Firstly, there is a new cover illustration for Helen at Westfield on Smashwords; if you've gotten the book, feel free to get a new version, with the new cover. If you haven't got the book, please do get it; it isn't terribly dramatic (or maybe it is; I had forgetten everything there was in it), but it is closer to my heart than some of the other books, because it contains Helen's adventures in music, as well as her adventures in the classroom.
I only recently learned that J. K. Rowling had expressed unhappiness about the rights of transgender persons.
Before I had read the essay she had written and posted on her website, I too had begun to think that it is not appropriate to grant to transgender persons every right that they demand. But read Rowling's essay for yourself; it is available on her personal website. It isn't easy reading, because it is nuanced.
Same-sex couples had fought for their rights for many years, and finally won them about a couple of decades ago. Subsequently, transgender people fought for an entire set of rights, some of which were not parallel to the rights of gays and lesbians at all, and they have persuaded authorities to give them all sorts of legal rights.
Firstly, the term 'transgender' can mean many things. Apparently in the north of Britain, a person can merely assert their interest in being considered to be a gender different from that of their birth, and be certified as transgender. Now, I don't know whether that is universally true, but according to J. K. Rowling, it is. And her objection to the matter is that she does not wish to relinquish the right that, let's call them conventional women have had for centuries, to have a protected feminine space, namely the Ladies' Room, into which no one with a penis can obtain entrance.
So much I can completely sympathize with. And now I have to read carefully, and see what rights and privileges various flavors of transgender people are demanding.
Kay
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