Hi dear readers.

I wanted to do a quick update to assure you that I am still working on this story and I will continue to work on it - my university schedule is currently packed so this is just taking longer than I would like.

I am saddened and angered by JK Rowling's recent twitter rants and the foul 3000 word essay published on her website. I am non-binary and my wife is transgender, along with some of my closest friends, and to feel the palpable disgust emanating from the words of someone whose work was formative to my childhood was a very nasty thing to experience.

Trans women have an average life expectancy of 35 years old. They are targets of hate crimes and murders at wildly disproportionate rates. To be clear, views like JKRs breed the climate where these hate crimes and low life expectancy are acceptable. JKRs words contribute to the view that transwomen are predatory men in dresses and transmen are confused lesbians who are unable to face their same gender attraction. This is damaging and not at all true.

Trans people are not any more or less threatening than any other person. I am not going to say that there are no predatory trans people, but their predatory behaviour has absolutely nothing to do with their transness. To say otherwise is inherently transphobic. Like JKR, I am a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault, and I refuse to use that as justification for being a TERF and marginalising an already intensely oppressed demographic.

Trans women are women. Trans men are men.

I understand not everyone will agree with me but I honestly don't care. Trans rights are human rights and I care more about my wife not dying before she's 35 than what a millionaire transphobe has to say.

Just wanted to be clear that this is my stance. Hopefully I will be back with another chapter very shortly!

~ Maeve