It’s pretty obvious that both liberals and conservatives are ready and willing to turn on their own if someone steps out of line in their estimation, and J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter and a very liberal-minded individual in her own right, has stepped firmly in it at this point by coming to the defense of researcher Maya Forstater, who was recently found that her contract with Centre for Global Development was cancelled due to her views on sex being ‘absolutist’ were not in keeping with the dignity of the people that were seen to be affected. Translation? She stated that the sex of each human being, their DNA in other words, was real and could not be refuted. She made logical sense in other words and it hurt the feelings of many people across the world given that we’re currently living in a very over-sensitive climate where saying the wrong thing can cause even the most popular individuals to suddenly feel the bottom drop out. Rowling decided to back her and has since been called transphobic on a large scale and bashed repeatedly even by the fans that have followed her since the first Harry Potter book came out. If there was any need to show just how fickle fans can be this is yet another bit of proof since saying what appears ‘wrong’ to people these days is sure to turn a wide number of people against you no matter if they happened to love or tolerate you to begin with.
Mark Hamill almost stood with Rowling until he noted the last part of her tweet in which she spoke of sex in terms of it being a real and viable thing. It’s still somewhat amazing that many people are fighting this very hard to deny, but easy to prove fact that sex is in fact a real thing that cannot be wished away or denied by claiming to be the opposite sex. The fact that trans men and women prefer to be addressed by their preferred sex isn’t the issue so much as the reality of what their DNA will reveal is. Like it or not, despite the fact that there are those men that exhibit more womanly traits and women that exhibit more manly traits there is still that one very telling part of everyone that will determine whether a person is male or female beneath everything they attempt to use to hide it, and that’s their DNA. It has been revealed throughout the years that men and women can exhibit traits that tend to belong to the opposite sex that they were born with, but more often than not a person will be definitively male or female beneath the surface, and as such this is important for many reasons, not the least of which is their personal health and how this differs between men and women. Taking medications and various hormones and doing whatever is deemed necessary by the individual to deny that part of their existence is indeed possible, but at times it also comes with complications. Jeffrey Kluger of Time has more to say about this.
The mess of who is who and what is what in this world has become an increasingly sensitive and confusing morass of humanity and bruised egos and hurt feelings that appears to have no ready end or satisfying conclusion at this point but there are obviously many ways to keep the fires stoked and people ready to lash out at anyone that doesn’t think the way they do. There are even those that have dug far into history to present that the world has ‘always been this way’ in order to validate their current existence and let others know that normal isn’t, and never has been, the norm. Personally I tend to get by with a ‘live and let live’ stance that doesn’t condemn anyone for their thinking unless of course it seeks to harm others or make others feel as though they are somehow less in the eyes of those around them. The trick here is that Rowling didn’t actively say anything about the sex of any other person save to try and confirm that it IS real, and that the DNA one is born with is what they will be stuck with for the rest of their lives no matter what they do to their body or how they want to appear to themselves or others. Face it, a rock will be a rock, an animal born in the wilds will be the same animal from birth to death, and humans will possess the same DNA they were born with from the moment they’re brought kicking and screaming into the world to the day they exit. No more and no less, this is what is true on a very fundamental level, no matter how many feelings it hurts. At this point it’s time for people to realize that Rowling hasn’t actively insulted anyone and that it’s time to move on, without pointing fingers or assigning blame for something that is beyond our control.
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