This article is taken from the February 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issue for just £10.

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If you haven’t heard of Vice magazine, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. It offers the best of rigorous investigative journalism combined with awe-inspiring intellectual profundity. Some of Vice’s most ground-breaking articles include “Beards Aren’t Cool Anymore”, “Gluten-Free People Are Getting Laid Way More Than The Rest Of Us”, and the immortal “I Ate Myself Out Using My iPhone And It Was Pretty Good”.

So you can imagine my delight when I saw that Vice recently turned its probing eye to that demon in human form, J. K. Rowling. The article was entitled: “J. K. Rowling Just Won’t Stop Attacking Trans People Online”. The article didn’t offer any actual examples, but that’s because Rowling has been so manipulative. Her tactic is to not attack trans people in order to make it look as though she is not attacking trans people. 

So when Rowling writes that “the majority of trans-identified people pose zero threat to others” and “need and deserve protection”, she is clearly implying that all trans people are sexual predators. And when she says that “of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter”, she is dog-whistling to her transphobic followers by writing the exact opposite of what she thinks. It’s the oldest trick in the book. 

For all Rowling’s talk of “women’s rights”, it is worth remembering that chromosomes are a social construct. She claims to be concerned about “single-sex spaces” such as prisons. But given that women are woefully underrepresented in the prison population, surely a male inmate transitioning to female can only be a good thing. 

Besides, why on earth would a serial rapist claim to be female in order to be locked up with hundreds of vulnerable women? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. 

As a role model to impressionable girls across the globe, Rowling is doing untold damage to the feminist cause. So if she really wants to set an example to these young women, to promote the cause of female liberation and autonomy, she needs to start shutting up and doing what she’s told.