Midknight Review is beginning a conversation about the transgendered:

In this extremely biased  and critical article in review of JK Rowling's position against transgender theorapy here, w

J.K. Rowling, as you may have heard, has some Opinions about trans identity, some of which she aired on Twitter in early June. Sharing an article on period poverty, the author took aim at the phrase “people who menstruate.” As became clear from her subsequent explanation, Rowling believes that womanhood somehow hangs on this biological function, logic that excludes trans women and gender-nonconforming people. Many read her comments as transphobic, and with criticism growing, Rowling published a 3,690-word response on June 10. In this essay, entitled “TERF Wars,” she both broadly declares her support for trans people, while doubling down on her original suggestion that trans women do not actually qualify as women.

And now, weeks after publishing her controversial essay, Rowling has reiterated those beliefs at length, while also implicating people who take mental health medications. It is, as you may have intuited, a lot to unpack.

Rowling’s June essay sparked outrage for its reliance on anti-trans talking points.

In the June 10 post, Rowling named five core reasons for her position. The two that animate the essay, however, are a suspicion that young people who decide to transition (particularly adolescent girls heavily influenced by their peers, an idea that has been thoroughly debunked) often “grow out of their dysphoria” and come to regret their decisions; and Rowling’s fear, as a survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse, that opening the doors of a women’s restroom to “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” means “open[ing] the door to any and all men who wish to come inside,” jeopardizing female safety.

Naturally, the existing online criticism of Rowling’s position did not cool with the publication of this rebuttal. One reader summed it up as a “TERF bingo card,” and indeed the term TERF — which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist and in its current usage, often describes a liberal woman whose brand of feminism excludes transgender women from its push for equal rights — is one that Rowling heard many times between hitting send the tweet that kicked off the controversy, and the birth of this essay.