This is the second post in a series; the first can be read here.
In the penultimate passage of her TERF Wars essay, J. K. Rowling rejects the label of victim: “The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim.” The distinction between the label of survivor and that of victim is the difference between activity and passivity, but each comes with the implied existence of an aggressor – a villain.
Narratives of aggressors and targets (a term I’ll generally be using here as a more neutral alternative to victim/survivor) run through the essay, the most prominent being the narrative of Rowling as target of online harassment. She identifies this harassment as beginning when she clicked “like” on a certain tweet:
All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. […] On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.
Continue reading “Tranny Potter and the Chamber of Death Threats”
Doris V. Sutherland 