I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.
I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.
Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.
However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.
When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.
The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.
Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?
I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.
The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.
Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.
If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.
People like Charlie Kirk get turned into caricatures. It’s not that reasonable and well-intentioned people couldn’t disagree with him vehemently. That’s fine and good. He would have seen that as fine and good.
But there is a thick strata of our population who judge people ambiently. Just off of reputational vibes that surface within their media bubbles. No real direct knowledge of the subject, but nonetheless certain in their hatred. They will mistakenly think that a very bad guy died today.
The UK: where a comedy writer is met with armed police because he tweeted that if a man refuses to leave a woman-only space he should get kicked in the balls, and elected politician @IanRBristow is free to publicly tell a woman to shut the fuck up with a picture of a gun.
I see Nicola Sturgeon is once again complaining that I posted a picture of myself wearing a T-shirt with her name on it and the legend 'Destroyer of Women's Rights.' Apparently this didn't 'elevate the debate.'
Is there a clinical term for an individual who has extreme thinness of skin when it comes to their own perceived hurts, coupled with a rhino-hide when it comes to the fear and suffering of others?
I'm thinking in particular of the two women Isla Bryson raped, who had to watch their First Minister squirm and smirk on TV as she tried to avoid admitting he was a man; of the five survivors of male violence who were ready to give evidence to Sturgeon's committee on gender self-ID, but were told to put their concerns in writing while seventeen trans-identified people appeared in person; of the mother of a young girl with a learning disability who campaigned against self-ID because she wanted her daughter to be guaranteed same sex intimate care, should she need it (the mother was presumably one of those female opponents Sturgeon calls 'shrill' and 'hysterical' in her memoir); of the ten-year-old girl sexually assaulted in a public bathroom by a 6'5" paedophile who served his jail sentence in a women's prison because he called himself 'Katie'; of Sandie Peggie, forced to discuss her own menstrual history in public to justify not wanting to undress in view of a 6ft straight cross-dresser in the nurses' changing room; of Marion Millar, dragged into court because she tweeted a picture of suffragette ribbons; of the Scottish rape crisis centres reliant on government funding who were pressured to admit trans-identified males into their services if they wanted funding to continue.
When Sturgeon refers to an 'elevated debate', she means a discussion that takes place within a tiny, smug bubble from which regular women suffering real life consequences of her policies are firmly excluded. These faceless ants are loftily dismissed as bigots, or, to be more precise: 'transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, maybe racist as well.'
Nicola, you hated the T-shirt picture because you couldn't ignore it, as you'd ignored so many other women trying to make you understand their concerns. Appeals to your empathy, your intelligence and your compassion all failed. Apparently the only way to get through to you is through your vanity.
I see Nicola Sturgeon is once again complaining that I posted a picture of myself wearing a T-shirt with her name on it and the legend 'Destroyer of Women's Rights.' Apparently this didn't 'elevate the debate.'
Is there a clinical term for an individual who has extreme thinness of skin when it comes to their own perceived hurts, coupled with a rhino-hide when it comes to the fear and suffering of others?
I'm thinking in particular of the two women Isla Bryson raped, who had to watch their First Minister squirm and smirk on TV as she tried to avoid admitting he was a man; of the five survivors of male violence who were ready to give evidence to Sturgeon's committee on gender self-ID, but were told to put their concerns in writing while seventeen trans-identified people appeared in person; of the mother of a young girl with a learning disability who campaigned against self-ID because she wanted her daughter to be guaranteed same sex intimate care, should she need it (the mother was presumably one of those female opponents Sturgeon calls 'shrill' and 'hysterical' in her memoir); of the ten-year-old girl sexually assaulted in a public bathroom by a 6'5" paedophile who served his jail sentence in a women's prison because he called himself 'Katie'; of Sandie Peggie, forced to discuss her own menstrual history in public to justify not wanting to undress in view of a 6ft straight cross-dresser in the nurses' changing room; of Marion Millar, dragged into court because she tweeted a picture of suffragette ribbons; of the Scottish rape crisis centres reliant on government funding who were pressured to admit trans-identified males into their services if they wanted funding to continue.
When Sturgeon refers to an 'elevated debate', she means a discussion that takes place within a tiny, smug bubble from which regular women suffering real life consequences of her policies are firmly excluded. These faceless ants are loftily dismissed as bigots, or, to be more precise: 'transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, maybe racist as well.'
Nicola, you hated the T-shirt picture because you couldn't ignore it, as you'd ignored so many other women trying to make you understand their concerns. Appeals to your empathy, your intelligence and your compassion all failed. Apparently the only way to get through to you is through your vanity.
This shift in attitudes shown below isn't because of increased intolerance, but of an increase in understanding, and trans activists themselves bear the greatest responsibility for the change.
Five years ago, a lot of medical bodies (and trans activist organisations, lobby groups and virtue-signalling celebrities) were united in telling us that puberty blockers were completely reversible and harmless. As more and more evidence accrues showing actual and potential harm, public opinion, unlike trans activism, has shifted in line with the data.
Five years ago, the sophisticated, fashionable line was that sex difference didn't really matter in sport. Trans activists demanded that the women's category be destroyed to accommodate men who claim to be female, but the public wasn't willing to pretend they couldn't see the injustice right in front of their faces.
Five years ago, trans activists and professional lanyard- wearers were chiding us all to use preferred pronouns, because that was kind. Now the public see convicted rapists described as 'she' and 'her' by news outlets and are rightly enraged that journalists are feeding us ideological fiction instead of facts.
Five years ago, a lot of people, especially older ones, were under the impression that trans-identified men had all had full sex reassignment surgery and were sexually orientated towards other men. They didn't know that cross-dressing straight men were now asserting the right to enter all women's reserved spaces. They didn't know how few trans women have had 'bottom surgery.' They know now.
Trans activists are to blame for the hounding and persecution of non-believers, which has spilled into British courts. Women have had to fight all over again for rights they thought they'd have forever. The Cass Review brought shame on all who lobbied to continue a broadly unresearched and unevidenced medical experiment on minors. Trust in institutions, in academia, the media and the medical profession has been severely undermined. Politicians have beclowned themselves, willing to parrot self-contradictory slogans and outright absurdities rather than defend truth and freedom of speech.
The stark change in attitudes over the past five years is the direct consequence of the way trans activists set out to 'educate' us all. Giddy with the power they'd been handed by people in authority, they've tried to impose a quasi-religious, elitist, minority belief upon the whole of society. They can't complain (although, of course, they will) that the public has decided it doesn't want to buy what they're selling.
Tell me again that there’s no class discrimination here. The professional class doesn’t have to strip off during their working day, but working class women must act in accordance with their betters’ luxury beliefs and do so front of men. 2/2
I don’t think enough parents realise that the only real ‘benefit’ of puberty blockers is to make young boys grow into feminised men who other men want to fuck.
Dear @Simone_Biles
As a Western Black woman who's old enough to be your grandmother, I'm going to bring race into this.
You are defending 'Trans people', a group that routinely compares Black women to men.
We (including you) are regarded as a less 'feminine'; a less 'appealing' iteration of femaleness, who are by biology, more analogous to 'Transw***n' than are our White counterparts.
By supporting the concept that one can 'identify' out of, or into, a chosen demographic, you are also defiling the memory and struggles of our ancestors.
How many of them could 'identify' out of being Black, even those who tried to pass?
How many were able to 'identify' out of being called 'Boy', or 'Girl', or 'N****r'?
How many were able to 'identify' out of chattel slavery and then Jim Crow?
The world is real, Simone, we cannot alter it by magical thinking and nobody is obliged to participate in another person's delusions that they have changed sex.
And, Simone, you further spit on the memory of every one of your Black grandmothers who never had the opportunities that have been accorded to you.
Women who, because of the double disadvantage of being Black and female and of being born at the wrong time in history, were, despite their talents and skills, largely consigned to lives of involuntary domestic service and manual labour.
You, luckily, were born in a time when your skills and attributes were recognised and so you could shine like the star you are.
But by defending men and boys in dresses who want to obliterate women's sports, you pile betrayal upon betrayal.
You betray ALL girls, regardless of their race, who want to achieve sporting success.
And you worsen this betrayal this by comparing @Riley_Gaines_ to a man!
The very same accusations made against Black women.
The very same accusations made against you (and your style of gymnastics).
And it's not just about what happens in public.
Women and girls have been forced to change and shower and undress in front of boys and men.
Their public violation is compounded by a loss of privacy, of safety, of bodily autonomy.
Of trust.
As a survivor of sexual abuse by your own coach, how can you not comprehend this?
How can you give tearful testimony against Larry Nassar and so movingly describe the "horror" you experienced, yet be blind to the horrors faced by other women and girls?
You describe there being an "entire system that enabled and perpetrated" the abuse against you.
Simone, you are now defending that system.
I can't decide whether your "transphilic" comments are cynical opportunism aimed at garnering attention for your Netflix documentary, or whether you are really this uninformed and unfeeling.
Either way, you should now seriously reflect on your choices or ignorance.
Maybe, sit down and have a quiet word with your 'aunties'. And also speak with any of the hundreds of women and girls whose dreams have been smashed by psychopathic transvestites who have bludgeoned their way into female sports.
Count yourself lucky and direct your compassion and empathy towards these women and girls.
Not towards cheating, tucking, painted, lying opportunistic transvestites.
Child, 'Trans people' are not your friends.
You are being used.
Fix up!