20 July

This is what caused the global pile-on, on J.K. Rowling. Her querying why ‘people who menstruate’ isn’t ‘women’. I saw this in a news article about cervical cancer screening. The sentence could easily say ‘you’re eligible if you’re a woman aged between 25 and 74, and have ever been sexually active.’ But that would exclude the men who want to identify as women. People seem OK with this. The biological complexity and challenges of being a woman have been a core part of the struggle women have faced for all of human history. Now that’s being erased by a social media culture that allows people to create an identity from anything - you can be a Jedi, or cosplay a superhero, or whatever. Also why I included the second image about Harry Potter, because this shift is happening everywhere. Even with Rowling’s own work. The line between reality and fantasy is gone. This is kidult culture too, adolescent fantasies become lived realities. Identity goes from being playful within boundaries to being essentialising, and chosen at will. And social media gives this a home.