“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling posted a lengthy response to late-night host John Oliver ’s latest rant on guidelines for transgend...
“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling posted a lengthy response to late-night host John Oliver’s latest rant on guidelines for transgender-identifying athletes participating in sports.
“Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video’s for you. An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullsh** to support something he wants to be true, but isn’t,” the author shared on social media Sunday.
The “Last Week Tonight” host did a monologue on Friday about people who opposed biological males who identify as females participating in women’s sports. During his remarks, he claimed there was no evidence biological male trans athletes have an advantage when competing against biological females.
“The Harris campaign failed to formulate a response, especially when it’s pretty easy to do,” Oliver said. “There are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high schools anywhere, even if there were more, trans kids like all kids vary in terms of athletic ability, and there is no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness.”
He said it was “weird” for opponents to be “so focused on this subject.”
Oliver said, “If you genuinely want to address the biggest concern for most girls who play high school sports, you’d be less worried about this and more about the creepy assistant volleyball coach who keeps liking their f***ing posts on Instagram.”
In response to Oliver’s claim that trans-identifying athletes didn’t cause harm, Rowling pointed to a United Nations report from last month, which found that more than 600 biological females did not medal in more than 400 competitions in 29 different sports due to trans-inclusion standards, meaning those competitors missed out on earning almost 900 medals.
Rowling also mentioned college student Payton McNabb, who sustained a concussion when a trans-identifying biological male spiked the ball at her during a high school volleyball game.
“Again and again I’ve come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points,” the British author continued. “With a straight face, the ‘believe the science’ guys will say ‘actually, we don’t yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls’. The ‘be kind’ crew can’t see what the issue is. ‘Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?'”
She added, “If you want to tell the world you’re happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world’s population, fair enough; you’re allowed your opinion. But if you’ve just told girls they don’t deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your ‘edgy’ closing joke.”
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