It seems as if J.K. Rowling can excuse transphobia, but she draws the line at people thinking her friend invited Nazis to a hate march that they willingly just came to support. Rowling and her ally Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull have banded together online to defend a Nazi-adjacent rally, clarifying that Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally wasn’t a Nazi event, it was just attended and supported by Nazis that she didn’t invite—but also didn’t kick out.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, by the way, also goes by the name Posie Parker, much like how Rowling goes by the pseudonyms Robert Galbraith and J.K. (as her name is Joanne). Isn’t it funny how transphobes love to use names they feel suit themselves but refuse to recognize that an individual might want to do that for their own gender identity? So weird!
The event in question took place in March of this year and was called “Let Women Speak.” It was, unsurprisingly, centered around TERFs talking about how being a woman is hard while attacking trans women in the process. Keen-Minshull’s entire brand is to scream about being a “woman” and an “adult female” to the degree that she has now garnered support for her cause by Nazis.
Apparently, a bunch of Nazis heard about Keen-Minshull’s event and thought, “Oh this is a hate rally against the trans community? We’re in,” all on their own accord. An article in iNews about an anti-trans documentary published back in May made reference to the event, claiming in an aside that “activist Kellie Jay-Keen staged a mass Nazi salute.”
Rowling, instead of recognizing the bad part of this situation is that Nazis agree with her views, decided she was going to yell at a journalist who didn’t note that the Nazis came there all on their own without Posie Parker inviting them. According to a new Editor’s Note on the story, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull didn’t “endorse” the Nazis’ presence or their salute. What both Keen-Minshull and Rowling seem to miss from this is that they should probably examine why Nazis agree with them.
Rowling logged on to Twitter to shame a journalist and completely miss the point of why people were calling out this rally in the first place.
You should probably be wondering why Nazis agree with you!
The entire situation is bad. Mainly because both Rowling and Keen-Minshull are using their platforms to negatively impact the trans community. Now, they’re using that same energy to attack journalist Patrick Strud for not correctly (in their minds) labeling that Keen-Minshull and Rowling both endorse a cause that Nazis also agree with.
To be clear, Rowling has 14 million followers and Keen-Minshull has over 100,000 followers. Strud has less than 42,000. So both Rowling and Keen-Minshull using their bases to shame someone for pointing out what happened. Yes, Strud made an error but he made note of the reality of the situation. Which is that Nazis were present at the rally in support of what Keen-Minshull was saying, a statement that Rowling also seemingly supports.
That is the issue. That neither of these women is willing to stop and look at what their transphobic stance is doing.
The fact that the Nazis in question were not instantly thrown out or denounced? Telling!
What this proves is that Rowling and other prominent TERFs seem fine with finding themselves in agreement with Nazis but do not want to accept any responsibility for the ways in which they serve to normalize and legitimize those Nazis’ abhorrent views.
(featured image: Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
