A Letter to J. K. Rowling

03 Oct 2024

Dear J. K. Rowling,

NOTE: for context, you may want to read articles about J.K. Rowling’s transphobic tweets.

I read the blog post you wrote in 2020 about sex and gender issues. That was helpful, I get it. I see where you are coming from.

You are a woman who lived through a marriage of domestic abuse and sexual assault. That’s incredibly scary–you said yourself that to this day you are still jumpy and afraid of loud noises. You feel keenly that women need protection from violent men.

So when a man says they identify as a woman, and wants to come into your safe spaces, your bathrooms, your changing rooms, your social and political movements, it’s terrifying and you feel threatened. Of course you do, how could you not?

Even though I don’t agree with the conclusions you’ve come to and I think you’ve said some pretty nasty things as a result, I understand why you feel that way. The way you feel is not “sad” as Daniel Radcliffe put it, or unacceptable. It simply is what it is. Unfortunately in our society we’ve replaced empathy with logic and decided that emotions are “irrational.” We believe that throwing statistics at you, which show that trans women are harmless and even more marginalized than cis women, is enough to discredit the way you feel. The social belief that emotions can be dominated by enough correct logic/facts/data is actually part of what is called the patriarchy but that’s another story.

Because what I also see in your blog post is that you are still carrying a heavy burden. When we feel threatened, “triggered,” and afraid, we believe that the problem is out there somewhere in the world. And it is, to a certain extent, but it is also inside of us, and the inner journey is the only path to true healing.

We live in a culture of light supremacy. We are afraid of darkness of all kinds. The dark place inside that you are truly afraid to visit is the mind of the abuser, the sexual assault perpetrator, who still lurks in your unconscious and rules your life. You know the door is there but you dare not enter.

If you went through that door you would find a man who is utterly confused, who suffers greatly. A man who knows of no other way to share his pain than through violence and domination. To live as a man in this world is to be told that you must steel yourself to the moral pain of power, that to betray your heart is the only way to survive. You have shared in this pain and you know something about what I am saying. That doesn’t excuse abuse or make it right, but it might help you to make sense of it. It might help you let go of your burden and feel free again.

And free people feel much less inclined to write angry tweets :).

Love,
Dylan

---

Please Call Me By My True Names
By Thich Nhat Hanh in October 2004

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.