J. K. Rowling and the Anti-Trans Panic

"No, Trans People Are Not Death Eaters' could have been the subtitle of Gwenffrewi's blistering takedown of Rowling's bigotry. But this book is also a deeply considered indictment of anti-trans feminists' bone-deep embrace of permanent victimhood in order to continue oppressing the tiny percentage of women who are transgender." —Riki Wilchins, author of Bad Ink: How "The New York Times" Sold Out Transgender Teens

"By situating Rowling's activism within structural forces of dark money, legacy media, and neoliberal politics and moving between lived experience and cultural analysis, Gwenffrewi makes an essential and methodologically distinctive contribution to trans studies and the sociology of moral panics." —Katie McBride, author of Trans Individuals' Lived Experiences of Harm: Gender, Identity and Recognition

"Blending analysis with her lived experience as a trans woman in a nation in the throes of an anti-trans moral panic, Gwenffrewi provides a necessary corrective to the 'about trans people, without trans people' mode of reporting that has become standard in UK media." —Fran Amery, author of Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain

"J. K. Rowling and the Anti-Trans Panic is an indispensable resource for expanding the nascent analysis of the gender-critical movement and its effects on trans people's lives. Readers will appreciate Gwenffrewi's honesty in her autobiographical examples and her ability to find solace by making space for herself and queer compatriots in Edinburgh." —Lucy J. Miller, author of Distancing Representations in Transgender Film: Identification, Affect, and Audience

"A powerful and incisive intervention, this book offers a compelling analysis of contemporary anti-trans moral panic. Gwenffrewi combines rigorous critique with lived insight to expose the dynamics of media, power, and exclusion in urgent and unsettling ways." —Ben Colliver, author of Re-Imagining Hate Crime: Transphobia, Visibility and Victimization

A personal and gripping analysis of J. K. Rowling's rise as an anti-trans activist, its media and pop cultural context, and trans resistance to moral panic.

In J. K. Rowling and the Anti-Trans Panic, Gina Gwenffrewi weaves her own experience as a trans woman living in Edinburgh, Scotland, with analysis of political and pop cultural discourses and artifacts to deliver a trenchant study of how fellow Edinburgh resident J. K. Rowling's emergence as a major anti-trans campaigner and the years-long entrenchment of existing anti-trans forces have converged. Analyzing Rowling's output since 2020, a series of anti-trans events at the University of Edinburgh, the transphobic comedy of Ricky Gervais within the British media landscape, YouTube commentaries, and more, Gwenffrewi creates a potent taxonomy of the rhetorical devices and foundational assumptions of anti-trans discourse. While the 2020s UK has proved fertile ground for "gender-critical" feminism, she argues, it has also provided the foundation for sites of resistance and for bolstering transgender voices worldwide. In celebrating trans activism and trans joy amid adversity, Gwenffrewi beautifully captures the light and dark of being out as trans in the city that—if it can fairly be called ground zero for anti-trans fervor—also embodies liberatory possibilities for trans people worldwide.

Gina Gwenffrewi is a researcher and lecturer in Media Studies and English Literature through the prism of trans and queer studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Contents

Contents
Introduction
Background Characteristics of a Moral Panic and Five Factors That Prompted It
Chapter 1 Deconstructing Rowling Through the Gaze of ContraPoints
Chapter 2 No Debate, Campus Free Speech, and a "Gender-Critical" Film Screening at the University of Edinburgh
Chapter 3 Ignoring Trans People's Transness: A "Gender-Critical" Book Launch at the University of Edinburgh
Chapter 4 Ricky Gervais's Comedy of Ignorance
Chapter 5 J. K. Rowling and the Echo Chamber of Secrets
Afterword Standing at the Edge of the World

Acknowledgments
References
Index