It is interesting just how much of the rage directed at JK Rowling seems grounded in utter bafflement that she will not back down.
She is just about the only woman in the world with the power and the financial resources to take the stance she's taken in as uncompromising (though polite) a manner as she has done, and both women and men the world over are clearly baffled by this because it's without precedent in a woman.
And all she had to do was write the most popular fiction series in the world to do it.
There's clearly an element of the backlash and confusion that has to do with what I think of as soft-online-version American cultural imperialism (see also all the references to the UK as "TERF island") but the majority of it is such obvious woman hatred it is truly galling to watch it be peddled as somehow representing the feminist POV.
I'm thinking of (and these are just from the top of my head) the now commonly peddled ideas that she:
Made up or is exaggerating the violence of her first husband in their marriage (the truly poisonous idea that victims can "weaponise" the violence by which they were victimised)
Is not that talented anyway and the terrible films of her books are why she is famous (factually untrue, as anyone who bought one of the original series books at a midnight release to frantically read before the whole world was finished with it by morning knows)
Was peddling uniquely terrible views in her books which were secret hidden Signs Of Her Problematic Nature (often due to the poor reading comprehension of people who don't understand what she was doing with SPEW)
Is an Evil Rich Capitalist who deserves any abuse she had coming to her (the only billionaire here to lose that status by appropriately paying her taxes and sinking so much of her money into sound evidence based charity work)
Has in some way discriminated against or inflicted violence on the trans community (untrue, the usual reversal)
Owes grace and mercy to the people stalking her home address and posting it online to incite others to go there and commit violence because they are "q*eer activists" who face "ruined lives" because she stood up to them and called out what they did as wrong by name (obviously bonkers to think you can stalk and harass and face no consequences for your actions because they're righteous in your own head).
Only in a world this steeped in the hatred of women could you write the most beloved children's books of all time (Diana Wynne Jones hipsters don't fight me, I am one of you) and still, for daring to publicly hold the safety and health of girls and women more dear than the desires of men, be instantly deemed a liar, a fake, an attacker playing the victim, a harasser playing the harassed.
In short, a woman, whose every action to defend herself is but further evidence of her fitness for greater and greater punishment at the hands of the mob who have decided they have the right to mete it out, and call it justice all the while.
