JK Rowling mansplained
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JK Rowling mansplained A new podcast dives into her transformation
I’d be lying if I said I love everything about Rowling’s social media style (Ray Tang/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
I’d be lying if I said I love everything about Rowling’s social media style (Ray Tang/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
blueskyCultureMansplainingTransgender
Sarah Ditum
May 23 2026 - 12:05am 7 mins
What happened to JK Rowling? If only there were some kind of primary source that could tell us why she became interested in the clash between trans activism and women’s rights — say, a first-person essay. But alas, the archive is silent. It must be, because why else would two male podcasters have taken it upon themselves to solve this supposed mystery?
This week, the Origin Story podcast, hosted by indistinguishable journalists Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, bravely shouldered the burden of analyzing Rowling over the course of two episodes. Do they succeed? Not remotely. But they do offer a fascinating insight into what happens when a certain kind of progressive man becomes radicalized by Bluesky.
And if you think I’m being patronizing and pathologizing, wait until you get a load of the podcast, which is predicated on the idea that Rowling has undergone a metamorphosis so bizarre, only psychological fracture can explain it. “It’s just such a weird story,” says Dunt. “She gets to say whatever she likes, but year by year, it gets quite a bit less kind until you just see this thing left over.”
Neither host notes that Dunt has referred to Rowling as “this thing”, as though a lack of appropriate “kindness” has turned her into something monstrous. (The “kindness” demanded only flows in one direction — there’s no expectation that trans activists could “kindly” respect women’s boundaries.) Nor do they seem to truly believe that Rowling, or any woman with gender-critical beliefs, should get to “say whatever she likes”. Any deference they pay to free speech is strictly pro-forma.
Despite a cursory show of aiming for balance, Dunt and Lynskey aren’t coming to this subject as neutral parties. They have a point of view, and their point of view is that trans activism is the decent, liberal, commonsense stance: any dissent is at best silly, and at worst (gasp) Right-wing. The assumption which shapes the entire podcast is that there is no legitimate way to be gender critical.
Ten years ago, when Stonewall’s “no debate” position held sway, this was the standard stance in most of the UK media. Today, it has substantially collapsed, but it persists in certain pockets. One of these is Bluesky — the X-replacement social media platform memorably described by Josh Barro as a “containment dome” for extremist Left-wing opinions, and a site where Dunt and Lynskey both enjoy hefty followings.
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On Bluesky, the gender argument never left 2016. Lynskey treats the idea that you can support trans people’s rights while criticizing the politics and precepts of trans activism as inherently bad faith: “It’s very hard to separate those two things considering that, without gender identity, how do trans people make sense?” In other words, if you don’t accept trans people’s understanding of the world, you’re a transphobe.
This is obviously ludicrous. There are innumerable creeds that I don’t share, while also believing that the people who hold them are entitled to freedom from discrimination: Christians, Muslims, vegans, even people who think “two male podcasters giving an etiquette seminar to a woman they don’t know” is an acceptable form of entertainment. If the belief in gender identity requires everyone else to adhere to it, that’s pretty totalitarian.
Dunt and Lynskey find it easy to embrace their own gender identities. In a moment of hearty masculine backslapping, they agree that it would be “mad” to object to the term cisgender. “We’re both cisgender. It’s like, whatever,” shrugs Lynskey obliviously. Oh, do you identify as naturally of the sex class that does less housework and isn’t expected to put other people’s feelings first? How nice for you! (Then, having agreed that “cisgender” is “a really valid and useful word”, neither uses it for the entire rest of the first podcast. Truly, an indispensable piece of language.)
They take the same attitude to the word “terf”. “It’s weird the way it’s treated like a slur and yet it’s not factually inaccurate,” ponders Lynskey, which is exactly the kind of thing racists have historically said about the P-word and the N-word. A word becomes a slur because of the way it’s used — and, as the linguist Deborah...