JK Rowling’s stance against the thought police
The author’s brave stance in defence of reality must be defended, and her hysterical detractors exposed as the reactionary bullies they are.
As is probably well known all over the world by now, the author of the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, has been targeted by self-styled trans activists because of a tweet she published gently mocking the attempt to avoid using the ‘gendered’ word ‘women’ by substituting ‘people who menstruate’.
The political correctness enforcement brigade responded variously from calling her a ‘hag’ to threatening her with physical assault and rape. Charming!
These people who are spitting hate, and ought to be criminally prosecuted for threatening behaviour, actually have the gall to accuse people who accept that sex is a biological reality of thereby, of necessity, ‘hating’ trans people! But clearly there is no logical connection between the two.
Ms Rowling wrote a lengthy response, published in the Times on 12 June, explaining that, while she entirely sympathised with trans people, at the same time one cannot deny the reality of biological sex.
Sympathy for trans people, and conferring rights on them to live for most purposes as members of their chosen gender, however, does not mean that one must deny the existence of men and women as separate biological sexes and be forced into proclaiming that biological sex does not exist. To do so amounts to denying womanhood and women’s rights, reflecting a high level of misogyny in modern society.
It seems incredible that Ms Rowling’s eminently empathetic and sensible approach to this issue, which is undoubtedly in tune with the attitudes of the overwhelming majority of British people, has given rise to howls of abuse, with various actors who became famous acting in the Harry Potter films, for example, rushing to denounce her and exclude her from their friendship.
It is, however, they who must be denounced as idiotic in the extreme. Of course, they are entitled to their idiotic views, but these are not of a nature to demand the breaking off of friendships, much less threats of physical assault and rape.
As regards attitudes towards trans people, one would break off a friendship with someone who proclaimed trans people should be beaten up, killed, or even deliberately taunted or ridiculed, but even if you disagreed with a person who thought, for instance, that allowing people to change their birth certificates was a step too far, would you really break off a friendship for that reason alone? Or with someone who was against allowing those who are still obviously anatomically male to use a women’s changing room, or to reside in a women’s refuge? Or with allowing someone whose body originally developed as male, thus conferring superior strength, to compete in women’s sports?
Many of the political correctness bullies are students or graduates, and this may be related to the fact that universities push onto today’s humanities students a ‘postmodern’ idealist philosophy which denies that correspondence with the material world is any basis for judging the correctness of an idea. On the contrary, the only measure of correctness, according to these modern reactionary philosophies, is what the majority of people believe to be true (or the majority of ‘educated’ people, the initiated elite, believe to be true).
It is not always easy to persuade people to change their minds, even when presenting them with concrete and irrefutable evidence from the material world. So, if you deny material reality as the criterion of truth, how do you change attitudes sufficiently to impose a different idea and have it accepted by the majority of public opinion, thus making the new idea ‘true’ in the postmodern sense?
Well, you can try charming them into compliance, but when this doesn’t work, which it won’t with the more down-to earth types, all you can do is to bully and terrorise them in the hope that fear will shut them up. What else can you do? And in that respect, how are you different from the people you no doubt deplore who advocate killing, maiming or otherwise severely punishing people who give up their former religious beliefs?
For some unfathomable reason, being ‘politically correct’ is often attributed exclusively to people who are ‘left-wing’. Marxism is of course normally considered to be the essential philosophy of the ‘left-wing’. But Marxist philosophy is dialectical and historical materialism, which has as one of its most fundamental tenets that ideas are true only if they are in accord with material reality, regardless of what any number of people, learned or otherwise, might believe.
At one time, practically the whole of humanity believed that the world was flat, and/or that the sun revolved round the earth. But their belief did not make it true. And it follows that, however many people are bullied into believing that there is no biological difference between male and female, it will never be true.
Vive la difference! Defend women’s rights, don’t try to obliterate them! Denounce the thought police! Stand up for JK Rowling and all those who defend the truth!
