My skin has been grated and the wounds are bloody,

And I’m proud of the mess and the pain on show.

I boldly display the cuts and the bruises,

Enjoying the oo’s and the ah’s of my captive audience.

I don’t even know how those scars came about.

I did know once, but now that has paled

Into nothing important, nothing that matters.

All that I care about now, is that you look at me,

Know how much pain that I’m in,

And to hell with the rest of you.

I’ve been following the JK Rowling fiasco quite closely over the past few weeks and I’ve found the arguments fascinating. The problem arose when she commented on an article and said something that suggested only women mentstruate.

This kicked off a really ugly Twitter debate over whether or not she was transphobic. And some of the abuse that I saw hurled at her was very uncomfortable to read.

I’m not transgender so I can’t even begin to understand what pain and anguish members of the community go through, but are we solving anything by hurling abuse at other women. Looking at JK’s initial comments, she didn’t say anything maliciously.

JK then went on to write an essay about why she said what she did and she had good reasons behind her words (namely that her ex husband had been abusive and she worries about the effects it will have on victims if they are stripped of their identities as female).

Again, I’m not going to pretend to know enough about this topic to pass judgement BUT I do find it interesting how we often forget that everyone has their own story and their own pain. In this argument it seemed like a lot of people were willing to launch an attack on JK without knowing anything about her story. It was as though their pain trumped anyone elses.

This happens across society and isn’t helped by the anonymity offered by the internet. However, I think that we are entering dangerous territory and we need to stop feeding into this idea that we are number one and we should put number one first.

Let’s learn from this drama that we’ve seen play out on Twitter and try to be more accepting of everyone’s stories. Nobody’s pain is worth more than another’s even if it does seem quite trivial to you. Some were arguing that because JK is a multimillionaire, he pain means less; as though money is the medicine that will fix the human condition!

Just be nice and remember that just because you are hurting, it doesn’t give you the right to be horrid to others. Hate doesn’t drive out hate, only love can do that.

Much Love,

Rachel xx