A word about transphobia
TetleysTLDR: The Summary
Transphobia isn’t a debate: it’s a safe space for hatred, used by the powerful to distract from their own failings. While billionaires hoard wealth and public services collapse, trans people, less than 1% of the population, are scapegoated.
This so-called ‘culture war’ is actually a class war. From Orbán’s Hungary to DeSantis’ Florida to Westminster’s block on Scottish gender reform, trans rights are under coordinated attack, fuelled by media hysteria and figures like J.K. Rowling, who, whether she likes it or not, now serves as a de facto mouthpiece for the far right.
The result? Real harm. Nearly a third of UK trans people have attempted suicide. The vilification is constant, and deadly. Transphobia divides the left, emboldens fascists, and distracts from economic injustice.
It’s time to call it what it is: authoritarianism - and fight back with solidarity, not silence.
Trans rights are human rights. And being transphobic is fucking shameful.
TetleysTLDR: The Article
Why being transphobic is really fucking shitty and showcases the very worst of humanity
And Yes, That Includes You, J.K. Fucking Rowling
Transphobia is not some difference of opinion. It’s not concern for women’s rights. It’s not biological realism. It is, without exception, a violent ideology of dehumanisation, scapegoating, and bigotry. When someone engages in transphobia. whether through policy, press, or pathetic subtweets: they are not just punching down. They are exposing the rotting underbelly of fear, hatred, and cruelty that has always driven fascist movements.
And if you need a poster child for this cowardly crusade, look no further than J.K. Rowling, once a children's author, now the high priestess of gender-critical venom, whose output reads less like feminist concern and more like the Daily Mail scrawled on the back of a toilet door in blood and bile.
On 3rd July, we did a satirical blog called the. The adventures of Toilet Karen, the Trans-Finder General of Edinburgh. In retrospect I'm not sure I should have tackled this with satire, but it was absolutely meant to shine a light on privilege, hatred and transphobia. If I got this wrong it was not intentional.
Transphobia kills: literally
Let’s be clear: trans people die because of this shit. Not metaphorically. Not in some abstract, philosophical sense. They die. A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that 40% of transgender adults in the U.S. had attempted suicide James et al., 2016. In the UK, Stonewall’s 2018 report showed 28% of trans people had attempted suicide, with 84% having experienced suicidal thoughts (Stonewall, 2018). And what drives that despair? Constant dehumanisation. Media vilification. Legal discrimination. Institutional violence. TERF screeds being printed uncritically in The Times. ‘Concerned feminists’ who’d rather a few more kids kill themselves than have gender-affirming care funded by the NHS. This isn’t a culture war. It’s a class war, a health crisis, and a moral emergency.
Transphobia isn't feminism: it's fascism
Let’s torch the myth that anti-trans bigotry is just a fringe concern. Transphobia has been actively weaponised by far-right groups across Europe and the US. From Orbán’s Hungary to DeSantis’ Florida, anti-trans laws are a cornerstone of authoritarian politics. Why? Because trans people are visible, vulnerable, and easy to demonise. And every time someone like Rowling insists ‘sex is real’ in response to trans people’s basic dignity, she’s singing in harmony with the very worst elements of the international far-right. Want proof?
- In 2023, The Heritage Foundation (a far-right US think tank that helped shape Trump’s policy platform) released a report lauding J.K. Rowling as ‘a brave defender of Western civilisation’ (Heritage Foundation, 2023). When literal fascists call you brave, it’s time to rethink your feminism.
- The LGB Alliance, who Rowling has praised, have appeared on platforms alongside white nationalist groups and have been roundly condemned by legitimate LGBTQ+ organisations like Stonewall and TransActual UK (TransActual, 2021).
Rowling’s Twitter feed, now X, is a cesspool of bad science, smug self-pity, and straight-up retweets of accounts linked to anti-LGBT lobbying.
Her transformation from novelist to reactionary crank is not just sad, it’s dangerous. She has millions of followers and an obsessive platform. Every time she spreads disinformation, some kid loses their family, their healthcare, or their will to live.
Transphobia is a class issue
It’s not just a culture war. It’s about austerity, power, and control. The right wants us fighting each other over toilets and pronouns while they privatise the NHS, evict families, and funnel billions to offshore accounts. Who benefits from demonising trans people? Not working-class cis women. Not feminists. Not kids. The people who benefit are the same bastards who gutted mental health services, who cut youth shelters, who slashed education funding and created a hostile environment for all minorities.
In 2021, Tory MP Alicia Kearns admitted that the anti-trans moral panic was a ‘dead cat’, a deliberate distraction from the government's failures (PinkNews, 2021). Transphobia is not accidental; it’s strategic. And yet Rowling and her gender-critical acolytes are happy to do the establishment's dirty work. They’ll rage about unisex toilets in the name of ‘women’s safety’ while saying fuck-all about rape conviction rates, cuts to refuge services, or the fact that the Met Police harbours more actual predators than Soho on a Saturday night.
TERFs are not the left: they’re a fucking embarrassment
Let’s say this loudly for the back row: gender-critical ideology is not feminism. It’s not radical. It’s not leftist. It’s a reheated blend of 1970s pseudoscience and colonial-era eugenics. The idea that trans people are ‘deluded’ or ‘dangerous’ was used in Nazi Germany to justify arrests, sterilisation, and murder (Laurie Marhoefer, 2022).
When Rowling platformed Maya Forstater, who was praised by far-right bloggers, who sued her former employer for not respecting her anti-trans beliefs, and helped launch the Centre for Labour and Social Studies' discredited gender ‘report’ she was cosying up to bigotry masquerading as free speech. And don’t let them pretend they care about children. These same people oppose gender-affirming healthcare despite every major medical authority: The NHS, WPATH, The American Academy of Pediatrics: agreeing it saves lives (WPATH, 2022).
What Rowling Could Have Done Instead
Rowling could have done good. She could have used her platform to support women in poverty. She could have stood up to domestic violence, backed the nurses’ strikes, or highlighted disabled people's treatment under universal credit. Instead, she’s obsessed with the fucked up fantasy of ‘men in dresses’ invading women’s spaces. Let’s not forget she made her fortune off the backs of LGBTQ+ and working-class fans. Her early readers included young trans and non-binary kids who saw hope and transformation in her magical world. Then she turned around and cast them out. She did a literary Pontius Pilate and washed her hands of the lives she helped shape. She has become a symbol of the very worst in liberal betrayal. Comfortably rich, unaccountable, and utterly lacking in compassion. A boot stamping on a queer teenager’s face forever, signed 'With love, J.K.'
What we should do instead
I'm not trans. I can't possibly understand what persecuted minorities like trans people go through. But I am human and I know what humans should do. So we fight back. With solidarity. With unapologetic allyship. We call out transphobia wherever it festers: in government, in media, in our families, or in the smug tweets of smug millionaires. We say no to ‘both sides’. No to pretending trans people are up for debate. No to the slow moral poison of polite fascism.
Being transphobic is not a fucking identity. It’s a disgrace. This isn’t about being ‘cancelled’. This is about basic humanity. And if your feminism requires you to attack some of the most vulnerable people in society just to feel relevant again, then maybe it’s not feminism. Maybe it’s just being a mean, bitter, power-drunk has-been shouting into a void of your own creation.
Final Thought
History won’t remember Rowling as a hero. It won’t remember any of these transphobic ghouls fondly. It will remember them as cowards. As collaborators. As the ones who spent their twilight years punching down on children while the world burned. Because being transphobic isn’t just shitty: it’s the clearest sign you’ve stopped being human.
And I have to say again, and I don't know how many times we have to say this Trans rights are human rights.
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