Content Note: this piece contains references to Aboriginal deaths in custody, racist violence, self-harm, mental health, and trauma history.

Click here to skip to the next piece in this section.

 Dear Jk Rowling

I’m writing this to you because I feel like I know you. I feel like your books were part of my life.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. This isn’t related to schizophrenia, or other disorders where people have hallucinations. This disorder is about PTSD, when your mind is too young to cope, it splits into “alters.” This is a disorder that I have because of the very trauma and violence you experienced, and I experienced. Trauma we experienced because we were born as women and seen as women.  So, this piece is about women. 

Alters are strange beasts. One remembers how your mother likes the table set. Two remembers what your English teacher was asking in class. Three remembers your grandparents enjoy Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em. Four remembers the exact slant of your abuser’s eyebrows and the tilt of his chin – eyes flashing like amber warning signs, and then you knew you were in for it.

Five? Five remembers reciting the Sorting Hat song in my head while I stared at the skylight and tried to escape. Five remembers the whole Gringotts poem, starting with “Enter, stranger, but take heed.” Five remembers knowing I could go home and escape in to Harry Potter – a world where nothing, and no one could touch me. A world where good triumphed over evil. Where strength and laughter were the antidote to a crawling, creeping darkness – strangling tendrils of mist were chased away with the power of friendship and the wave of a magic wand.

And I think back on those times, now, with ice in my chest again – and the single thought of “how dare you.”

Because, your essay, is a betrayal of the “you” I thought I knew. It’s a betrayal of me and mine. And, fundamentally, it’s a betrayal of other women. Worse, it's using the very bones of the most fundamental of betrayals - that of violence - to justify hate. And, with eyes honed from picking up clues about RAB and your mystery plots, squinting to see canonical evidence of gay Dumbledore  –

I tell you, you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

There's the fact you took this moment about racial justice and used it to describe, what you as a wealthy white woman think is the "real" issue. There's the fact that Black people are being gunned down in the streets, in their homes, and you're talking about this with a cursory nod towards it, like that makes it all ok.Black trans people are dying and having their corpses laughed at by the people charged with protecting them. There's the fact that Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people on Earth, and are dying in custody at a rate of 1 per month - with a lack of medical care being involved in 39% of these deaths. There's the fact that we're speaking about these issues on an unprecedented level - that we are listening, and thinking, as we should have been all along, on an unprecedented level -0 and you chose to write 3600 words of straw man arguments and non-sequiturs against a marginalised group. I don't have the fucking energy to deal with that, as I am tired out from doing the work that matters. Which, not coincidentally, is convincing white marketing departments that racism exists because I'm a walking diversity hire with an "ethnic" last name and a known advocate for trans rights. And I don't want to waste any space in these conversations talking about you, but I am. Because people are asking, in a classic display of being uncomfortable with the topic of race.   . 

You aren't speaking truth to power. You're using your power to speak over truth.

There’s the fact you only express empathy and use “trans women” when you’re talking about male violence. There’s the fact you cite an incorrect study about detransitioning done on gender-nonconforming men in the 60s (some of whom grew up to be happily gay men.) There’s the fact you blithely describe trans men as “born as women” as a throwaway, and expect me to be impressed by your generosity here.  There’s the fact you see trans women as “not women.” There’s the fact you continually call “any man who says he’s a woman.” There’s the fact you can list the trans people you’ve spoken to on one hand.

There's the fact that you infantilize trans men and trans youth by suggesting they're "adorable" or "intelligent", in the same breath that you suggest trans men only transition because of peer pressure. If everyone who was prescribed female at birth, who'd ever experienced misogyny, homophobia (as you also mention), or needed space in their head to have books or music and be free transitioned, we'd have no women left. I'm a gender-nonconforming "woman" with trauma, misogyny written in scars along my arms and rotten teeth from vomiting to please my abusers or my mother - and I am still, emphatically not a man, trans masc or somewhere in between. Mental illness and trauma do not cause transition. To leave the grubby fingerprints of your own prejudice on the space, minds and well-being, of the people who grew up with your stories as an escape, is astounding. You say you don't wish to spread hate or toxicity. I can't think of anything more hateful than telling people they don't exist. 

But this is, fundamentally, an opinion piece from one woman who's life is scarred and marred and marked by violence, to another.  This is an opinion piece that says "how dare you use my trauma against my sisters." By sisters I mean trans women, by brothers I mean trans men.

There’s the (particularly dangerous) fact that you emphasise that anyone can gain access to a single-sex space “without the need for surgery or hormones.” You neglect to mention the two years and evaluations by doctors and psychologists that are required. You call for surgery and hormones for trans women. What you’re really insisting upon is people to make irreversible, sometimes dangerous, choices about their bodies – you want women to surgically or chemically alter themselves before you’ll grant them the time of day, or respect as fellow women.

There’s the big, honking implication that trans women are rapists and perverts. That trans women only wish to go to the bathroom that aligns with their genders so they can find someone in there to harm. That trans women are fundamentally “out to get” cis women – that they sexualise us, that they basically want access to single sex spaces because it provides them with access to vaginas. That your trauma (which you mention, and I am sorry about) causes this perspective.

Speaking as a person with trauma, you can fuck right off.

I’m not going to use misogynistic slurs (I hate them too), nor am I going to attack you, tell you you’re cancelled, threaten you or worse. I am going to give a voice to the unholy rage, a feminist rage, if you will, that speaks up in defence of the strong, wonderful, women in my life. That speaks for my sisters. That says “No. I will not allow you to treat the ones I love like that.” That says “No. Not with my story. Not in my name. Not ever.” I am going to use the voice that protects my own. 

No trans activist I know (and I know plenty) has ever insisted there is no difference at all between cis women and trans women. No one is asking you to deny that your experiences of sex, of moving through this world as a woman, matter. No one is asking you to deny the very global realities of sex, of poverty’s disproportionate impacts on AFAB people and women, of the plague and scourge of male violence. No one is asking you to not object to being defined by your bodily functions (menstruator, etc). But you seem to be defining others by theirs.

No.

We’re asking you not to blame trans women for what men do. We’re asking you not to use your experience of trauma to conflate men with women.

The fact is, if a man (used to mean male-identified, not based on their junk configuration) wants to gain access to a woman’s space to harm a woman, a sign on the freaking door is not going to keep him out.

Does this hypothetical predator go through two freaking years of observation, of medicalisation, of coming out as something he is not, of jeopardising his job, his housing, his friendships, his family, his marriage – in order to get a piece of paper so he can jump on a dress and attack a woman in a bathroom?

No. He just opens the damn door. Or finds a woman in another space, as you and I know too well. Why bother with transitioning, unless, shock horror, you are actually trans?

I know fear. I know the fear of someone bigger than you, stronger than you. Of heavy eyebrows and muscular arms and all of the things I don’t want to encounter in a bathroom when I am alone.

Guess what I’m not afraid of?

I’m not afraid of my friend with glasses and the laughing eyes, who probably has a good two feet on me. I am not afraid of her as she speaks of her happiness to a crowd. I am afraid *for* her, if I think about her being attacked in a bathroom – especially if she’s forced to use the male facilities in her dress and heels by people like you.

I’m not afraid of my blonde-haired metamour, who moves like a flowing river, cackles like a witch, and has a shy smile when she thinks no one’s watching. Who beatboxes to her cats, and is the most patient mother I’ve ever seen. I am afraid for her, if I think that people will call her “he” or “a man saying he’s a woman.” I am afraid for your dark, sticky words to come near her stardust soul.

I’m not afraid of Jodie. Or Kylie. Or Rachel. Or Skyla. Or any other trans woman, who just wants to be left the hell alone, and not have bigotry spewed at her on the world stage.  I am, selfishly, afraid that these women will be afraid of me – afraid that I, like you, would be unable to separate them from the people that hurt me. Afraid that I would see a shadow of a former threat in their height or their faces, afraid that I would hurt them with a word or a look or a deed that says “you’re not like me. You’re a danger.”

To my trans sisters – I love you. To my sisters and brothers and siblings in trauma – I love you too. I will fight for all of us, against this hate and against this bigotry. And I believe there is hope for us yet. 

To JK - do not use my trauma to justify your transphobia. Don't call my brothers "women" and expect me to be impressed.  Don’t call my sisters, these beautiful women, “men”. Don’t imply that by being who they are, they are predators or rapists. I will stand with my sisters, and if that means standing against you, the author of my beloved childhood series - the author of an avenue of escape from the worst sort of violence - so be it.

The end.