The Failed Silencing of J.K. Rowling

The woman who lived.

“But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

This week, J.K. Rowling has been subjected to public trial over a series of tweets made on the topic of biological sex and what we ought to call the class of people who menstruate. Readers may recall the word “women” — a relic of a bygone era — formerly used to refer to this group. In the alternate reality that is Twitter, this has created quite an outrage, prompting those supposedly in favour of ‘tolerance’ to scold Rowling en masse. Twitter users were not short of suggestions for alternatives on what we ought to call women, or at least, the ones that they disagree with.

Twitter sometimes so closely resembles the real world as to confuse us. The people, politics and pictures of cats that fill our feeds look almost identical to the people, politics and cats we encounter in our lives — especially if you live on a university campus. Yet when we turn off our screens and walk…