She Who Must Not Be Named?
I’ve been watching with interest over the last couple of years, the controversy surrounding JK Rowling and her social/political views. Her organisation The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) “offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s and girls’ sex-based rights in all aspects of life”, which sounds great on the face of it. The problem emerges when she also makes hefty donations to organisations like For Women Scotland (FWS) who actively seek to strip trans-women of their identity and rights. Some say JK is anti-trans, others that she’s a powerful figurehead of the fight for women’s safety and rights; no one knows the whole truth of the matter and both views are technically valid depending on your perspective. 
In our house, we love Harry Potter and we love women’s rights even more, so we’ve spent many an evening discussing their validity. Since we took the leap and became booksellers in April this year, it’s become more important than ever that we find somewhere reasonably solid to plant our stake on the issue. This became even more apparent this week when we received our first negative comments on social media after Simon posted a tongue-in-cheek comment about the irony of JK choosing with some books to write under the male penname of Robert Galbraith considering her reputation of being anti-trans.
As a woman and a feminist myself, I personally find it incredibly irritating when I hear people say that they’re acting on my behalf, as JK claims to be acting on behalf of all women. I have never felt threatened by a trans person, but I have felt threatened by plenty of Cis Men. I’ve never had a trans person shout abuse at me in the street, follow me into a club toilet, grab my ass as I walk past or use a misogynistic slur, but I’ve experienced all of the above in the presence of Cis Men. I’ve had toxic relationships, been betrayed by friends, been overlooked in the workplace. None of these things had anything to do with trans people either.
However, these are real, recurring issues that happen to women every day and have become so normalised that we barely even notice. It’s laughed off as ‘one of those things’, ‘boys will be boys’, as banter. It isn’t. It’s dehumanising and it’s the on-ramp to much more serious abuse. We absolutely have to call attention to these issues, protect our women and girls, educate our men and boys and provide safe harbour for anyone who needs it. By all means do that on my behalf. For anyone who needs it, mind.
That certainly does mean female-only spaces have their place in order for these women to feel safe from men, and I’m with JK as far as that goes, but why does that have to be instead of the rights of trans women? Does there have to be coexistence in every single space, even if the women there are afraid of it? Of course not. But does one have to absolutely rule out the possibility of the other? Can we not just offer choice and allow people to make their own decisions based on what they’re most comfortable with? When did we decide that one human’s safety was less valid than another’s? But maybe that’s just me. More than my opinion on it - or JK’s – we’re interested in the opinion of the people this conversation is actually impacting – the trans community.
So here is where we’ve landed as a bookshop and as a business: we want to be an inclusive environment, the only characteristic you have to have to be welcome in our shop is a love of books. Actually, to be honest, you don’t even need to have that. On the grounds that JK has been very open about not only supporting women’s safety organisations, but also funding anti-trans organisations out of her own pocket, and we don’t feel comfortable contributing to or profiting from that, we have decided she won’t be an author we stock at our shop. Equally, we’ve made the decision not to stock any merch that might send royalties her way (Harry Potter stationary, bookmarks etc). Sometimes this has been a really difficult decision because the products are beautiful and showcase such a magical and well-loved story. Not only do we love the story ourselves, but realistically we could make money from it if we chose. We choose not to.
However, we’re not in the business of policing people’s reading habits any more than their bodies, so if someone wants to order a JK book through us, they’re more than welcome to. In order to make sure we can both provide this service and keep true to our values, any profits made from these sales will be donated to a local LGBTQ+ charity in hopes that will offset any potential damage done through further lining the author’s pockets. We don’t believe in censorship or banning books, but we won’t compromise our feelings on this topic by making money ourselves from it.
Not everyone will agree with my/our take on things or the policy we’ve decided on, and that’s okay. We don’t claim to know everything or to speak for anyone else. We can only do the best we can with the information we have. If we ever gain more information, we’ll do the best we can with that too. I doubt JK’s bank balance or aims will suffer much because of our decision, but there is a possibility that our trans customers will benefit from knowing exactly where we stand, and that’s the narrative we choose to live by.
Until next time, keep reading.
Cate x
