An Open Letter to J.K. Rowling

This is an open letter to J.K. Rowling…

It’s worth a shot to try to reach out to you and explain a bit that you don’t seem to be connecting right now.

Let’s talk about your views on transgender women using the bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities that are deemed “women’s spaces”.

Let me explain a few things to you very quickly.

First off, people don’t one day wake up and make a choice to be transgender, just as they don’t wake up one day and say that they’re black or white. Being born with the genitalia of a male or female has nothing to do with actually being male or female. Sometimes your brain is born female with your body being male, and sometimes people transition in order to validate themselves and live their most authentic life. Does this really mean to you that just because of an accident by birth, as in being born in the wrong body, that the process by which they undertake to actually be who they are is a problem and by that extension that transgender people are a threat to your safety? Where is your logic on this?

You do understand that LGBTQ individuals and specifically transgender women are much more likely to be the victims of violence and abuse from cisgender people than the perpetrators?

You’ve expressed that you think that allowing transgender women into “women’s spaces” puts them at risk of abuse and assault, so let me ask you where your research is on this? Where is your data that says that this is something that actually happens? The research is in on sexual assault and abuse and the most frequent perpetrators of sexual assault and abuse are family members, not transgender people.

In fact, the younger the victim the more likely it is that the abuser is a family member.

Transgender women are women and your views on them being a danger in women’s spaces means that you believe they are men, and believe that they are dangerous predators who pretend to be women in order to get into women’s spaces.

You don’t think a transgender girl in a men’s room wouldn’t be at higher risk of sexual assault and abuse?

According to a report from CNN, researchers looked at data from a survey of nearly 3,700 U.S. teens aged 13–17. The study found that 36% of transgender or gender-nonbinary students with restricted bathroom or locker room access reported being sexually assaulted in the last 12 months.

Now understand that my views on this subject have nothing to do with your brilliant work as an author, except for one small “BIG” point.

You, as an author of “fantasy” introduced the world to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, yet you can’t deal with the fact that reality isn’t as simple as you seem to be implying it is

Life and the world isn’t black and white, it’s gray.

This series is hands down an excellent monument in literary and creative genius, yet you’ve shown that your understanding of the complexities of the world evaporate the second you’ve stopped writing a page.

You created a universe where people like myself, who was at one point a young gay male, who felt ostracized from the world and looking for a place to escape, a place where I could fit in, and a place where I could lose myself in your universe. You made so many people who felt rejected from society and didn’t fit into or completely understand the world, or who were outright rejected from it feel like they had a home, even if that home was imaginary.

You gave us something so beautiful, so powerful, and so creative that to understand now that the person who developed this magical and incredible universe not only rejects our validity as human beings, but is actively campaigning against us and sees members of our community as a “threat”?

You’ve in my mind, gone from someone who provided shelter and acceptance to those who were different, and those that we might not always understand, to someone who preaches the same exact rhetoric that damns us and places members of our community into very real harm.

You’re essentially espousing the same kinds of views that lead to the murders of transgender women, the bullying of LGBTQ kids, and the rejection from families that lead to the astounding number of homeless LGBTQ youth and adults.

Transgender women are women.

Predators are predators.

Understand the difference because this is the EXACT same argument we’ve been dealing with for years.

You of all people should know the power that words hold and how these words are frequently used as a weapon against members of my community.

Transgender women are women and your ignorance on these matters doesn’t change that fact.