Have our views on gender not changed since 1920s?

Sir, – JK Rowling: Pariah of women or just pariah of the patriarchy?

I ask this question as a transgender man, othered once again by patriarchal ideals because what’s in my trousers doesn’t match that of other men, and I ask: How is reducing womanhood or manhood to what lies between our legs and restricting who we are allowed to be any different to the oppressive views of the 1920s?

Women like JK Rowling and Joanna Cherry may strike a chord with many, but their words echo a very old view, one that champions the same sexbased oppression cis women have faced for millennia.

Is it truly not time yet to end this rhetoric and allow our genders to be something much more than anatomy: who we are, something so personal and important, our identity?

With statistics from the Scottish Prison Service telling us only 17 of 7,436 prisoners serving time in recent years are transgender, and the Office for National Statistics stating trans people are victims of crime in double percentage rates to cis people (28% v 14%), I beg the question – are we truly such a threat it’s better to stand against us than with us?

Rowling’s “doxxing” (publicly revealing previously private personal information about an individual) was terrible, but it happens across the board to many political figures, including a 10-year-old transgender girl in Poland.

Truly it is another practice that needs to end. But divisionary hate does nothing to further that goal for us all, and the cycle will continue unless we stop it.

Only you can decide your path but for us transgender folk, there was no choice. We never made a choice to change, only the choice to openly be ourselves.

Only you have the choice – will you stand with trans people against the patriarchal views of the past, like the cast of Harry Potter themselves have decided or continue to parrot the repackaged oppressive stances that have been used against cis women over and over again?

Marco Winter, Perthshire.