J. K. Rowling

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Joanne Rowling, pen name J(ust) K(idding) RowlingJ. K. Rowling wasn't given a middle name. When choosing to write under initials, she added a "K." after her grandmother, Kathleen. Wikipedia confidently states that her surname is pronounced /ˈroʊlɪŋ/ ROH-ling, but most people ignore this. and sometimes known ashttps://web.archive.org/web/20220815043302/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling the male writer Robert Galbraith,Robert Galbraith is the name under which Rowling writes the Cormoran Strike detective novels for adults. is a British author, prominent TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and Nazi crimes denier. Since becoming a vocal TERF, she has been known among some Harry Potter fans as "she who must not be named"- a reference to a similar moniker for the main antagonist of her magnum opus.JK Rowling now 'she who must not be named' for Harry Potter fans (04/07/2020) Newshub. She went from hailed author of the beloved Harry Potter series to a fallen hero who now spends her time concern trolling and defending transphobia as sacred and untouchable. Rowling, despite being credited with having encouraged a generation to read, supports Moms for Liberty-style bans on LGBT-themed kids' books.Screenshot of a retweet by Rowling of a Twitter thread by anti-trans lobby group SEEN in Publishing.
==Harry Potter series==
Harry Potter, a series of seven (or so) fantasy novels by J. K. Rowling, relates the adventures of a teenage boy and his two best friends who attend a school of "witchcraft and wizardry", learning a whole range of magical skills; fighting Dark Magic and evil; and demonstrates how Alan Rickman got snubbed of another Oscar.Spoilers!
The series portrays Good triumphing over Evil. It became a literary and critical success; nevertheless, fundamentalist religious groups condemn it as a harmful work that will seduce children into the occult and witchcraft. In the United States (the so-called "great land of liberty"), the books became the most challenged of the 21st century (at least, as of 2000–2005).(September 21, 2006). Harry Potter tops list of most challenged books of 21st century, American Library Association Fortunately for Harry Potter fans, magic and witchcraft are only a concern if you're stuck in the 17th century or living in Africa,"The Witch Killers of Africa (2003)". Indonesia, or Papua New Guinea in the present century.
The response to the books represents an excellent example of modern-day fundamentalism and would-be authoritarianism, with numerous attempts to ban the books.
===Commercialisation===
The commercialisation of the Harry Potter series by capitalist industries, especially by Hollywood and the media, has been criticised. Scholar Jack Zipes critiqued the mass commercialisation and corporate hegemony behind the Harry Potter franchise, likening such hegemony to a form of cultural imperialism. In his Adornean analysis of Harry Potter's global brand, Zipes wrote, "It must conform to the standards of exception set by the mass media and promoted by the culture industry in general. To be a phenomenon means that a person or commodity must conform to the hegemonic groups that determine what makes up a phenomenon".Zipes, J. (2002). "Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter". Page 175.
===Themes===
Scholars subject the Harry Potter novels to serious social scrutiny, with studies of the series' political intricacies performed by columnists, professors, and doctoral students alike. As of 2007, the catalog of the Library of Congress recorded 21 volumes of criticism and interpretation; at least seven master's dissertations, and 17 doctoral theses have been devoted to the Harry Potter books. Seriously.Pottering Around, Inside Higher Ed
From the concepts of hierarchy and purity found in the relations between pure-blooded and Muggle-born wizards to the struggle for house-elf freedom, equality is a central theme of the books. It portrays a dishonest, incompetent government and media. It paints war as a great evil in which innocent people die. The school Harry attends, Hogwarts, is multicultural, multiracial, and (seemingly) secular. Some critics, however, called the books patronising and conservative,"Why Harry Potter doesn't cast a spell over me", The Guardian or sexist and neoconservative."Hogwarts is a winner because boys will be sexist neocon boys", The Sunday Times This is odd since Rowling herself was a Labour supporter at time of writing (though she later drifted away from the party).
Unrelated controversies include comparisons to some older book series such as the Howl's Moving Castle and Wizard's Hall (The Worst Witch is the most commented-on), which have resulted in accusations of plagiarism, or (far worse) being derivative. The works feature frumpy and disaster-prone protagonists, a couple of loyal best-friends (one book-smart and rational, one street-smart and slightly problematic), a blond and rich but cowardly and rather inefficient rival, a scary and seemingly unfair potions-teacher with hidden depths, a childish headmaster with a penchant for candy, and a big bad-guy who desires the destruction of the protagonist after their fateful first encounter. Whether this is more than just a re-hashing of tropes is a matter of debate. Some fans, especially older ones, also believe that Rowling's later additions to the franchise are inferior to the original seven novels, with some outright comparing her work to that of George Lucas on the later Star Wars films,Farrow, Max. "J.K. Rowling Is Turning Into George Lucas." ScreenRant, 25 November 2018 (recovered 30 April 2019). though one could hardly throw a rock within geek culture without running into similar complaints regarding one particular franchise or another.
Rowling is a Christian herself. The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, contains an epigraph from the Gospels (), Harry's parents' gravestones display another Bible quote (), and Rowling also has a scene where Harry sacrifices his own life and is resurrected and then proceeds to save everybody.We're kind of over-exaggerating a bit, because it's implied in the final epilogue that he lived a fairly normal life after that. However, in a 2007 interview Rowling said she "did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity" and the books were praised by people of various religions.Nancy Gibbs (December 19, 2007). "Person of the Year 2007 / Runners-Up / J.K. Rowling". TIME.
==Fundamentalist hysteria==
Being a fantasy franchise centered around magic and portraying wizards and witches as heroes, this naturally freaked the living shit out of the world's religious zealots (mainly Evangelicals and right-wing Catholics) during the late 90s and early 2000s,inspiring a whole slew of deranged conspiracy theories. You see, Harry Potter (the religious nuts claim) is secretly a sinister plot to brainwash our precious children into the occult and make them worship its titular protagonist as the Antichrist. Most Flocks of religious leaders (plus Jack Chick) have fulminated against the series.
Note, however, many moderate and some evangelical Christians have spoken in favour of the books. The Catholic Church has no official position, but its Popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, gave a positive and negative review, respectively, both in 2003 (though the latter was before he became Pope).(February 3, 2003). "Pope sticks up for Potter books". BBC Newsround.Elisabeth Rosenthal (July 16, 2005). "Don't count pope among Harry Potter fans". The New York Times. Many of the Church's cardinals also opposed the books, though the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano endorsed one of the films.(July 14, 2009). "Vatican finally gives Harry Potter its blessing". Reuters. It seems that once people make the distinction between fiction and real belief in magic, they can see past any objections to demons and witchcraft to realise what the series supports.
Islamic fundamentalists have denounced the series. The Islamic preacher Sheik Feiz Muhammad regarded the books and films as "Satanic" and claimed they were introducing young children to pagan rituals (like drinking goat blood) which Islam forbids. The esteemed Sheik criticised Muslim parents who allow their children to watch the films or read the books, claiming they were being irresponsible.Harry Potter — Sheik Feiz Muhammad
Furthermore, the drinking of dead animal blood, Satanic human sacrifice, demonic possession, etc. described in the quote at the top of the H.P. section, are actions practised by the book's Wilhelm-screamingVoldemort NYAH NYEAHThough, technically, the scream isn't actually the Wilhelm. antagonist, Lord Voldemort, the murderer of Harry's parents; the books do not exactly present Voldemort as a morally praiseworthy figure.
As to the claims that the books promote witchcraft by teaching impressionable children to cast spells, well… we hate to break it to you, but the spells described in the books don't work in real life, even if you wave a piece of carved wood in the air.
Satirical news source The Onion, in its inimitable style, once ran a spoof of the fundamentalists' claims, saying that children were converting to Satanism because of the books.Avada Kedavra, bitches! As if to prove their idiocy to anyone yet unconvinced, the fundies took the article as proof that they were right.Harry Potter and Satanism, Snopes.
==Secular criticism of Harry Potter==
====Goblins as an antisemitic trope====
In the Harry Potter novels, goblins are a short, humanoid race with "swarthy" skin and "dark, slanting eyes." They run Gringotts, the sole banking institution in the wizarding world. They're characterized as shrewd, secretive, and untrustworthy. The films give them hooked noses and pointed ears.
Critics link them to antisemitic caricatures of the Evil Jew and conspiracy theories about Jews secretly controlling the world's financial system.Peter Dendle, "Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts: Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter, in Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter (2008), page 165Jackie C. Horne, "Harry and the Other: Answering the Race Question in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter, The Lion and the Unicorn (2010), 34(1)Madelyn Travis, Jews and Jewishness in British Children's Literature (2013), page 5Daniel Levy & Avichai Snir, "Potterian economics", Oxford Open Economics, Volume 1 (2022) In 2001, a reader letter to The New York Times called out the paper's review of the first film, charging that it failed to identify the "goblin bankers" as a "thinly veiled representation of Jewish stereotypes."T. Gossett, "Readers Comment on 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'," The New York Times, 26 November 2001 Writing in the literary journal The Lion and the Unicorn in 2010, Jackie C. Horne held that the goblins' features "mark them as physically other," while their role as bankers distinguishes them as "morally suspect" and a "modern-day embodiment of the stereotype of the Jewish moneylender or perhaps even an Italian Mafiaso." Daniel Levy and Avichai Snir, in the journal Oxford Open Economics, note that the films' goblins, in particular, have been condemned for their "acquiline noses and greedy-looking faces, similar to the cartoons that were used to depict stereotypical bankers and financiers in Europe in the late 19th century."
This criticism gained new traction in 2022 after it came up during a discussion on Jon Stewart's podcast:The Problem With Jon Stewart: The Problem With Goblins: J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter, & JewsIndieWire: Jon Stewart Slams J.K. Rowling for Anti-Semitic Goblins in 'Harry Potter' Series"Variety: Jon Stewart Calls Out J.K. Rowling’s Anti-Semitic Goblins in 'Harry Potter' Franchise
Stewart later clarified that these remarks were intended as a "lighthearted conversation" and that he was "not accusing J. K. Rowling of being antisemitic."NBC News: Jon Stewart clarifies comments he made about depiction of goblins in 'Harry Potter'
====House-elves and portrayal of slavery ====
One of the most understated parts of the book series is the portrayal of slavery and abolitionism. One of the main characters, Hermione Granger, seeks to abolish slavery and is mocked for it. The enslaved group, the house elves, are portrayed as comic relief and themselves show hostility to the only slave who sought freedom.Harry Potter and the problematic slavery parable Thankfully, this portrayal of slavery is almost completely removed from the films, with only Dobby (appearing only in Chamber of Secrets — in which he's freed from the Malfoys — and Deathly Hallows — in which he dies) and Kreacher (where any mentions of Harry owning him are scrapped) making any appearances, likely as a result of the screenwriters noticing "Hey, this part's kinda weird." Though, a page about the pros and cons of slavery made an appearance on the official Pottermore website in 2017, exploring "both sides of the argument". The page concluded "The trouble with S.P.E.W. [Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare] is that Hermione wants it all and wants it now."(September 20, 2017). "To S.P.E.W. or not to S.P.E.W.: Hermione Granger and the pitfalls of activism". Pottermore.
===="Dumbledore is gay" and queer-baiting====
In 2007, at a fan event a few months after the release of the last Harry Potter book, Rowling revealed that she "always thought of Dumbledore as gay."Devan Coggan (March 19, 2019). "J.K. Rowling's long history of discussing—but not depicting—Dumbledore's sexuality". Entertainment Weekly.The Leaky Cauldron: J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals Dumbledore is Gay, dated to Oct 20, 2007BBC News: JK Rowling outs Dumbledore as gay, dated Oct 20, 2007 The revelation drew praise from fans and the LGBT community at the time, but predictably angered the Religious Right.The Christian Post: Conservatives Urge Ban on 'Harry Potter' Over Witchcraft, Homosexuality, dated Oct 30, 2007 Many fans later became more critical, viewing it as a cop-out when she could have made it more explicit in the books.The Daily UW: Sex positions: Fishing for a queer audienceEsquire: J.K. Rowling Wants You To Know How Gay Dumbledore Really Was The Fantastic Beasts prequels in particular drew fire for ambiguously portraying Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald.Insider: LGBT backlash against Fantastic Beasts, dated to Feb 2, 2018SBS: Rowling omitting Dumbledore being gay is a slap in the face to her queer fans, dated to Mar 19, 2019Insider: Fantastic Beasts director says movie will not address Dumbledore being gay, dated to Jan 31, 2018 It was eventually made unambiguous in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) — fifteen years after the original revelation.Kertész Dzsenifer (August 18, 2022). "Homosexuality in Harry Potter—the Historic Moment". qLit.
Rowling stated in a 2008 interview that, after being made an "utter fool" and "[losing] his moral compass completely" through his love for wizard supremacist Grindelwald, Dumbledore "became quite asexual" and "led a celibate and a bookish life."MuggleNet, "New interview with JK Rowling," 9 March 2008 Critics have linked this to the "hate the sin, love the sinner" framework of anti-gay conservatives, which accepts gay people so long as they renounce their "sinful" desires and never act on them.Demisexual and Proud: Albus Dumbledore, J.K. Rowling’s Ex-Gay Prof. Catherine Tosenberger wrote in 2008, "Dumbledore also arguably fits into the category of the 'safely contained' homosexual, as he is both elderly (and therefore presumably celibate) and dead."Catherine Tosenberger, "Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts: Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction", Children's Literature, volume 36 (2008) Tosenberger elsewhere wrote: though it might "smack of ageism," it spared "squeamish readers" from having to "confront the threatening specter of a sexually active gay male body."Catherine Tosenberger, "'Oh my God, the Fanfiction!': Dumbledore's Outing and the Online Harry Potter Fandom", Children's Literature Association Quarterly (2008), 33(2) Victoria Vestić wrote in 2018 that, because Dumbledore's teenage sister died in the crossfire of his parting duel with Grindelwald, he "does not pursue other homosexual relationships until his death." Thus he's "punished by the narrative for not sacrificing his homosexuality" in service to the heteronormative family ideal, but offered redemption by "dedicat[ing] his life to the protection of other's children" as Hogwarts' headmaster.Victoria Vestić, "Harry Potter, Heteronormativity and Pronatalism – the Villain as the Antinatalist", Journal of the International Symposium of Students of English, Croatian and Italian Studies (2018) In 2018, Prof. Thomas Crisp said gay readings of Dumbledore mean the "sole depiction of a gay male in this series is of a sensitive man with a flamboyant sense of style and a penchant for fashion, a man whose love for another man is the great tragedy of his life."Thomas Crisp, "Beyond Harold and Dumbledore: (Re-)considering Children's Books Depicting Gay Males", Journal of LGBT Youth (2018), 15(4)
Dumbledore/Grindelwald isn't the only time that Rowling has been accused of "queer-baiting". Early in the fandom's history, some readers saw evidence of subtextual gay romance between Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, citing canonical details like their joint Christmas gift to Harry in the fifth book.The Paris Review: Harry Potter and the Secret Gay Love StoryVanity Fair: Why J.K. Rowling's Latest Apology Is Even More Meaningful than It Seems In 2004, when asked at a book festival if Harry had a godmother, Rowling said his godfather Sirius had been "too busy being a big rebel to get married."J K Rowling at the Edinburgh Book Festival, 15 August 2004 However, with the release of the sixth book the following year, Lupin was shoehorned into a heterosexual romance with Nymphadora Tonks.The Print: JK Rowling has always been tone-deaf. Just look at the Harry Potter UniverseTN2 Magazine: Not-So-Fantastic Queerbaiting And Where To Shove Your Bad Racial Politics" Some fans saw this as Rowling deliberately shutting down the possibility of canonical queer romance, particularly since Tonks, a pink-haired shapeshifter, has also been interpreted by some as genderqueer or lesbian. In Deathly Hallows (2007), Harry visits Sirius Black's teenage bedroom and sees "posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls", seen by fans as another example of Rowling imposing heteronormativity. In 2016, Rowling peevishly denied that Sirius Black was gay in response to a Twitter inquiry, prompting upset fans to launch the hashtag "#JKRowlingIsOverParty" (this was before the first rumblings of her descent into transphobia).Screenshots of the original questions and Rowling's reply.Digital Spy: #JKRowlingIsOverParty kicks off in protest of a Harry Potter character's sexuality and a Wizarding War eruptsHuffPost: JK Rowling Sirius Black Sexuality Twitter Profile 'Answers' Lead To 'Ton Of Abuse' For Harry Potter Author Prof. Tosenberger wrote that Sirius's character arc in Order of the Phoenix (2003) follows the "trope in early gay-themed YA literature that homosexual characters must be 
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) renewed queer-baiting and accusations.Vox: The Harry Potter universe still can't translate its gay subtext to text. It's a problem.The Guardian: Harry Potter and the Possible Queerbaiting: why fans are mad over a lack of gay romanceLogo: Harry Potter and the Relentless Queerbaiting: Why Won't The Magical Closet Be Unlocked The play, written by Jack Thorne based on a story outline by Rowling, centers on the friendship of Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy (sons of Harry and Draco, respectively). Vox commented that "sexual subtext hovers at the edges of Albus and Scorpius' interactions," with the "poorly written" female characters serving as "shameless props for the giant, flashing ' sign that the play hangs over the two boys' heads"; and that the boys' interest in the girls seemed to have been "added as an afterthought" in "underdeveloped, unconvincing moments." A 2018 Logo review saw Scorpius and Albus as "secret lovers with all of the subtext and none of the follow through." The play's script was eventually reworked in 2021 to remove the references to female love interests and add new dialogue suggesting romantic feelings on Albus's part.Los Angeles Times: Commentary: A ‘Harry Potter’ play claimed to be a family affair. After major changes, it finally isPride.com: This Harry Potter Character Is Even Gayer in Cursed Child RevampThe Guardian: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: is the shorter, one-part play better?
Rowling explicitly shut down a fan theory that dragon-keeper and confirmed bachelor Charlie Weasley is gay. In the 2007 documentary J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life, she was directly asked if Charlie was gay after dropping the Word of God that and replied, "Um, no, I don't think Charlie's gay. Just more interested in dragons than women."MuggleNet: Asexual Awareness: Protect Charlie Weasley at All Costs
====Werewolves as an AIDS metaphor====
In the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Remus Lupin is introduced as a new Hogwarts professor, proving to be a competent instructor and supportive mentor to Harry. It's eventually revealed that Lupin's mysterious monthly absences are due to lycanthropy. For a time, Lupin keeps his condition secret with the aid of sympathetic headmaster Dumbledore by sequestering himself away from students every full moon. Ultimately, he forgets to take a special potion and nearly attacks Harry, revealing his condition to the wizarding world. He is forced to resign as a teacher amid angry protests from parents.
In Half-Blood Prince (2005), Lupin reveals he was bitten as a child by Fenrir Greyback, who he describes as the "most savage werewolf alive today." Greyback, unlike most werewolves who attack in a state of uncontrolled frenzy, knowingly plans and stalks his victims in advance. He "specialises in children," following a philosophy of "bite them young … and raise them away from their parents, raise them to hate normal wizards." Greyback hopes to "bite and to contaminate as many people as possible" to create a werewolf army and "overcome the wizards." In Deathly Hallows (2007), Lupin volunteers to join Harry on his quest. Harry accuses Lupin, having hastily-married the expectant Tonks, of abandoning his wife and child-to-be. Lupin calls the marriage a "grave mistake" and worries that he has made Tonks an "outcast." He castigates himself for having "knowingly risked passing on [his] own condition to an innocent child." He says that, even if the child isn't born a werewolf, it will be better off "without a father of whom it must always be ashamed." Tonks and Lupin later reconcile. Their son Teddy is born without lycanthropy, but is orphaned when they die fighting Voldemort.
Rowling first revealed that she'd used lycanthropy as a metaphor for HIV/AIDS in 2008 while testifying in her lawsuit against Harry Potter Lexicon creator Steven Vander Ark:Transcript of the first day of testimony in Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books
This explanation was also given in a supplementary biography of Lupin written by Rowling and published on the site Pottermore in 2015:J. K. Rowling, "Remus Lupin", Pottermore, 10 August 2015
The AIDS metaphor drew criticism even before its confirmation by Rowling due to the parallels to real homophobic fearmongering.Tison Pugh & David L. Wallace, "Heteronormative Heroism and Queering the School Story in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series", Children's Literature Association Quarterly (2006), 36(3)Phillip A. Bernhardt-House, "The Werewolf as Queer, the Queer as Werewolf, and Queer Werewolves", in Queering the Non/Human (2008)Souvik Datta, "Hijacking the Hysteria: Reading Heteronormativity, Homophobia and a narrative of Queerness into J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels", Lapis Lazuli: An International Literary Journal (2021), 11(1) In 2006, Tison Pugh and David L. Wallace wrote in the journal Children's Literature Association Quarterly that if werewolves "serve as a queer figure within the world of the Harry Potter books, it becomes distressingly apparent that they must then also serve as figures of pederasty and child sexual abuse." They described Fenrir Greyback as "delight[ing] in the pederastic pleasures of preying on children," citing a passage in which he tells Dumbledore "you know how much I like kids." Gay people – particularly gay men – have been accused of "recruiting" young people into homosexuality through seduction or abuse since the post-War era.Heather Murray, Not in This Family: Gays and the Meaning of Kinship in Postwar North America, page 91 Homophobes propagated urban legends and moral panic that HIV was being deliberately spread during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.William A. Rushing, The AIDS Epidemic: Social Dimensions of an Infectious Disease (1995), page 157Christopher R. Fee, Jeffrey B. Webb, American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore (2016), pages 4-6Jeffrey P. Dennis, "'Do You Like Girls Yet?': Heterosexual Presumption, Homophobia, And Pubescence", in Perceiving Gender Locally, Globally, and Intersectionally (2009), page 68 LGBT teachers have long faced public outing and calls for their sacking under the notion they are a threat to children.Janna Marie Jackson, Unmasking Identities: An Exploration of the Lives of Gay and Lesbian Teachers (2007), pages 2-4
==Yer a transphobe, Joanne==
==="Show me one 'transphobic' thing she's said!"===
====TL;DR — "JKR's top hits"====
Long story, but if you want some of the key points…
*Began by oversimplifying views of specific anti-transgender activists to make their extremism less obvious — a kind of "motte and bailey" or "iron man" gambit.Claire Lampen (February 16, 2023). "Here’s What J.K. Rowling Has Actually Said About Trans People". The Cut (New York).Katy Montgomerie (June 16, 2020). "Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling's Justification For Transphobia". Medium. An early blog post she made on the matter was cited to block a proposed anti-discrimination law in the United States that would have protected lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people alike.Tim Fitzsimons (June 19, 2020). "GOP senator quotes J.K. Rowling while blocking vote on LGBTQ bill". NBC News.
*Strongly implied she would finance Kellie-Jay "Posie Parker" Keen-Minshull's legal bills. Later said she "never met anyone who doesn't think trans people deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else." The same month, Parker called for employers, funeral homes, and landlords to discriminate against trans people.
*Donated £70,000 to a campaign to legally redefine "woman", so it wouldn't include trans women with a Gender Recognition Certificate.Madeleine Farber (March 7, 2024). "JK Rowling Donates to Anti-Trans Organization". Out Front Magazine. Called them "men with gender recognition certificates".
*"Liked" a post opposing a proposed ban on involuntary conversion therapy.Kerry Kennedy (August 3, 2020). "A Statement from Kerry Kennedy President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights". Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.Tom Chapman (July 4, 2020). "JK Rowling Likes Pro-Conversion Therapy Tweet". CBR. Then turned around and claimed trans hormone replacement is like anti-gay conversion therapy;Darnell Christie (July 6, 2020). "Trans anger as J.K. Rowling compares hormone treatment to gay conversion therapy". Reuters. a cursory read finds the opposite is true since anti-gay and anti-trans conversion therapy were, historically, intimately linked.(February 2021). "APA Resolution on Gender Identity Change Efforts". American Psychological Association. Quote: "In addition to explicit attempts to change individuals’ gender according to cisnormative pressures, GICE has also been a component of sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE). As intense focus on cisnormative conformity is a frequent characteristic of SOCE it is possible that authors in the literature describing sexual orientation change efforts misgendered their participants (Hipp et al., 2019). Moreover, “ex-gay” literature and discourse conceptualize gender diversity as a sin, a mental illness, and harmful, perpetuating cisgenderism and transmisogyny (Robinson & Spivey, 2019)." For a brief article summarizing this, see here. For a freely readable PDF of the journal article that was uploaded by its author, see here.Cynthya BrianKate (March 30, 2010). "The Feminine Boy Project Still Threatens Gender Expression". Stony Brook Press.
*Alienated from the UK's Labour Party she used to vote for, suggested her followers who planned to spoil their ballots should cast them for the Communist Party of Britain, a minor tankie party, because it emphasized "biological sex". This despite Labour leader Keir Starmer agreeing with Rowling on some points (which was criticisedLiam Barrett (June 13, 2023). "Under Starmer, Labour Has Let the Right Control the Debate on Trans Rights". Jacobin.Libby Brooks (July 1, 2024). "Campaigners lament 'completely off' UK election discussion of trans issues". The Guardian.), but he calls for "respect" of trans people.David Hughes (April 30, 2024). "Starmer says transgender issues need to be handled with 'respect and dignity'". The Independent.
*Denied that the Nazis burnt research books about trans topics and targeted trans people. She was accused of Holocaust denial. At the very least, it's a form of "Nazi crimes denial".
*Her Twitter/X feed generally just turned into a lot of complaining about trans people. Anyone from random criminals to newsreaders or football managers became subjects of scorn if they happened to be trans. This led even some people who agree with her to get a bit sick of it; the top example was probably Elon Musk.
*Praised the author for retweeting her. Then deleted the praise and blocked him when he said elsewhere that he believes trans women are women.
*Once posted about how she pressured a man in real life to talk with her about crackpot theories concerning transgender people's penises, and how supposedly "a cross-dressing fetish is one of the most common paraphilias in heterosexual men", citing Freud. She reported back: "I cannot overstate how little he wanted to talk about this … the impression given was that I was depraved to say such things aloud".
*Assumed the Harry Potter film actors and may apologize for disagreeing with her on trans topics. Rejected the non-existent apologies in advance.Wesley Stenzel (April 11, 2024). "J.K. Rowling says she won't forgive Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson for their trans support". Entertainment Weekly.
*Wrote a crime fiction book about an artist "cancelled" online for transphobia and ultimately murdered. It is over one thousand pages long; some of the pages are just sheets of fake Twitter posts from nonexistent social justice activists. Rowling insists any similarity to her is coincidence.Rachel Treisman (August 31, 2022). "J.K. Rowling's new book, about a character accused of transphobia, raises eyebrows". NPR.Kyle Burlingame (August 30, 2022). "J.K. Rowling Writes Massive Book About Young Transphobic YouTuber Getting Murdered". Inside the Magic. The book also casts people with chronic conditions like CFS/ME as antagonists for no apparent reason.Nathan J. Robinson (August 31, 2022). "J.K. Rowling’s New Novel Shows Why Having an Editor is Important". Current Affairs.
*Insulted 2024 Olympics athletes who were assigned female at birth and cisgender. They were accused of being intersex, but this was extremely doubtful.Karolos Grohmann (August 5, 2024). "IBA gender tests on two boxers were flawed and illegitimate, says IOC". Reuters.Greg Beacham (August 3, 2024). "Banned governing body that’s fueling outcry on Olympic boxers has Russian ties and troubled history". The Associated Press.Sean Gregory (August 5, 2024). "The IBA Held a Press Conference About Boxing’s Gender Controversy. It Was a Chaotic Mess". TIME. Rowling falsely suggested they were "male", and "cheated" by competing in women's divisions.J. K. Rowling (August 1, 2024). "‘Someone with a DSD cannot help the way they were born but they can choose not to cheat; they can choose not to take medals from women; they can choose not to cause injury.’ ✍️ @suzanne_moore". Twitter, via archive.today. An international backlash ensued,"'Pure bigotry': Social media users defend Algerian boxer Imane Khelif against online abuse". Middle East Eye.Firdaous Naim (August 2, 2024). "Olympics 2024: Campaign Defends Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif Against Transgender Claims". Morocco World News. particularly in AlgeriaJack Kenmare (August 2, 2024). "Algerian Olympic Committee issues new statement on Imane Khelif following gender eligibility controversy". SPORTBible. and Taiwan, the athletes' home countries.
====2017–2019: The mask starts to slip====
The first sign of Rowling's developing transphobia was her "like" of a tweet linking to an October 2017 Medium blog post framing "sex segregated spaces" and "smears of TERF" as a #MeToo issue.https://web.archive.org/web/20220127020340/https://twitter.com/TransSalamander/status/922941885160632320 She later confirmed that she began "reading books, blogs and scientific papers" about transgender topics around this time.https://web.archive.org/web/20230330221850/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269394077176541189 Vice proposed a scene in her 2014 novel The Silkworm was an earlier sign.Vice: JK Rowling's Transphobia Wasn't Hard to Find, She Wrote a Book About It This scene has the hero, Cormoran Strike, warn a trans woman that going to prison "won't be fun for you, Pippa … not pre-op." This would read as just a terrible joke about prison rape if it weren't for the weird implication that vaginoplasty would make the experience "fun" — exactly the kind of thought someone might have if their brain was already half-cooked by believing in autogynephilia.This pseudoscientific hypothesis from the 1980s divides trans women into two categories: "homosexual transsexuals," who supposedly transition to lure straight cis men into relationships, and "autogynephiles," i.e. lesbian and bi trans women who can't be branded self-hating gays and are instead deemed to have a fetishistic interest in imagining themselves as female. Under this batshit framework, some transphobes have sincerely claimed that trans women derive gratification from being sexually assaulted, either as sex with a man (for "homosexual transsexuals") or as a validation of their womanhood (for "autogynephiles"). Basically, in the warped perspective that seemingly informed Rowling's tasteless joke, Strike assumes Pippa would prefer vaginal rape over anal rape as a fulfillment of her "autogynephilic" fantasy of experiencing sexual violence as a woman. Rowling confirmed she has indeed swallowed Blanchard's crap with a 2024 tweet attacking a famous trans woman for "cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy."
In March 2018, Rowling liked a post declaring: "Men in dresses get brocialist solidarity I never had. That's misogyny!"Indy100: JK Rowling has a 'clumsy and middle-aged moment' by liking a 'transphobic' tweet Rowling's representative issued an apology claiming she had a "clumsy and middle-aged moment", accidentally liking the post by "holding her phone incorrectly." However, that September, she liked another post by Janice Turner promoting her Times op-ed on trans prisoners;Phaylen Fairchild: Oops! She Did It Again, Transphobic J.K. Rowling: "No Fox Belongs In a Henhouse." it had the tagline, "No fox has a right to live in a henhouse, even if he identifies as a hen." Trans author Owl Fisher sarcastically replied, "Did you have another 'middle-aged' moment and accidentally like a clearly transphobic article, @jk_rowling?" Rowling ignored Fisher but liked a subsequent post by Turner rebuking "the thought police [who] patrol a woman author's every 'like' for wrongthink."
In June 2019 — Pride month, no less — Rowling was revealed to be following nearly a dozen transphobic Twitter accounts.PinkNews: JK Rowling under fire for following a 'proud transphobe' on TwitterFemestella: J.K. Rowling Has Been Following Anti-Trans Activists and We Need an Explanation Twitter user @Persenche looked through the nearly 670 people Rowling was following at the time and concluded that 11 of them were anti-trans activists (including Julie Bindel and the notoriously vicious ). Rowling's representative told PinkNews "J.K. Rowling won't be commenting", and she "follows a wide range of people she finds interesting or thought-provoking."
On December 19, 2019, Rowling put out a tweet supporting Maya Forstater, an anti-trans activist who had recently launched a wrongful dismissal suit against her former employer.Vox: J.K. Rowling’s latest tweet seems like transphobic BS. Her fans are heartbrokenMaya Forstater: Woman loses tribunal over transgender tweets, BBC, December 19, 2019 Rowling characterised Forstater's case as a woman being forced out of her job simply for "stating that sex is real." The reality is, Forstater was working on a contract that her employer didn't renew when it expired.NBC News: J.K. Rowling's Maya Forstater tweets support hostile work environments, not free speechThe Advocate: The JK Rowling Scandal Is Anti-Trans Bigotry Masquerading as Science Forstater's co-workers also went to management because they found that her frequent espousal of anti-trans views (at one point she blasted out 150 transphobic tweets in a single week) was creating a hostile work environment.
Rowling's full-throated support of Forstater drew stronger backlash than any of her previous slip-ups. It's commonly thought of as the moment that she officially "came out" as a TERF. Nonetheless, some held out naive hope at the time that Rowling was simply misinformed, and sought to educate her rather than condemn her. GLAAD offered to "facilitate an off-the-record discussion" between Rowling and "members of the trans community", but she refused.Variety: GLAAD: J.K. Rowling’s Support of Anti-Trans Researcher ‘Puts Trans People at Risk’. Ultimately, Rowling's inability to listen to critics and reflect on her own problematic behavior and beliefs would a few months later result an unprecedented backlash that most likely forever damaged not only Rowling's public image, but entire the Harry Potter franchise as a whole.
====2020–2021: TERF manifesto and Twitter punditry====
In May 2020, Rowling released a children's fairytale, The Ickabog, as a free online distraction from the COVID-19 pandemic.CBC News: J.K. Rowling unveils new kids tale The Ickabog as free online serial She also began liking more "hideously transphobic" posts around the same time.PinkNews: We guess JK Rowling has had another 'middle-aged moment', because she's been caught liking hideously transphobic tweets againLGBTQ Nation: "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling continues support for extreme anti-transgender rhetoricPopBuzz: JK Rowling slammed for liking transphobic tweets on Twitter On May 29, she threatened legal action against Canadian trans politician Nicola Spurling, over a post suggesting the author's bigotry means she "can no longer be trusted around children."Tri-City News: J.K. Rowling threatens legal action against Coquitlam transgender activist over tweets The same day, Rowling may have unintentionally proven Spurling's point when she accidentally copied a vulgar quote from Feminist Current into a reply to 9-year-old fan, later apologizing for the "un-Ickaboggish message" but not for the transphobia.HuffPost: JK Rowling Speaks Out Over 'Accidental' Tweet About Transgender Woman"The Mary Sue: J.K. Rowling Accidentally Tweeted Transphobic Content From Her MessagesPinkNews: JK Rowling apologises after accidentally tweeting 'f**k up some TERFs' while responding to a 9-year-old's drawingThe Daily Dot: J.K. Rowling deleted a tweet that included transphobic commentary with a child’s fanart This was followed by Rowling mocking the phrase "people who menstruate" on June 6.Vulture: J.K. Rowling Somehow Decides Now’s a Good Time to Double Down on Her Transphobia The next day saw her endorse biological determinism in yet another Twitter tirade: "If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth."Insider: JK Rowling claims trans activism hurts women and lesbians, dated to Jun 7, 2020If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth., JK Rowling, Twitter, 6 June 2020; archived.
In response to the online shitstorm brewing over this, Rowling published a long TERF manifesto on her website on June 10, 2020.J.K. Rowling: J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues liked a post by Rowling quoting Andrea Dworkin, prompting Rowling to thank him and praise his work.The Independent: JK Rowling deletes tweet praising Stephen King after he supports trans womenNewsweek: J.K. Rowling Deletes Stephen King Praise After He Supports Trans WomenConsequence of Sound: J.K. Rowling Blocks Stephen King After He Tweets Support of Trans WomenDworkin was an early trans-inclusive radical feminist, advocating a right to state-funded "sex-change operation[s]" in her 1974 book Woman Hating, albeit as an "emergency measure" on the path to her weird prescription for the societal abolition of gender. The quote Rowling tweeted is from her 1987 book Intercourse: "Men often react to women's words – speaking and writing – as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women's words with violence." The full passage makes it clear that Dworkin was discussing how patriarchy harms and oppresses women. Rowling dropped the quote toward the end of a nine-part Twitter screed gloating over her extraction of an apology from Labour MP Russell-Moyle upset Rowling by accusing her of "using" her sexual assault survivor status "as justification for discriminating against [trans people]" in a June 2020 Tribune piece criticising Tory plans to scrap GRA reform. It's possible that Stephen King only saw the tweet with the Dworkin quote or was unaware of the rampant transphobia in the UK. has walked back liking Rowling tweets he seemingly understood as general feminist statements. In 2019, he apologised for not catching the "transphobic connotation" in the #IStandWithMaya tweet, and in 2023 he apologised for liking a tweet in which Rowling replied to trans newsreader declaration of being "more of a woman" than her with "citation needed." However, after King publicly stated "trans women are women", Rowling deleted her praise and blocked him. King later stated that Rowling had "canceled" and "kinda blocked" him for supporting trans women.Forbes: J.K. Rowling 'Canceled' Stephen King For Supporting Transgender WomenThe Independent: Stephen King says JK Rowling 'cancelled' him over trans row On July 7, 2020, Harper's Magazine published an signed by Rowling and 100 other public figures,A Letter on Justice and Open Debate decrying a "vogue for public shaming and ostracism" supposedly threatening the "free exchange of information and ideas." It was a response to New York Times editor James Bennet resigning after printing a controversial Tom Cotton op-ed calling for the military to suppress Black Lives Matter protests.‘Whiny BS’: letter signed by JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood slammed as out of touch, The New Daily, July 7, 2020HuffPost: Don't Fall For The 'Cancel Culture' Scam Around this time, Rowling lambasted trans writer for withdrawing initial support for the Harper's letter,Newsweek: Trans Author Jennifer Finney Boylan Recants 'Cancel Culture' Letter Signed by J.K. RowlingBoylan explained that, at the time she endorsed the Harper's letter, she believed it to be a "well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming," and was only aware that it had been signed by Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, and Gloria Steinem. Rowling's bonkers response to the retraction pointed out that Boylan was "still following" her and demanded that she "publicly repent of [her] association with Goody Rowling before unfollowing and volunteer to operate the ducking stool next time." Rowling notably did not attack cisgender historian for withdrawing her signature (which was allegedly added by a colleague without her consent). and threatened to sue UK teen-oriented news site The Day for reporting on the controversy surrounding her anti-trans remarks.
In August 2020, denounced Rowling's "deeply troubling transphobic tweets and statements," leading Rowling to return an award given by the RFK Center for her charity work in 2019.The Associated Press: JK Rowling returns award from group linked to Kennedy familyReuters: J.K. Rowling Returns Kennedy Family Award Following Kerry Kennedy RemarksEntertainment Weekly: J.K. Rowling returning human rights award to group that now condemns her trans views Now fully content with being an arsehole, Rowling shilled for a TERF store called Wild Workshop in September, posting a selfie of herself in a shirt proclaiming "this witch doesn't burn." Rachel E. Greenspan (Sep 23, 2020). "JK Rowling promoted a store selling anti-trans merch saying 'transwomen are men' and 'f--- your pronouns'". Insider.Allie Gregory (Sep 23, 2020). "J.K. Rowling Promotes Proudly Transphobic Online Store". Exclaim! The shop sells a variety of products featuring such lovely slogans as "sorry about your dick bro," "f*ck your pronouns," "transwomen are men," and "transmen are my sisters."@DreamsRestless. (September 22, 2020). "JK Rowling is taking the next step in making her hatred of trans people her whole identity by promoting a store with an entire section dedicated to transphobia." Twitter. Archived November 16, 2020.
In November 2021, Rowling claimed to have been "doxxed" after three protestors shared a photo of themselves holding signs with trans-rights slogans outside the gate of her Edinburgh mansion.James Factora, J.K. Rowling, Whose Mansion Is on Wikipedia, Decries "Doxxing". them.us, 24 November 2021. However, this property was already known to the public as a listed building featured on tourist sites,Global News: J.K. Rowling slams trans rights activists for 'doxxing' her during protestStravaiging Around Scotland: Whitehouse - Castle in Edinburgh and has been featured on Harry Potter-themed fan tours of Edinburgh without comment from Rowling.YouTube: HARRY POTTER IN EDINBURGH SCOTLAND, GREYFRIAR GRAVEYARD, ELEPHANT HOUSE, J.K. ROWLING'S HOUSE The mansion also ends up in the news whenever Rowling pisses off her neighbours. In 2012, she earned their ire by building two 40-foot-high, "Hogwarts-style" treehouses in her garden.The Telegraph: JK Rowling wins permission to build magical treehouses in gardenThe Guardian: JK Rowling wins permission to build £250,000 Hogwarts-style tree houses She created "traffic chaos" by closing down the road multiple times between 2015 to 2024 to allow her 30-foot-tall hedges to be trimmed.The Guardian: JK Rowling hedge-trimming blamed for traffic 'chaos' around Edinburgh homeEdinburgh Evening News: Traffic halted to let work crew tackle JK Rowling's massive Leylandii hedgeDeadline: Scots author J.K Rowling closes road outside of £2.2 million 17th century home to trim back massive hedgeEdinburghLive: JK Rowling breaks silence over backlash for trimming hedge outside Edinburgh home The Edinburgh Council warned her that the overgrown hedges were blocking streetlights in 2019.Bart Dickson (May 18, 2019). "JK Rowling ordered to cut huge 30ft trees surrounding Edinburgh mansion". The Daily Record. Rowling also owns a country estate called a centuries-old castle with its own Wikipedia article. She seems to expect total privacy and anonymity despite buying and living in famous landmarks.
====2022–2023: Throwing a literal transphobia party====
On March 12, 2022, Rowling tweetedTwitter: Big love to you xxx, dated to Mar 12, 2022 "Big love to you xxx" to Caroline Farrow, a homophobic CitizenGo activist who once harassed a trans woman so intensely that a High Court judge granted an injunction against her, ordering her to stop the harassment.PinkNews: Anti-LGBT pundit Caroline Farrow hit with injunction over ‘abusive tweets’, dated to May 3, 2019 Farrow once expressed outrage over "deviant" gay penguins,PinkNews: Children not ’emotionally ready’ for ‘deviant’ gay penguins, says journalist, dated to Jul 3, 2019 and accused Disneyland of engaging in "LGBT indoctrination" of children.Twitter: Image It's unknown whether Rowling was aware of this, but she never retracted her support or apologized after Farrow's views were widely reported. Farrow is also a "verified" Kiwi Farms user; police received a complaint of her activity on the site in 2022.David Gilbert (October 6, 2022). "J.K. Rowling Ally Arrested for Allegedly Doxing a Trans Activist". VICE News.
On March 18, the South Wales Police's LGBT+ Network set up a kiosk with information about their efforts to combat anti-LGBT crimes and attitudes. The kiosk was set up near Bute Park, where the bisexual Dr. Gary Jenkins was beaten, robbed, subjected to homophobic abuse, and murdered in July of 2021. Prosecutor Dafydd Enoch said that the crime was motivated by "greed, homophobia, and a straightforward liking for violence"; and that it was "torture, pure and simple". When anti-LGBT Twitter users began mocking the kiosk as "virtue signalling", the police responded with: "Good evening, supporting our communities is not virtual signalling and we make no apologies for doing so." On March 21, Rowling added to the pile-on with: "Virtual signalling. Like virtue signalling, but for people who aren't really arsed. #VirtualSignalling".Twitter: Virtual signalling. Like virtue signalling, but for people who aren’t really arsed. #VirtualSignalling, dated to Mar 21, 2022 Real classy Joanne.
She opposed reform of gender recognition legislation in Scotland aiming to make the process "less traumatic and inhumane for trans people" (according to Scotland's First Minister), because it would remove some of the obstacles to legal gender changes.J.K. Rowling Doubles Down on Transphobia in International Women’s Day Twitter Rant, Indiewire, 8 March 2022 Speculating that politically correct zealots would rename International Women's Day, she wrote: "Apparently, under a Labour government, today will become We Who Must Not Be Named Day".
In April 2022, she attended a lunch with other prominent TERFs at the River Cafe in Hammersmith, London. Other guests included Rosie Duffield, Helen Joyce, Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, and LGB Alliance co-founders.Inside J.K. Rowling’s ‘gender wars’ lunch, The Week, 12 April 2022 Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, has referred to trans people as "damaged", saying "every one of those people is someone who needs special accommodation in a sane world where we re-acknowledge the truth of sex"; she called for immediate action "reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition".‘Gender critical’ author Helen Joyce says she wants to ‘reduce’ number of trans people: ‘Chilling’, Pink News, 3 June 2022Dawn Ennis (3 June 2022). "Happy Pride Month? Trans People Are Just Trying to Survive It". The Daily Beast. Duffield repeatedly called trans women "male-bodied people",Labour MP Rosie Duffield confronted after repeatedly calling trans women ‘male-bodied’ on the BBC, Pink News, 18 Nov 2021 and said they should be banned from "refuges, women's prisons, single-sex wards and school toilets".Labour MP Rosie Duffield explains ‘gender critical’ views in anti-trans tirade, Pink News, 11 September 2021
On April 22, Rowling marked Lesbian Visibility Week (LVW) by "saluting the resilience and courage" of her friend Allison Bailey.PinkNews: JK Rowling blasted as 'perfect example of how not to be an ally' by Lesbian Visibility Week founder This lead LVW founder Linda Riley to say she never intended the observance to be a "vehicle to stir up more hate within our community." Rowling replied with a mocking post, featuring a photo of what she deemed a "white, bearded, Stonewall-approved lesbian." The photo was of Alex Drummond, a Welsh psychotherapist and authorThe Guardian: Weekender: Alex Drummond, psychotherapist, 47 who released two LGBT-interest books in 2011-2012.WorldCat: Queering the tranny: new perspectives on male transvestism and transsexualismWorldCat: Grrl Alex: a personal journey to a transgender identity She gave a series of interviews in 2015 explaining why she kept her beard.BuzzFeed News: This Trans Woman Kept Her Beard And Couldn't Be HappierWales Online: 'There are no legal bars to a woman having a beard' Alex Drummond wants to broaden how people think about genderHuffPost: This Incredible Trans Woman Is Challenging The Way We Think About Gender From all appearances, she's done little to earn anyone's umbrage, except exist as a bearded trans woman. Rowling lambasted so-called "beardsplainers" in an unrelated tweet,https://web.archive.org/web/20220831064808/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1510706840379797511 in response to which Michael Deacon penned a Telegraph piece bemoaning how "woke men are ruining beards".The Telegraph: JK Rowling is right. Woke men are ruining beards for the rest of us
In May 2022, Rowling began sharing material from Reduxx, a far-right anti-trans blog.JK Rowling slammed for ‘demonising’ trans inmates at prison where women raped by guards, ThePinkNews
In July, singer walked back and apologized for transphobic comments made in a Piers Morgan interview soon after talking with members of the LGBTQ communityhttps://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/07/macy-gray-apologizes-anti-trans-comments-misunderstood-today-show-hoda-kotb-piers-morgan, leading conservative anti-trans pundit Matt Walsh to tweet that women who "publicly renounce the definition of 'woman' for fear of mean comments from trans activists deserve all the scorn they get."Advocate: JK Rowling and Matt Walsh Bond Over Transphobia, Get Blasted OnlinePinkNews: JK Rowling criticised for praising ‘dangerous’ anti-trans film by far-right bigot Matt Walsh Rowling replied, claiming TERFs have received serious threats, and telling him "If you don't yet understand what happens to women who stand up on this issue, back off." In the following exchange, Rowling criticised Walsh for "shouting 'coward' at individual women" like Gray, but praised his propaganda film for "exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory." In September, Rowling liked a shockingly insensitive tweet from radio presenter stating: "At least the Taliban know what a woman is," in response to someone explaining he had been compared to the Taliban for "supporting trans people's existence in society."Twitter: J.K. Rowling said you DO gotta hand it to the Taliban, dated to September 2, 2023 Twitter: At least the Taliban know what a woman is, dated to August 29, 2023
On July 11, 2022, Canadian author Will Johnson (@LiteraryGoon) tweeted a picture of his children at Rowling, stating that he planned to teach his "minions" to "stick to their principles even when it's unpopular."Shaun on YouTube: JK Rowling's New Friends (relevant part begins at 20:20)The Blast: J.K. Rowling Under Fire For… Giving Fan A Positive Reply? Rowling replied telling Johnson that he had "beautiful minions!" Johnson published a tweet in 2021 threatening to murder trans-rights supporters in graphic detail.
In October, TV host gave an interview at a literary festival, and was asked about cancel culture.Them: Graham Norton Seemingly Driven Off Twitter For Suggesting We Listen to Trans PeopleThe Independent: Graham Norton deletes Twitter after comments on JK Rowling and 'cancel culture' go viralPinkNews: Graham Norton 'hounded off Twitter' for suggesting we listen to trans people He said cancel culture would be more accurately called "accountability." When asked specifically if this applied to the backlash against Rowling's transphobia, he gave a measured comment that the media should "talk to trans people, talk to the parents of trans kids, talk to doctors, talk to psychiatrists" rather than amplifying celebrity opinions. Musician approved of Norton's interview. Rowling quoted-tweeted Bragg with a rant excoriating an alleged "spate of bearded men stepping confidently onto their soapboxes to define what a woman is and throw their support behind rape and death threats to those who dare disagree." Norton deleted his Twitter account a few days later after a barrage of hate from anti-trans activists. By now, people noticed Rowling's bizarre fixation on beards, leading her to tweet that she "like[s] beards" except "when they're attached to misogynists."https://web.archive.org/web/20231023114409/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1580611061698334720 In Rowling's view, a reasonable plea to listen to trans people and experts represented misogyny.
In October 2022, it was revealed that a trustee for UK trans kids charity , gave a presentation at a conference for "paedophile support group" in 2011. Breslow promptly resigned and Mermaids issued an apology. Rowling blasted Mermaids for "appoint[ing] a paedophilia apologist" and committing a "catastrophic safeguarding failure."https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1577357679609135125https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1577357679609135125 Despite these protestations, Rowling followed on Twitter back in 2020.https://web.archive.org/web/20210609061117/https://twitter.com/2damntrans/status/1289929592996691976 Cantor is an American crackpot sexologist with an extensive history of pedophilia-related research and advocacyn."James Cantor". Trans Data Library. Cantor's belief is "preventative treatment for pedophila" will help "people manage their sexual interests" before they offend. This is a legitimate, though controversial, area of clinical research. However, Cantor has gone much further than most sexologists might, saying "ethical principles require us to add P [pedophilia] to GLBT."James Cantor (December 8, 2018). "Speaking as a gay men, I believe we SHOULD include the P. To do otherwise is to betray the principles that give us our rights." Twitter, via the Wayback Machine.Vesper Henry (October 28, 2022). 'Expert' formerly slated to testify in favor of Florida ban on trans health care once called to include a 'P' for pedophiles in LGBTQ. Media Matters for America. He volunteered for the advisory council of Prostasia, a so-called "child safety" group that "has campaigned against bans on sex dolls resembling children and has hosted support groups for 'minor attracted people' open to adults alongside people as young as 13."Ari Drennen (June 27, 2024). "New York Times quotes psychologist linked to extremist groups to fearmonger about gender-affirming care". Media Matters for America. The SPLC identified him as one of an "old guard" of anti-trans shrinks from the in Toronto. Since 2018, he has moonlighted as a paid "expert" in pushes to ban gender-affirming care in several U.S. states, despite stating under oath that he has no clinical experience with trans youth. Unlike Mermaids with Breslow, Rowling has never issued any statement about why she followed Cantor.
On November 21, 2022, the day after five people were murdered in a mass shooting at a gay bar in Colorado, Rowling liked a tweet by Libs of TikTok, which mocked another Twitter user for criticizing Kanye West amidst his antisemitism and white supremacy controversy.Archived "likes" page of J.K. Rowling, showing the Libs of TikTok tweetTwitter: Archived screenshot Libs of TikTok's well-known, relentless anti-LGBT fearmongering was credited with setting off violent threats against children's hospitals and drag events.Washington Post: Twitter account Libs of TikTok blamed for harassment of children’s hospitals, dated to Sept 2, 2022Them: How Libs of TikTok Became an Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate Machine, dated Sept 30, 2022 On May 29, 2023, she expressed supportTwitter: But as I've already told her, she knows where I am., dated to May 29, 2023 for Kellie-Jay "Posie Parker" Keen-Minshull and implied she would finance her legal bills. Parker gained notoriety for organizing an anti-transgender event that attracted support from neo-Nazis.The Guardian: Anti-trans activist Posie Parker ends New Zealand tour after violent protests erupt, dated to Mar 25, 2023The Guardian: Daniel Andrews says Nazis ‘aren’t welcome’ as Victorian government considers ‘further action’ following salutes, dated to Mar 18, 2023 She also openly wished death on innocent trans people,Twitter: Image called for sterilization of trans men,https://twitter.com/trans_safety/status/1493233608663908352 and admitted to lying about being a lesbianTwitter: Video, dated to Jun 7, 2023. (From archived tweet). to dishonestly bolster her political argument against a gay man. Rowling has also taken it upon herself to speak for lesbians and gay people in general despite not being a lesbian.
On June 16, Rowling liked a post from Three Percenters movement leader Erik Rohde proclaiming, "we stand with you and III% is proudly members of House Gryffindor".Twitter: JK Rowling liking tweets from a "Three Percenter" leader. The "Three Percenters" are a far right militia that are considered a terrorist group in Canada, dated to Jun 16, 2023Twitter: Just wanted to say we stand with you and III% is proudly members of House Gryffindor 🧙‍♂️, dated to June 14, 2023 Rodhe's post was in reply to an earlier one by himself declaring "Fu<k ANTIFA" in reference to a counter-rally planned for June 17 against an anti-trans protest in Washington State.Lynnwood Today: Heated protest over transgender rights draws hundreds to Lynnwood The Three Percenters are a far-right militia recognised as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.SPLC: Three Percenters The movement was officially deemed a terrorist group by the Canadian government in 2021.CBC: Three Percenters, neo-Nazi group added to Canada's terrorist list Symptomatic of her radicalization, Rowling supported a supposed "Black Women's Caucus Statement Against Gender Ideology" from Women's Declaration International – an anti-trans hate group whose leaders are all white.Tweet by J.K. Rowling
On October 15, 2023, Rowling was a surprise guest on a panel at a FiLiA conference in Glasgow, stating she could "take the hit" as someone who will "always be able to feed [her] family."PinkNews: LGBTQ+ groups protest gender critical conference hosting JK Rowling as a speakerThe National: JK Rowling speaks at FiLiA feminist conference labelled 'transphobic'The Times: JK Rowling makes surprise appearance at feminist conference in Glasgow The appearance is believed to be Rowling's first time speaking publicly on trans issues and was reportedly not publicised beforehand. Two days later, she tweeted a photo (which was at that point more than five years oldNick Duffy (July 11, 2018). "'Trans women are women' projected onto London landmark after Pride hijack controversy". PinkNews.) of the text "Repeat after us: trans women are women" projected on a government building, commenting "No."Entertainment Weekly: J.K. Rowling says she would 'happily' do prison time for controversial transgender views This prompted a series of batshit tweets in which she fantasised about being sent to prison for misgendering trans people, declaring that she'd "happily do two years" over "compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex."PinkNews: JK Rowling would prefer two years in jail over using a trans person’s correct pronounsOut Magazine: J.K. Rowling Says She'd Rather Go to Prison Than Correctly Gender a Trans Person To no one's surprise, there was no arrest.
On November 3, The Australian ran a story about how the state of South Australia had implemented a policy of using preferred pronouns in court.The Australian: South Australia court calls for use of preferred gender pronouns Rowling fired off a tweet declaring it "state-sanctioned abuse" to ask a woman to refer to "her male rapist or violent assaulter as 'she' in court."Inside the Magic: J.K. Rowling Equates Trans Women to RapistsSuch policies apply to all court proceedings rather than solely to cases involving sexual assault. They aren't designed to protect the feelings of rapists, but to ensure that due process isn't jeopardized by systemic bias or unfair treatment, and thus reduce the chances of guilty parties being freed on legal technicalities. British TERFs seem unwilling to accept that not all jurisdictions as non-consensual penile penetration (thus precluding AFAB offenders) like the UK. A Twitter user pointed out the fallacy of "treating trans women like predators" when they are "statistically far more likely to be [sexual assault] victims." A 2015 U.S. study found that nearly half of surveyed trans people reported having experienced sexual violence.National Center for Transgender Equality: The Report of the 2015 Transgender Equality Survey Surveys in Canada and Australia have also found trans people to be at increased risk compared to cis people.The Sydney Morning Herald: 'What's in your pants?': Gender diverse people exposed to high rates of sexual violenceStatistics Canada: Experiences of violent victimization and unwanted sexual behaviours among gay, lesbian, bisexual and other sexual minority people, and the transgender population, in Canada, 2018 Despite this evidence, Rowling smeared the Twitter user as a "rapists' rights activist," accusing them, unironically, of ignoring facts that "contradict [their] fallacious argument." Courts SA released a statement calling Rowling's claims "completely unfounded."1news: J.K. Rowling chided for 'unfounded claim' on South Australia courts
====2024: Going full Graham Linehan====
On February 2, 2024, Rowling broke a period of Twitter inactivity to join the anti-LGBT book-banning crusade, decrying the Glasgow Women's Library for displaying an indie comic about trans lesbians.https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1753395762514251883https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1753418692463862204 Initially, she characterised the zine as a "delightful penis-centred work" intended to "shame and coerce lesbians out of same-sex orientation," but shortly after said it "centres the desires of straight men." On Valentine's Day, Rowling tarred Jonathan Liew, lead Guardian sports writer, as a "'progressive' misogynist" for a piece defending a non-competitive fun run, against gender-critical fury over its lack of sex segregation.The Telegraph: JK Rowling labels Guardian journalist 'progressive misogynist' over Parkrun trans row It was also noted around this time that Rowling had liked a series of November 2023 tweets mocking and misgendering metal guitarist Katy Montgomerie for discussing her experiences with domestic violence.https://web.archive.org/web/20240209163616/https://twitter.com/WistfulOtter/status/1755366943073112184
On February 16, 2024, Rowling donated £70,000 to a crowdfund by an anti-trans group founded by Magdalen Berns.The Times: JK Rowling donates £70k for legal challenge on defining a womanPink News: JK Rowling reportedly donates £70,000 to group's Supreme Court appeal over 'woman' definition FWS plan to launch a Supreme Court challenge to legally enshrine a definition of "'sex' … referring to biology." The case will ostensibly be an appeal of a 2022 Scottish ruling concerning a law requiring that public boards in Scotland be made up of 50% women.The Telegraph: JK Rowling donates £70k to challenge ruling that men can become women This decision, much to the consternation of UK transphobes, held that trans women legally count as women. TERFs have made no secret of the fact they're following the anti-abortion playbook of mounting successive regional legal challenges in the hope of eventually winning a landmark national ruling like Dobbs. Daniel Sanderson of The Telegraph crowed that FWS are seeking an "'historic' Supreme Court ruling stating that men cannot become women." Commentators noted the challenge could lead to a rollback of existing legal recognition and protections for trans people in the UK if successful.Tweet by Thomas WillettTweet by India Willoughby
As TERFs squabbled over pronouns, and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak faced widespread backlash for his transphobia, Rowling zeroed in on trans women in the prison system. This began with a February 20 broadside accusing trans-rights supporters of using incarcerated cis women as "validation tools or emotional support props for trans-identified male sex offenders."https://web.archive.org/web/20240223004741/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1759940576340770987 In this four-pagagraph tweet, Rowling claimed that "activists" are "knowingly forcing [cis women prisoners] to live in fear of, and, in some proven cases, to suffer abuse." Rowling held that housing cis women with trans women constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" due to potential sexual violence. Meanwhile, research consistently finds that trans women are at greater risk in prison.CNN: Trans women are still incarcerated with men and it's putting their lives at risk A 2007 study found 59% of trans inmates in California were victims of sexual assault while incarcerated in contrast to 4.4% of the general prison population.Valerie Jenness et al., Violence in California Correctional Facilities: An Empirical Examination of Sexual Assault (2007) In 2016, an Australian trans woman revealed that, while serving time for auto theft in a men's prison, she was raped over 2000 times.News.com.au: A transgender woman talks about life in a male prison
Rowling quickly betrayed that her outrage was born more of a desire to cherry pick crime statistics to prove that AMAB people are inherently violent while AFAB people are not. On February 26, Sky News published a story about the conviction of Scarlet Blake, a trans woman, for murdering a man years earlier.Sky News: Cat killer Scarlet Blake who had 'obsession with death' jailed for life for murdering man In response, Rowling said: "I'm so sick of this shit. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes."https://web.archive.org/web/20240301044254/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1762187612352020860#m She re-tweeted an open letter from Louise Tickle condemning the Guardian for not initially reporting Blake's trans status.Archived tweet by J. K. Rowling Tickle insisted this editorial choice "falsif[ied] the public record" and caused the "wrong perception that women are suddenly more aggressive."
On March 3, Rowling argued bans on "men" in "women's spaces" allow alleged interlopers to be "challenged" for "breaking a rule decent men respect."https://web.archive.org/web/20240304214247/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1764388015118442533 Twitter @OwenJonesStan replied with a .gif of trans newsreader asking, "So you are saying this lady should use the men's locker room then?!"Archived tweet by @OwenJonesStanThe Independent: JK Rowling deliberately misgenders trans activist India WilloughbyErin in the Morning: JK Rowling Transphobia: Rowling Calls Trans Woman Journalist "A Man…Cosplaying Rowling responded the next day with a blatantly transphobic attack on Willoughby, calling her a "man revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks 'woman' means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist."Archived tweet by J. K. Rowling She then accused Willoughby of "cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is."Archived tweet by J. K. Rowling These comments were probably the first time Rowling unambiguously misgendered a trans public figure. Byline TV (a branch of Byline Times) released an exclusive interview with Willoughby on March 6.https://twitter.com/BylineTV/status/1765484416275472570Variety: Broadcaster Says She Reported J.K. Rowling to the Police Over Alleged Transphobia as ‘Harry Potter’ Author Threatens Harassment ClaimEntertainment Weekly: J.K. Rowling reported to police for alleged transphobia by broadcaster The interviewer, Caolan Robertson, formerly worked for white nationalist Tommy Robinson, but has since disavowed his association with the extreme right.Pink News: Gay former extremist Caolan Robertson says leaving the far-right was like escaping 'a cult' In the interview, Willoughby stated she received "putrid" abuse on social media in the wake Rowling's outburst, revealing that she reported the author to the police. Byline TV's Twitter account suggested this report "could lead to Rowling's arrest." Transphobes launched a fresh wave of attacks. Robertson clarified that he'd extended an interview invitation to Rowling.https://twitter.com/BylineTV/status/1765529551117971581Mediate: BylineTV Producer Apologises For Explicit Outburst At JK Rowling Rowling responded by accusing Robertson of "call[ing] India 'him' twice" in the video.https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1765685200174862555Robertson used "them" twice after using "her." This is clear in both the subtitles and the audio. This lead to a tit-for-tat culminating in Robertson calling Rowling a "cunt." Robertson offered a grovelling apology to Rowling for his "unforgivable and inexcusable" language on March 8. Rowling accepted this "spontaneously made" apology and asked "any supporters of mine giving Caolan grief to please stop now." (She predictably hasn't told her flying monkeys to lay off Willoughby and every other trans person she's targeted.) Northumbria Police stated they would not be pursuing Willoughby's complaint since it "did not meet the criminal threshold."The Independent: India Willoughby's JK Rowling complaint did not meet criminal threshold, police say According to Willoughby, UK hate crime law only covers speech targeting people on the basis of race or religion, but Rowling's tweets were recorded as a "non-crime hate incident."https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1766214992364269598
On 13 March 2024, Rowling denied that the Nazis persecuted trans people, saying the idea is "a fever dream".Mira Fox (March 13, 2024). "It wasn't just the goblins — is J.K. Rowling doing Holocaust denial now?". The Forward.Trudy Ring (March 15, 2024). "Yes, J.K. Rowling, the Nazis persecuted trans people, burned books". The Advocate. She cited Malcolm Clark, an LGB Alliance co-founder who isn't a historian. Clark's thread said transgender people weren't a "key target" of the Nazis', then conflated trans surgery with Nazi eugenics and concentration camp experiments. Contrary to Clark's claims, however, the Nazis did specifically persecute transgender people.Vivian McCall (March 20, 2024). "Yes, JK Rowling, the Nazis Did Persecute Trans People". The Stranger. (Article was featured by the Department of History at the University of Washington, the institution of the interviewed expert.) According to the the Nazis "brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures."(2022). "Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany". Museum of Jewish Heritage. Laurie Marhoefer, a historian specializing in this, said: "The author of a 1938 book on 'the problem of transvestitism' wrote that before Hitler was in power, there was not much that could be done about transgender people, but that now, in Nazi Germany, they could be put in concentration camps or subjected to forced castration. That was good, he believed, because the 'asocial mindset' of trans people and their supposedly frequent 'criminal activity … justifies draconian measures by the state.'" After a Jewish person, Rivkah Brown, called "a Holocaust denier" in response, Rowling threatened Brown with legal action, saying "I'd be delighted to meet you in court, Rivkah, to discuss holocaust denial." This forced Brown to issue an apology on April 15. Rowling has previously threatened legal action over commentary on her transphobia, including against Canadian politician Nicola Spurling (2020), UK youth news site The Day (2020), and Irish actor JJ Welles (2023). UK libel law enables SLAPP lawsuits to a much greater extent than other countries. News of the legal threat against Brown lead "JK Rowling is a Holocaust [Denier]" to trend on Twitter.
On 1 April, Rowling listed several trans public figures (including Willoughby) alongside violent sexual offenders, in what MSNBC reporter Clarissa-Jan Lim deemed "an apparent attempt to draw a connection between trans people and sexual perversion". Rowling sarcastically called the listed individuals women throughout the thread, but then declared they "aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them" in an April Fool's gotcha the very end. Rowling intentionally posted this the day a new hate crime law came into effect in Scotland. Critics of this law fear it might chill free speech and criminalise the expression of TERFish views. In true edgelord fashion, Rowling, who was holidaying "out of the country" at the time, said "I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment." The police clarified her comments were not criminal and no action would be taken.
On May 1, the transphobic troll account "Dr. Dame Katy Elise" posted a beach photo of calling them a "time line cleanser" and a "hunk of a man."https://twitter.com/damekatydenise_/status/1785391631874629834 Rowling replied mockingly scolding "Dame Katy" for misgendering the non-binary singer.https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1785392647688830991 She then bantered with "Dame Katy" about the latter's pretend charity "Chairs 4 Trans." This was a running joke between Rowling and "Dame Katy" since October 2022.https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1597614753660436482 The "Dame Katy" account has posted some truly horrific things, such as a January 2024 tweet imagining openly gay, pro-Palestine journalist Owen Jones as the star of a fake porn film titled "Oreo Delights: Twink Boy vs Chocolate Soldiers 2 - Allah's Revenge."https://twitter.com/damekatydenise_/status/1748667323584590094
On May 4 2024, Elon Musk told Rowling: "While I heartily agree with your points regarding sex/gender, may I suggest also posting interesting and positive content on other matters?"Beatrice Nolan (May 6, 2024). "Elon Musk gives some advice to J.K. Rowling, suggesting she post 'interesting and positive content' on X". Business Insider. (Musk reportedly became interested in buying Twitter after right-wing Onion knock-off The Babylon Bee was suspended for transphobia in 2022.)
Not keen to take Musk's advice, on 11 May, in response to a tweet praising Lucy Clark for becoming the first transgender manager in the top five divisions of English women's football, Rowling posted: "When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it's fantastic to see how much things have changed."https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789275573123964985 On 12 May, Rowling doubled-down several times. When The Daily Mail reported Rowling had compared Clark to a "straight, white, middle-aged bloke", Rowling responded by tweeting: "I didn’t compare him to one. He IS one."https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789590944976650436 In response to criticism that she had been publicly bullying Clark and "punching down", she said: "You're right. No demographic is more vulnerable and oppressed than large, tattooed crossdressers who get plum jobs in women's sport. I don't know how I can have been so cruel."https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789623779791982817 and "Calling a man a man is not 'bullying' or 'punching down.' Crossdressing straight men are currently one of the most pandered-to demographics in existence, and women are under no obligation to applaud the people caricaturing us."https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789641182164688934 She continued to compare being transgender to being "transracial", saying "Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?"https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789681522544455976 Clark said she had a "day of hate-fuelled transphobia" after Rowling's comments. On 13 May, Rowling dug out a video of Clark being interviewed on transphobia from 2019, and commented: "Publicity-hungry men who declare themselves lesbians, go on TV to tell female athletes they 'need to be careful' about what they say, advocate for males' inclusion in women's sport and send women abuse for standing up for their rights aren't 'quietly getting on with their life.'"https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1790004839595774458 Rowling continued to describe Clark's advice (again, from several years prior) to not tweet transphobic statements if you don't want to be called a transphobe: "Big Tommy DeVito vibes. 'Be a shame if anything happened to those nice Twitter accounts of yours, ladies. Just be careful, is all I'm saying. Count this as a friendly bit of advice.'"https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1790017915103637761
On 17 May, Rowling tried to downplay her hate by claiming, "I've never met anyone who doesn't think trans people deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else. Militant trans activism doesn't want trans people to have the same rights, though. It wants women's and girls' rights and protections dismantled for the benefit of men."Twitter, dated to May 17, 2024 However, recall that she previously expressed support for Kellie-Jay "Posie Parker" Keen-Minshull, and implied she would finance Keen's legal bills. Keen has explicitly called for employers, funeral homes, and landlords to discriminate against transgender people,(May 25, 2024). "Kellie-Jay Keen calls for employers and landlords to be able to discriminate against trans people." YouTube. (Archived).Twitter, dated to May 22, 2024 a violation of equal rights and opportunities.
In the lead-up to the UK general election in late June, Rowling wrote a Times op-ed on her "struggle to vote" Labour, accusing the party of being "dismissive and often offensive" to anti-trans feminists.Caroline Frost (June 22, 2024). "J.K. Rowling 'Will Struggle To Vote For Labour Party In UK Election After Its Treatment Of Female MPs'". Deadline. The next day she learned that the had made a statement "recognising the nature of biological sex".J. K. Rowling (June 22, 2024). "If you were going to spoil your ballot paper, why not check this list to see whether there's a candidate in your constituency: communistparty.org.uk". Twitter. (Archived).Mrinalini Dhyani (June 24, 2024). "JK Rowling & the biological definition of sex: Author backs Communist Party over trans rights stance". ThePrint. She suggested people who "were going to spoil [their] ballot" vote for the Stalinist party instead. To rhetorically indict Labour, she referred to legally transitioned trans women as "men with (GRCs), attacking Labour MP Bridget Phillipson for supporting such trans women's right to "access women-only spaces".J. K. Rowling (June 29, 2024). "Confused about what will happen to women-only spaces under Labour? No need! Here's their clear and unambiguous position: Rachel Reeves MP: Labour will protect women-only spaces based on biological sex. Bridget Phillipson MP: men with gender recognition certificates can access women-only spaces." Twitter, via archive.today. (Original post). Then she branded Doctor Who actor the "Gender Taliban" for calling out Tory MP while accepting an award for his pro-LGBT advocacy.Jake Kanter (June 28, 2024). "J.K. Rowling Blasts 'Gender Taliban' David Tennant After ‘Harry Potter’ Actor Said 'Whinging' Trans Critics Are On 'Wrong Side Of History'". Deadline.Zack Sharf (June 28, 2024). "J.K. Rowling Criticizes David Tennant and the ‘Gender Taliban’ After Actor Slammed Trans Critics as ‘F—ers’ Who ‘Are on the Wrong Side of History’". Variety. And then she confessed to making her "lefty straight man" friend "incredibly uncomfortable" with seemingly uninvited talk of "penised 'lesbians'" and sexual kinks.J. K. Rowling (July 1, 2024). "I’ve heard straight men talk about trans women as though they’re fallen men to whom sympathy ought to be automatically extended, but there’s deeper stuff going on, too. I asked a lefty straight man I know (this is irl) whether he was aware how many penised ‘lesbians’ are involved in the push to access female spaces. The subject made him incredibly uncomfortable. He simply didn’t want to hear it. I then asked him whether he knew what his straight male friends wanted from women in the bedroom, kink/sex wise. Horrified look: ‘no, of course I bloody don’t.’" Twitter, via archive.today. (Original link).
For the 2024 Summer Olympics, Rowling insulted female athletes, including from Algeria,Melanie Goodfellow (August 2, 2024). "International Olympics Committee Decries 'Witch Hunt' As Boxing Gender Row Continues: 'This Is A Minefield'". Deadline. who Rowling called a "bullying cheat".J. K. Rowling (August 1, 2024). "Watch this (whole thread), then explain why you’re OK with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment. This isn’t sport. From the bullying cheat in red all the way up to the organisers who allowed this to happen, this is men revelling in their power over women." Twitter, via archive.today. She responded to from Taiwan with: "What will it take to end this insanity?". She falsely suggested Khelif and Lin were male.Emma Guinness (August 2, 2024). "Liz Truss, Musk and JK Rowling weigh in on Olympic boxing controversy to spread false anti-trans rhetoric". The Independent.Emma Guinness (August 2, 2024). "Inside the tough childhood of Olympic boxer Imane Khelif as she faces groundless accusations of being male". The Independent. This led to an international backlash against Rowling, particularly in Algeria and Taiwan, including from government officials and general citizenry, many of whom pointed out the athletes were assigned female at birth.Koh Ewe (August 2, 2024). "Taiwan Turns Against J.K. Rowling for Stirring Olympic Boxing Gender Controversy". TIME.Shelley Shan (August 2, 2024). "Officials urge support for Olympic boxer Lin". The Taipei Times. Khelif and Lin were accused of being intersex, but this claim was doubtfulLes Carpenter (August 1, 2024). "Olympic woman boxer who faced gender-eligibility claim wins, igniting outcry". The Washington Post. Quote: "The IOC, which is overseeing the boxing competition in Paris, does not test for gender, and there never has been evidence that either Khelif or Lin had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone. They have competed for years, including at the Tokyo Olympics and several world championships." and came from a disreputable Russian-run sports body, with ties to organized crime and the Kremlin, that contradicted its own claims and only began accusing Khelif of being intersex after she won against a previously-undefeated Russian athlete. In November, the BBC named Zambian soccer star Barbra Banda its Women's Footballer of the Year, which Rowling likened to "spit[ting] directly in women's faces."
In December, Rowling reached new levels of science denialism by tweeting "there are no trans kids," arguing that gender-affirming care has caused "more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined."Archived tweet thread by J. K. Rowling This ignores decades of research documenting the existence of trans children and youth. Rowling also claimed that kids are being convinced they're trans by "watching TikTok videos of surgeons" telling them that "bodies can be modified like Lego." When asked whether she was concerned about teens undergoing cosmetic surgery, Rowling stated these procedures would only "become relevant to the discussion" if they caused ", the loss of the ability to orgasm and a lifetime's reliance on powerful hormones."
===Tarnishing legacy as a beloved author===
====Anti-trans personality cult====
A bizarre personality cult has emerged in TERFdom since Rowling joined its ranks, a highly ironic development considering how accusing the trans community as being a "cult" has become a popular canard in TERF rhetoric. The phrase "I Love J. K. Rowling" became one of the most recognisable transphobic dog whistles."I love JK Rowling’ poster taken down at Edinburgh railway station due to ‘political nature’", The Independent"I Love J.K. Rowling sign makes brief, controversial appearance in Vancouver", CBC News Anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has infamously plastered the slogan on billboards and merchandise. Rowling has claimed that 90% of her fans agree with her transphobia but are "afraid to speak up" due to "fear for their jobs and even for their personal safety."J.K. Rowling says 90% of her fans agree with her transphobia but they’re afraid to say so publicly, LGBTQ Nation.
One prominent example of this personality cult is the mythical status Rowling's IStandWithMaya tweet attained in so-called gender-critical circles. Disgraced screenwriter-turned-professional-transphobe Graham Linehan proclaimed the tweet's anniversary of December 19 to be "Gender Critical Coming Out Day" in 2021.PinkNews: A planned 'gender critical coming out day' sparks searing backlash: 'It's despicable in every way'PinkNews: Graham Linehan and anti-trans activists plan pathetic, pitiful Christmas campaign for TERFsLGBTQ Nation: New 'holiday' honors day J.K. Rowling “came out” as an opponent of trans rights By 2022, the hateful holiday had come to be known as "TERFmas," and Rowling personally wished a follower "Merry Terfmas."PinkNews: What does ‘Merry Terfmas’ mean? Anti-trans activists’ pitiful Christmas campaign, explainedThe Advocate: J.K. Rowling Lambasted for 'Merry Terfmas' Tweet In 2020, transphobes began circulating a conspiracy theory that Twitter was stealing likes from the hallowed tweet, supposedly as part of a sinister trans-activist plot to artificially lower the like count.Gemma Stone: 'Likes' are being removed from JK Rowling's transphobic tweet The conspiracy theory originated in Twitter failing to display a red heart on older tweets as a result of a glitch or deliberate process.https://web.archive.org/web/20210303034844/https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1366958322151088130 Allison Bailey warned Jack Dorsey in November 2020 that he would inevitably need to "defend twitter against accusations of rampant manipulation of data" due to the supposed missing likes. declared in March 2021 that she was "putting [her] 'like' on record as it won't stick despite originally liking ages ago - sinister much…?"PinkNews: Rosie Duffield thinks it 'deeply frightening' that 'you have to write womxn with an x' At one point there was even a Twitter account (@RelikeReminder) that posted daily reminders to relike Rowling's tweet.
TERFs in the UK began holding so-called #JKRLadiesLunchs in 2022. These events were inspired by Rowling inviting nearly every prominent TERF in the UK to a "boozy" lunch at a posh London restaurant that April.Salon: J.K. Rowling organizes boozy TERF lunch amidst protest and march for transgender rightsPinkNews: JK Rowling enjoys boozy lunch with anti-trans lobby while thousands march for trans equality The luncheon took place as thousands marched on Downing Street against a plan to exclude trans people from a proposed ban on conversion therapy. TERFs predictably decided that critics were merely upset over women gathering and having fun rather than at a rich transphobe throwing a party celebrating transphobia while trans people were literally fighting for their rights. On April 16, 2022, a Welsh TERF group shared a photo of their lunch date, commenting, "Only fair we had drinks & lunch! Oops do women need permission for that @jk_rowling?"https://web.archive.org/web/20220721190313/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1515423379838455808 Rowling replied, "It's ok, I'll get your permit postdated for you. I've got a contact in the Women's Lunch Permissions Office."
This isn't the only time that Rowling has directly encouraged the obsessive fawning of transphobic fans. In April 2022, an anonymous Scottish TERF claimed she had quit a book club after its members "roundly attacked and smeared" Rowling, tweeting that she'd founded her own club called JKR's Barmy Book Army.The Telegraph: JK Rowling promises to visit 'gender critical' book club set up in her nameScottish Daily Express: JK Rowling to hang out with feminist Scottish book club named in her honour Rowling caught wind of this and vowed to personally attend a meeting of the club. She made good on her promise in June.Daily Record: JK Rowling drops into Scots book club after promise to organiser who backed gender views
====Reaction of Harry Potter cast====
Many actors who appeared in the original Harry Potter films have spoken out in support of trans rights since Rowling's transphobic awakening.PinkNews: "Here's everything the Harry Potter cast have said about JK Rowling and trans rightsUS Weekly: What the 'Harry Potter' Cast Has Said About Where They Stand With J.K. Rowling Amid Controversy" This has included the series' three main stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint.The Guardian: 'Trans women are women': Daniel Radcliffe speaks out after JK Rowling tweetsEntertainment Weekly: Emma Watson speaks out for trans rights after J.K. Rowling's controversial commentsBuzzFeed: Rupert Grint Just Responded To J.K. Rowling's Anti-Trans Statements Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston, stars of the spin-off franchise Fantastic Beasts, have denounced Rowling's remarks.Variety: Eddie Redmayne Criticizes J.K. Rowling’s Anti-Trans Tweets"Vanity Fair: Katherine Waterston on Why It's "Important" to Denounce J.K. Rowling's Transphobic Comments Potter alumni who have defended Rowling include nearly every major villain (except the aforementioned David Tennant, who played Barty Crouch Jr. in the fourth movie) and tedious anti-"woke" crank John Cleese.Vulture: John Cleese Supports J.K. Rowling, Mocks Trans Rights on TwitterThe Hollywood Reporter: Ralph Fiennes Says Abuse Directed at J.K. Rowling Over Trans Controversy Is "Disgusting"Vanity Fair: Helena Bonham Carter Goes to Bat for J.K. Rowling and Johnny DeppYahoo!Life: Harry Potter's Tom Felton praises JK Rowling for "bringing joy to generations"
Transphobes have taken aim at cast members for criticising Rowling and affirming their support of trans people. Helen Joyce tweeted in 2020 that it "must hurt being insulted and betrayed by two young people [Radcliffe and Watson] whose careers she made."https://web.archive.org/web/20220408043144/https://twitter.com/setoacnna/status/1271180048184283136 In late 2021, Piers Morgan lambasted the stars as "ungrateful little twerps" more interested in "pathetic virtue-signalling" than defending the right of the "woman who made them all rich and famous" to her views.The Mirror: Piers Morgan hits out at 'ungrateful' Harry Potter stars for not supporting JK Rowling Judith Woods branded Radcliffe "the world's most ungrateful man" in the Telegraph after he reaffirmed his support of LGBT rights in a November 2022 interview.The Telegraph: Daniel Radcliffe is surely the world’s most ungrateful manLGBTQ Nation: Internet mocks anti-trans columnist who said Daniel Radcliffe has been 'ungrateful' to JK Rowling Woods accused Radcliffe of being a "33-year-old man child" (but also a "petulant pup") seeking to "once again … cancel his creator." Graham Linehan labelled Radcliffe an "ungrateful, traitorous, talentless misogynist" in an April 2023 tweet.https://web.archive.org/web/20230404110620/https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/1643155114776051713 In early 2023, transvestigators spun the conspiracy theory that Radcliffe's slightly-taller cis girlfriend Erin Darke must be trans, despite the couple having just announced they were expecting their first child.Them: Transphobes Believe That Daniel Radcliffe's Pregnant Cis Girlfriend Is TransPinkNews: Transphobes share conspiracy theory about Daniel Radcliffe's pregnant girlfriend Watson set off a wave of abusive online comments by making a mildly trans-supportive quip at the BAFTAs in early 2022.Daily Mail: 'Woke brat' Emma Watson is blasted for her 'ALL the witches' BAFTAs barb at JK Rowling - the woman who 'plucked her from obscurity' - and 'being so desperate to please trans fans, she s**t on ALL women' Trolls variously accused her of being an "ungrateful woke brat" and of "biting the hand that feeds [her]." In April 2024, after the release of a heavily cherry-picked anti-trans government report in the UK, a self-described "FarRightHooligan" on Twitter suggested that "Dan and Emma" would soon issue a "very public apology" to Rowling. Rowling replied stating the actors could "save their apologies." Radcliffe broke his silence in an Atlantic interview later that month, stating that he has "had no direct contact" with Rowling in years and finds her anti-trans activism "really sad," as it contradicts the "deeply empathic" side he saw in their past interactions and in her writing.
The framing of the actors' denunciation of Rowling's transphobia as "betrayal" and "ungratefulness" has drawn sharp criticism. Cartoonist Barry Deutsch wondered how playing Rowling's characters could possibly mean "ow[ing] her undying fealty to the extent of never disagreeing with her in public."Internet Archive copy of a Google Cache copy of a tweet. Thanks, Elon! LibDem councillor Matt Severn similarly observed that a "contract signed by an 11 year old" does not impose a "legal duty of lifelong fealty and/or silence."https://web.archive.org/web/20220718053652/https://twitter.com/Matt_Severn/status/1540638993179721733 Twitter user @HimeOnion opined that transphobes were "literally pulling the 'I made you!' bullcrap abusive parents do."Another Internet Archive copy of a Google Cache copy of a Twitter thread.
It's been speculated that Katherine Waterston had her role reduced from the female lead of the first two Fantastic Beasts films to a glorified cameo in the third in retaliation for calling out Rowling's transphobia.The Daily Dot: Why did Katherine Waterston's Tina Goldstein vanish from the 'Fantastic Beasts' franchise?Radio Times: Is Katherine Waterston in the new Fantastic Beasts film? Antonia Kinlay won a discrimination suit in 2021 after being dropped from the television adaptation of Rowling's Strike series due to her pregnancy.BBC News: Strike actress wins £11k payout in pregnancy discrimination case One wonders if Rowling actually opposes forcing women out of their jobs or simply wants her TERF friends to be able to say whatever they please without consequence.
====Forgetting that fans used to like her ====
In the third episode of The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a "fair and balanced" podcast produced in early 2023 by ex-Westboro Baptist Church member for Rowling recounted an incident circa 2000 (she stated she was still writing Goblet of Fire at the time) when she visited a fan-run chatroom using a "random name."Ellie Harrison, "JK Rowling says she was bullied off a Harry Potter forum she joined under a pseudonym", The Independent, 28 February 2023Kian Rains, "JK Rowling: author claims she was ‘bullied’ out of a Harry Potter chatroom after joining anonymously", Edinburgh Evening News, 2 March 2023 As retold by Rowling in the podcast, she expressed a "very bland" Potter-related opinion in the chat and was "clearly an idiot who [didn't] know anything," but nonetheless "got rounded on by users who told me in no uncertain terms to get out."
Rowling claimed this was an example of cyberbullying and "authoritarian behaviour":
This account of her first bumbling encounter with the online fandom of her books differs starkly from ones given in the past. In March 2004, she posted an update to her official site announcing that "a few weeks ago I did something I've never done before and took a stroll into a Harry Potter chat room: specifically, MuggleNet's chat room.""Mugglenet Chatroom Uninterested in JKR's Theories", J.K.Rowling Official Site She jokingly lamented that "nobody was remotely interested in my theories about what's going to happen in book seven," and that, after failing to "impart any gems of wisdom," she moved on to a discussion of This spawned a rumour that she had used the handle Squidward in the MuggleNet chatroom, causing fans on the site to adopt this username in jest for some time afterward."JKR is deadly serious when she forbids people to call Voldemort 'Voldy'", J.K.Rowling Official Site
Rowling similarly spoke of this incident as a funny story in a 2005 interview with Melissa Anelli and Emerson Spartz of the fansite The Leaky Cauldron:"The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Two", 16 July 2005
==Promoting pseudoscience and ableism==
===Cross-sex blood transfusions===
On March 27, 2023, Rowling tweeted the false claim that it was "recently discovered" that "transfusions of blood from the opposite sex had poorer outcomes, including fatalities."IFL Science: When You Get A Blood Transfusion, Does It Matter What Sex The Donor Is?The Mary Sue: Please Do Not Let J. K. Rowling Convince You Blood Is GenderedGizmodo: Donated Blood Is Safe No Matter a Person's Sex, Large Trial Find Scientists pointed out that the single study cited by Rowling (Alshalani et al. 2022) had a small sample size and only found increased mortality in transfusions from AFAB patients to AMAB patients. It has also been noted that the study's conclusions fail to account for the confounding factor of male-assigned people generally having poorer ICU outcomes than female-assigned ones.Henry Wood & Suzy Morton, Is donor-recipient sex associated with transfusion-related outcomes in critically ill patients?, Blood Advances (2022) 6(23) The two largest studies have both found no link between donor sex and recipient survival.Nareg Roubinian et al., Association of donor age, body mass index, hemoglobin, and smoking status with in-hospital mortality and length of stay among red blood cell transfused recipients, Transfusion (2019) 59(11)Gustaf Edgren et al., Association of Donor Age and Sex With Survival of Patients Receiving Transfusions, JAMA Internal Medicine (2017) 177(6) However, another large study showed a small increase of mortality in transfusions to AMAB patients from AFAB donors with a history of pregnancy, but none in transfusions to AMAB patients from never-pregnant AFAB donors. It has been posited that this may be due to antibodies created through adverse autoimmune responses sometimes triggered by pregnancy. The NHS disallows whole-blood transfusions from those who have been pregnant to newborn babies.
In short: most evidence suggests that AFAB blood recipients aren't put at greater risk by receiving blood from AMAB donors, but mother-of-three Rowling's blood could kill a trans woman recipient according to one study. As a resident of the "mad cow"-stricken UK between 1980 and 1996, she would be deferred as a blood donor in Canada and several European countries, and would've been deferred in Australia, Israel, and the United States until recently. This isn't to say that British mums-of-three shouldn't donate blood (it saves lives!). It's just that cognitive biases tend to heighten the perception of risk related to Others while diminishing the perception of risk concerning oneself.
Rowling's fearmongering over cross-sex transfusions is reminiscent of past moral panics. In 1960, the white supremacist publication The American Nationalist raged over the "thousands of critically ill [white] patients" supposedly "made sicker, or even killed" by "tainted Negro blood transfusions," an "evil practice" it said was tolerated in the "sweet name of racial 'equality' and 'democracy'." At the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis and ensuing in the 1980s, newspapers in the UK regularly carried lurid stories about the "Gay Plague", "Gay Menace", and "Gay Killer Bug". Rowling's alarmist claims about "trans blood" are unsurprising in light of her widely-criticised use of lycanthropy as a AIDS metaphor in the Potter series.
===Link between autism and gender variance===
In her 2020 TERF manifesto, Rowing claimed that there has been a "huge explosion in young women wishing to transition", and that "autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers."Insider: J.K. Rowling said there's been an 'explosion' of young women transitioning and de-transitioning. There's no evidence that's true. Research has shown an increase in transmasculine people seeking gender-affirming care since the early 2000s.Madison Aitken, Evidence for an Altered Sex Ratio in Clinic-Referred Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria", The Journal of Sexual Medicine (2015) 11(3)Matthew C. Leinung & Jalaja Joseph, Changing Demographics in Transgender Individuals Seeking Hormonal Therapy: Are Trans Women More Common Than Trans Men?", Transgender Health (2020) 5(4)Ian T. Nolan, Christopher J. Kuhner, & Geolani W. Dym, Demographic and temporal trends in transgender identities and gender confirming surgery, Transnational Andrology and Urology (2019) 8(3) Studies have also found that trans and gender-variant people are more likely to be autistic.John F. Strang et al., Increased Gender Variance in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Archives of Sexual Behavior 43 (2014)Varun Warrier et al., Elevated rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses, and autistic traits in transgender and gender-diverse individuals, Nature Communications (2020) 11(1) The problem is that Rowling has taken evidence-supported claims and twisted them to fit the preconceived conclusion that vulnerable "girls" are being hoodwinked into thinking they're boys by social pressure or Big Gender.Cripple Media: JK Rowling, Autism, and Getting to 'Pick Your Gender' Evan Urquhart of Salon has linked the upward trend in transmasculine transitions to increased public awareness, as the few media reports of "successfully transitioned trans people" in past decades were "almost universally trans women, not trans men."Salon: Why Are Trans Youth Clinics Seeing an Uptick in Trans Boys? He has also pointed to the early history of gender-related therapy primarily seeking to "cure homosexuality and effeminacy in boys" due to to the greater social stigma attached to gender non-conformity in male-assigned children. Meanwhile, various explanations have been proposed for the increased prevalence of gender variance in autistics, including prenatal hormone exposure, fixation on special interests, and rejection of social norms.Spectrum News: Living between gendersThe Atlantic: The Link Between Autism and Trans Identity Bryony White of The Atlantic has cautioned against conflating correlation with causation by presuming that the "need to transition is a result of [autistic trans youth's] autism."
Autistic self-advocates have highlighted how objections to autistic youth transitioning are rooted in ableist attitudes and ideas.The Age of Autism: An Autistic's Response To J.K. Rowling's Transphobic TweetsThinking Persons Guide to Autism: Autistic, Trans, and Betrayed By J.K. Rowling A writer for disability-rights blog Cripple Media cited it as an example of autistics being "talked over, gaslit, and denied [their] right to self-determine," a product of the belief that they are "children who need to be looked after at all times, not adults and adolescences who get to make choices about [their] own lives." Rowling implicitly endorsed such thinking by approvingly tweeting an anonymous TERF's fear that defining gender by "an internal sense of identity" would make it impossible to ascertain in people with "certain mental handicaps or learning disabilities" or those "unable to develop language skills or … communicate at all".https://web.archive.org/web/20220313092936/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1502688881782702086 She did it more explicitly with a April 2022 praising David Bell for his "deep concern at high numbers of autistic children … presenting at gender clinics."https://web.archive.org/web/20220709074622/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1510254904174067716 The supposed impressionability of autistic people figures in the plot of two Cormoran Strike books.Alicia Hendley: JK Rowling, The Ink Black Heart, and the problem of misplaced authorityhttps://web.archive.org/web/20220901085758/https://twitter.com/sara_rose_g/status/1565261159846055937Maggie Baska (September 28, 2023). "We asked a non-binary person to review the new JK Rowling book. They had a lot to say". PinkNews. In The Ink Black Heart, a "profoundly autistic" teen girl is lured into joining a terrorist group after being "convinced she'd found real friends online," while in The Running Grave a man tries to free his adult autistic son from a Scientology-like cult that serves as a thinly-veiled anti-trans metaphor. Ableism and transphobia don't just contribute to social stigma, but can adversely impact health, freedom, and equality. Autistic trans people have reported having their access to gender-affirming care blocked or delayed by clinicians. Several U.S. states restricted or banned gender-affirming care for people with autism, ADHD, and other psychological conditions in 2023.The 19th: Anti-trans laws are targeting autistic youth and those with mental health conditions A man in the UK sued the NHS to try to prevent his 21-year-old autistic daughter from undergoing gender-confirmation surgery in June 2023.The Telegraph: 'Heartbroken' father sues NHS to stop autistic son's sex change
On June 22, 2023, Rowling shared a tweet by far-right activist Christopher F. Rufo making the pseudoscientific claim that puberty blockers "shut down a child's hypothalamus."Twitter: https://web.archive.org/web/20230626120101/https://twitter.com/BadWritingTakes/status/1673007258844667904 The tweet linked to Rufo's interview of an anonymous doctor in the Manhattan Institute quarterly City Journal, who claimed that this imaginary side effect means "shut[ting] down what makes us human" since the hypothalamus contains a "divine spark," and is the "system" that allows people to "stand in awe of the beauty of a sunset" and be moved by music.City Journal: Thrown to the Wolves Rowling uncritically tweeted this metaphysical horseshit despite railing against gender identity as an "unfalsifiable concept" involving "unprovable essences" on June 21.Yahoo! Life: 'Cisgender' meaning as Elon Musk brands term a ‘slur’ and JK Rowling voices her view The nonsense Rowling picked up from Rufo may have emerged from a conflation of the amygdala theory of autism with more recent research linking autism to structural variations in the hypothalamus.Spectrum News: "Molecular mechanisms: Autism linked to small hypothalamus"Elisabetta Angela Rizzo and Tina Röck, "Autistics as empathic subjects: Phenomenology and Intense World Theory", Phenomenology and Mind (2021) 21 The amygdala theory posits that there is "an abnormality in [the] autistic amygdala" that is correlated with a "diminished ability for social interaction, [and] intersubjective capacity and empathy." This theory is tied to the Baron-Cohenian model (no, not Borat, but his uncle ) of autism as an innate inability to recognize that other people have their own thoughts and feelings (a concept known as "). As such, it is regarded by many autistic people as outdated, or rejected in favor of alternate models. In short, Rowling has signed up for vaccine hysteria round two, except this time puberty blockers are the jab supposedly making kids autistic.
===Stigmatisation of disability and mental health===
In July 2020, Rowling liked a tweet by the transmedicalist @Manaxium characterising hormone replacement therapy as "the new antidepressants", something @Manaxium saw as emblematic of the "pure laziness" of people who "would rather medicate than put in the time and effort to heal people's mind."https://web.archive.org/web/20200704212716/https://twitter.com/TrinerScot/status/1279501444496986113Global News: J.K. Rowling under fire for describing hormone therapy as 'conversion therapy for young gay people'NBC News: J.K. Rowling calls gender transitioning 'a new kind of conversion therapy' This prompted another Twitter user to wonder if anyone had foreseen Rowling one day "pivoting to supporting those who call people who take mental health medication 'lazy'." Rowling quoted-tweeted this user with an 11-part response accusing them of "[lying] about what I believe about mental health medication" and "misrepresent[ing] the views of a trans woman for whom I feel nothing but admiration and solidarity."https://web.archive.org/web/20220604183102/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1279755418621878272 Rowling underscored her own "mental health challenges, which include OCD, depression and anxiety," stating that she had "taken anti-depressants in the past" and found them helpful. She claimed that, like the "many health professionals" she couldn't name, she was merely concerned that struggling youngsters were "being shunted towards hormones and surgery" by Big Trans.
On March 6, 2022, genderqueer trans-inclusive feminist writer posted a Twitter thread revealing they had suffered a breakdown after "twelve years of relentless trolling."https://web.archive.org/web/20220307220123/https://twitter.com/BadWritingTakes/status/1500954723968499716 In this thread, Penny mentioned that they had been diagnosed with CPTSD and highlighted nasty reviews of their recent book by The Times, The Observer, and The Critic. The following day, Julie Bindel, author of the Critic piece, put out a tweet claiming that Penny was alleging the reviews "caused her complex PTSD." Shortly thereafter, Bindel mockingly tweeted that she had "diagnosed [herself] with Complex PTSD" after a man "opened a packet of Cheesy Wotsits" on the train, prompting a reply of "thoughts and prayers, Julie" from Rowling.https://web.archive.org/web/20220819041708/https://twitter.com/bindelj/status/1500799081190498304https://web.archive.org/web/20220307143059/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1500841347015663619 In response, Penny reminded Bindel that she knew "full well that these reviews didn't *cause* the CPTSD [they] experience," as they had personally disclosed the sources of their trauma to Bindel "back when [the pair] were trying to build bridges." Penny's reply to Rowling was gentler, pointing out that it was their "mental health history" Bindel was mocking in the tweet "along with everyone else who has experienced CPTSD," and hoping that the author didn't think it was acceptable to "shame" people in this manner.
Rowling came under fire for her portrayal of chronic illness and the disabled community in her 2022 Cormoran Strike novel The Ink Black Heart.A Spiral Dance: The Online Spoonie Community is Valid and ImportantGretchen Felker-Martin: In the Flesh - The Ink Black HeartThe Once and Future Cripple: Rowling’s new book is ableist and so was Harry Potter The book features a description of the Tumblr bio of "disabled artist" character Kea Niven: "CF – fibromyalgia - POTs – allodynia – I need more A Spiral Dance, a disability-focused blog, held that Rowling "couldn't even get the details of chronic illnesses correct," citing her incorrect rendering of " and use of the non-standard acronym "CF" to mean chronic fatigue syndrome. Author Gretchen Felker-Martin wrote that Rowling is "deeply mean-spirited when it comes to anyone non-normative, especially the fat and the disabled," finding The Ink Black Heart to be "particularly savage" in its "bottomless contempt for 'spoonies' and other disabled communities." She contrasted the sympathetic portrayal of "brusque, manly Strike, whose disability is the result of a war wound" with the portrayal of chronically-ill characters as "malingerers, abusers, and emotional manipulators." Kristina Lucien of the blog The Once and Future Cripple echoed this view, commenting that it is "made clear to the readers that [Kea] is the wrong kind of disabled" as "she claims her identity openly," in comparison to amputee Strike trying to minimise his disability by declining to use a cane despite his pain. Psychologist Alicia Hendley declared the book to be "threaded throughout" with "dismissal and lazy stereotyping" of people with invisible illnesses. In Hendley's view, Rowling distinguishes "people who have valid, visible, 'real' illness/disabilities" and want to to "'get on with it', to live their lives 'despite' their difficulties, to even excel" from the spoonie who "not only wallows, but defines themselves by (and perhaps even revels in) being ill."
In May 2024, amidst wider controversy over Israel's participation in Eurovision, Irish contestant accused Israeli broadcaster KAN of "incit[ing] violence" against them. They criticised the EBU's handling of their complaint against KAN in what anti-trans grifter described as a "profanity laden rant."https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughJKRowling/comments/1cqg83a/jk_rowling_likes_tweets_mocking_ireland_singer Rowling liked a re-tweet of London by Dennis Noel Kavanagh, who added that "developmentally delayed as she [Bambie] is, even she realises cursing the public wouldn't go down well." Bambie (who is non-binary) has stated that they were diagnosed with ADHD as a child.
==Statements on sexual assault and abuse==
===Rowling's own experiences===
Rowling experienced domestic violence during her "short and catastrophic" marriage to Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes in the early 1990s.Oprah.com: The Brilliant Mind Behind Harry PotterThe Guardian: JK Rowling tells of fear former husband would burn Harry Potter manuscript By Rowling's account, Arantes was "very violent and very controlling" as a partner, denying her a housekey so he could have "control of the front door."The Independent: JK Rowling describes 'violence' in first marriage" At one point, Arantes allegedly took the manuscript of the first Harry Potter novel and hid it as "his hostage," forcing Rowling to sneak "a few pages" into work "every day" to photocopy. Rowling gradually assembled a copy of the manuscript and kept it in a staffroom cupboard. She feared Arantes would seize or destroy the original if she "wasn't able to get out [of the marriage] with everything." Arantes has admitted that he slapped Rowling on the night she fled in 1993 but denies having committed "sustained abuse."The Sun: JK Rowling's abusive first husband admits he slapped her but says 'I'm not sorry' The Sun (who else?) interviewed Arantes in June 2020 and published his claims with the lurid headline "I slapped JK and I'm not sorry."BBC News: JK Rowling: Sun newspaper criticised by abuse charities for article on ex-husbandThe Associated Press: Sun newspaper says J.K. Rowling article did not glorify domestic abuse This article was widely condemned by the press and abuse survivor advocates.
In her 2020 TERF manifesto, Rowling revealed that she was the victim of a "serious sexual assault" sometime in her twenties, describing it as occurring "at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable" and involving a "man [who] capitalised on an opportunity." Rowling wrote that her memories of this event spurred her to oppose Gender Recognition Act reform in Scotland, declaring it would inevitably "throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms" to sexual predators. She added: "I'm mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who've been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces." One such woman replied in a 2022 New Statesman column, "As a victim of abuse, I once agreed with JK Rowling".Lucy Hall (March 9, 2022). "As a victim of abuse, I once agreed with JK Rowling". The New Statesman.
Rowling cited her personal history as a motivation for funding the establishment of a private "support centre for female victims of sexual violence" in Edinburgh in December 2022.The Guardian: JK Rowling launches support centre for female victims of sexual violence"The Times: JK Rowling launches service for women victims of sexual violence before Scotland brings in self-ID law" This service – named Beira's Place after the "Scottish goddess of winter" – is frequently lauded as a "women's shelter," "rape crisis centre," and "refuge" by Rowling's supporters, but reading the website makes it clear it doesn't offer shelter space or crisis support.Beira's Place: About UsBeira's Place: FAQs It provides one-on-one and group counselling by appointment only. The centre is not wheelchair accessible and clients are advised not to bring children. Board member Rhona Hotchkiss served as governor of the women's prison until 2019.NHS Scotland Events: Rhona Hotchkiss In 2016, it was reported that inmates faced "Victorian conditions" and long queues for access to a shared toilet, with some being instructed by staff to "pee in the sink" if they couldn't wait.BBC News: Cornton Vale prisoners 'forced to use sink as a toilet'Holyrood: Cornton Vale toilet conditions 'wholly unacceptable in the 21st century', warns chief prisons inspector Hotchkiss asserted in 2022 that she would've resigned if she'd still been governor during the The Telegraph: Former prisoner governor says she would have quit over trans rapistDaily Mail: Ex-governor of Scottish women's prison 'would have quit' if she'd been told to house transgender rapist with female inmates
According to an article published by the Wall Street Journal in 2024, Rowling invoked "her past as an abused woman" during business meetings with Warner Bros., reportedly claiming that "a group of men telling her what to do reminded her of her previous marriage."
===Johnny Depp and other accused===
Despite Rowling exploiting her public image as an outspoken feminist and #MeToo advocate in order to justify her anti-trans beliefs, she has on several occasions sided with alleged abusers over the victims of sexual violence.
In November 2016, shortly before the release of the first film in the Fantastic Beasts franchise, it was revealed had a cameo as Gellert Grindelwald, and was slated to return in the sequels.USA Today: Shocker! Johnny Depp is in 'Fantastic Beasts'Digital Trends: Johnny Depp will play a pivotal character in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ sequel His casting sparked outcry from Potter fans due to allegations of abuse made earlier that same year by Depp's then-wife Amber Heard.Stuff.co.nz: Backlash from Harry Potter fans after Johnny Depp cast in Fantastic Beasts Rowling apparently blocked fans who asked her about it.Jacob Shamsian (December 1, 2017). "J.K. Rowling blocked a fan on Twitter after she asked her why Johnny Depp would still be in 'Fantastic Beasts'". Business Insider.(November 29, 2017). "J.K. Rowling blocking Harry Potter fans on Twitter who ask her about Johnny Depp 'abusing his wife'". r/harrypotter (Reddit). She issued an official statement in December, telling fans that she understood why they were "confused and angry," but that she and the filmmakers were "not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy" with Depp's involvement based on their "understanding of the circumstances" of Depp and Heard's marriage.J. K. Rowling: Grindelwald casting Rowling added, "conscience isn't governable by committee."Jake Coyle (December 7, 2017). "JK Rowling, Warner Bros. voice support for Johnny Depp". The Associated Press. Depp said in a 2018 interview: "J.K. has seen the evidence and therefore knows I was falsely accused, and that's why she has publicly supported me."Alexia Fernández (October 13, 2018). "Johnny Depp Opens Up About Playing Grindelwald, Says J.K. Rowling 'Knows I Was Falsely Accused'". People.Gina Carbone (September 15, 2022). "How Johnny Depp's Libel Trial Is Directly Tied To J.K. Rowling And Fantastic Beasts Movies". CinemaBlend.
Depp was cut from the Fantastic Beasts franchise in 2020 after losing a libel case against The Sun for a headline calling him a "wife beater."(November 2, 2020). "Johnny Depp loses libel case over Sun 'wife beater' claim". BBC News.Variety: Johnny Depp: Why Warner Bros. Finally Cut Ties With the 'Fantastic Beasts' Star Depp won a subsequent defamation suit against Heard in 2022 over an op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post in 2018.Entertainment Weekly: Johnny Depp wins defamation trial against Amber Heard, jury awards him $15 million in damages In this piece, Heard described herself as a "public figure representing domestic abuse," but did not specifically name Depp.Washington Post: I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change. Some have speculated that Depp's legal team pushed for the case to be heard in Virginia over the couple's home state of California due to Virginia's "far weaker" anti-SLAPP laws.Vulture: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s Defamation Trial, ExplainedFairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Depp/Heard Verdict a Loss for Violence Survivors—and a Free Press
Rowling, reportedly a long-time friend of Depp, bought his yacht sometime around 2015 for £22 million, then soon sold it at £7 million loss.Lilit Marcus (September 15, 2016). "J.K. Rowling Is Selling Her $20 Million Yacht (With Interiors By…Johnny Depp)". Condé Nast Traveler.(September 14, 2016). "JK Rowling sells yacht for £7m loss - a year after buying it". The Scotsman. She sent a bouquet of roses to Depp's close friend Marilyn Manson in January 2020.https://web.archive.org/web/20200209142625/https://twitter.com/marilynmanson/status/1223133969232752641 In 2021, actress Evan Rachel Wood named Manson as the ex-partner behind an account of sexual assault revealed in 2016, prompting several other women to come forward with further allegations of rape and torture by Manson.BBC News: Evan Rachel Wood: Actress tells Congress about sexual abuseVanity Fair: He "Horrifically Abused Me for Years": Evan Rachel Wood and Other Women Make Allegations of Abuse Against Marilyn Manson Depp stans paid to have the Depp v. Heard court records unsealed in the hope of unearthing dirt on Heard.Rolling Stone: Johnny Depp Stans Rushed to Fork Over Cash for Unsealed Court Docs. Did It Backfire? They instead revealed a trove of unsavoury and embarrassing things about Depp. This included the transcript of a "troubling" 2016 text conversation in which Manson tried to set Depp up with an 18-year-old girl.Popculture.com: Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson's Troubling Text Messages Surface in Unsealed Court DocumentsEntertainment Weekly: Biggest bombshells in unsealed Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard court docs: Erectile dysfunction, nude photos, and Marilyn Manson
Rowling personally thanked voice actor for his work on the 2023 video game Hogwarts Legacy.J. K. Rowling (February 9, 2023). "Thank you, Greg". Twitter, via archive.today.BehindTheMagic.com: J.K. Rowling Under Fire For Publicly Thanking, Hiring "Canceled" Actor Accused of Domestic Violence Ellis is a hardline MRA with his own history of domestic abuse allegations.GeekBuzz: Legal Filings Debunk the ‘Respondent’ Greg Ellis’ Belittling Proclamation Against Family CourtEli Erlick (February 11, 2023). "Greg Ellis is a Trump-supporting anti feminist who distributed revenge porn of his wife, had a restraining order for domestic violence, and is now banned from seeing his children. He voiced 12 characters in Hogwarts Legacy." Twitter, via the Wayback Machine. In 2015, Ellis' then-wife successfully filed for a restraining order against him, stating that he had threatened their children. Another former partner of Ellis obtained a three-year protection order in 2023 in a case involving an allegation of revenge porn.Tweet featuring redacted court document Ellis is reportedly a long-time friend of Depp,OK Magazine: Actor Greg Ellis Says Pal Johnny Depp 'Took Responsibility For His Faults' During Trial: 'He's Never Said He's Perfect'New York Post: Johnny Depp is ‘happy to get his life back’ after trial, says longtime friend and has been one of his fiercest defenders on social media.Movieweb: Pirates of the Caribbean Star Greg Ellis Supports Johnny Depp, Blasts 'False Allegations' Ellis supposedly met Depp at his infamous Los Angeles bar in the 1980s and worked with him on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
Depp wasn't the only Fantastic Beasts cast member to generate worrying headlines. Video emerged in 2020 of physically assaulting a woman at a Reykjavík bar.Variety: Ezra Miller Appears to Choke Woman in VideoVanity Fair: Ezra Miller's "Messiah" Delusions: Inside The Flash Star's Dark Spiral Since 2022, they have incurred multiple arrests, citations, and restraining orders for a slew of alleged crimes including assault, burglary, and grooming minors.NBC News: Massachusetts court grants temporary protection order against actor Ezra MillerThe Daily Beast: 12-Year-Old Granted Order of Protection Against Ezra Miller Scottish actor Kevin Guthrie was sentenced to three years in prison for sexual assault in 2021.'Fantastic Beasts' Actor Kevin Guthrie Sentenced to 3 Years in Jail for Sexual Assault Rowling has not publicly commented on either case to date.
===Selective moral outrage===
When disturbing revelations of sexual abuse committed by popular fantasy author Neil Gaiman were to brought to wider attention in a New York magazine expose in January 2025https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/neil-gaiman-faces-sexual-assault-allegations-1236108095/, Rowling took to social media and accused the "literary crowd" of remaining silent on the matter while comparing Gaiman to Harvey Weinstein.https://deadline.com/2025/01/nail-gaiman-allegations-j-k-rowling-1236255597/ Ignoring the fact that Rowling had, up until this point, made no mention of these allegations when they were first reported months ago in July 2024, its rather interesting that Rowling would defend and cozy up to other powerful men accused of similar abuses for years, but will suddenly become Gloria Steinem if the accused in question just happens to be a high-profile supporter of the trans community. Its also probably not coincidence that Gaiman signed letter in support of the LGBTQ+ community in response to Rowling's transphobia 4 years prior.https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/news/stephen-king-margaret-atwood-transgender-open-letter-jk-rowling-b912344.html
===Flawed understanding of sexual abuse===
thumb|right|200px|A "tragic love story," according to Rowling.
Rowling has demonstrated a deeply flawed understanding of sexual violence and consent. In 2024, she tweeted that "under UK law, only men can commit rape."https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1806021379474563455 It's correct to say the UK as the non-consensual penetration of the victim's "vagina, anus or mouth" by the perpetrator's "penis."Sexual Offences Act 2003, www.legislation.gov.uk(February 8, 2021). "Can a woman rape a man?". Bastian Lloyd Morris Solicitor Advocates. However, it betrays Rowling's apparent belief that AFAB people are incapable of committing sexual violence, a notion rooted in the essentialist idea that men are inherently aggressive and women are inherently weak. Rowling has repeatedly mentioned penises when discussing the supposed risk of housing trans women in women's prisons.https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1470092815506063365https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1620107934364745728https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1639275893607612421
Her rhetoric on such topics sometimes alludes to "sex class",J. K. Rowling (May 17, 2024). "It's a very difficult point to grasp, if some of my regular attackers are anything to go by. 'Why do you care if the most vulnerable members of your sex class are deprived of basic protections?' They appear unable to fathom why I'd care about anything other than my own safety." Twitter, via archive.today. (Original post). taking a leaf from one fellow TERF celebrity.Graham Linehan (April 13, 2020). "I'm very sorry that happened to you, Amy, that's terrible. It has nothing to do with the fact that men *as a class* rape women *as a class* and I don't know why you would pretend it does. I'm not sure anyone who would blind you to that fact is a 'friend'." Twitter, via the Wayback Machine.Graham Linehan (April 15, 2020). "so there are no sex classes? this is hysterical. Hey @FondOfBeetles you'll enjoy this one". Twitter, via the Wayback Machine. This is a vulgarization of ~1960s–1970s radical feminist class theory, which proposed sex class was an oppressive social construct. Even an early radical feminist author who theorized that these social classes stemmed from biological differences (specifically, historical and accumulated power imbalances from pregnancy), proposed in her book that social distinctions of sex class can and should be abolished with technological and medical innovation.Shulamith Firestone (1970). The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. ISBN: 978-1784780524. This view of sex as a class system was partly inspired by Marxist theory, which itself saw gradients and exceptions: petit bourgeois and lumpenproletariat were semi-distinguished from two main classes. Likewise, in Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin said two sex classes were a reductive construct; speaking of the "radical biology of sex similarity" in relation to intersex and transgender people, she said humanity was "a multi-sexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete."
The "women-cannot-rape" mentality has seemingly influenced Rowling's fiction. Love potions feature in the world of the Harry Potter series. In Half-Blood Prince (2005), a female student, Romilda, gives Harry chocolates spiked with love potion, having purchased the potion as a novelty from a joke shop. The chocolates are instead consumed by Ron in an incident played mainly for comic effect. It is also revealed that Voldemort's witch mother Merope forced his Muggle father Tom to marry and conceive a child with her by continuously dosing him with love potion over an extended period. Rowling has never acknowledged that Voldemort's villain origin story involves an act of female-on-male date rape. The closest she came was describing the love potion as "coercion" and a "symbolic way of showing that [Voldemort] came from a loveless union" in 2007. Kabir Chattopadhyay wrote in the journal Gender Forum in 2020 that Rowling's love potions are a "largely harmless commodity, whose role in manipulating consent is presented not in the sinister context of abuse and gender violence, but in the frivolous, even playful, language of pranks and jokes." Chattopadhyay held that "the love potion, in its purpose and intent, is disturbingly similar" to actual date-rape drugs, but that Rowling uses "two major narrative strategies" – a desexualised "image of teenage romantic attention" (Romilda) and an "inversion of the gendered associations" of date rape (Merope) – to "dissociate the love potion from this real-world counterpart."
Another commonly cited example of gender essentialism in Harry Potter is the charmed stairs in Gryffindor Tower barring boys from accessing the girls' dormitory but not the reverse. According to Hermione, this is an "old-fashioned rule" set by Hogwarts' founders, in the belief that "boys [are] less trustworthy than girls." Tison Pugh wryly observed in 2019 that the school "incorporates gender bias into its very architecture." Not only did Rowling negate the possibility of girls wanting sex or being predators, but, once again, she conveniently forgot queer people exist. As Erin A. Delaney noted in 2007, "Hogwarts is an institution that acknowledges its students' sexuality," but it is only "heterosexual sex that the school guards against."
Rowling hailed as one of her favourite books in a Radio 4 interview in 2000. Rowling described the novel – about an adult man's abduction and rape of his 12-year-old stepdaughter – as a "great and tragic love story."Jacob Shamsian (August 1, 2016). "Here are all of J.K. Rowling's favorite books". Business Insider. She stated that the novel's ending – in which now-teenage Lolita dies in childbirth – "make[s] [her] cry without fail." Fans have pointed to apparent Lolita references throughout the Harry Potter series. One would think a best-selling writer would know the difference between a romantic tale and a disturbing story told by an Author was clear Lolita is a story about a "little girl" preyed upon by a "vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear 'touching'."
==Cormoran Strike series==
Since finishing the Harry Potter series, Rowling has focused on a new series, adult detective novels featuring ex-military policeman Cormoran Strike and his female assistant Robin Ellacott. These are published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Some have also been adapted for television by the BBC and HBO.Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger return in Strike - Troubled Blood, BBC press release, 2022
In the beginning, it wasn't known that Galbraith was Rowling. But then the first book, The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), was rejected by some publishing firms and sold just 1,500 copies once it did find a publisher. Her lawyer then proceeded to leak the fact that the novel was authored by Rowling to his "wife's best friend". The sales for the book then skyrocketed after The Sunday Times reported it.James Meikle (July 18, 2013). "JK Rowling directs anger at lawyers after secret identity revealed". The Guardian. Adam Taylor (July 15, 2013). "Every Aspiring Author Should Be Depressed By J.K. Rowling's Pseudonymous Publishing Stunt". Business Insider. It is completely impossible that this "leak" was actually staged as a financial decision.
Initially, the books seemed to be unexceptional genre works, but that changed when Rowling started to inject her increasingly strange beliefs about trans people and other issues. Over time, it started to become obvious that Rowling was writing these airport novels as an exhibitionist way to vent her own personal obsessions and prejudices into fiction. At first it was subtle; book two, The Silkworm (2014), features two trans characters who are portrayed in a relatively sympathetic fashion, although Strike is rude to them and threatens one with prison rape.
Book three, Career of Evil (2015), is about an online community of people who wish to be disabled and have limbs amputated to meet their desire. is a real condition, but to some people, it felt like Rowling was using these people who wished to be disabled as a way to attack or mock trans people, whom she viewed as similarly deluded.
Lethal White (2018), book four in the series, features a pair of far-left villains who hate Israel so much that they became antisemitic. (See: J. K. Rowling § Other political views.)
Controversy increased with book five: Troubled Blood (2020) features a serial killer who disguises himself in drag in order to assault woman in public restrooms. Naturally, this was read in the light of Rowling's hostility to trans people and belief that trans women are all men dressing as women to attack cis women. It also contains a lot of criticism of 21st century feminism for being sex-positive, pro-porn, holding SlutWalks to oppose slut shaming, etc, as well as gender essentialist undertones in regards to the behavior of men and women.J.K. Rowling’s transphobic new novel sees her at the mercy of all her worst impulses, Constance Grady, Vox, September 3, 2020 In addition to transphobic stereotypes, several passages in the novel also have a perverse fixation with fat people, filled with bizarre paragraphs that detail in unnecessary length the eating habits and appearances of overweight characters in a less-than-flattering matter and whose behavior is an almost cartoonish portrayal of obesity in what is supposed to be a serious crime thriller.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHTMidTLO60 As to the reasons behind these baffling creative decisions is due to Rowling despising fat people or just psychologically projecting her own body image insecurities unto fictional characters remains unclear, however. This is even more puzzling when considering Rowling has spoken against society using weight as an insult before.Paul Kelbie (April 6, 2006). "Rowling rails at fashion's obsession with weight". The Independent.
This was followed by book six, The Ink Black Heart (2022), which is about a cartoonist who is doxxed and ultimately murdered after antagonising woke online trolls with remarks about a hermaphrodite worm that are considered transphobic. Rowling insists any resemblance to her life is coincidental; most people don't believe her (not even The Daily Telegraph).Cheyenne Roundtree (August 29, 2022). "J.K. Rowling's New Book Just So Happens to Feature a Character Persecuted Over Transphobia". Rolling Stone.Mey Rude (August 30, 2022). "J.K. Rowling's New Book Is About a Creator Doxxed Over Transphobia". Out. Not exactly subtle Joanne.
In the seventh book, The Running Grave (2023), the apparent connection between Rowling's real-world views and this fictional storyline is built upon further. Some drew parallels between the abusive cult present in the seventh installment and the way Rowling views her political opponents. The cult is described as (aside from the abusive behavior typical of any real-world cult) expressing positions in favor of various social justice causes. A typical profile of a cult recruit is described as someone with dyed-blue hair, most likely a coded reference to right-wing stereotypes of LGBTQ people and liberals/progressives having unnaturally colored hair to signal strangeness and non-conformity.https://ohiofusion.com/the-blue-haired-liberal/https://www.wired.com/story/portland-blue-hair-stereotype/. They are also said to predate on autistic people and lesbians, and one of its fictional critics is a "patron of several charities" with a "reputation for intelligence and integrity". Again, nothing terribly subtle here.
===About that pen name…===
There is also a curious coincidence that the pseudonym Robert Galbraith is very similar to the name of a controversial psychiatrist. He experimented on black people; Harry Bailey, a research partner of his, stated that the two experimented on black people because it was "cheaper to use niggers than cats because they were everywhere", though Heath later denied knowing Bailey.Slattery, J.P. (1990). "Report of the Royal Commission into Deep Sleep Therapy". New South Wales Parliamentary Paper. 304/1990-1991. .Deborah Cameron (October 8, 1988). "The CIA link to deep-sleep research" (page 11). The Sydney Morning Herald.Carl Bernofsky. "Changing People's Minds, Tulane Style: A Tale From Two Perspectives". TulaneLink. He also experimented on the mentally ill and pioneered conversion therapy for gay men, including the use of electric shocks.
Rowling's spokesperson said she was unaware of the existence of Heath when she chose the pseudonym and that she had long been fond of the name "Galbraith". The spokesperson also pointed to Rowling's original explanation for the pseudonym's origin in 2013.Emma Nolan (September 16, 2020). "Why J.K. Rowling's 'Robert Galbraith' Pseudonym is Linked to Harmful Conversion Therapist". Newsweek. She had then stated: "When I was a child, I really wanted to be called 'Ella Galbraith', and I've no idea why. I don't even know how I knew that the surname existed, because I can't remember ever meeting anyone with it." She attributed her choice of "Robert" to her admiration for Robert F. Kennedy.Liz Bury (July 24, 2013). "JK Rowling tells story of alter ego Robert Galbraith". The Guardian.Margaret Lyons (July 24, 2013). "J.K. Rowling Explains Her Pseudonym". Vulture.
Robert Colvile, the author of a 2016 article about Robert Galbraith Heath, claimed Rowling "could not have known about" Heath in 2013 when she chose the name, because it came before his article and "everyone had forgotten" about Heath.Arturo Garcia (September 24, 2020). "Did J.K. Rowling Promote a Website Selling Transphobic Merchandise?". Truth or Fiction?. In actual fact, Heath's Wikipedia page was created in 2007, and from the point of creation made reference in-text to his experiments on black people, and view of them as "animals"; a citation referenced one of Heath's conversion therapy experiments in its title.(February 5, 2007). "Robert Galbraith Heath" (old revision). Wikipedia. A winter 2006 article in The New Atlantis (a conservative journal),Adam Keiper (Winter 2006). "The Age of Neuroelectronics". The New Atlantis. a September 2008 article in the neuroscience blog Mind Hacks,Vaughan Bell (September 16, 2008). "Erotic self-stimulation and brain implants". Mind Hacks. an October 2010 article in Vice's Motherboard,Don Caldwell (October 18, 2010). "Wireheading: This Strange Experiment from the 1950s Wired Pleasure Directly Into the Brain". Motherboard. Vice. an April 2012 CRC Press book,"Neurotechnology: Premises, Potential, and Problems", p. 151. CRC Press. and a May 2012 article in Scientific AmericanJohn Horgan (May 14, 2012). "What Are Science's Ugliest Experiments?". Cross-Check. Scientific American. all discussed Heath's brutal experiments, and half the time named him in full as "Robert Galbraith Heath". To state that she could not have known about this guy is completely inaccurate, although it is likely to have been an accidental coincidence in any case. Even if she did know, it's much more likely that she simply didn't care, rather than secretly having some kind of twisted admiration for a homophobic mad scientist.
==Other political views==
In a 2000 interview, Rowling described herself as left-wing. As early as 2002, Rowling claimed that one of her biggest writing influences had been whom she described as a "self-taught socialist" (Mitford had also been a member of the Communist Party of the United States until 1958). Lindsay Fraser, The Scotsman, November 2002, archived at Accio Quote! She also donated to LabourJK Rowling gives Labour £1m donation, 20 September 2008 and was openly supportive of the British welfare stateJK Rowling on paying taxes and the welfare state in the late 2000s. In April 2010, she wrote a Single Mother's Manifesto criticising Tory austerity and David Cameron.The Single Mother's Manifesto, originally pushed in The Times
However, she was very critical of Jeremy Corbyn, a remnant of Labour's Old Left,JK Rowling gave "blast of reality" on Jeremy Corbyn and mocked his (honestly mediocre and half-assed) stance on Brexit.JK Rowling mocks "Saint Jeremy" over Brexit. The Guardian, 23 December 2018. This was driven by fear that it would lead to a repeat of which resulted in the Tories, under Margaret Thatcher, winning re-election in 1983 and control over national politics until 1997.JK Rowling is in a massive Twitter war about the future of progressive politics in Britain
Rowling expressed her opposition to Scottish independence at the time of the 2014 independence referendum, donating £1m to the anti-independence group Better Together.Alexandra Siierlin, J.K. Rowling Tweets Her Opposition to Scottish Independence, Time, 8 September 2014. This didn't endear her to some Scottish Nationalists, and she received online abuse, which caused her to double down in her opposition to independence, accusing Scottish nationalists of bigotry; she also called out the "blood and soil" ethnonationalists Siol nan Gaidheal, who are certainly bigots but whose membership is so small they can hardly be considered representative of anything.JK Rowling attacked for saying Scottish nationalism 'contains traces of bigotry', The Guardian, 6 July 2018 Predicting some in the independence movement would discard her opinion due to being born and raised in England, she called the idea "Death Eaterish".
In 2015, she signed a letter stating that "cultural boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory, and will not further peace."Megan Willett-Wei (October 27, 2015). "J.K. Rowling wrote about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict using her 'Harry Potter' characters as examples". Business Insider.(October 22, 2015). "Letters: Israel needs cultural bridges, not boycotts – letter from JK Rowling, Simon Schama and others". The Guardian.(October 23, 2015). "J. K. Rowling tops list of UK artists opposing Israel boycott". The Times of Israel. In response to criticism of this, she wrote a bizarre essay which criticized Israel (though particularly Netanyahu), but also argued young Harry Potter would be upset with her decision not to boycott Israel. Dumbledore and an older Harry Potter would have agreed with her refusal to boycott Israel, she added.Sam Kriss (November 2, 2015). "JK Rowling's Weird, Nonsensical Claim That Dumbledore Would Have Been Against a Boycott of Israel". Vice. (Archived version).Gita Jackson (October 3, 2018). "J.K. Rowling Needs To Stop Messing With Harry Potter". Kotaku. In 2018, she released a Cormoran Strike novel featuring a pair of far-left "Israel-hating antisemites" as the villains.Yvette Alt Miller (September 23, 2018). "In J.K. Rowling’s New Novel, the Villain Is an Israel-hating anti-Semite". Jewish Telegraphic Agency, via Haaretz.
Rowling told off Vladimir Putin when he had the gall to compare Western sanctions against Russia to Rowling being "canceled" for her TERF views.Arnaud Siad, Nathan Hodge and Toyin Owoseje, J.K. Rowling hits back at Putin after he likened Russia to her in rant against cancel culture. CNN, 25 March 2022. In apparent response to her stance, a group of Russian trolls pranked her, convincing her that she was in a video conference with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Roughly fifteen minutes of strange nonsense ensued, with Rowling agreeing to "look into" changing Harry Potter's scar due to its similarity to the Russian She endorsed pressure on Russia "culturally and economically", in response to a question about how "not to promote Russian culture" such as music."J.K. Rowling pranked by Russian pranksters".James Hibberd (June 23, 2022). "J.K. Rowling Pranked by Russians Impersonating Ukraine President Zelensky on Zoom Call". The Hollywood Reporter.
==See also==
*Anita Bryant, another celebrity whose subsequent bigotry has completely overshadowed her legacy.
*Philosopher's stone
*Tatsuya Ishida, another once-popular writer turned TERF (and in his case, later turned neo-Nazi).
==External links==
*Religion in Harry Potter — Skeptic
*Boolean Union Tract Dissections review of The Truth For Youth's Hairy Polarity and the Sinister Sorcery Satire comic
*Harry Potter's big con is the prose
*Harry Potter and the childish adult
*"Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let’s let her speak for herself." — Vox
*ContraPoints video on J. K. Rowling
*Shaun's videos on Harry Potter and JK Rowling's New Friends
*Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists
==Notes==
==References==
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