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Alice Walker is defending the controversial views of famous author J.K. Rowling.
In a new essay posted to her website, The Color Purple author challenged naysayers to understand Rowling’s insensitive remarks made about the trans community in 2020.
“I read the first Harry Potter novel and thought it extraordinary,” Walker stated in her blog post. “I felt something old and wise, fresh and exciting had been offered humanity. Life with its vicissitudes prevented reading volumes that followed.”
She continued:
“I consider J.K. Rowling perfectly within her rights as a human being of obvious caring for humanity to express her views about whatever is of concern to her. As she has done. I also believe that listening to each other before going for the match would put some distance between us and the Middle Ages.”
In 2020, Rowling was infamously labeled a TERF after she took issue with an op-ed piece calling women “people who menstruate.” A TERF is a feminist who excludes the rights of transgender women from their advocacy of women’s rights.
“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people,” the author tweeted at the time. “Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she sarcastically added.
Fans have since slammed the British celeb for being transphobic, but Walker argued that the backlash was unwarranted. She went on to compare Rowling’s recoil to a “witch hunt.”
“As an Elder (which I take seriously), I must remind us that there is no “right witch” to burn,” Walker continued.
“Perhaps only our own lack of awareness of being erased, long before robotic AI “females” were foisted upon society’s consciousness, primarily as slaves, workers, and sex toys. By this I mean, for instance, that “woman” for whatever sinister reason was being erased in language well before she/her was being disappeared from dictionaries and society.”
She ended her lengthy post by sharing her controversial views about gender fluidity and the transitioning process.
“The use of ‘guy’ for both male and female eroded the ability of children to easily feel confident in which gender they were. From that confusion, considered irrelevant, apparently, to the forming of young minds, has come much cutting off of parts and restructuring of essential physical equipment,” Walker added.
“If such restructuring is freely chosen at eighteen or twenty, at least there is a sense the person involved may have lived long enough to know, definitely, what is desired. Younger than that, I feel there may in fact be reason, later on, to mourn and weep. After all, the human body is a miracle, of whatever sex, tampering with a miracle is unlikely to serve.”
Social media users call out Alice Walker for defending J.K. Rowling
After Walker’s post went viral, social media users sounded off about the famed author’s support for Rowling, with many calling her a TERF for her views about the trans experience and gender identity.
“The pain of Alice Walker’s anti-semitism and defense of JKR shows why we can’t pretend “bad people” only create bad art,” one user wrote. “People want this to be true so that we never get attached to violent people and can easily untangle ourselves from their legacies, but that’s not the case.”
A second user chimed in:
“I think the worst part of Alice Walker’s support for JK Rowling is the cynical deployment of her community elder status as if almost reassure us that her support for gender-confused is well-informed when in fact she sounds like every other TERF.”
While a third added:
“Alice Walker emerging as a TERF on International Women’s Day is a disappointing turn of events.”
Walker’s post comes just a month after Rowling opened up about the backlash received from her TERF opinions. During a podcast interview in February, Rowling said she didn’t give a flying hoot about her legacy possibly being tarnished by her controversial remarks.
“Whatever, I’ll be dead,” she responded when host Megan Phelps-Roper asked whether she was concerned about her staunch views hurting her fruitful writing career, according to Salon.
What do you think about Alice Walker and J.K. Rowling’s bold comments?
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