J.K. Rowling, British Author and the brains behind the best-selling book series of all time, Harry Potter, is no stranger to the limelight of fame. Having sold over 600 million books worldwide, Rowling is regarded as the richest author in the world, worth a whopping £875m. Recently however, she has been in the media, not for her penning of bestselling novels, but for her writing of incredibly transphobic, bigoted tweets on social media.
Rowling first came under fire in early June 2020 for controversial tweets she posted about the transgender community. The tweet that ‘sparked’ it all, the so called ‘terf’ war, was in response to an article titled:
‘Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate.’
Written to raise awareness of the oppressed- ‘An estimated 1.8 billion girls, women, and gender non-binary persons menstruate’, the headline ‘people who menstruate’ was used as an all encompassing term to include non binary people who these issues also effect. Yet, through her hateful comments, Rowling only served to uphold/further contribute to oppression via her targetting of trans people.
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’ she wrote.
Facing backlash from this (unsurprisingly, it’s a blatant dig at trans people and a total disregard of what the article was actually about- fighting oppression), Rowling then went on to say;
‘I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.’
(June 2020).
^ (Well, that aged badly)…
‘I would rather go to jail than refer to a trans person by their preferred pronouns.’
(October 2023).
Is Rowling going to march with trans people against her own discrimination, for which her prejudice (see also: bigotry) seemingly worsens with each passing day?…
On Sunday (03/03/24), Rowling posted several comments on X complaining about trans women being allowed in female locker rooms after a man who was caught secretly filming women told police, upon being arrested, that he ‘identifies as a woman.’
‘It’s happened again’, Rowling wrote on X. ‘That thing only evil, nasty bigots claim happens, and that never, ever happens, has happened. Again.’
Again.
That evil, nasty bigot (Rowling) is at it again… Stereotyping all transgender people as predators based on the actions of a minority within a minority.
Kurtis Mawson (the man arrested for filming in women’s toilets) was not transgender. Caught red handed, he used being trans as a ‘get out of jail free’ card (a get out of jail free card which didn’t work, because he is not trans). Any excuse to take aim at transgender people though, Rowling has ran with this story to deliberately* spread further hate against trans people…
*Because it is deliberate, don’t be mistaken. Rowling knows exactly what she’s doing, and has been contacted by several charities to inform her of this in the off chance that she didn’t… No excuses, she is spreading hate for the sake of being hateful.
A post from Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights group;
‘I have spoken with J.K. Rowling to express my profound disappointment that she has chosen to use her remarkable gifts to create a narrative that diminishes the identity of trans and nonbinary people, undermining the validity and integrity of the entire transgender community — one that disproportionately suffers from violence, discrimination, harassment, and exclusion and, as a result, experiences high rates of suicide, suicide attempts, homelessness, and mental and bodily harm. Trans rights are human rights.’
And Mermaids, a charity advocating for transgender rights;
‘We are aware through our work with families that there have been cases of self-harm and even attempted suicide following J.K.Rowling’s statements. If standing beside trans young people and their families is radical, then please J.K. Rowling, be radical.’
In response to her evident scapegoating (again), in which Rowling insinuated that trans women shouldn’t be allowed in women’s toilets because of the actions of a man claiming to be trans, an X user asked Rowling if she thought ‘this lady should use the men’s locker room?’, with footage of British newsreader India Willoughby attached.
‘You’ve sent me the wrong video’, Rowling replied. ‘There isn’t a lady in this one, just a man revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks ‘woman’ means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist. India didn’t become a woman. India is cosplaying a male fantasy of what a woman is.’
How someone who claims to be the victim of oppression- a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor- can be so nonchalant about deliberately hurling abuse at the oppressed is beyond me…
Even after India responded, ‘Genuinely disgusted by this. Grotesque transphobia. I am every bit as much a woman as JK Rowling. Recognised in law, and by everyone I interact with every day’, Rowling still went on to attack trans identies. Referring to India she said, ‘this is the individual whose precious feelings are more important than truth, according to some of his fellow men.’
She wasn’t lying in her tweet back in October;
‘I would rather go to jail than refer to a trans person by their preferred pronouns…’
India, now 58, talks of knowing at just five years old that ‘something wasn’t right’ in terms of her gender, yet Rowling still refuses to credit her as a woman; ‘HIS fellow men’ (‘his’ meaning India, and ‘fellow men’ meaning transgender women)…
So much hatred does Rowling have towards trans women (always trans women, by the way, never trans men, for biological women transitioning to men don’t fit her narrative of; ‘all trans people are predators’/ ‘they’re all just men claiming a trans identity to access female spaces), that she won’t stop at ‘just’ hating on trans people herself online, if her friends don’t do the same, consider them blocked…
Stephen King, a fellow author, retweeted a tweet from Rowling’s account in 2020, ‘It isn’t hateful for women to speak about their own experiences, nor do they deserve shaming for doing so.’
In response, Rowling sent a now-deleted tweet praising the best-selling author. ‘I’ve always revered @StephenKing, but today my love reached new heights.’
However, when a fan asked King to respond to Rowling’s transgender statements, the author replied that, ‘Trans women are women.’
Wrong answer (according to Rowling, the biggest openly transphobic celebrity there is).
*Blocked.*
Rowlings shameless transphobia doesn’t stop at posting to her 14 million followers on social media either, with her bigotry having even seeped into her work…
What used to be a safe place, a place of comfort for people to get lost within, a different world, is now tinged with the hate that she so vehemently harbours towards the trans community. So much so, in fact, that she has made it [transphobia] the subject of two of her latest books; ‘Trouble Blood’ (2020), in which a cis male serial killer dresses as a woman in order to hunt and murder cis women, and ‘The Ink Black Heart’ (2022), in which a celebrity whose work is accused of being transphobic is threatened with rape and murder and then ultimately stabbed to death in a cemetery.
The same theme runs throughout both of these books, depicting the oppressed (transwomen) as the oppressor, and the oppressor (JK Rowling) as the oppressed. Shifting the blame, (to use Rowlings own, highly uncalled for descriptors of India Willoughby as above, ‘narcissistic, shallow’), Rowlings inability to accept people who are different to herself: a prime example of HER narcissim at play…
Responding to someone asking how she sleeps at night she replied ‘I read my most recent royalty cheques and find the pain goes away pretty quickly.’
‘Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I’ve taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.’
Her ignorance is jarring.
And unfortunately for anyone with an ounce of decency/morals (aka. not J.K. Rowling and her fellow bigots), Rowling is showing no signs of stopping her vile comment spreading anytime soon either, as a Glamour article ‘A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy’ concludes;
‘This post may be updated as new information is available.’
Sorry to say that I think it may…
Portfolio of Hope 