Talk:Political views of J. K. Rowling

Split proposed
Out of all political views of J. K. Rowling, it's pretty clear that her views on transgender issues are the most notable. Considering the size and content of the section, it seems appropriate that an article about J. K. Rowling views on transgender issues should exist independently. Skyshifter  talk  15:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose - I disagree that they are the most notable. They are merely the most apparent now because it is very much the current live issue. This is also a problem with the approach being taken in this page, where we are following news cycles but not paying much attention to secondary sources. There are secondary sources on Rowling political views. There are sources about the politics of Harry Potter, there are sources looking at her opposition to Brexit, her views on feminism and such like, and yes there is at least one academic secondary source on her views on the transgender issues, but we are not going to fix a bias to the recent issues by creating a new article for the recent issue. Moreover we are likely to just get repetitive. Despite having this page, there is still a lot of political views stuff in her main article. If we split this off, I would wager this article will still get a load of duplicated commentary. Finally, despite the current imbalance in this article, there is no SIZERULE case for such a split. This article should be expanded in areas outside the transgender issue, and not split to allow one issue to grow and spread even more.
 * Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:41, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Size-wise, I'm not sure a split is warranted; although poorly written and poorly organized, the article is now under 4,000 words of readable prose, with a good deal of WP:PROSELINE, WP:RECENTISM and WP:NOTNEWS that should just be cut. But if there is to be consensus for a split, I suggest the target name is wrong.  This article most frequently does not deal with "Political views of" or "JKR's views on", rather ideas about her views taken completely out of context and mis-attributed to her.  That is, a split might be more appropriately named "J. K. Rowling and transgender issues", since it's unlikely an anyone-can-edit Wikipedia article will stop taking her actual statements out of context.  We shouldn't be implying in WikiVoice that we are writing about her actual views, when we rarely are.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  15:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose. This article is just under 4,000 words in length. According to WP:ARTICLESIZE, that's less than half the size before we need to consider splitting or trimming. Even if the trans section is the largest, it doesn't strike me as anywhere near such a size it needs to be split. — Czello (music) 21:22, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Support, kinda. There are a couple reasons to split, one due to size, the other may be content per WP:CONTENTSPLIT. I have already stated before that I don't think her views on trans issues are appropriate for this article, and they therefore can be split by reason of content. She is also the most prominent critic on trans issues, and for that reason its own article could be justified. Too much of a focus on trans issue in this article also distorts this article. Personally though I'd prefer a renaming of the article. Hzh (talk) 11:20, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose Spinoffs of this nature are inherently problematic; there are less eyes on the article, and you end up with potential coatrack and POV issues easier. While the article currently covers her LGBT views prominently, the article is absolutely nowhere near the size where a spinout can be argued on those grounds. I agree with Sandy that there's a lot of editorial cleanup that needs to happen to, and that would shrink that section down further, whereas a split article is going to inevitably lead to a bloated, unfocused battleground article with less value. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 13:54, 28 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose. For the other sensible reasons have already been highlighted, and because it's not our fault that trans people are all she talks about now.
 * 13tez (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose Agree with SandyGeorgia that the section is in need of cleanup. The section right now (excluding the Reactions section):
 * In June 2020,
 * In September 2020,
 * In March 2022,
 * During Lesbian Visibility Week in April 2022,
 * In May 2022,
 * In December 2022,
 * Rowling commented in a 2023 podcast
 * In February 2024,
 * On 4 March 2024,
 * On 13 March 2024,
 * On 1 April 2024,
 * Once the section has the WP:PROSELINE, WP:NOTDIARY, and WP:RECENTISM issues taken care of, a split is not warranted (not that it currently needs to be split right now anyway as others have mentioned above). If a content split does occur for whatever reasons, the split article will undoubtedly face those same three issues where editors will try to document and cram every single instance of JK Rowling appearing in the news for transgender-related reasons into that split article. Also agree with David Fuchs that a split article will lead to an unfocused battleground article with POV issues and a lot less eyes watching it. Some1 (talk) 23:09, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Support. There are a lot of subsections that should exist and it’s hard to muddle through this overly long section and find what you’re looking for. A separate article would be helpful in clarifying timelines and other people’s comments. This section is almost certainly going to become longer over time, so a separate article would be very helpful. Bluedoor17 (talk) 19:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I concur with Czello in that this article is not nearly long enough to consider splitting or condensing. Making an entirely separate article for her views on one specific issue is completely unnecessary.
 * DocZach (talk) 16:33, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose - In addition to making the recentism issue worse, such a split would be inappropriately implying that her opposition to trans people's rights can be separated from her political views. Grayfell (talk) 22:15, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think we can have a summary of her views on trans people’s rights in the main page, for clarity, but then also have a separate page just for her views on trans rights, just to have clearer subsections that people can jump to so it’s easier to navigate the timeline. Bluedoor17 (talk) 02:12, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose and perhaps consider reducing the size of the section by improving and condensing the prose.  ——Serial Number 54129  13:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:SIZERULE, as referenced above. Length alone doesn't justify splitting or trimming, unless the later is to remove excess detail. It could simply do with sub-sectioning, whether that be by time-frames or ideally the content re-organised in some way; for examples views on this, allegation of that, or similar; ie collating content together where relevant into sub-sections. CNC (talk) 01:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Adding balance to the lede
Here's what I proposed as an addition to the second paragraph:


 * However, some of these other feminists are of the view that Rowling is using the language necessary to describe the issue, such as referring to male individuals who seek to access women-only spaces with male pronouns.

This is User:DanielRigal's counter-proposal:


 * Others say that Rowling is using "language necessary to describe the issue"[citation needed], by misgendering transgender women who use women-only spaces with male pronouns.

I have a couple of criticisms of this, first, this isn't a direct quote but paraphrasing what feminists like Julie Bindel (cited later in the article) have said about JKR's choice of language. Secondly, it's more accurate to use "male individuals" because we can't make any assumptions about how they identify. For example, JKR (and other feminists) have spoken about the problem of male prisoners in the female prison estate and there is a common view even amongst trans activists that these include opportunistic men.

Let's work towards the best wording possible that doesn't just slate JKR for her views but tries to explain them in the appropriate context. 2A00:23EE:2418:718:B81C:E698:CC3A:8BF7 (talk) 00:58, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Not really a fan of the first proposal.
 * "However, some" is a bit weasel-wordy- it's good to avoid using "however" on Wikipedia as it's a bit essay-like or persuasive writing.
 * "Some" is also very vague- how many are we talking?
 * "The issue" is also contentious- it's Rowling et al's opinion that there is an issue, it's not universally agreed that there is an issue.
 * Rowling doesn't just use male pronouns for trans women accessing women-only spaces, she uses male pronouns for any trans women, regardless of whether they are seeking to access spaces.
 * "Male individuals" is also contentious; saying "transgender women" is more specific and less contentious about who Rowling is describing. She's not talking about cisgender men, so she's not talking about all male individuals.
 * GraziePrego (talk) 01:18, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I see your point on "however" and I agree that was inappropriate. For "some" and "the issue", I was trying to match the style of the previous sentences which refer to "related issues" and "some feminists":
 * Since late 2019, Rowling has publicly voiced her opinions on transgender activism and related issues. Rowling has used language and expressed her views towards transgender people in a manner which has frequently been referred to as transphobic by LGBT rights organizations and some feminists, even as she has received support from other feminists.
 * I understand that "male individuals" is contentious here but it is consistent with how JKR expresses her views on this topic, which I believe this article should be trying to accurately describe. For example in this recent tweet https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1786425947274527215, the framing is around male violence, not trans:
 * That you watch that video and see the large male using physical violence as vulnerable, and the tiny girl using words as the oppressor, you're somebody I wouldn't trust on a jury or anywhere near a child.
 * Interested to hear your thoughts on this. 2A00:23EE:2418:718:B81C:E698:CC3A:8BF7 (talk) 02:10, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Since I also had one revert in the recent edit history, lemme add my two cents.
 * I think it's relevant to note that this is a page under WP:CTOP, and that it seems to have taken reams and reams of previous discussion to arrive at the current wording. So it's not just between those two proposals, if Talk page history is any indication.
 * Given how controversial the topic is, and in case we can't agree on which proposal, by default I would lean towards reverting to established talk page consensus until there's a new agreement.
 * However I'll also argue that this is BLP, and I'm a strong proponent of avoiding weasel wording like "has frequently been referred to as" or "many people say", especially for contentious topics, even more so in BLP. Either we have some direct quotes supporting this language that we can add as inline citations, or it's unsupported weasel wording, and I could not object to anyone challenging it.
 * I think if we disagree about how to characterize Rowling's language, the best thing might be to but just fall back on what reliable sources report, as directly as possible. We don't need to establish whether she's "using the language necessary" or "misgendering". Let's just find good sources and report what they say as directly as possible, with regard to due weight, relevance, etc etc.
 * Mlkj (talk) 01:18, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * If we're talking about this block of edits, it reads as editorializing based on WP:OR from primary sources. No dice.
 * A deeper issue here is that it's a form of editorializing to assume that there are only two equivalent sides and that the most neutral approach lies somewhere between those two sides.
 * Reliable sources plainly describe Rowling's comments as bigoted towards trans people. Perhaps a few years ago there was some ambiguity, but no longer. Euphemistic language is not neutral, nor does BLP obligate us to use evasive language or filler from weaker sources. Grayfell (talk) 05:16, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I wrote the revised version due the massive POV problems with the first version and to break out of the tedious edit war of reversions. I'm perfectly happy to see it fully reverted to the status-quo version, with neither version included. I feel that this is over-detailed for coverage in the lede and does not require any "balancing" here anyway. The fundamental problems, which can not be addressed by rewriting, are WP:FALSEBALANCE and WP:LEDEFOLLOWSBODY. I can't even see the unreferenced "necessary" language claim being made anywhere in the body. Let's leave it as it is now, without either version. If anybody can source the "necessary" language claim then maybe it can go in the body somewhere but I'm thinking that this is probably not the best article for covering it as (I presume) that this is not a claim or term specific to Rowling. --DanielRigal (talk) 08:33, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Failed verification
I've noted that a few citations failed verification about a week ago. I have now removed this content. Suissa and Sullivan has three sentences on Rowling, and the best possible content that can be got from it is "Rowling received insults after publication of her essay", not a detailed analysis of why. Since this anchored a couple sentences of text, it's not clear how to rescue them. If anyone disagrees, please quote exactly the text from Suissa and Sullivan that says "Rowling inspired debates on academic freedom", and "Rowling was insulted after her views on the legal status of transgender people came under scrutiny". Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 18:34, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

First sentence of one of the lede paragraphs
"Since late 2019, Rowling has publicly voiced her opinions on transgender activism and related issues."

What are people's thoughts on changing "activism" to "rights"? Saying "related issues" makes it sound like transgender activism is an issue i.e a problem, which feels like POV. In addition, Rowling's opinions don't specifically just relate to the "activism" of transgender people, she's made plenty of comments about transgender people who aren't engaging in activism. GraziePrego (talk) 05:11, 9 July 2024 (UTC)