A bookshop in Leeds invites customers to write insults about J.K. Rowling in Harry Potter books for a fee, and the money they collect goes to five transgender persons. The bookshop is run by transgender persons, who state that “to exist as a transgender person in this political climate is both exhausting and frightening; it feels particularly important to give the community a way to express feelings.” They are, in a sense, right – the trans debate, at least in the United Kingdom, is over.
For 25 pence, approximately three Norwegian kroner, customers are allowed to write things such as “F..c JK Rowling” on pages of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. “You have destroyed yourself, destroyed the name of feminism, and destroyed the precious childhood of thousands of women and girls. F..c you,” wrote one, according to The Telegraph.
The Bookish Type, as the bookshop is called, justifies the vandalism as follows: “Camille Sapara Barton speaks about the necessity of addressing grief within social and political movements in order to avoid burnout and to build sustainable resistance”, writes the newspaper. Sapara Barton is an activist who maintains that grief does not solely concern death, but losses associated with “state oppression” and other forms of oppression, according to her Instagram page.
It is possible that it is the grief over losing the trans debate that has made trans activists desperate for attention. In the United Kingdom, the government put a stop to puberty blockers for children in 2024 due to a lack of evidence, and recently a clinical study of these medications was also paused because the health authorities could not vouch for the medical safety of the patients.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled in April last year that the definition of woman refers only to biological women. In December, Girlguiding, that is, the Girl Guides, determined that trans girls could not continue to be members and that the organisation was only for biological women and girls. On top of this, the IOC has decided that only biological women will be permitted to participate in Olympic women’s sports from 2028.
Final convulsion
The bookshop in Leeds is an example of a final convulsion of trans activism. The trans wave gathered momentum around Covid, when young people sat alone in their rooms with their phones and social media, and were fed a diet of gender confusion (does anyone remember frog gender?) and mentally confused purple-haired activists who made it fashionable not to be “gender normative.”
It was at that time that my daughter came home and informed me that the school library had removed the Harry Potter books and replaced them with “Space Boys Wear Tutus” and other trans-glorifying books. It was also at that time that my good friend Tanya ended our friendship because she had a six-year-old daughter who identified as a boy, and Tanya had seen that I had shared an article by Brendan O’Neill about trans women in sport, and she could not have anyone in her life who did not support the trans cause.
In that respect, the trans debate has been far more than a normal political debate – it has ended friendships, it has defined people as “good” and “evil” –