J.K. Rowling – Part One – Transformation

Indeed presents Hires you can't afford to get wrong Like payroll manager Hi, I was just checking my payslip and it's all in Japanese yen Yes, you're welcome Sorry? Given the exchange rate between the pound and the yen You're technically a millionaire now Don't spend it all in one place I can't really spend it anywhere This is a job for sponsored jobs This is what happens when you don't sponsor your job on Indeed So the next time you need someone to get the job done right Get matched with quality candidates with an Indeed sponsored job Visit indeed.com slash next hire and sponsor your job today Hello, welcome to Origin Story The show where we take an idea, person, event or institution from history We explain its origins and we discuss how it influences political discourse I'm Dorian Linsky And I am Ian Dunt This week we begin the story of J.K. Rowling And how the world's most successful and perhaps beloved author Became its leading opponent of trans rights And therefore I suppose its most divisive author Ian, I'm very interested in this topic But it was actually your suggestion, why? Well I'm just sort of interested I just sort of want to know the answer really Like, I do want to know how that happened It's just such a weird story Like, I can't think of anyone we've covered That has such a sort of Velocity of change And the steepness of the curve You know, who's just so admirable And then just starts, and each, those bits Because also I'm remembering my own history Like, no hang on, you know, she gets to say this She does, she gets to say whatever she likes But it's just like, you're just like, oh It's almost like year by year, slice by slice Oh, that's quite a bit less kind than you were the year before Oh, that's really quite a bit less kind than you have ever been before Until you just sort of see this like This thing left over And by the end of it you sort of think like That is a proper story of our time You know, this is like what happens to the human brain When it comes into contact with tribalism on social media So by telling it, you get to tell a much broader story To a certain extent about all of us But then also quite specifically About a particular kind of political movement And the way that a particular political debate has evolved Yeah, because this is not a history of trans identity Or trans rights, or the anti-trans movement We obviously talk about all those things as context I'm sure some people will think that In places we're too sympathetic And others will think we're too harsh The goal, I think, is to explain And in order to do that, you have to understand How she sees herself Yeah Because what's crucial here Is that She still identifies as a liberal centre-left feminist It's very important for her to see herself as a good Compassionate, rational person, right? And it's true that she's not as extreme as Graham Linehan or Sharon Davis Who have simply become right-wing And in Linehan's case, just like viciously transphobic She's not quite in that camp Although I do think that she has become A lot meaner in the last few years You know, that there is a hardening And we can look into the reasons why that is The context here Is that Britain, on this issue, is very unusual Like, in America In Russia The rest of Europe To be anti-trans is a right-wing position That goes hand-in-hand with general Culture-war hostility towards LGBTQ people Yes That was what it was like in Orbán's Hungary You know, Putin's Russia, for the Republican Party Here The pushback starts with feminists On the Guardian and the New Statesman Yeah Really And she sees herself in that context Now, of course If the outcomes are what they are Does it matter who's been pushing it? But so much has changed And she represents A movement in the gender-critical movement And also Changes in just, you know Who is endorsing this kind of view, right? Because it is no longer Primarily feminists on the Guardian Who are making these points Yeah, exactly Although, you still see the You see, ultimately Why does the British government currently have Such an anti-trans position? It's because they think that it's a split on the left It's a split in their electoral coalition It's the kind of thing that you just don't want to touch Right You know, whatever we think courts are saying And that is a product of the fact that It is seen as an internal left-wing debate As well as a left-right debate And also generational In that context Generally speaking, when you speak to people If someone says they're a feminist You're not going to get it right all the time By any measure But if you know their age You would basically Sort of make a guess On which side they fall By virtue of it You know, I look at it And I think There are different explanations Of what has happened here And our typical thing on Origin's story Is just sort of like, you know It doesn't really matter You know, we don't really know What's going on in someone's head You judge them by their actions And what they do And that's the easiest thing you can do And also, where you can Look at the money Because very often the money Will give you a pretty good indication Of what the kind of things That they want Will come out of their mouth And with her It's funny because I think people Do evaluations of her Without realising that They're mutually inconsistent So, the thing you'll very often hear Is that she's been radicalised online Which is exactly how it looks to me It's a clear-cut case of radicalisation But at the same time You'll get the sense of like This is a very cynical Political operation Where the nicer version of her You know, 2018, 2019, 2020 Was actually just a sort of mask A concealment For the sort of snarling politics That were underneath it And that there was no real radicalisation That's not a radicalisation argument That's the opposite, right? That's to say They're always this way And this was just like A very cynical ploy Or there are other alternatives Which is to say That people believe In certain propositions To do with the subject And are not prepared Or unable To think through The consequences Of what happens If they are enacted in law Or if they're insisted on socially And are not prepared To grapple with The morality of what happens Once that takes place And their own Tribal identity So, to me It's like teasing out Those different explanatory strands And trying to see Which one of them is more valid If any And I think this is also A story about the internet You know, and about Polarisation Free speech issues Extreme disagreement You know, this is the first Civil rights debate To play out on social media It turns out That's a really bad thing And it's something that Obsesses people That once I see a writer Become obsessed with this issue They cannot let it go It becomes almost All they write about Or they'll insert it Into pieces about Something else entirely And yet we're talking about Small numbers Maybe half a percent Of the UK population I think it's between Half and one percent Of the US population So why does this consume So many people? I do find that very strange And the other angle To look at this Is obviously through her work Right? And it is unprecedented For somebody this well regarded Whose work is this important To become so divisive So, John Lithgow Is playing Roald Dahl In this play Giant About the anti-Semitism Scandal around Dahl In the 80s, right? But then Lithgow While he was doing this play Was announced to play Dumbledore In the new HBO Harry Potter TV series Obviously You could do an origin story About that on its own I know, right? And some people are Drawing comparisons Children's author Controversial thing Dahl's was like one interview In the New Statesman Pretty much And I think an article That had preceded it Very anti-Israel And then in the interview Becomes out as more anti-Semitic Right? It's basically that Right? Roald Dahl was not talking About anti-Semitism A lot For several years He didn't use his royalties To fund anti-Semitism He didn't become The world's most famous anti-Semite There weren't protests When his books Were turned into movies Like when they made The Matilda movie It was like How could you be in this? Right? That is not to say That Rowling's opinions Are analogous to anti-Semitism I want to point that out I'm talking here In terms of the controversy Rather than the issue Yeah, sure So, okay That's not a precedent Like what is? Because now Anybody who works On something to do With Harry Potter Or the Cormoran Strike Novels They can't do an interview Without being asked about her Yeah And so I think what we've got here Which is incredibly unhealthy Is a sort of proxy war Over a celebrity I don't think That every actor Who appears in the show Should have to Speak about Trans rights And I don't think It is helpful That trans rights Is often seen now In terms of What do you think About JK Rowling Yes I mean that is a I can't, again I can't think of any other time That that has happened Where it was as if You know Campaign for women's suffrage Or civil rights Was all about What you thought of like One very famous person You know I don't think Those two things Should be entangled But they are Inevitably Of all the ways there are To debate this issue Doing it through the prism Of one celebrity Via the medium Of social media May not be The most sensible way To proceed So Ian Have you read The Harry Potter books I have Well okay So I tried to read The first one A couple of times I'm just like A couple of years Too old for it Three years probably Three or four years Too old for it And I haven't got kids Right so I'm in that Little Ham in the sandwich That hasn't touched it You know on that basis And because everyone Talks about it I tried to read The first one Several times I did get to the end I did not think Very much of it I still didn't enjoy that And I'm out Well I've read the books With my kids And I've seen the films With my kids And one One of the arguments That I think just doesn't Really land Is the idea that She's just a shit writer And her work is rubbish It's like obviously It is extremely popular I think it is the The most popular And lucrative IP Among millennials Not among everyone But among millennials Right Definitely And you know I can say yes She uses rather too many Adverbs Or she repeats certain Terms People can't just say something They have to say it In a You know sharply Or whatever You can certainly critique The prose But I think To say like Oh it's all just garbage And she was always bad There is always that They always like this myth Where you almost have to go back And go there was never Anything of value here Oh I think that's a bit mad And I think it's I think it kind of Just avoids the reason Why this is so difficult For people It's a bit like Just saying like Oh you disagree with Morrissey And you go Well the Smiths were shit Anyway And it's like Well they weren't And that's why a lot of Their fans are kind of Torn right I did once read The Casual Vacancy Which is the one Sort of I guess literary Sort of essentially I thought it was really good Like I really liked it Oh cool And I remember thinking At the time Your prejudices are mine And it's very enjoyable To see me there So you basically At that point Right Yeah To clarify Yeah Because it was basically Because it's that sort of Thing of like You know like The adopted parents In Harry Potter Yeah And they sort of There's a layer of the middle class That she detests That I also dislike And I remember getting A lot of pleasure from that And just generally thinking She was an empathetic Writer who was interested In getting inside Of people's minds I cannot connect No That writer really With the person That I see online So to finish The table setting We have to talk about language We're always interested In language And origin story In this case The terminology Is so contested It's impossible To be completely neutral I mean It just is Sometimes there are These competing terms But I think It's just useful To turn to the OED Which we love to do But I think In this case It's sort of like You know Let them do the work Rather than us Right So I'm just gonna Run through some terms And I think also The first citations Give you a good idea Of like When people Start talking about These things So Transgender Designating a person Whose personal identity And gender Does not correspond To that person's Sex at birth Or which does not Otherwise conform To conventional notions Of sex and gender First citation 1974 The first citation For trans Is a year earlier Aren't you But that's because Of these older words Transsexual 1949 Transvestite 1911 They're not the same thing Right So transgender Becomes the more Common term Right right Cisgender Designating a person Whose sense of Personal identity And gender Corresponds to his or her Sex at birth That is Basically just the opposite Yeah Like first citation Is on a usenet group 1997 And it's popularized In the noughties Hmm Still content Some people don't like This word But there it is Yeah It's Described somebody Who is not Trans But it's One of those Annoying phrases That tends to indicate That someone comes From a particular tribe In this In the script It's really quite hard To avoid You end up just saying Non-trans people You know what I mean It's less elegant It's a really valid And useful word Some people find it Somehow insulting Which is mad Like we're both cisgender It's like Whatever Gender identity An individual's Personal sense of Being or belonging To a particular gender Or genders Or of not having A gender Gender identity Is generally regarded As distinct from Biological sex Or sex as registered You see They've said Or And those are the two That's what I mean About you can't be neutral Biological sex Tends to be The more anti-trans phrase Sex registered Or assigned at birth Tends to be The pro-trans phrase In later use It is also often And for some Commentators Controversially You know He's getting sweaty now Distinguished from gender As a socially Or culturally Constructed state And from its Manifestation in Gender expression Or presentation So the first You know He first develops it He's working with people Who have differences In sex development Or DSD Then Also applies it To trans people And he also Proposed the idea Of being non-binary The word doesn't Appear until the 90s But this idea That you might You know Not have a gender At all Transphobia This is just A straightforward one Hostility towards Prejudice against Or less commonly Fear of transgender people I think the less commonly Is because people go Phobia means fear I'm not scared of them It is the answer I just hate them Every bore in the pub Yeah First citation 1993 Now Stonewall's Definition is much The same But it adds Including denying Their gender identity I see Which of course Is very important But also very Controversial Yeah Gender critical Second meaning Critical of the Concept of gender Identity Or the belief That gender identity Outweighs or is more Significant than biological Second citation 2018 God it's very Very very recent Yeah Existed before then Makes us I think I thought it existed A little bit before then But perhaps not The movement I felt Did But Well definitely Gender critical People who do not Believe in gender identity So I'm gonna have to use Sometimes the term Anti-trans As a term Meaning anyone Opposed to the movement For trans rights And the concept Of gender identity And the problem is People who Oppose Except the one they invented Themselves That they will Not Find annoying It's kind of So I'm not gonna say Transphobic But I think anti-trans As in a post-trans right Is fair enough As neutral as one can get And we have to warn listeners That we will be quoting Some potentially Offensive statements As Is one of those Episodes right In order to show What People are thinking So we're gonna tell a Two track story We're gonna go Year by year I think that's really To get to 2017 Yeah Where the Real story starts One is what Rowling is up to The other is the Political events And ideas That influenced her And indeed the science Her interest In the issue Becomes public in 2017 So we're going to start With her story Up to that year And then move on To a sort of History of Trans-exclusive Feminism So, Joanna Rowling Is born 1965 Gloucestershire To a middle-class family Her father Peter Is an engineer At the Rolls-Royce plant In Bristol Mother's a science technician They met on a train From King's Cross Charmingly enough In a foreshadowing Of her fiction Her family lived Near the city They moved to a place Called the Forest of Dean When she's about nine She basically says I always felt Like an outsider Clearly that movement You know At nine years old Made her feel Really quite distant From the people She was around She says My voice wasn't Forest of Dean Although it became Forest of Dean Believe you me Pretty damn quickly Not really exceptional At this age Like an English teacher At secondary school Says One of a group of girls Who were bright And quite good at English Okay And she wasn't really That happy as a teenager She says She was just Having a pretty Rotten go of it At that stage So she said She was quite unhappy She said home was A difficult place to be And partly This is because Her mum Was diagnosed with MS When Rowling Was fifteen Quite young I think her mum Had her when she was twenty And we should say Hermione In the books Is a version of Rowling When she was young Yeah Kind of like Very bright But kind of awkward And you know But she also says That she grew up In quite a misogynist household And didn't feel Particularly feminine She brings this up In this essay Crucial essay We're going to come to I wondered whether If I'd been born Thirty years later I too might have Tried to transition The allure of escaping Womanhood would have been huge I believe I could have Been persuaded To turn myself Into the son My father had openly said He'd have preferred Now the whole question Of whether people Are actually out there Persuading kids To transition Is something we'll Come to But it's interesting That she had a sense That You know Her mum Is very ill It's a very What's called a galloping Form of MS And her dad Doesn't seem to Like her that much No I mean Her dad sounds dreadful Continuing the tradition That we have Of having awful fathers On origin stories She says I didn't have an easy Relationship with my father We know that In December 2003 He sold His first edition Of Harry Potter And the Goblet of Fire At Sotheby's For 48 grand It was given to him On Father's Day 2000 By her With an inscription Saying Lots of love From your first born You're like Really mate That was worth A few grand My first born She's got a sister I think two years younger Diane Now She didn't really talk about In all these early interviews She really doesn't talk about Politics at all But on this podcast It's a very useful resource The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling Came out in 2023 And I think Because of the title Because it was produced By Barry Weiss's Free Press Oh god I did not listen to it at the time I thought it would be Extremely biased It's somewhat biased Um But It's just a very Very interesting Resource Huh Um It's presented by Megan Phelps-Roper Who used to belong to that Horrible church That used to abuse people At funerals Okay Yeah yeah The Western Borough West Borough Baptist Yeah And I think Even though you can hear The bias in kind of The editing And some of the choices The structure of it Um And it is very good And anyway We find out a lot of stuff That was not talked about before That's fascinating So Rowling talks there About reading When she was young These feminists Like Kate Millett Germaine Greer Simone de Beauvoir She says She was an idealist But never really An ideologue So she was Somewhat interested In I suppose The classics of Feminism at that point Mm But not enough That this ever came up In subsequent You know Interviews Um To Oxford But doesn't get in So she goes to study French at Exeter She finds it very posh Um And she sort of Later says I was really quite glad I didn't end up in Oxford Because if I could barely Open my mouth in Exeter Like what would have Happened to me You know She says she reacted Quote Not with the rage Of the revolutionary But with the smouldering Hatred of the peasant At this point She starts wearing Heavy eyeliner Listening to the Smiths She's reading Dickens and Tolkien She basically sounds like The Smiths Song she chooses Is Big Mouth Strikes Again Wow Now I know how Joan of Arc felt But this was back in Oh no This was back in 2000 Uh huh So it was unintentional Musical foreshadowing Um When she graduates In 1986 She works briefly For Amnesty International In London Uh And then in 1990 On a delayed train Between Manchester And London She is overwhelmed By the thought Of a boy who learns At the age of 11 That he is going to be A wizard A year later She has The year from hell Basically Like her mother dies I think 10 years After first realising That she had MS Yeah she's 45 Rowling's 25 She's really lame Yeah It's grim Really grim Um She's in a long relationship That comes to an end She was in a job She gets made redundant So she decides to Up her sticks To Portugal Where she becomes An English teacher In Porto She meets a TV journalist In 1992 She becomes pregnant She gives birth To her daughter Jessica In 1993 Named after Jessica Mitford Oh right Okay who she's a huge fan of Yeah Yeah And then she breaks up And now we know That this relationship Um Involved Domestic violence So in an interview To the Daily Express About the night of the breakup The husband said She refused to go Without Jessica And despite my saying She could come back For her in the morning There was a violent struggle I had to drag her out Of the house And I slapped her Very hard In the street Well she later claims Like in the Witch Trials podcast That He was also very controlling That she couldn't Have her own house key He would search her bag When she got in Um He hid her manuscript For the first Potter book Jesus And she was terrified He would burn it So she would sneak Pages out A few at a time Photocopy them at work So she had a whole Other copy of the manuscript My god Just in case He held it hostage You know He destroyed it And this stuff Comes out Much later At the time We know that There was some violence And it was obviously A very bad relationship Um But a lot of the other claims She keeps quiet Perhaps to do with her daughter Perhaps because she doesn't Want to become That to become the narrative She does say At one point You know I did have to talk To my daughter Before I talked about this stuff Because it's not just mine But also I think It's fair to say That She is She's quite cautious About what she says Particularly about her own life She's not Someone that likes Putting all of her own life Out there And this includes Many of the things That she has done That are extremely Kind of morally honourable Like lots of the charitable Giving that she's done She literally gave so much To charity That she stopped Being a billionaire Really she didn't make A big song and dance About any of that stuff You actually have to Look into it quite hard Before you actually get Lots of this information She returns to the UK After the end of that relationship In the end of 1993 With her daughter And she settles down In Edinburgh Which is where her sister Exactly yeah She says At this point I mean she is having An absolutely miserable time She is clearly very poor At this point She writes Later This is actually when She was doing a speech To Harvard students I had failed on an epic scale An exceptionally Short lived marriage Had imploded And I was jobless A lone parent And as poor as it is Possible to be In modern Britain Without being homeless The fears that my parents Had had for me And that I had had For myself Had both come to pass And by every usual standard I was the biggest failure That I knew I mean it's like There are other men She was taking a postgraduate Certificate in education She became a teacher She was on benefits In a period where benefits Gave you you know A bit more than they do Right now She was working When she was writing She was writing in a cafe Owned by her sister's husband I mean you know This is probably not a full reflection Of how it is But she was clearly Very very miserable And didn't have much money And you know Just left the relationship As a single mother And clearly What goes into that first Harry Potter book Is This grief Because she comes up With the idea I think six months Before her mum dies And this period Of kind of This awful marriage And this feeling Of having failed And you know It's interesting How much that gives it This sort of That there is a kind of Emotional heaviness Interesting To it That's the context For writing it Hmm So she finishes that Harry Potter And the Philosopher's Stone In 1995 It is published By Bloomsbury And it's called Harry Potter And it's published By Bloomsbury She appears on the cover As J.K. Rowling Because the publisher Thought that it If she had her Normal name there It might put off The boys Rowling said It was the publisher's idea They were wary Of me being a woman I was so grateful To be published It didn't matter to me Yeah well because She'd been rejected Twelve times Quite famously Largely I think Because it was too long For a children's book Oh wow Traditionally I mean they You know You ain't seen nothing yet And the She doesn't have a middle name I didn't know I didn't know any of this So the K Is partly because It comes after J And is quite pleasing And is partly a nod To her grandmother Kathleen So that is her Literally I know people bring this up In a kind of Slightly snide Ironic way But it is obviously A gender neutral name That she has chosen That she has been asked to choose Yes It's published 1997 With an initial print run Of 500 Her first royalty check Is for 600 quid Right Her second royalty check About a year later Is for 1 million quid Um She will never Know poverty again You know Much like Much like the last time I put a book out Very Very similar Extremely similar dynamic Yeah well she's been But she's already been Like transformed Because You know She gets this Auction in the US For publishers So it's a hundred thousand dollars Advance there Immediate movie interest Yeah And the deal isn't signed For another couple of years But the guy David Heyman Who's writing the Harry Potter movies Is interested Almost as soon As he's read the book Right So It takes off In a way That Feels almost like Is the publishing Like Beatlemania Yeah It's so fast It's so big It's so Unprecedented Oh it's just Fucking cute I mean look I was working in a book shop In 2001 Straight out of school Just before I went travelling I think probably At that point About 40% Of the books We sold Were Harry Potter books I mean It was just Everything There was There was nothing else There People were absolutely Obsessed by it She starts I mean initially She's publishing a book A year She slows down I mean She Part of the reason She slows down Is because Actually the extent Of the attention Freaks her out She's on a They sort of set up For the Goblet of Fire In 2000 This sort of For the promo tour They set her up For a bit of chaos Really One of the organisers said I mean she escapes Through the rear Of this fake train One of the organisers said She loved bits of it But I don't think Any of us quite realised Quite how freaked out She was She was quite thin skinned About something That we thought Was quite funny I think she thought We'd put her in jeopardy And then she just starts To put These layers of people Around her to protect her Starting with the Public relations team Yeah But the books Keep on coming out And the books Keep on being I mean She's receiving Around 2,000 letters A week She's almost Universally adored The left love her They especially love The story of Single mum on benefits In Scotland Writing in a cafe The right love her As a British success story Well The first Print run of the Seventh novel So if you got A first edition I've got bad news For you It was 25 million Compared to 500 For the first I mean Jesus Christ So a little A little less Rare So yeah Two really interesting Things about her Reaction to this One is that She really She says she never Wanted to be famous She found it Very frightening She didn't know Anybody who was famous She didn't have Anybody to talk to She talks about this A lot at the time By the way And I believe her Completely All of her behaviour Suggests that That must surely Be the case She seems quite scared She really dislikes Doing the publicity She's described as Thin skinned Controlling Closed off But this is all coming From that same impulse She's a If you've heard a clip Of that Harvard speech She's quite a nervous Public speaker Yeah, yeah, yeah She's good with children Not so great with You know Talking to adults At this point She's like the most Successful author on earth Talking to a bunch of students And yet she looks Nervy You know But then also There's the fact That her ex-husband Um Turned up In her flat In Edinburgh She had to get A restraining order I didn't know that Then In 1999 Uh He goes and speaks To the mail And the express She's already Suspicious of the media So there is a sense That he hasn't gone away And he's sort of Come back to Um Fuck up her life And there's a really Interesting thing In I think The New Yorker profile Of Rowling Where Ian Rankin Fellow Yes So she is wary of Situations you can't Always control In the real world Yeah, yeah As opposed to Um So it sort of Sets somebody up Here Who is quite Who is very private And Nervous And fearful Overwhelmed They say she spends Three years to write The fifth novel Yeah Which is the longest And probably the worst You know She's really Discombobulated by it Also This incredibly Intense fandom Is the world's First big Online fandom It's fascinating That a lot of people The first time Oh no way Right Attracts a lot of Sensitive outsiders Including a lot of LGBTQ people Because it's the story Of a boy who fights These bigots And bullies And fanatics To find this More welcoming Substitute family And become his True self And that's The way that They read it And she kind of Endorses that Because at Harvard She talks a lot About empathy And says Those who choose Not to empathise But apparently The flack she's getting Is from the Christian right Right So around 2000 She starts being demonised By evangelicals in America Including members Of the Bush administration Later For promoting witchcraft Literally for promoting Witchcraft And I had no idea About this But some of the Legal battles Over book bans Set legal precedence That are now being used To protect LGBTQ books From being banned Oh really It was like A major thing So she thought If she had any enemies In the world It was Extreme right wing Christian evangelicals Yeah She has a Like it's almost It's hard to imagine What it must be like To be this person You know the stories That you hear Of when fans approach It's basically saying Can I hug you Yeah And then they hug And just say You were my childhood I mean she probably Is told Dozens of times Every day For years You were my childhood You have essentially Formed all these human beings And that's how They see you And increasingly That's how you see them And yet No matter what happens That description Of her character Stays very very similar Right so here's her She has a second husband Called Neil Murray She meets in 2001 They have two kids He's a doctor His only public comment Is about his wife Caught by a documentary crew Jo detaches herself When she's very stressed She will detach herself And only trust one person And that's herself So everyone else Gets blocked out And she becomes More and more stressed And less and less able To accept any help It's also then pertinent To think that Let's say She publishes a book Called The Casual Vacancy At one point Three characters Read critical comments About themselves On a local website Accurate comments About themselves You know Critical And then completely Fall apart In outrage And to quote The New Yorker The novel seems to treat Extreme touchiness As a default Psychological setting I copied that down As well That was a really Interesting observation Well given that It's being written At a time Half a decade Before any of this Stuff emerges So that's then Followed by the first Cormorant Strike Detective novel in 2013 Which is under the name Robert Galbraith And originally She goes out Under the pseudonym And then it gets leaked And then It starts selling Quite a lot more And it's not like She's unaware She does speak about So she sort of says You know On those strike books She says I wanted to take My writing persona As far away as possible From me So a male pseudonym Seemed a good idea I am proud to say though That I was a man Who had read and enjoyed The Cuckoo's Calling Without realising I wrote it One of the first things He said was I would never have thought A woman wrote that Apparently I had successfully Channelled my inner bloke Again I was sort of Wow I wasn't sure about Whether to include this Is this just very superficial But it's just You're just like How can you not mention This fact It's staring you in the face So she joins Twitter In 2014 Which at the time And this is a time gap She calls it An unmixed blessing Because you can just have A good chat with people Very few people Describe it in those terms now And as she later explains She gets very interested In online subcultures Particularly around Tumblr Which is very kind of It's young women Very left wing And she kind of gets Involved in this Early anti-woke backlash Around 2015 It's quite sort of That Tumblr tone Which is quite Strill and censorious And to do with No platforming And cancel culture And things that are problematic Etc, etc I think that is how She frames Trans people And trans rights It's sort of that Because soon She's reading about It's not just right wing trolls That are being no platformed It's left wing feminists Why is that? Disclosure to the whole world Starring Emily Blunt Josh O'Connor Colin Firth And Coleman Domingo This terror campaign Of lies has to end That truth will upend order Across the entire world This is Disclosure Day Disclosure Day In cinemas Wednesday June 10th So there is this idea That Rowling and her allies Like to push That her position Is the feminist position Right In fact It has always been A divide within feminism Yeah Starts in second wave feminism About trans inclusion And who is a woman So do you remember From the New Left episodes The feminist Robin Morgan Who published Sisterhood is Powerful Now in 1973 At the West Coast Lesbian Conference She denounces A trans folk singer And organiser Well the organiser of the conference Beth Elliot She calls her An opportunist An infiltrator A destroyer And she calls for a vote To have her ejected Two thirds of the attendees Vote no She can stay So I thought it was quite interesting This is 1973 Yeah And you actually have a majority At this lesbian conference Going no Yes She counts So you've got these two different strands You've got Janice Raymond's 1979 book The Transsexual Empire It's a terrifying title Describes transition As a form of rape And says The problem of transsexualism Would best be served By morally mandating it Out of existence Wow In 1989 Jemaine Greer Publishes an article called On why sex change is a lie And says it doesn't matter If you pass or not It doesn't matter If you've had surgery or not Because there was Some division here about Whether or not You had medically transitioned Right But Jemaine Greer Was just like It doesn't matter Okay Then you've got this other tradition Which is A woman A very important feminist Years later Says Anybody who identifies as a woman Wants to be a woman Is going around being a woman As far as I'm concerned Is a woman Crucially in 1990 There's Judith Butler's book Gender Trouble Which is a key text In queer theory And gender studies Her position is still quite radical She says It's not just gender That's socially constructed But sex is as well Most people would actually Make a distinction Between sex and gender I mean I'm taking no Position on this I'm not an expert I'm just laying out Just trying to survive Laying out the terms here So There's this thing that happens In the late 70s Early 80s Called the sex wars Which kind of breaks up Second wave feminism Mainly what they're arguing about Is issues like pornography And prostitution The trans issue Is actually a relatively small Part of that And in the early 90s You get third wave feminism Which is generally more Sex positive And those issues I mentioned And also Inclusive And there's a kind of Famous Disagreement At the Michigan Women's music festival About whether trans women Should be allowed There's a brilliant John Ronson Things fell apart podcast About this We interviewed Some people who were there I don't need to go Into the details The important thing is Is that in 2008 A feminist called Viv Smythe Was writing a kind of Online glossary Of feminism She's writing about What happened at the Michigan women's festival And she needed a way To describe The anti-inclusion Position Without saying Transphobia So she consults With feminists On you know With different Points of view And they sort of Agree together Trans exclusionary Radical feminist Abbreviated as TERF Smythe said It was meant to be A deliberately Technically neutral Description Of an activist Grouping OED says A feminist Whose advocacy Was thought to exclude The rights of Transgender women Also more generally A person whose views On gender identity Are or are considered Hostile to Transgender people Or who opposes Social and political Policies designed To be inclusive Of transgender people And there's something About the abbreviation TERF Which means It has become Very derogatory And it sounds Quite hostile When shouted out The only way Which is inaccurate Is that a lot of These people are not Radical feminists But trans exclusionary So it's like How do we describe These radical feminists Who are trans exclusionary So it's sort of weird The way it's treated Like a slur And yet it's not Factually inaccurate No it's about How onomatopoeic The acronym is So nothing to do With the content It's just to say That once you Turn it into TERF It just sounds like A bad thing And then of course It's taken up by one And now of course I think it's sort of Basically been almost Completely reclaimed By the other If you even come into Brief contact with this thing You just think I'm going to try never to use Because it's going to do Absolutely no good To have any Sensible discussion There's a lot of Language wars Going on So the point I'm making here There is a genuine Divide in feminism As there is among Gay men and lesbians It is largely But not exclusively Generational And yet Some Gender critical feminists You know Really argue that They are the only Real feminists And that the trans Inclusive feminists Are then naive They're deluded They're treacherous Handmaid's tale One of them Victoria Smith says I think this particular belief Gender critical Is a prerequisite For being a feminist Not holding it Is anti-feminist Right In fact The most anti-trans demographic Is of course Straight men And there are Huge numbers of feminists Who do not hold that view You know That's really Really important Because there's such An effort to go Trans You know Tubes of butlers Just going It's not trans people In these terms It's trans people And some feminists Versus Some other feminists As you might imagine To get us to 2017 Right It actually starts with The European Court of Human Rights There's a nice little Not a good Little bridge Yeah In 2002 Rules that a trans person's Inability to change their sex On their birth certificate Is a breach of human rights And they should have Full legal recognition Straight away This is 2002 Some British clinicians Write an open letter To a paper arguing It's a victory of fantasy Over reality Right Very against this So as a result Of this ruling The UK has to introduce The Gender Recognition Act In 2004 Yeah It's actually one of the most Restrictive systems in Europe You can obtain A gender recognition certificate Three things If you provide evidence Of a diagnosis Of gender dysphoria From your doctor If you've lived In your acquired gender For two years And if you make A statutory declaration You intend to live In your acquired gender For the rest of your life At the time Some feminists Are attacking this It's not uncontroversial I'm going to kind of Quote this piece This viciously transphobic piece By Judy Bindel In The Guardian It's quite unpleasant But just to disprove The idea that It started as very moderate And compassionate And then got angry Because of toxicity Of social media And all that Right so it's called Gender Benders Beware I don't have a problem With men disposing Of their genitals But it does not Make them women In the same way That shoving a bit Of vacuum hose Down your 501s Does not make you a man It's pretty ugly Stuff There's a lot of Obsession With genitals going on Then you've got The Equality Act 2010 Obviously very important Later Where there's quite a lot This sort of Very dangerous ambiguity About sex and gender Which of course A lot of people are using Interchangeably right Yeah It wasn't like a big debate Oh this distinction It's not like Judith Butler Was drawing it up Then in 2015 The charity Stonewall Becomes trans-inclusive 2014 We've got the Time Magazine Cover Transgender Tipping Point With the actress Laverne Cox What's telling Is that it mentions A lot of advances In the piece To do with sports Restrooms Youth healthcare All of which Become these battlegrounds And Gillian Branstetter From the American Women's Union Says that what trans People experienced In that moment Was visibility Without protection That the visibility Moved so fast That it couldn't Really build this Kind of very solid Public support And ignore the Organisational strength To fight the political And legal battles That were coming So it felt like Oh we've been accepted We're no longer Stigmatised as like You know Carrot and science And the lambs Or whatever You know what I mean Being accepted But underneath Inevitably Brewing And it gets Wrapped up with Attacks on DEI Abortion rights Gay marriage In America right So in 2016 Jordan Peterson Our old friend If you remember He first gets International attention For opposing a new Canadian bill Protecting gender identity Of course And he says It is a proposition Of radical social Constructionists And must be met With outright conflict Going in pretty hard The same year A North Carolina Bathroom ban Causes massive Uproar It's literally I think Bruce Springsteen Wouldn't play In North Carolina Because of this Ten years ago This Which is now being You know On the verge Of happening Possibly in the UK Was considered Completely beyond the pale Of course All you need Christian rights stuff In the UK It's really different It starts Like I said With feminists Who see this sort of Clash of identity rights And it's totally Wrapped up in the Free speech issue They feel they can't Talk about it But it's a platform 2015 Germaine Greer Is now platformed At Cardiff University And you get these Anti-trans groups Forming Like transgender Trend There is still a sense That overt Transphobia is wrong I'm not sure If you remember this But this is what I wrote that Blog post about 2013 The Observer had to Delete a column By Julie Burchill In which she called Trans women A bunch of dicks In chicks clothing And compared them to Black and white Minstrels It was a massive Backlash Across the board Almost like nobody Thought that was Acceptable There was also I've been back Reading loads of These sort of 2019 Tweets from people And you sort of What's notable Is that What is your Starting assumption When you write a Message On social media And a lot of the time If your starting Assumption is I could Potentially end up Under a mountain Of abuse here And I could lose My job In a very Careful Attempted collegiate Just asking questions Kind of way Now it could Just be Because that's really How you want to Talk about it And then you're Later radicalized By the response And you become Much more Sort of rigid And fierce Or it could Just be that You sort of Cynically Just think This is the way Of introducing These ideas Into the blood stream You know All happy happy And then later This is Polite And inquisitive And broadly Intellectual So sort following This kind of debate Which is sort of Heating up There's a network Of bloggers And mainstream Journalists Begins to form And the discussions Produce the term Gender critical There's a piece Called an oral History of the Gender war And in it One of them Sarah Dighton Says it was An alternative Terminology by Which to reject Being branded We were critical Of gender As a concept But It's very hard To separate Those two things Considering that Without gender Identity You know How do trans People make sense Right How do they see Themselves Right I don't think You can separate The people One of the people In this piece Compares the Redefinition of women By gender Rather than sex To gaslighting And abuse It's very hard So this Activism solidifies In 2015 Around a report Recommending self I.D. By Maria Miller The Tory chair Of the women And equality Select committee And self I.D. 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