Thank You, Tinashe, For Telling J.K. Rowling What We’re All Thinking

I should have known this was coming on International Women’s Day: A day with the word “women” in the title is like catnip for TERFs! And, of course, the most famous (or at least most annoying) TERF did not disappoint.

On Tuesday, J.K. Rowling re-announced her displeasure with TERFs with a tweet against the Shadow Minister for Equalities, apparently a real member of the British government and not a job in Hogwarts.

“Someone please send the Shadow Minister for Equalities a dictionary and a backbone,” the sadly best-selling author tweeted, before following it up with a second tweet: “This is what a woman who owns a dictionary and a backbone looks like.”

And because Rowling cannot leave well enough alone, she tweeted a third time. “Apparently, under a Labour government, today will become We Who Must Not Be Named Day,” she wrote, using the scary moniker she gives Voldemort in Harry Potter.

So, if you’ve put that all together, J.K. apparently believes women (which very much includes trans women) are equivalent to Voldemort, a fictional mass murderer and Muggleborn-cleanser. What? What a fucking bizarre and transphobic take.

Luckily, Tinashe used a tweet of her own to tell J.K. what we were all thinking: “Oh my god, SHUT UP.”

We’ve long seen how Rowling has taken it upon herself to be the one of the most visibly transphobic people outside the Murdoch universe. In 2020, Rowling objected to using “people who menstruate” in a headline for an opinion piece discussing how to bring about equity to all who bleed. Then she doubled down, publishing a blog outlining why she’s going public with her transphobia.

Rowling holds an outdated and transphobic belief that trans women invalidate the experience of cis-women. That’s just not true. There is no singular experience or singular body part that makes a woman.

Just once, I want to enjoy my used DVDs of the Harry Potter without remembering this woman and her idiocy. It’s already too embarrassing to keep my original Harry Potter books on my shelves. J.K. Rowling, from one woman to another woman on this International Women’s Day: please shut the fuck up.