How curious: the people who defend that “only one knows what one feels and what one is” are the first to claim they know what Rowling feels: namely hatred, hatred, transphobia and more transphobia. Whatever she says, whatever discursive arguments or data she offers – accurate or not, that’s another matter – she will always get the same answer: that, as everyone -except her apparently- knows, what she feels is hate and whatever she says or thinks stems from that hate.
It would never occur to me to think that I am so important that a lady who has had the brains to write a highly successful seven-book saga has nothing better to do than hate me. But apparently there are people who believe, or pretend to believe, that the likes of Rowling have nothing better to do than hate. Hate, hate, spam and hate, as per the Monty Python sketch)
The case of Imane Khelif in Olympic boxing has raised eenormous controversy. Rowling, as a – perhaps wise perhaps misguided (irrelevant here)- advocate of women’s rights, has taken a stand. I don’t know to what extent Khelif can or not be called a man for apparently having XY chromosomes. But it stands to reason that that Khelif’s genetics is relevant to the effect of not endangering, in boxing, the physical integrity of someone who does not have XY. And it also seems apparent that this participant having been formally excluded from the world championship, the current socio-political trend that blurs the concepts of biological sex and socio-cultural gender has helped to ensure that Khelif can compete in Paris. This trend is favouring the desires of those with XY over safety and justice criteria for those with XX.
Rowling exercises her freedom of expression in voicing concern for women’s rights. Women that, in the exercise of her freedom of thought, she defines as XX. And once again, she gets roasted: “You will not be remembered for your work, but for your hatred”, she is told.
And I cannot help but observe that the current glorification of subjective sentiment in law and social life plays out as follows: if someone has XY in their biology, everything they say they feel becomes truth and grounds for new definitions and laws (the fact that XX women can also declare themselves men curiously does not cause any definition crisis for the word “man”) If someone who does not have XY in their genetics has any objection to the above, they become, curiously, the only person who, in this realm of subjectivity, does not know what they feel. Everyone else knows: she feels hatred and phobia and hatred and phobia. Whatever reasons she may offer are crushed as rationalisations for her pre- attributed all-explaining hatred. Not even the possibility that she might be misjudging or overdoing her defence of women is contemplated. That cannot be her goal and her priority. She hates and that’s all there is to it. After all, for thousands of years the patriarchy has been inculcating in us the idea that women are hyper-emotional, incomprehensible and that all their feelings necessarily revolve around XY. If we combine this widespread idea with the current culture of demonising those who think differently, why should anyboby be surprised that an intelligent woman who has everything, who has produced a body of work showing interest in justice and humanity, should make hatred her life’s driving force? The culture of subjectivity and emotionalism makes it clear: everyone knows what Rowling feels except Rowling, and we all know that Rowling feels hate. It is as obvious as two and two make four.
Well, if this is how subjectivity and sentiment manifest themselves in law and society, we had better note it: law, politics and social coexistence need shared, rational and objective language and criteria, because when they are subjective, coherence is scarce and neo-patriarchal nerve abounds: we uphold subjectivity and self determination but we know what non-complying women feel better than they do. In other words: only I know what I feel, but we all know that she hates and hates. The patriarchal cheek of it!