Yes, she shares her views with TERFs. I think saying she has trans "friends" is akin to a racist saying they have black friends.

@Theresa_N It sure is.

From the article:
“RFKHR has stated that there is no conflict between the current radical trans rights movement and the rights of women,” said Rowling. “The thousands of women who’ve got in touch with me disagree, and, like me, believe this clash of rights can only be resolved if more nuance is permitted in the debate.”

Radical trans rights movement??? Isn't it just a movement for equality? How is that radical? And doesn't that amount to a tacit admission that she views trans folks as less worthy. I'm not sure I see a clash of rights. I would need some specific real world examples. Unless she's referring to... what was it? Single sex safe spaces? And based on her other statement about that it should only be for trans folks who have undergone hormone and surgical transition means that she ties it to physicality alone. But it comes first from the mind, which she clearly doesn't understand. Not the other way around.

@bingst Trans Medicalists or TrueScum. That's what they're called.
It's another way of being prejudiced and saying "oh but we aren't - we aren't singling anyone out we just...." (The Fuck they aren't!).
I've seen arguments from that side that make it sound like they'd throw out women for no longer having a uterus or ovaries (or a menstrual cycle) - that's how barmy these people are. They make no sense and they definitely are going after trans folk. With absolutely zero reason for it. Except for blind prejudice.

I'll say what my niece's wife said so well "We aren't the genital police.".
She's right you know - if people just accepted that and moved on? We'd all do a lot better.

The British feminist movement has a strong TERF component more so than in the US. You would find even the GB edition of The Guardian favors TERF commentators over pro-trans ones. The US edition of The Guardian is much less biased.

There are some radical views within the trans community. "Lesbians should love my girl dick" (AKA "genital preference is transphobic" ) and "die, cis scum" being a couple of the problematic attitudes that I really think we need to counter by making it clear that these people don't speak for most of us.

But accepting trans men as men isn't the least bit radical. When Rowling describes 'woman' as an adequate synonym for 'people who menstruate' she brands trans men contrary to their sincere gender identities, and shows just how far out of touch she really is with trans people. And she's been dabbling with dog whistle politics for years, 'accidentally' liking the wrong tweet and such. She's taken it too far this time, and is now desperately trying to undo the damage she's done to her brand, without actually admitting that she's done anything wrong.

She's also got a massive bee in her bonnet about youngsters being supported in questioning their gender. She's a firm believer that AMAB children should be raised as boys, AFAB ones as girls, and that legal barriers need to be erected to prevent 'woke culture' from allowing these children to follow non-cisnormative paths. Like a few others, her extremist views may have their roots in transition envy, in that she has at one point claimed that she could have been transmasculine herself, but felt denied any opportunity to pursue it.

It mimics the hard-line anti gay people who are secretly gay themselves. "I want this, but I know I can't have it, so I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure nobody else can, either."

@NicoleCadmium She's absolutely frightening! And that she has such a large voice as a children's author? And misused it in this fashion - phew!

She broke a lot of hearts with her nasty ideals.

As a CIS woman without periods - I take absolute umbridge at her attitude as well. She's ridiculous.
Possession of specific working/non-working organs is not indicative of gender identity.

Any Hysterectomy club would eat her for lunch! Never mind any guy with a vasectomy. (How absurd!).

And she deeply offends with her attitudes about trans youth. Not seeming to care how at risk her attitudes would make them.

@RavenCT I think what we have here is a fundamental lack of respect for belief. Interestingly for a site such as this, it parallels religion. Only rather than disagreeing over the nature (or existence) of God and who was his number one prophet, our conflict of belief is over the meaning of the word 'woman': the gender essentialist view (if you weren't born with a specific anatomy, you're not one, and never can be) versus a belief in sincere gender identity (that gender is an artificial social construct, and defined by identity, so if you can say, hand on heart, that you feel you are a woman, then you are one.)

The gender essentialist argument always ends up being reductive, because that's its nature. It's trying to take the intangible thing that is 'woman', and make it tangible and gatekeepable (is that a word?) in much the same way as sex can be. But even sex is bimodal rather than binary. It just happens to neatly divide most of us on the basis of "body purposed for producing sperm" and "body purposed for producing and gestating ova."

Anyhow...

As with religion (or non-religion) most people can get through their everyday lives agreeing to disagree whether gender is defined by physiology or psychology. If you're a Christian and your neighbour is a Muslim, you don't take every opportunity to tell him he's wrong and he's going to hell unless he converts to your faith. If you do, people will brand you an extremist, and rightly so.

Rowling is the Christian who's in the habit of standing outside her neighbour's window during Ramadan, eating a bacon sandwich, shouting how Satan is going to torture him for eternity unless he accepts 'the truth.'

@NicoleCadmium 100 percent agree!

Or as my niece's wife says "If people would just STOP being the genital police we'd all be a lot better off".

@RavenCT Absolutely. I even see trans women joining in, trying to excuse the person they are now, but condemning the one they were, perhaps not so long ago. The number of times I've seen "I've had surgery and no longer have a penis" or "I take feminising hormones that have resulted in erectile dysfunction" used to argue that they are no longer a threat because of this, throwing everyone who can't claim this (including themselves, historically) under a bus in the process. So does that mean they were a threat before? And if so, how is someone else supposed to know whether they're post-op, or on hormones that have led to ED?

It all boils down to the notion that someone who is physically capable of rape (in UK law, specifically a real flesh and blood penis penetrating orifices of a non-consenting party) then they should be considered a potential rapist. Furthermore, no form of sexual assault other than 'genetic XY upon genetic XX' actually matters, otherwise even the bathroom police would have to acknowledge that a trans woman is far more likely to be a victim of sexual violence in men's facilities than a perpetrator of it in women's.

It's interesting to watch people attack the BLM movement based on the fallacy that the message is "Only Black Lives Matter" when in fact it's one of "Black Lives Matter, Too" Yet here we have a group clearly with a mission that's "Only Cisgender Women's Lives Matter", and they're getting away with it.

@NicoleCadmium Precisely!