Famous Man Rants About Beautiful Women

As people all over the world are rising up to protest police brutality and white supremacy—and all in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic, no less—Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has decided that now is the perfect time to share some truly deranged thoughts from the most misogynistic corners of his brain.

As if possessed by the spirit of the “literally no one:” meme, Rowling got mad online yesterday, tweeting his disapproval of an article that referred to people who menstruate as “people who menstruate” rather than just saying “women.” The complaint is a textbook TERF dogwhistle—that is, a textbook trans-exclusionary radical feminist dogwhistle—about the linguistic erasure of cis women or whatever, so it makes sense that a bunch of people started calling him a TERF. Rowling fired back about how TERF is a slur and blah blah blah blah blah. He continued his tantrum for a couple more hours, at one point implying that women and other trans people don’t face discrimination. He also claimed that his woman-hating tweets were all in defense of gays and lesbians—another classic TERFism—as well as some self-serving definition of biological sex—yet another TERF go-to, notably deployed here in this horrible essay by former Jezebel man Natasha Vargas-Cooper.

I’m tempted to debunk Rowling’s stupid tweets one by one, but literally what’s the point? His hatred of women is nothing new, and he’s not likely to change any time soon. If he, as a multimillionaire author with one of the largest platforms on the planet, wants to claim that a few million stunning, beautiful, inimitably gorgeous women are oppressing him, then fucking who cares—let him!

Instead of wasting any more words on this sad, sad fellow, I suggest that women and cis women, not to mention our male and nonbinary allies, refocus our attention away from hateful men and back on materially supporting women. You can do that by donating to the Homeless Black Trans Women Fund and other pro-woman fundraisers like the Okra Project and For the Gworls, not to mention joining up with the Black Lives Matter protests in your area.