17 April 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Critic.

There’s definitely no debate about whether she is transphobic or not…. She’s putting out so much hate”. So asserted Katie Neeves, biological male turned transgender female and founder of Cool to be Trans, on the BBC’s World at One last Tuesday, responding to a long string of tweets the previous evening by J. K. Rowling. These comprised pictures of ten high-profile trans individuals, followed by the comment, “obviously, the people mentioned … aren’t women at all”, but “men performing their idea of femaleness”.  

Where is the hatred in that? In part, Neeves argued, because Rowling had “implied that all trans people are sex offenders” by putting the latter at the top of her list. Yet, the very first person listed was not an offender at all and nor were most of the rest. And later in the string, she explicitly said that most trans women “aren’t … offenders”.    

Another reason why Neeves deemed the tweet transphobic was because he had received “a ton of hate”, most of it presumably online, which is “exactly what she [Rowling] wanted to happen”. But Neeves can’t possibly know that. We often cause effects we don’t want or intend. Indeed, it’s a practical certainty that Neeves himself has said things that have (perhaps unintentionally) excited trans trolls to abuse Rowling. Besides, adults should know better than to take online nastiness seriously. If you really don’t want to wallow in it, you can block it. Or leave Twitter altogether ….