Preaching to the choir on tumblr but I just need to talk about this shit.
Trans activist (I believe) and performance artist Freda Wallace went on a debate panel in 2023.
Recently, on July 12th, JK Rowling shared an upskirt image of Freda taken by Maya Forstater during this debate. She took the opportunity to bodyshame, and then doubled down on why it's okay to share the photo by using the same arguments rapists make about their victims.
Full twitter thread I am referring to is here, this is a part of it:
JK Rowling is whining on Twitter that Freda, a trans woman with a small platform, won't debate her properly. In frustration, she shares a 2 year old photo taken by a fellow TERF which she claims is of Freda flashing the audience. I have cropped the image for this post.
When called out on it, Rowling doubles down.
"Fred chose the fishnets and miniskirt."
"Fred was free to wear whatever he wanted to that filmed debate."
Does that not sound familiar? "But what was she wearing" is such a common sentiment among rapists that this feels like parody.
She argues that because Freda wore what she wore, talked about sex on stage, and is a trans woman, she wanted this.
Note also the difference in their following. Rowling's tweets are getting thousands of likes, the one starting the thread having 36k, while Freda's get a couple hundred at most. Rowling has a habit of responding to posts with little to no traction without even censoring usernames. Another notable trans woman she has done that to is bluefolf who was swatted not long after.
This post is about JK Rowling, but her fans and fellow terfs agree with her, sharing things about how real women are hyper-aware of the lengths of their skirts, and sit in ladylike manners.
Pedantic note: Whether it counts as upskirting or not, whether anything intimate was visible or not, does not actually matter when JK Rowling is repeatedly implying that Freda was flashing people during the event. When she looks at that picture, she sees something inappropriate. She decided to share it for millions to see specifically in order to humiliate her. The intent behind it is clear.
