Like most others whose mind isn’t addled by transphobia brain rot, I had a good laugh at JK Rowling insinuating that anything that produced eggs was a woman this weekend. Amongst the trolling were people posting chickens, dinosaurs, and my personal fave, a machine that makes easter eggs.
Of course, the comment was the usual terfery from auld mouldy castle, but, it also made me feel isolated and angry.
Joanne was responding to tweets after she’d tweeted that womanhood was more than an “essence” and that she’s a woman because she was “born with the equipment to produce large gametes” (no I’ve no fucking idea either) and others rightly asked that if you’ve had a hysterectomy, or are infertile by this standard, does this mean you’re no longer a woman.
It was at this point that JK Rowling used an absolutely vile term that she apparently thought won her the argument:
If you are born with egg-producing equipment, even if faulty, it’s proof you are a woman.
Am I faulty, JK Rowling?
After having a good chuckle at all the memes that spawned from JK Rowling and her truly foot-in-mouth statement, I took a step back and realised just what she was saying about women who couldn’t have kids. Faulty.
I fought doctors for over 15 years to have my excruciating pain believed. I was crippled by pain during ovulation, and my super irregular periods would have me doubled over and bleeding through pads. I jumped through hoops and tried every birth control under the sun to sort my periods out and ease the pain.
I was left suicidal on many an occasion.
Finally, after years of begging, doctors agreed to a hysterectomy, but they insisted on leaving my ovaries even though ovulation was the most painful time. I was forced into a medical menopause that changed my body and left me almost unable to walk – all because I was “too young” to have my ovaries taken away.
Finally, in 2021, I had my ovaries removed. It was then a doctor told me they’d found endometriosis too. After this, I was plunged straight into menopause at just 32. Weeks, months, years of mood swings, depression, stress on my body and all the other things which come with that. All by the way, whilst still having endometriosis, which I will still have until the tissue dies off naturally.
Being childless doesn’t make you incomplete
An incredibly hard part of this journey has been coming to terms with never being able to have children naturally.
A big reason for this was that society still views motherhood as the pinnacle of womanhood and what we can achieve as women. As I neared my 30s, I was constantly being asked when I was going to settle down and have kids. At family events, I’d constantly be told that my ex would make a great dad. All of the things I achieved in my professional life seemed to pale in comparison to others my age who became mothers. I had nightmares of being the elderly great aunt that nobody wanted to visit at Christmas. I was also constantly told by medical professionals that I would regret not having kids when I was older. I was made to feel less than everywhere I looked in the media.
But despite, or maybe in spite of, this I’ve built a good life for myself. I’ve navigated divorce, written books, travelled the country speaking about disability rights, lived through grief, and given myself time to find who I am again.
In time, I stopped dreading a friend’s pregnancy announcement; instead I was able to be an amazing aunt to my biological and chosen nieces and nephews. I’ve even become a mother in a different way – to my gorgeous dachshund Rusty. I’m fulfilled in my personal and professional life.
Without a doubt, getting rid of my uterus and then my ovaries was the best thing I ever did, because it allowed me to get my life back. Yet this miserable woman, whose seemingly only goal in life is to make it harder for marginalised people to live, wants to call me faulty?
Terves, doing the right wing sexist pigs jobs for them
It’s truly both horrific and absolutely ridiculous seeing how much this hateful movement doesn’t even realise how much they’re conforming to right-wing patriarchal standards. Whilst Moldemort equates being a fully functioning woman to whether we can reproduce, her little army of saddos are also policing who and who doesn’t look “woman” enough to piss or, apparently, talk to customers at their job.
Last week, we of course had the discourse of a trans woman daring to ask customers in the shop she worked if they needed any help. We still don’t actually know if this woman was actually trans, all we have to go off here is the mother saying she sounded manly and was tall. As if tall women with deep voices don’t exist.
When I defended this woman, I was hit with a barrage of hundreds of tweets calling me a man and sending me my own photos as evidence that I’m trans. Citing my big hands, “wig”, sharing close-ups of me both made up and wearing no makeup at all, trying to simultaneously prove i was “wearing womanface” (again no idea) and that I was clearly a man because I wasn’t made up.
These “feminists” who just a few years ago were running pointless campaigns about toys having no gender and preaching that boys can wear pink, have now been completely swallowed up by the alt right ideals that women should only look and act a certain way and if they don’t they won’t be accepted.
What’s especially hilarious is that whilst terves regularly called trans allies “transmaidens” or compared us to the rich women in A Handmaid’s Tale by forcing poor women to show a scrap of compassion and humanity to trans women, they’re the ones who are really leading us to Gilead.
By reducing women down to whether we can reproduce, whilst insisting we must look pretty at all times, JK Rowling and her lot are doing far-right men’s job for them.
And she has the gall to call me faulty.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.