Joanne Rowling, the controversial fantasy and crime fiction author who often goes by the chosen names J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, has once again sparked controversy with her opinions on the social media site formerly known as Twitter yesterday. The author, who has become infamous in recent years for her increasingly hateful rhetoric towards transgender people, has now made a post insulting the asexual community.
Rowling posted an image that was meant to promote International Asexuality Day, which was yesterday, April 6, but shared it with an insulting caption, which reads: “Happy International Fake Oppression Day to everyone who wants complete strangers to know they don’t fancy a shag.” Her comments further down in the thread were equally dismissive of asexuality as a category, often suggesting that asexuality does not belong as part of the larger LGBTQ+ movement.
When we talk about Joanne Rowling, many people compare her to her own character of Dolores Umbridge, the strict disciplinarian who insists on teaching propaganda while ignoring facts. While I see the similarities, I always like to compare Rowling to her character Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew, as that character fooled everyone into thinking he was a hero, then was later proven to be a cowardly traitor. That’s what Rowling is to me. At one point, she tried to make herself out to be a champion for the LGBTQ+ community. Then she slowly revealed that she doesn’t support the transgender community and doesn’t think we really exist. Now she’s revealed that she doesn’t support asexual people. It almost feels like she’s slowly revealing that she doesn’t actually support any of the letters in the acronym.
There’s been an effort by some people within and outside of the queer community to try to claim that certain parts of the LGBTQ+ community don’t actually belong in the same category with each other. Some try to argue that LGB are all the letters and everything else in the acronym is unrelated, or worse, not real. A lot of this is due to what’s called “respectability politics,” which is basically where you try to present yourself in a way that bigots might respect. Since transgender rights is such a controversial topic right now, there’s an effort by some LGB people to try to distance themselves from that controversy by claiming to be part of a separate group.
While it’s true that sexuality and gender are different things, it’s also important to remember that the two are deeply intertwined, especially in a heteronormative society, so much so that the rights surrounding them are intertwined as well. We are expected by that heteronormative society to have an attraction to a certain gender, as if our gender dictates our sexuality. The entire LGBTQ+ community as a whole is united by the fact that we experience gender and sexuality in ways that are not considered normal by society. Gay people experience attraction to a different gender than society expects them to. Trans people present as a different gender than society expects them to based on their biological sex. Asexual people, of course, experience a lack of sexual attraction in a society that expects everyone to be sexual. It all goes together because our experiences, while different, share parallels.
Rowling seemed to be claiming that there is no discrimination against asexual people, calling it “fake oppression.” But, of course, asexual people experience oppression all the time. Society pushes sexuality on every person, in the media, in expectations of people to have children, in sexual advertising that is literally impossible to get away from. Asexual people can’t escape assumptions that they are more sexual than they are. Because of that, asexual people are often forced into sexual situations that they are not comfortable with, which is traumatizing. In a study conducted for The Journal of Sex Research, out of a sample of 8,752 people who identified as part of the asexuality spectrum, 67.4% of them reported having been victims of sexual violence victimization in their lifetimes.
So yes, there is such thing as oppression and even violence against asexual people for their sexuality, and, because of that, it’s important to boost visibility for asexual people and understand their sexuality. That’s the entire purpose of International Asexuality Day, the very holiday that Joanne Rowling chose to disrespect. While I know that some people would prefer not to pay any attention to Rowling’s hateful outbursts in hopes of diminishing her platform, I think it’s important that people know that she is not an ally of the LGBTQ+ community or any subsection of that community, and maybe then there will be an even more effective boycott of her work.
