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Notes -
I should clarify that what I mean is that it seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance to a person who claims to care about women's issues generally. It's clear why this would be a significant issue for trans activists, but not clear to me why it should be a problem of similar magnitude to women's rights activists in general, as Rowling claims to be.
To put it another way, trans activists care about issues that trans people face. They believe that one of the main issues that trans people face is the fact that elements of society do not recognize them as their chosen gender. They believe that this lack of recognition is expressed in many ways, for example in the prison system, via being compelled to inhabit the prison of their biological sex rather than their chosen gender. They might also believe that i.e. trans women who are made to inhabit men's prisons suffer greatly at an individual level, and care specifically about alleviating the suffering of members of their tribe. Thus it seems clear to me how this issue slots into the greater project of trans activists of having society recognize them as their chosen gender rather than assigned at birth gender.
However, JK Rowling claims to be interested first and foremost in women's rights in general. If she perceived the most important problem facing society to be the potential advancement of trans rights, and thus stated that her main mission was the frustration of the advancement of trans rights, in just the same way that trans activists have as their central mission being pro-advancement of trans rights, it would make sense for her to care about i.e. 'should they be assigned to the prison of their chosen gender or not' just as much as trans activists do but in an equal and opposite sense. But JK Rowling doesn't claim to be an anti-trans-rights-activist, or proclaim that the potential increase in trans acceptance is of significant importance in general. She even claims to be for trans-rights in some sense. What she most specifically claims to be is a feminist, and that her main mission is women's rights in general. Yet, she makes an almost disproportionate amount of her online presence and activism about combating these specific areas like trans people being admitted to womens prisons and etc.
A rational person who cared most about women's rights but did not specifically support some areas of trans-rights would still not spend as much time caring or thinking about these specific trans issues as Rowling does: there are bigger fish to fry facing women even in her home country, but especially around the world.
It reminds me to an old shibboleth called "voting against your interests". The story went all these poor rednecks vote Republican, but Republicans push through pro-business policies, while Democrats would have pushed through welfare, therefore the poor rednecks are voting against their interest. Well, I don't think people should get to claim what is and isn't a miniscule in the name of another group, if the group is loudly claiming otherwise.
What you did here ended up being a bit of a sleight-of-hand. Trans women in prison are a specific issue for both sides, but by slipping in "not being recognized as their chosen gender" you're trying to claim it's a general issue for trans people. Well, TERFs can do, and do the same by claiming the general issue is oppression by the patriarchy, and putting trans women in women's prisons is just a specific instance of a general problem.
I would imagine that a rational person who cares about trans rights would not spend so much time caring about putting rapists who had a sentencing-day realization they're trans into women's prisons either, yet here we are.
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