JK Rowling knew her views on transgender issues would make people “deeply unhappy”
JK Rowling has said that she expected a backlash to her views on transgender issues. During a recent interview, the Harry Potter author stated that she knew “many folks would be deeply unhappy with me” when she first addressed the topic.
Speaking to Meg Megan Phelps-Roper, the host of The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast series, Rowling refuted claims that she has betrayed the message of the Harry Potter novels, arguing that she is “absolutely upholding the positions that I took in Potter”.
During their conversation, the best-selling author spoke to Phelps-Roper about her 2019 tweet supporting Maya Forstater, who was fired from her job as a researcher after tweeting that transgender women could not change their biological sex. Forstater claimed that she was unfairly discriminated against because of her gender-critical beliefs and eventually won the case.
“When I first became interested in, and then deeply troubled by, what I saw as a cultural movement that was illiberal in its methods and questionable in its ideas, I absolutely knew that if I spoke out, many people who love my books would be deeply unhappy with me,” Rowling said.
She continued: “I knew that, because I could see that they believed that they were living the values I had espoused in those books. I could tell that they believed that they were fighting for underdogs and difference and fairness. And I thought it would be easier not to.”
Despite fears that speaking out “could be really bad”, Rowling decided to make her views public, believing that “time will tell whether I’ve got this wrong”. She also spoke of being “scared at times for my safety and, overwhelmingly, for my family’s safety” since coming out in support of Forstater.
Rowling added that she’d “thought about it deeply and hard and long and I’ve listened, I promise, to the other side, and I believe, absolutely, that there is something dangerous about this movement and that it must be challenged”.
The author has since been criticised by Harry Potter fans. In 2022, one of the governing bodies of “competitive quidditch” (named after the wizarding sport in Rowling’s novels) changed the sport’s name to “quadball” because of the author’s “anti-trans positions”. During her interview with Phelps-Roper, however, Rowling said a “tonne of Potter fans were grateful I’d said what I said” and argued that those who claimed she’d taken the side of Voldemort “have not understood the books”. The Death Eaters, she said, “demonised and dehumanised those who were not like them”.
“I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement, that has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society,” Rowling concluded. “I do not see this particular movement as either benign or powerless, so I’m afraid I stand with the women who are fighting to be heard against threats of loss of livelihood and threats to their safety.”
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