J.K. Rowling Reveals Sexual Assault Has Led To Her Views On Trans Rights Amid Backlash

Source: thetango.com

J.K. Rowling, the author of the most popular book series in history, has been getting backlash over her views on transgender rights. That being said, the writer took to her platform again to share a long statement on her controversial previous posts.

On her personal website, Rowling talked more in depth about why she decided to share her rather hurtful and disappointing opinions on trans people before.

That being said, she explained that rather than being anti-trans, she is just a supporter of ‘single-sex spaces.’

That pretty much means that she is not really all for transgender women using women’s bathrooms and she shared 5 reasons why she thinks that.

During her lengthy essay, Rowling also mentioned her experience with sexual assault and how that has shaped the stance she has today on this topic.

The writer started by addressing the hate she’s been getting over her seemingly uninformed views on trans people, saying that she has, in fact, met many of them and read many books about it, consulted psychologists and more, just like people online had suggested to her in order to learn and understand more.

However, at some point, she stresses that she ‘worries about the new trans activism’ and reveals she was sexually assaulted.

‘I’m mentioning these things not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces. That assault happened during a time and in a space where I was rather vulnerable, and a man capitalized on an opportunity.’

The famous writer stated that she could not get those memories out of her head when she realized that her government might be putting women and girls’ safety at risk for the sake of transgender rights.

Then, Rowling talked about her position and awareness she has when it comes to the danger and violence trans women, just like cis women, also go through and she stressed that she can definitely empathize.

‘If you could get inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a transgender woman dying at the hands of a man, you would find solidarity and kinship. I find a visceral sense of the terror in which all those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I have known moments of blind fear too when I realised the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self restraint of my attacker.’

The writer made it clear that she believes the majority of transgender women are not a threat and are, in fact, indeed ar risk, but, she argued that some gender certificates are too easy to obtain nowadays even before gender reassignment surgery or taking hormones.

In her opinion, that means giving some men a free pass to women’s bathrooms.