Someone You Thought You Knew is Suddenly Transphobic, Now What?
Breaking Bad, or is There Something Else?
I was volunteering as a Planned Parenthood safety escort in 2017 and 2018 in Glendale and Tempe, Arizona. The process we adopted was to be a presence outside the clinic for the days that abortion procedures are scheduled, and to act as shields for patients that were coming in. Protesters would be out yelling at them for killing their babies, for doing unGodly things, and telling them that they still had the chance to get right with the Lord and to keep their baby. Escorts carry umbrellas for a visual shield from the yellers. In both Glendale and Tempe, the protesters were separated from the entrance by parking lots, so there was no danger of physical assault. They did have an intimidating visual presence along with their megaphones, and that’s what we were shielding the women from as they came in for health services.
Not all women were coming in for abortions. Some were coming for pap smears, cervical exams, birth control, and other medical visits related to women’s reproductive health. The yellers didn’t care. I had also done some of the same work in Minneapolis at Women’s Whole Health. That clinic is in the same building as a dialysis center, and the protesters harassed them, too. Their reasoning was that if the dialysis patients hated being harassed, they would complain to the landlord and the landlord would terminate the women’s clinic’s lease. It was a strategy.
The leader of the volunteer squad thought I was her darling for being a man who is willing to step out and support women who needed abortions. And I got along great with her until she posted in Facebook, representing all of the volunteers from a public group, that blah blah blah “fuck TERFs.” I sent a private message to her explaining that such statements are condoning the threats of violence against women who don’t accept trans, and I couldn’t support the statement for that reason while at the same time protecting women from verbal and visual attacks. I asked her to remove that or put it under her name, or I would have to leave escorting.
This devolved into her calling me a transphobe and within minutes going from a pet to a pariah. She had asked me if I thought transwomen were women, and I had to be honest. Perhaps if I had lied things would have gone different, but then I would have had to maintain that lie. I didn’t want to. I admitted that I don’t think that TWaW and explained why, but she wouldn’t hear any of it, and labeled me a hateful bigot.
In her eyes, I became a transphobe in a minute, I broke bad.
Jesse Pinkman to Walter White:
“Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, age what, 60? He’s just gonna break bad?”
For the record, Walt (the character in Breaking Bad) was 50.
So, there have been a few people who’ve accused me of being transphobic after they have known me for several years. More than one of them decided that this was reason enough to terminate the friendship, which tells how much they valued my friendship in the first place.
I’m not going to enumerate them, and I am not wallowing in self-pity over this. I am using it in the post to illustrate how little critical thought there is in choosing trans ideology as a determinant of friendship, or even generosity of spirit towards an acquaintance who for many years has seemed to be a decent sort. Someone, say, like JK Rowling.
Lynch on Rowling1
Rowling spoke these words at Harvard’s 2008 Commencement:
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
These were formative years for Rowling, and shaped her view of all of us. She does not accept totalitarian views no matter the politic direction from whence they come. The themes that run through the background of the 7 Potter books reflects a deep distrust of authoritarian views whether from the Ministry of Magic, the Death Eaters, and even in the main trio’s response to some of Dumbledore’s decisions that don’t seem to make sense from their vantage point.
Modern accusations against her are assumptions that she just sort of “Broke Bad,” all of a sudden, but do those accusations stand up to critical examination? Someone who has been famous for her empathy towards many different groups, including the orphaned, the ridiculed, the falsely accused, is now widely believed to be full of hate for gender non-conforming people.
Does that seem right to you? Do you think it bears examining? What is behind the statements that she has made that are being used as examples to show that she is anti-trans?
One way to find out is to ask her, which Megan Phelps-Roper has done and is releasing an episodic podcast that gives insight into the social culture that we live in thanks to Tumblr and 4Chan. All is not as it seems. Something wicked this was has come.
Episode 3 is full of revelations and reminders.
We don’t “break bad,” and we all need reminders that people don’t change overnight, so if it seems as though an old friend is suddenly an evil hater, perhaps our own assumptions are wrong and bear examination. Be skeptical of all authority, especially your own. Also, be generous towards your friends, but remember if someone is being honest with you about their views:
And, of course, Lynch now faces the fury:
https://www.unilad.com/celebrity/luna-lovegood-actress-backlash-rowling-377950-20230302
Someone You Thought You Knew is Suddenly Transphobic, Now What?
I hate the term transphobe. That implies hatred. Trans-skeptic is a far better term. 🤪