JK Rowling has taken a stance for quite some time that trans women are not real women. I have always disagreed with her on this point, and continue to do so. To say they are not women is to erase them them, and that is completely unacceptable. Trans women are women. Full stop. In addition, when called out and accurately labeled a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), Rowling doubled down and proclaimed that “it isn’t hate to speak the truth.” With all due respect to Rowling’s talent in other areas and her entitlement to her own opinion, what she stated isn’t fact—it’s opinion. Just as generations of people have spewed hate as fact (blacks are dumber, gays can’t parent, men are stronger and smarter), she too now seeks to weaponize her opinion by claiming it as truth and then hiding behind that label as a shield. And her claim that this is not hate is not only wrong, but seeks to minimize and, indeed, erase the entire issue; preventing any discussion at all. It is the equivalent of saying “can’t we all get along” or “all lives matter.” This is disingenuous and dangerous.

That said, after reading three of her recent tweets, I found myself struggling because I agreed with one of her smaller tenets: how can we say sex doesn’t exist when we talk about sex discrimination and same-sex marriage and the like? Through discussion, I have found an understanding that I believe addresses her concerns within the context of our current understanding of gender (and similarly race and sexuality).

Historically, we have viewed the world as a series of binaries.: male/female; black/white; gay/straight. These binaries were intended to create a hierarchy for society and define preferential traits, which allowed for significant violence and discrimination to occur by men against women, whites against blacks, and straights against gays. The problem is that these binaries do not accurately describe our world. Gender, race/color, and sexual identity are more fluid and a continuum. Thus, bi-racial people, bi-sexual people, and trans-people have always experienced violence and abuse at the hands of both ends of the “binary” for failing to “pick a side”: But are you black? You’re either gay or straight. Are you a woman who like to dress like a man, or do you think you’re a man?

Our new understanding of the fluidity/continuum of gender, race, and sexual identity prevents classifying people into 1 of 2 (or any other number of) clearly defined categories. But it does not erase the historical facts of violence, abuse, and discrimination caused by our previous use of binary systems, nor does it erase the current repercussions of those systems.

To Rowling’s point that sex must exist or her lived experiences are erased, the lived experiences of women, gays, and blacks are not erased by recognizing that the binary system we ascribed to was wrong. That understanding created issues that are still causing ripples today. So we can talk about the harms and discrimination caused by the previous understanding of sex, race, and gender identity as binary without there actually being something finite and discrete as “male” or “female”, “black or white” or “gay” or “straight” into which everyone must be placed.

As a final thought, I want to address her statement that there can be no “same-sex marriage.” I tend to agree, but only because there has never historically really been only “opposite sex marriage.” Our binary system was built on the illusion that there were only two biological sexes, expressed as XX and XY, when, in fact, we have known for a long time that XXY, XYY, and various other inter-sex genetic combinations exist. We maintained the illusion of opposite-sex marriage, but in truth a trans woman (genetically XY) could legally marry a cis-gendered woman (genetically XX) because they had differing genetic codes And yet, to anyone on the street, they might well have appeared to be a legally married lesbian couple. Thus, even our previous binary system never fully prevented “same-sex” marriage. Fortunately, when we finally opened up marriage to everyone, we removed all gender classifications. Thus, the result was not the creation of two kinds of marriage: opposite-sex and same-sex. Rather, we simply opened up the legal institution of marriage to everyone, and no longer have to consider the parties’ genetic code or genitalia before issuing them a marriage license.