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Did you read Joanne Rowling’s wizard books? Cool, let’s talk about how she’s a bigot.
Forget the question “can I still ethically watch the Deathly Hallows?” and start asking, “why is this woman spending so much of her one precious life attacking a vulnerable minority and when will she stop?”
Rowling has been showing us who she is for years, but she’s really been going for it recently.
Editor’s note: Argh, hi, I’m jumping in to update this post, which I won’t be able to do every time Joanne Rowling goes on a transphobic rampage, because I cannot keep up, but here we are.
This week, Joanne expanded her transphobia to include cis women. In a series of cruel, inaccurate tweets sent to her many millions of followers, Joanne called Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif a “male.” She isn’t; she’s just very strong. There are no trans women competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics - so Joanne Rowling got restless and attacked someone who was born and has lived her whole life female.
To those of us who’ve been paying close attention to transphobic celebrities, this is not a surprise. Joanne’s transphobia does not need facts, or truth, or logic. It was never, never about women’s rights, protecting women, or real feminism. It has always been about the violent gatekeeping of a certain type of womanhood. Transphobia is in cahoots with racism, misogyny, and fascism. It is a frightening obsession, a cult-like set of beliefs, a dangerous hobby with very real, very distressing consequences.
And now back to my original post, written in April of this year.
If you need to catch up on this whole situation
Watch or listen to this podcast by Matt Bernstein with guest Natalie Wynn: J.K. Rowling’s Spiral Into Madness
Read this: J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia Controversy: A Complete Timeline (though of course please note this is actually not up to date because Rowling keeps doing more transphobia)
Another option for a timeline over on Glamour.com
Latest developments: JKR targets cis Olympic boxer Imane Khelif
Earlier this year, she challenged Scottish police to arrest her under new laws that aim to prevent hate crimes and she misgendered a trans newsreader. In February of this year, Rowling donated £70,000 to a group who are trying to get the Supreme Court in Scotland to rule on who is allowed to be a woman.
Not content hurling her opinions from a computer somewhere in Edinburgh, she’s actually trying to change the law so that trans people are not permitted the same human rights as the rest of us.
Oh, and have you noticed how often someone who takes up one type of hatred stumbles into another type? Yeah. Rowling recently claimed that trans and queer people were not targeted by Nazis. Fact check: they very definitely were.
Here she is supporting the prosecution of staff at two vitally important charities that provide life-saving care for trans people, especially trans youth.
And here she is calling a trans performer a man.
MY GOD THERE ARE SO MANY MORE.
She genuinely spends a lot of her free time tweeting about this.
Which is baffling and mad, considering that just 0.5 per cent of the population is trans… and they’ve never done anything to hurt Joanne Rowling. Someone has! Rowling wrote an essay about her experience of sexual assault. She was attacked, as many of us have been, by a cis man. And yet? Instead of joining the fight against male violence??? She has missed the fucking point entirely and weaponised her own trauma against trans women, who statistically commit very very few crimes of this sort. They are significantly more likely to be the victims of violent crime.
The same sinister abdication of logic pops up any time someone brings up public bathrooms. Do you have a relative who likes to say, over family dinner, “but women should feel safe in locker rooms!!!” Ah, yes. If trans women are in there, babes, they are safe.
How many times do you reckon a trans person has snuck into a public bathroom to attack someone? None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. No times.
If you’re screaming about which bathroom people should be able to use, or whinging about pronouns, while cis men kill women at a rate of AT LEAST ONE PER WEEK, then darling you are not just on the wrong side of history, you’re on the wrong side of now.
Liking Harry Potter used to be a favourite hobby of mine. I owned Hufflepuff paraphernalia. I've tasted Butterbeer. I dressed up as Hermione Granger more than once (I’ve got the hair for it).
There are still people in my life who will see a TikTok clip of Ron Weasley yelling on an enchanted chess board and think of me.
When I first moved to London, I worked on the website affiliated with the franchise. It was the greatest job I’ve ever had. I cannot tell you the details.
This was before Joanne Rowling appointed herself arbiter of other people’s gender.
In late 2017, I stopped working for the brand.
It was March 2018 when Rowling ‘liked’ a transphobic tweet and claimed it was an accident. This, to me, suggests that someone on her publicity team recognised that transphobia was bad… someone she has clearly not listened to since.
In the intervening years, Rowling has leaned into her opinions.
It’s sad enough when someone’s random cousin or boss says something transphobic. Rowling is saying it to millions of people who give her opinion undue weight because she once wrote a series of children’s books about magic school.
GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation have expressed alarm at Rowling’s behaviour online, saying that she has: "aligned herself with an anti-science ideology that denies the basic humanity of people who are transgender," and that "Trans and non-binary people are not a threat to women, and to imply otherwise puts trans people at risk."
I get asked about Joanne Rowling a lot.
I do not pretend to have known her at all; I’ve only spoken to her three times and even then so, so briefly. I have no insider information. I have read and researched this topic in the past few years because I felt I needed to understand what was going on.
I want to be prepared when people ask me about it.
And they do. Friends, family and tenuous acquaintances see something with Hogwarts branding and think of me. I used to love it that much. It was part of who I was. Strangers and peers and new friends have cornered me to ask what I think of the “trans debate” and “whether JK Rowling is a victim of cancel culture”.
I stay calm and I explain to them, as I will here.
There is no “trans debate”. That implies that there are two sides to a valid argument. Hate speech is not debate and we are not entitled to argue about the validity of someone’s existence. There is only transphobia… and then there are trans people who are simply trying to live their lives.
And “cancel culture”? It’s a clever marketing term for when a powerful person experiences consequences for something they’ve said and they don’t like how it feels. Even those who claim to have been canceled usually do so in a national newspaper or to a social media following of millions.
Oh and while I’m doing a glossary of terms, you’ve probably heard of the “trans lobby”. There isn’t one. Much like “muggles” and “the department of magic,” it’s just something someone made up. In this case, it’s to give conservative columnists and Twitter transphobes an entity to rail against, because otherwise they would be shouting into the void. Nobody belongs to the “trans lobby,” it is not an official thing - again there are just trans people, asking to live without persecution.
The vast, vast majority of trans people are honestly just trying to live their lives. Find love! Have a career! Make friends! Make money! Take up a hobby! Be at peace!
The only “trans agenda” (an ominous term made up by conservatives who’d like us not to look too closely at what they’re doing and think it’d be cool to whip up hatred against a vulnerable group of people as a distraction technique) is to have a nice life and be safe.
I feel like it’s not too much to ask.
I feel like we could give them that.
I feel like Joanne Rowling could find something else to do with her time than campaign for the persecution of people whose gender does not affect her in any way.
Just as it does not really affect you. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary darlings are non-binary darlings. None of this makes you any less a woman or a man.
Yep, when babies are born, they have different genitalia. Yep, whoever fills in their birth certificate will circle an M or an F. Yep, they’ll be called “him” or “her” (these are pronouns, everyone has them, don’t get upset about it). Some of them will be dressed in blue and told that anger is not an emotion. The ones in pink will be told to reproduce, people-please and date their most likely predator.
Some people get weirdly dangerously angry when we deviate from these rules. Rules that make them feel safe, perhaps, because they know where they’re meant to fit in society.
Joanne Rowling is one of the weirdly dangerously angry people.
I wish upon a star that she will recant in our lifetime. A redemption arc for Ms Rowling, please. Wouldn’t that be something.
Until then, please, get another book. Watch a better movie.
And then, do something for the people whose safety is at stake here.
If you’d like to find out how to help support trans people, go to MERMAIDS or The Trevor Project or Stonewall. Access resources and find out more at the Terrence Higgins Trust or take action via Transactual. Learn how to be an ally with GLAAD.
ENTHUSIASM is a newsletter for people who feel strongly about things. Like, for example, potatoes, human rights and former members of the boy band One Direction. Here, we contain multitudes. You might enjoy previous posts, like An Insomniac’s Success Story or this interview with Kylie Minogue’s bass player.
Kate Leaver is an editor, author, and former professional fairy. She writes about dogs, friendship, love, pop culture, sadness, and Taylor Swift. She’s currently writing her first novel, a cautionary tale about fame. She’s represented by David Higham Associates and she really really loves her dog.
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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
For whatever reason, this post I wrote in April 2024 is really kicking off in November/December 2024. It seems to have reached some very angry people and I am somewhat overwhelmed by the volume of hateful, scientifically inaccurate, wilfully ignorant, often cruel things people have to say. The comment section is getting away from me a little bit. I stand by what I said in this post! I hope transphobic people take the time to reflect on why someone else’s gender upsets them so much! I send my love and support and solidarity to trans people! xx
Cis men are not sneaking into anywhere just to hurt cis women. They’re doing it out loud and in front of the Charlton Heston God and everybody.