Transgender

But he had good PR regardless. The sentiment about him online around 2015 was very positive. The "real life Iron Man" meme was strong. He could have easily ridden that, doesn't really matter it was undeserved.

He was always a piece of shit, yeah, but if he'd let his "work" do the talking he'd have been known as the guy who pushed electric cars into a more mainstream position, he'd be the figurehead behind reusable, more economical rockets.

Instead he's the guy who fucked up Twitter and makes swasticars.

He just couldn't shut the fuck up, and we all saw who he really is, and now the only people who don't want him to fuck all the way off up his own ass are people who should themselves fuck all the way off up their own asses.

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.

“The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition.

“The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager.

“If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

“As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens.

“Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.”

https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/06/10/jk-rowling-trans-terf-essay-transphobia-gender-identity-dysphoria-mental-health-harry-potter/

It would be in very poor taste for me to voice any speculation on another person's gender identity.

It's also worth pointing out that traditional femininity is treated with disrespect throughout the Harry Potter series. All the "good" female characters subvert it in some way, by being smart or ugly, because Joanne doesn't seem to have matured past 90's-era film tropes.

Why is her main character a boy in a genre already saturated with boys and begging for female leads? Why did she deliberately obscure the fact that she's a woman by abbreviating her name? Why does she write under a male pseudonym? It all sounds so feminist and progressive, doesn't it?

Le Guin had the grace to be embarrassed that she hadn't even considered a female wizard, and she went on to write fantastic novels about that exact topic. Writing that also made me realize that girls literally cannot be wizards in Harry Potter canon, lol. It's like she read Equal Rites but only paid attention to the problematic parts.