“Harry Potter” author JK Rowling is refusing to apologize for defending biological sex.
In a powerful essay on her website, Rowling not only doubled-down on what the far-left has dubbed “anti-trans comments,” but she explained why her opposition.
The controversy first erupted when Rowling accidentally “liked” a tweet in support of Maya Forstater, a British woman who was fired for “transphobic” off-the-clock tweets. Forstater had stated that she believed sex was determined by biology–and sued her employer for wrongful termination. Forstater lost in court.
Rowling said, both now and at the time, that liking the tweet had been an accident. But Rowling soon came out in full support of Forstater.
“I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I [publicly] supported Maya,” Rowling wrote. “I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.”
“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive,” she added. “They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people… [who are] worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”
Rowling said she had “stepped back” from Twitter, both before and after her support of Forstater.
When she came back, she was immediately attack by the far-left as “anti-trans.”
Rowling wrote: “Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist.]”
Rowling swung back at her opponents… arguing that they were hurting women, children, and the very notion of free speech.
“I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children,” Rowling wrote. “It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender,” Rowling wrote.
“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding,” Rowling added. “Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both,” she added.
“The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump,” Rowling added.
Rowling also outlined what made the issue “truly personal” to her: a huge number of young girls in the United Kingdom are transitioning to male–especially many lesbians, autistic girls, and girls suffering from mental health issues.
“The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition,” Rowling added. “The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”
Rowling added that, despite the leftist blowback from social media, she will continue to speak out.
“It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity,” she wrote. “But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”
