Jonathan Van Ness Slams J.K. Rowling's Latest Transphobic Comments

Jonathan Van Ness is speaking up after J.K. Rowling’s latest foray into attempting to regulate gender identity.

Every time Rowling opens her transphobic mouth to say something new and dangerous against the trans community, a divided rush of people flood forward to either praise or condemn her.

Those expectations were filled when, over the weekend, she weighed in on a new law in Scotland that would see police record the gender of suspects based on how they identify, regardless of what their gender legally is. This extends to suspects accused of rape, which prompted Rowling to tweet this:

Many trans activists and allies hit back at Rowling continuing to use her massive platform to punch down, including Van Ness, who explained the situation quite clearly.

“The biggest threats of violence against women has always been cis gender men,” he tweeted. “Not trans women, unless Jk’s constant transphobic cherry picked vitriol convinces you otherwise. But as trans women are assaulted, deprived of work, killed, and raped JK is safe in her mansion.”

The insinuation was that Rowling’s decision to focus on this one small way in which Scotland’s new gender ID laws could be used serves to promote the claim — repeatedly proven false — that trans women are a threat to cis women and use their gender identity to gain access to female spaces and as a cover against accountability.

This is a fallacy, as people who identify as trans are statistically far more likely to experience violence than to perpetrate it, and as JVN said, the majority of violence against women is committed by cisgender men. Fearmongering about trans women is just that, and worrying about the way in which anyone who commits rape identifies after the fact in a police report ultimately seems unhelpful.

But much like the villains in her stories, Rowling has chosen a stance and nothing seems likely to sway her. Compassion, it would seem, is reserved for her fictional characters alone.