Aile Rodrigues Vieira
Maraisa Lopes

1. Introduction

Joanne Kathleen Rowling (1965-) is a bestselling phenomenon and creator of the Harry Potter (2001-2011) series, whose books frequently appear on bestselling lists around the world. She is also quite prolific on the social network Twitter³, regularly criticizing the persecution of dissenting voices brought into play in the process of signification. Twitter was chosen by her to first voice her views on transgenderness. On December 19, 2019, Rowling wrote a tweet in support of Maya Forstater, who had lost her job after sharing tweets that were deemed transphobic by the company she worked for. After a while of silence on the subject, on June 6, 2020, the author questioned the use of the term ‘people who menstruate’ in an article that intended to include men and non-binary transgender people who also menstruate. Later, she wrote a series of tweets justifying her position and reinforcing the statement “sex is real” (Rowling, 2020).

Considering that, this research analyses J. K. Rowling’s aforementioned tweets concerning transgender people, published in the timespan from 2019 to 2020. The theoretical device lies in Materialistic Discourse Analysis (hereafter MDA), focusing on the works of Pêcheux (1983) and Orlandi (1990) in terms of deepening the relationship between language, subject, and ideology. Also, the writings of Cristiane Dias (2016) and Marie-Anne Paveau (2013) are consulted to discuss discourse in digital environments. Regarding the analytical device, Queer Theory and Transfeminism are pertinent to this study as well, in particular the contributions of Butler (1988), Bagagli (2019) and Nascimento (2021).

Therefore, as a general objective, one intends to analyze how J.K. Rowling's discourse subscribes itself to a transphobic discursive formation through the lens of Materialistic Discourse Analysis. In order to achieve that main goal, this paper presents three specific objectives. Firstly, it analyses the conditions of production surrounding J.K. Rowling's discourse. Secondly, it investigates the way the concepts of women and transgender people are signified by Rowling’s discourse, putting it in relation/distance to the lens of Transfeminism. Lastly, the paper discusses key Materialistic discourse analysis in digital ecosystems concepts such as technodiscursive forms and corpography.

Regarding the justification, it is crucial to inform that one of the authors of this paper is a transgender person who lives in Brazil, the country with the highest number of murders of trans people in the world, according to Trans Murder Monitoring (2021). This in no way diminishes the scientific character of this research, since, according to Pêcheux, "the process of the production of knowledge operates through the taking of positions ('demarcations', etc.) for scientific objectivity" (1982, p. 142; author's italics and quotes). Orlandi (2020) agrees with Pêcheux when commenting that the analysts themselves are involved in the interpretation, so that there is a necessity to apply a theoretical device to mediate the object of analysis and the analyst. In this article, MDA presents itself as this mediation since, on a personal level, this theme is embedded in the reality of one of the subject-enunciators who produces the text.

Also, academically, even though many researchers use J.K. Rowling's online expositions as a corpus, most studies are based on Critical Discourse Analysis (or Anglo-Saxon Discourse Analysis). In this way, this research intends to differentiate itself from others by using Materialistic Discourse Analysis to delve further into its corpus and offer a new perspective on this subject to the academic community.

2.Research methodology

The research field of Materialistic Discourse Analysis does not have an inflexible or finished methodological procedure. This occurs because it is the effects of particular meanings, coming from a particular corpus, selected and studied by an analyst (this one, also, a particular one) that will require the handling of certain theories and concepts (Silva; Araújo, 2017). It is possible, however, to outline some key points in materialistic-oriented discourse analysis.

In fact, all MDA research “has a qualitative-interpretative character”⁴ (Silva; Araújo, 2017, p. 20). Thus, the focus of the analysis could not be quantitative, since the analyst's interest is not to exhaust a database. In addition, the aim is to treat these data as doors to spaces that need to be deepened, “with their memory, their semantic thickness, their linguistic-discursive materiality”⁵ (Orlandi, 2020, p. 65). This research also adopts, therefore, a qualitative-interpretative character, as it does not seek to list all of J.K. Rowling’s writings but rather proposes to analyse five of her tweets regarding transgender people that were the most impactful in their ecosystem (Twitter).

In order to do that, this paper dedicates a section to describe the corpus’ conditions of production. Specifying the conditions of production is essential for the analysis, as they constitute the past and the immediate of what was said. According to Orlandi (2020), in a strict sense, the conditions of production encompass the enunciation circumstances, and in a broad sense, present the socio-historical and ideological context accompanying the enunciation. Thus, it is presented the conditions in which the tweets by J.K. Rowling were written, as well as the historical framework on how trans identity has been seen and treated in the past and present, through the lens of transfeminism.

Discursive memory is a concept generally used in order to become familiar with the enunciations studied in the analyses. Also known as interdiscourse, discursive memory is constituted as a “network of said and unsaid, of silences”⁶ (Mariani, 2019, p.282). It deals, therefore, with the dynamics of the pre-constructed (Pêcheux, 1982), that is, the evocation of meanings that have long been established and that play a role in what is being enunciated. As this memory is historical and not psychological (Brandão, 2012), it is necessary to point out the discursive memory to which the specific discursive formation is associated, in other words, what was the ‘already-said’ that contributed to what was said now. In the case of this research, the study of discursive memory refers to the ways in which inscriptions in transphobic discursive formations have historically been presented and how these past enunciations are summoned to constitute the new ones that form the corpus of this work.

3.Theoretical background

Materialistic Discourse Analysis focuses on the practical use of language, considering how humans signify and are signified by it (Orlandi, 2020). Unlike Linguistics, MDA incorporates subjects and ideologies into its study of language (Souza, 2006). Psychoanalysis and Historic Materialism, which emerged in the late 19th century, provided foundational concepts for MDA, such as subjectivity and ideology (Lopes, 2009; Pêcheux, 1982). Also, Marxist theory provided MDA the important concept of ideology that “supplies 'each subject' with his 'reality' as a system of evident truths and perceived-accepted-suffered meanings” (Pêcheux, 1982, p. 113).

Foucault (1986, p. 135) defines discourse as "a set of statements that are based on the same discursive formation"⁷, while Pêcheux expands this to include the subject's position within interpellating ideologies (Pêcheux, 1982). Discourse is seen, therefore, as a social practice influenced by power, ideology, and identification, with language serving as its materiality (Pêcheux, 2008, 2014; Orlandi, 2020). This understanding places language in a historical and political context, emphasizing its role in shaping social and historical networks.

3.1 Materialistic discourse analysis and digital discourses

The materiality of discourse is crucial for MDA, with recent academic focus on the digital realm. According to Cristiane Dias (2016), “the digital is a field of discursivities that constitute space, subject and meaning, knowledge, with its own materiality” (Dias, 2016, p. 18)]. Social networks, within this digital landscape, serve as discourse devices facilitating interactions (Paveau, 2013). This specificity of digital discourse is pertinent to this study, given its reliance on Twitter as the corpus.

Marie-Anne Paveau (2013) defines a tweet as

a natively produced statement online on the microblogging platform Twitter. The tweet appears in the timeline (TL) of the tweeter's subscribers, which is its first production context. The tweet is a complex plurisemiotic production strongly contextualized in a technodiscursive ecosystem (Paveau, 2013).

For this author, it is important to specify the elements that constitute the production and use of the social network, as they are imperative for the analysis of any discourse presented through it.

Paveau (2013) also comments that linguists, when researching digital discourses in blogs, usually extract the main text and exclude comments and metadata. This approach “poses significant challenges for the design and understanding of social media discourse”⁸. In agreement, Oulebsir-Oukil (2022, p. 151-152) explains that it is necessary to redefine linguistic studies in order “to build an appropriate framework that allows the integration of technical elements with linguistic and discursive elements”⁹. Since it’s not its objective to exhaust interpretations, this article does not consider all the elements that are specific to the tweet or its ecosystem. Nonetheless, there are considerations about some symbolic elements that constitute the interface of a social network, as well as its interactional possibilities.

3.2 Queer theory and materialistic discourse analysis

Considering the previous background, recent studies have been taking MDA in directions that were initially unexplored, as it is the case of discourse analysis that uses, in addition to the scholarships mentioned earlier, Queer Theory. In the 1990s, Queer Theory was understood to be structured debates about matters of lesbian and gay identities, both within and outside the academy (Jagose, 1996). Since then, this area of study has also expanded to include discussions on gender and transgenderness, proposing that gender roles “are social constructs and, therefore, open to questioning, subversion, and self-construction” (Nagoshi; Brzuzy, 2010, p. 434). This actualized form of thinking favors the creation of many ramifications in queer studies.

One of the ramifications of queer studies is transfeminism. Bagagli (2019, p. 18) states that the “interests of women and transgender people are already previously contained in the ‘classic’ feminist agenda”. Considering that and according to Nascimento (2021), transfeminism emerges between queer theory and feminism as a possibility to rethink the relations between sex-gender-desire in order to overcome universalities and essentialisms that limit the freedom of gender performance, focusing on plural womanhood. In this sense, in agreement with Preciado (2014), transfeminism as part of queer theory intends to “shake up the technologies of sex and gender writing”¹⁰ (Preciado, 2014, p. 27), offering an even more disruptive point of view to queer theory.

MDA is of fundamental importance for queer studies because, as stated by Griffey (2009), “queer theory is an exercise in discourse analysis. It takes the significance of words and the power of language very seriously” (Griffey, 2009, p. 7). Specifically, MDA can be accessed to analyse language uses that end up invalidating and/or hurting the queer community. In this sense, recently, some work has been carried out focused on how mainstream media portray trans reality (Barbosa, 2020) and even on analyses of political discourses that reinforce gender stereotypes (Azevedo; Filgueiras, 2019). In fact, the queer theory researchers consulted in this paper start from the concept of an unintentional subject, that is, they do not consider that any speeches originate in their enunciators, but, on the other hand, they are enunciated by subjects crossed by history and ideologies. This shows the possibility of the union between the Materialistic Discourse Analysis theory and Queer theory, as well as it makes the intimate relationship between queer experiences and language explicit.

4.Archive constitution

For Pêcheux (1994), the archive encompasses the "field of relevant and available documents on an issue" (Pêcheux, 1994, p. 57). Thus, in MDA, a careful pre-selection of the archive is crucial. Aiub (2012) explains that this pre-selection involves “a reading that reveals whether certain documents refer to one theme or another. Various types of archives may exist” (Aiub, 2012, p. 65). Hence, the initial step in materialistic discourse analysis is to select documents aligned with the researcher's objectives.

It is essential to note, however, that digital media is not just a new frame for discourse but, moreover, a place that proposes specific elements for analysis. The concept of archive has evolved with the advent of Web 2.0, as digital media reshape discourse (Dias, 2016). Paveau (2013) introduces the notion of discursive technology, which encompasses the processes linking language to technological environments. Thus, the archive in digital discourse analysis considers the digital ecosystem's complexity (Dias, 2016).

In aligning the archive thematically, the initial reading targeted J.K. Rowling's tweets related to transactivism and women’s social position, forming a suitable corpus for analysis. Clippings were made based on the author's direct speeches, ecosystem repercussions, and representativeness of meanings.

The initial archive clipping identified chronologically relevant topics for this research. J.K. Rowling's potential alignment with transphobic discourse could be inferred as early as March 2018, evidenced by her actions such as liking a tweet that disparaged trans women or following an openly anti-trans account in June 2019. However, only the first five tweets explicitly expressing her views on transgenderism were chosen for this study's corpus. These include: a tweet supporting Maya Forstater (December 19, 2019), a tweet critiquing an article humorously (June 6, 2020), and a thread of three tweets where the author elaborates on her perspective (also on June 6, 2020, following backlash from earlier tweets). The immediate contexts of these tweets will be discussed in the section on conditions of production.

The representativeness of these five tweets guided the corpus selection. Clipping an archive should "mobilize [its] regularity" (Aiub, 2012, p. 74). Hence, including only these five tweets was essential because they encapsulate recurring themes in her tweets. For instance, the statement 'sex is real' is introduced in these tweets and only briefly reiterated later. Notably, the thread from June 6, 2020, offers a more refined 'justification' compared to her other online expressions.

The third reason for clipping this archive was the repercussion those first five tweets had. As already mentioned, according to Paveau (2013), the technical environment needs to be considered when analysing technodiscourses. Thus, the concept of 'repercussion' refers to a technical element of this specific ecosystem (Twitter), as it is measured through the large number of likes, retweets and comments that a tweet had. As a public figure, many of J.K. Rowling's tweets show great engagement, and in this case, two clippings were superimposed: from the tweets on the topic of 'transgenderness', those with the greatest engagement were selected.

5.Conditions of production

In order to understand the conditions of production of the discourse analysed in this research, it is essential to present the socio-historical moment in which the tweets were published. Starting from the idea that “all discourse is outlined in the relationship with others: present sayings¹¹ and sayings that are lodged in memory”¹² (Orlandi, 2020, p.43), it is possible to point out that the statements that theoretically systematize the exclusion of trans women from ‘womanhood’ date back to the 1970s. The book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979), published by Janice Raymond, develops many arguments that will be used in the following decades to explain the persecution of trans women, establishing “a precedent for radical anti-trans (or critical of gender and/or transsexuality) feminism”¹³ (Bagagli, 2019, p. 24). The main point defended in the book is the non-existence of trans people, since, according to Raymond (1979), people who identify as transsexual/transgender, in reality, suffer from a serious psychological disorder and, even more alarming, are instruments (and, eventually, agents) of a patriarchal society that seeks to erase the meaning of 'being a woman'.

A specific group of feminists who joined these ideas were named ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists’, or TERFs, from 2008 onwards (Hines, 2013). According to Bagagli (2019, p.24), this group has “feminist positions that are critical or hostile to the inclusion of transgender issues in feminism”¹⁴, although they consider the term TERF erroneous and call themselves ‘gender critical’. Under this name, they look to place the focus of the discussions elsewhere, seeking to differentiate themselves from trans activism (and other feminisms) by nullifying their extensive criticism of the gender category (Ahmed, 2016). Exposures of TERF ideas continue to gain traction in the 2000s, as “social conservatives and other groups that oppose transgender rights and gender-affirming health care have increasingly taken to amplifying TERF voices” (Serano, 2018, s.p.). In relation to these expositions, Stryker and Bettcher (2016, p. 5) “understand that the current wave of anti-transgender rhetoric is a reaction to recent gains for transgender human and civil rights”.

In recent years, trans people have, in fact, acquired more political rights. Specifically, in the United Kingdom, the geographic location where J. K. Rowling's tweets came from, trans people have been able to rectify names and sex markers on birth certificates since the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) of 2004. More recently, in 2017, the First Minister Theresa May designed a reform of the GRA. This proposal arose with the aim of facilitating rectifications, since medical approval is required for the change to occur, making the process invasive, bureaucratic, time-consuming, and expensive (Hines, 2013). This debate was not well received by TERFs, who argued that legally rectifying the sex markers of trans people would facilitate violence against cis women, opening up the possibility for men to invade their spaces. This clash led to “a new trans-exclusive feminist movement in the United Kingdom that also expanded rapidly online through digital platforms, such as Twitter” (Pearce; Erikainen; Vincent, 2020, p. 679).

In fact, Twitter has become an important platform for discussing various social topics in recent years. Dias (2016, p. 10) points, “since 2004, to a change in the world’s discursivity”¹⁵, which today she calls “digitalization of the world”¹⁶. This digitalization shifts the subjects' practice to another material form, in a process that presents a new historical background for meanings. TERF discussions are not left out of this process, with several communities “visibly concentrated on several social media sites including Reddit (r/gendercritical) and Twitter, as well as independent forums, under the moniker of 'gender-critical'” (Lu, 2020, p. 6). It is in this historical moment that the immediate events that preceded J. K. Rowling's tweets are inserted.

The first tweet about J.K. Rowling's trans issues was published on December 19, 2019, in support of Maya Forstater. After making statements on Twitter considered transphobic by the company she worked for, Forstater did not have her contract renewed. She challenged this decision at the Central London Employment Tribunal and exposed her situation, also on Twitter, gaining the support of TERF communities present on the social network. J. K. Rowling showed her support by using the hashtag 'IStandWithMaya' at the end of her tweet.

On June 6, 2020, J.K. Rowling once again commented on trans-related issues, specifically on the use of trans-inclusive language. On that day, she commented on the title of the report “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” (Sommer; Kamowa; Mahon, 2020), questioning why the authors did not just use the term 'woman ' instead of 'people who menstruate'. This tweet received a backlash in the comments, with users commenting that the term covered trans men and non-binary people who also menstruate and criticizing her stance, deemed transphobic. In response to criticism, J. K. Rowling published a thread denying that her statements were transphobic and justifying that not considering sex as something real would erase the reality of women around the world.

6.Perspectives of ‘being a woman’

Given the following discursive sequence presented in the first tweet published on June 6th, 2020, in a first analysis movement, it is possible to comment on the discursive memory related to the imaginary of what it means to be a woman.

Figure 1: J. K. Rowling's tweet from June 6th, 2020 (Tweet 1)¹⁷

Source: Twitter (2019) – Screenshot made by Rodrigues (2023)

According to Orlandi (2020, p. 31), discursive memory (or interdiscourse) is “what speaks before, elsewhere, independently”¹⁸. One of the sayings that historically constitute the notion of women is that they are ‘individuals who menstruate’, departing, therefore, from the dominant discourse on gender “based on a biologicalist/scientist conception [that] presents universals about what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman” (Brum; Ernst-Pereira, 2014, p. 47). This dominant discourse, however, does not consider the update that occurs in the concept of woman when reflecting on trans experiences.

A non-biological/scientist conception of gender gains arguments from the feminist movement itself, especially from the book The Second Sex (1949), by Simone de Beauvoir. In the work, the author argues that people are socialized to fit into historically pre-existing gender roles, attributing to culture an intense agency over ‘being a woman’. Butler (2003) broadens this idea by proposing that gender would be a type of performance whose repetition of acts socio-historically considered feminine or masculine would crystallize an appearance of naturalness in a process of “repeated stylization of the body” (Butler, 2003, p. 59). Thus, in this context, gender would not be something biologically determined or necessarily culturally constructed, which expands the possibilities of what it means to be a woman in feminism.

In fact, Nascimento (2021) considers the concept of gender as a place of dispute with the power to insert trans women into feminism. Agreeing with Butler (2003) regarding the performativity of gender, she advocates that feminism needs to embrace different ‘womanhoods’ (that is, different ways of constructing and performing womanhood) in order to “break with the origin narratives, with essentialist ideas, carnivalize the borders between the biological and the cultural”¹⁹ (Nascimento, 2021, p. 31). For didactic purposes, this historical network of sayings that recognizes the existence of transgender people and, specifically, considers this actualization of ‘being a woman’ to debate the place of trans women within feminism will be called Transfeminist Discourse Formation (TDF).

According to Orlandi (2020), a large part of the analyst's work consists of observing the conditions of production and functioning of memory in order to refer the saying “to a discursive formation (and not another) to understand the meaning that is said” ²⁰(Orlandi, 2020, p. 45). Since the conditions of production of the tweets, the memory of what it means to be a woman, and the actualization of this concept have already been discussed, it is possible to point out some characteristics of the Discursive Formation in which J. K. Rowling's tweets are inserted as materiality.

The elements that constitute the TERF Discursive Formation (TerfDF) are based on many of the ideas defended in the work of Janice Raymond, such as the strictly biological conception of 'being a woman' (individuals who are born with a vagina), which do not consider the existence of trans people within feminism valid. Thus, the actualization of the concept of woman that was explained in the previous paragraphs is not part of this TerfDF and is, in reality, contrasting with it.

To this discussion one can also add the perspective of denomination, a characteristic tool in the composition of any discursive formation. According to Costa (2012, p. 134), the denomination process “cuts out a region of interdiscourse that, when denominating, it signifies, it produces meaning, and this is installed in a discursive formation”²¹. In other words, naming a phenomenon, a place, a person, or groups of people in one way and not another is part of the organization of a discursive formation. Each word ‘chosen’ over another carries a specific meaning.

In the case analysed, the subject-enunciator uses the word ‘women’ to denote the group of people who menstruate. As Orlandi (1989, p. 42) states, “every denomination entails a silence that the very fact of naming produces”²², which is easily observable in TerfDF, since it not only names the group of people who menstruate exclusively through the perspective of the biologist/scientist already mentioned but also disregards any other possibility of denomination.

Thus, a tweet in which J.K. Rowling associates menstruation only with cisgender women is inserted as a materiality in the TERF Discursive Formation. This occurs because only the biological/scientist perspective that 'only women menstruate' is taken into account, ignoring the existence of people with the biological apparatus capable of menstruation but who identify/perform genders other than feminine, as well as people who identify/perform as women but do not have said apparatus.

7.‘Sex is real’ - or is it?

Other ramifications that the biologist/scientist conception of gender adds to the TERF Discursive Formation are the interchangeability of the terms sex and gender and the constant reaffirmation that sex is something immutable. In Raymond (1994), it is possible to verify statements that start from these assumptions, as is the case of the following one: “I don't accept the fact that someone's desire to be a woman, or a man, makes one a woman or man” (Raymond, 1994, p. 24). Sayings like this have historically been taken up strategically to justify the non-validity of trans people.

One of the strategies for taking up speech is anticipation, which “regulates the argument, in such a way that the subject will say it in one way or another, depending on the effect he intends to have on his listener”²³ (Orlandi, 2020, p. 39). As it is possible to notice in the following tweet and in the other tweets from the thread published on June 6th, 2020, the main argument used in J. K. Rowling's speech is presented in the sentence 'sex is real':

Figure 2: J. K. Rowling's tweet from December 19th, 2019 (Tweet 2)²⁴

Source: Twitter (2019) – Screenshot made by Rodrigues (2023)

It is therefore necessary to scrutinize this proposition to verify what meaning effect it produces, based on the anticipation carried out by the subject.

A proposition, syntactically, consists of a noun phrase and a verbal phrase. Such a structure can serve as materiality for ideological processes, since, according to Brum and Ernst-Pereira (2014, p. 48), “discursively, the proposition is understood as a possible formulation, whose characteristics (must be judged, in logic, for its truth value) provide you with the impression of veracity”²⁵. In other words, the logical way in which the relationship between a subject²⁶ (noun phrase) and an action or state of being (verbal phrase) is posited contributes to the creation of an 'appearance of truth', “linearizing interdiscourse knowledge as if it were always- already-there”²⁷ (Brum; Ernst-Pereira, 2014, p. 48). In this way, the proposition 'sex is real' is presented in J. K. Rowling's tweets as a fact, a truism.

However, considering the contributions of MDA, propositions (and, in reality, any linguistic structure) do not have an intrinsic, natural meaning (Pêcheux, 1982). The analysis of the sentence 'sex is real' cannot result in any literal or obvious meaning because, as materiality, “it is determined by the ideological positions brought into play in the socio-historical process in which words, expressions and propositions are produced” (Pêcheux, 1982, p. 111). Therefore, it is necessary to delve deeper into the socio-historical process related to this specific proposition.

In this sense, according to the immediate conditions of production, the first tweet presents the proposition to describe Maya Forstater's online speeches, pointing out a supposed case of injustice, since it would not be fair to “force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real” (Rowling, 2019). According to the case files at The Employment Tribunal (2019, p. 8), however, in one of the comments that justified her dismissal, she wrote: “I don't think people should be compelled to play along with literal delusions like 'trans-women are women'”. Since the analysed tweet assumes the role of summarizing what was said by Forstater, it is worth commenting on the paraphrastic process present in this case.

For Orlandi (2020), “the paraphrase represents the return to the same spaces of saying. Different formulations of the same sedimented saying are produced”²⁸ (Orlandi, 2020, p.36). In other words, it is the act of saying (meaning) the same thing, even with other words. It is possible, for example, to see that the saying 'gender is solely defined by biological characteristics' (a saying that comes from the imaginary of what gender is) is taken up in Forstater's comment as well as in J. K. Rowling's tweet: different syntactic structures and words, but the same saying. It is in this way that, for Souza (2006, p.90), discursive formations are “a system of paraphrases, being a space in which statements are taken up and reformulated always in an effort to close their limits in search of maintaining their identity”²⁹. Hence, the TERF Discursive Formation remains as a DF from this paraphrastic process.

Thus, the anticipation tool discussed previously allows the expression 'sex is real' to be used as a euphemistic summary of what was actually said, since asserting the factual existence of the biological characteristic 'sex' is less direct (and thus could cause less backlash) than claiming that transgenderism is a 'literal delusion'. Therefore, the meaning effect produced through Rowling's tweet was more euphemized than that produced by Forstater in her comment, although both are affiliated with the TERF Discursive Formation.

The reaffirmation that ‘sex is real’ is taken up in the following tweets:

Figure 3: J. K. Rowling's first thread tweet from June 6th, 2020 (Tweet 3)³⁰

Source: Twitter (2019) – Screenshot made by Rodrigues (2023)

Figure 4: J. K. Rowling's second thread tweet from June 6th, 2020 (Tweet 4)³¹

Source: Twitter (2019) – Screenshot made by Rodrigues (2023)

The focus on the immutability of a scientific fact also shows that the subject-enunciator assumes that such a statement is being questioned. Quite directly, Rowling (2020) states that there is an attempt to erase the concept of sex (Rowling, 2020). However, if the term 'sex' is understood strictly as the genetic constitution of individuals, that is, related to the XY chromosomal differentiation system, the proposition loses its argumentative potential³²: the existence of chromosomal differentiation is not doubted by supporters of the validity of trans people. In fact, some trans people are so aware of the physical effects and social consequences of this differentiation that many resort to hormonal transition. Queer studies also comment that such genetic characteristics are not determinant for gender performance and that, in this contemporary world, it is necessary to “learn to move beyond biology and give ourselves permission to become anything we want to be” (Serano, 2013, p. 39).

In this sense, the following tweet provides reflections on the impact of biological characteristics in relation to the social lives of cisgender women and trans people:

Figure 5: J. K. Rowling's third thread tweet from June 6th, 2020 (Tweet 5)³³

Source: Twitter (2019) – Screenshot made by Rodrigues (2023)

The word ‘female’ references the biologist/scientist perspective mentioned previously, but the phrase “my life has been shaped by being female” (Rowling, 2020) is not so far removed from transfeminist theoretical discussions. According to Nascimento (2021), the vagina has, in fact, an indisputable relevance for the creation of social asymmetries, including within cisgenderity. When born with XX or XY chromosomes, the human body is already discoursed, being called 'girl' or 'boy', and, in many societies, receives different treatment depending on this biological characteristic. However, the author states that a sexual organ is not the only materiality responsible for the sense of what it is to 'be a woman' or 'to be a man', since countless social norms are orchestrated to arrive at these denominations, and, in this way, “conceptualize women based on their sexual anatomy is limiting in the face of the diversity of experiences that define womanhood and femininity”³⁴ (Nascimento, 2021, p. 164).

One of the possible experiences of womanhood is misogyny (although oppression does not entirely define a social group) (Nascimento, 2021). In this sense, Rowling (2020) states, in tweet 4, that she finds the idea that 'women like her' hate trans people nonsense, given that she feels “kinship because they are vulnerable in the same way as women - i.e. to male violence”. The phrase, despite the apparent support for the trans community, separates the realities of trans and cisgender women, as the former do not suffer violence as women but in the same way as women.

Still, in the previous tweet, when addressing trans people, Rowling (2020) states “I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans” (our emphasis). The connective ‘if’ conveys the idea of a condition and the sentence as a whole suggests that such a condition was not met. However, data on violence against trans people, although poorly documented, does exist. In the UK alone, “in the year ending March 2023, 4,732 hate crimes against transgender people were recorded – a rise of 11% on the previous year” (Goodier, 2023, s.p.).

8.Twitter: an ecosystem

As already mentioned, it is essential not to consider only the verbal aspects (logocentric approach) of digital materialities, as is the case with the tweets analysed here. Paveau (2013) considers that it is difficult to carry out an analysis of a corpus coming from web 2.0 and social networks outside their specific ecosystems, since they “are actually native online writings, of a composite nature, because they integrate a technological dimension, and present a logocentric approach considerably reduces the study”³⁵ (Paveau, 2013, p.2). Thus, this section is dedicated to dealing with the ecosystem in which J. K. Rowling's speeches and how meaning effects interact in this specific environment that is Twitter.

The social network Twitter (until the writing of this article) works as a microblog and its users can create posts of written content with up to 240 characters and four media attachments (images, videos or gifs). Other users' posts appear arranged vertically, in a space called timeline. Algorithms consider users' personal interests and engagement metrics to define the order in which posts appear as well as which posts are shown on a given timeline. A post from an account open to the public can get engagement from any other user through:

- liking: in which it is possible to demonstrate approval of the content of a post;

- sharing: where you can send a post to other users on Twitter or other social networks;

- retweeting: in which one can repost a tweet from another user in one’s own timeline;

- bookmarking: in which you can save a post for easy access at another time;

- commenting: in which it is possible to create a post-reply directed to a tweet.

These elements of interaction are called technodiscursive forms (Paveau, 2016) and are precisely what makes digital discourses unique: the processes of meaning occur through characteristic elements of the social network. A gesture of approval can be made through a like, for example. The inscription of subjects in specific discursive formations gains a new perspective on Twitter, where through a retweet it is possible to point out a paraphrastic process. These technodiscursive forms “could not be developed without the input of computers and digital devices. In this, they are truly Internet natives”³⁶ (Paveau, 2016, p. 194).

In this sense, hashtags play an important role in the Twitter ecosystem. For Paveau (2013):

a hashtag is a technomorphem because it has a composite nature: the segment is effectively linguistic (involving acronyms, words, expressions or even entire sentences) but also clickable, as it constitutes a link that allows the creation of a thread (Paveau, 2013, p. 11).

In the case of the tweet published on December 19th, 2019, the hashtag '#IStandWithMaya' is the digital marker that links J. K. Rowling's tweet to Maya Forstater's story, which allows the specific signification of the sentences presented in the tweet. It is from this hashtag that the phrase “But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?” (Rowling, 2019) takes on a specific meaning: even though ‘women’ is a plural, the tweet specifically deals with Forstater’s case and, moreover, presents itself in her defense.

The second hashtag used in that same tweet, ‘#ThisIsNotADrill’ can be seen as an example of the emotive function that these technomorphemes can take. In this case, the hashtag plays an extra role “between the expression of emotion and the enunciative modalization, as it is difficult to distinguish what concerns the psychological description of the user or their enunciative subjectivity”³⁷ (Paveau, 2013, p. 16). That is, the hashtag can be used to directly or indirectly describe feelings and, in this instance, it points to a feeling of concern on the part of the user.

In the following comments, which are responses to the tweet questioning the use of the expression ‘people who menstruate’ in an article, it is possible to see the use of more hashtags:

Figure 5: Comments in J. K. Rowling's first tweet from June 6th, 2020

Source: Twitter (2020) – Screenshot made by Rodrigues (2024)

Both the hashtags ‘thisiswhattranslookslike’ and ‘ImWithRowling’ point to their users’ affiliation as much as the text of their comments. Each of the hashtags, as they are clickable, leads to another list of posts that specifies an entire discursive process, in which it is possible to investigate the conditions of production as well as outline the discursive formations corresponding to the hashtags (what can and cannot be said in the tweet they use them).

Also, from this screenshot of the comments, it is possible to comment on the notion of corpography, developed by Dias (2004, 2016). Corpography is the process of representing the body in digital materiality so that this “inscription of the body in the material form of speech on these social networks takes place through projections of icons, images, gifs, letters, links, hashtags”³⁸ (Dias, 2016, p. 13). An example of corpography can be observed when user @fao1236 attaches an image of himself to his comment. His body becomes part of his online communication through an image available online and associated with his tweet, that is, it becomes part of the enunciation.

8.1 The good and bad subjects on Twitter

When Pêcheux (1982) comments on the concept of reduplication of the subject, dividing it into 'speaker' and 'universal subject', he explains two ways in which these two parts can interact: through superimposition or separation. Superimposition occurs when the speaker “realizes his subjection in the form of the 'freely consented to'” (Pêcheux, 1982, p. 156-157), that is, when the enunciator identifies with the discursive formation of the universal subject. According to Pêcheux (1982, p. 157), “this superimposition characterizes the discourse of the 'good subject' who spontaneously reflects the Subject”. However, Beck and Esteves (2012, p. 141) report that later (1978), Pêcheux “realized that this superimposition or full identification would lead to a full-ego effect, with no place for the instance of the unconscious”³⁹. From this reflection, the discourse of the good subject comes closer to a constant attempt by the speaker to mirror the completeness of the Subject, seeking indefinitely to model it materially (Beck; Esteves, 2012).

On the other hand, in the separation modality, the speaker turns against the universal subject, disagreeing with him. Thus, “the subject, a 'bad subject', a 'trouble-maker', counter-identifies with the discursive formation imposed on it by 'interdiscourse'” (Pêcheux, 1982, p. 157). In other words, the bad subject is the one who recognizes the Subject and the discursive formation to which he is affiliated but, due to other discursive processes (other FDs, for example), enunciates against the Subject. It is this counter-identification that, according to Beck and Esteves (2012, p. 150), causes “a slight discursive displacement in relation to the discourse reproduced in memory”⁴⁰.

In the case of this analysis, J. K. Rowling's tweets can be classified as enunciations of a good subject, given the system of paraphrases presented that points to a search for mirroring the universal Subject of the TerfDF. The comments on these tweets that demonstrate support for J. K. Rowling and/or Maya Forstater through text or through technodiscursive forms, such as hashtags, can also be materialities of good subjects. The second comment on the previous screenshot is an example of this situation, in which the user points out an alleged exclusion of cisgender women in the use of the expression 'people who menstruate', as did Rowling in the analysed tweet. Both subject-enunciators try to mirror the universal subject affiliated with a discursive formation in which one of the possible sayings is that ‘only women menstruate’.

Inversely, there are also bad subjects in the comments on J. K. Rowling's tweets, as is the case with the first comment in the previous screenshot. The user (subject-enunciator) counter-identifies with the universal subject of the TERF discursive formation by stating that menstruation is not exclusive to cisgender women. In this case, also using the corpography process already discussed, the user maintains “a struggle against ideological evidentness on the terrain of that evidentness, an evidentness with a negative sign, reversed in its own terrain” (Pêcheux, 1982, p. 157). Thus, based on the specific relationships of the Twitter ecosystem, it is possible to identify the classic systems for producing meaning effects.

9.Final appointments

Examining J.K. Rowling's tweets showed complex levels of language structures, sayings, and social-historical elements relating to gender and identity discourse. Specifically, regarding the denomination of ‘women’ and the statement "sex is real", her views aligned with TerfDF - a discursive formation that adheres strictly to biological concepts of gender while rejecting transgender individuals in feminist circles. With indirect language to avoid criticism, the corpus of this research reiterated ideas consistent with TerfDF through paraphrastic processes.

In addition, the analysis went beyond considering just the written words in tweets. It also reflected on how Twitter operates as a whole and emphasizes how features like hashtags and retweets influence communication patterns. By participating on this platform, individuals either conform to or challenge commonly accepted ways of talking about certain topics — with user actions contributing to shaping meanings online. The unique environment created by Twitter fosters ongoing debates around different ideas within digital spaces, enabling the categorization of users into good and bad subjects, according to Pêcheux (1982), as well as considering how the concept of corpography (Dias, 2016) presents itself in this ecosystem.

In conclusion, the analysis explained the way in which J.K Rowling's tweets (re)produced a discourse that attempts to erase the existence of trans people based on an identification with a discourse affiliated with a binary (and biological) definition of gender. It also exposed a conflict between conventional, rigid beliefs and progressive, adaptable viewpoints by delving into discourse structures present and exploring communication patterns in the Twitter community.

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Data de Recebimento: 11/02/2025
Data de Aprovação: 16/09/2025

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