J.K. Rowling has written a new essay about her political views, noting they have not changed despite the harassment and death threats she has received.
“It’s been six years since I wrote my essay explaining why I chose to speak up on the issue of trans activism and the risk I believe it poses to women’s rights, and to everyone’s freedom of speech and belief,” she writes in the introduction to the essay, which spans over 2000 words and was posted on her website Wednesday.
“My views haven’t changed (you can read the original essay here) but the landscape certainly has, and my own involvement in the issue has become practical as well as theoretical, so I thought it was time for an update.”
Rowling has faced an “avalanche of death, rape and torture threats” because of her objection to what she describes as “the current, dominant strain of trans activism, which holds that a man who declares himself a woman is, literally, a woman, and is therefore entitled to be treated as a woman in all contexts.”
“Where women go to undress, he, too, should go to undress,” she continues. “If there’s an award or job advertised as exclusively for women, he should be eligible. Should he wish to play sports, he must be on the women’s team. No breast-feeding or rape support group should be allowed to exclude him. If he’s sexually orientated towards women, lesbians should include him in their dating pool. If convicted of a crime, even rape, he should be locked up with women.”
Her critics have described her views as “anti-trans,” although it’s a label Rowling has rejected.
In the essay, the author says there are “without question” vulnerable trans people, adding: “Should trans people be discriminated against when it comes to housing or employment? Of course not. Should trans people be stripped of their human rights, or denied personal safety? Again: of course not.”
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Referencing last year’s U.K. Supreme Court ruling, which held that the word “woman” in equality legislation refers to biological sex, she writes that “For a decade or more, trans activists and acolytes in positions of influence have insisted and behaved as though women’s rights were out-dated and even meaningless. They created a climate of fear and intimidation whereby a single misplaced pronoun could see a woman disciplined.”
“That climate persists,” she says.
The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund was among those financially supporting the feminist group which brought the legal challenge and in the essay she says it is continuing to provide assistance to those taking legal action.
“When it came to civil, gay and women’s rights, ordinary people who had little to no individual power organised at a grassroots level to challenge powerful institutions, from government downwards, on their entrenched prejudices, and campaigned to change harmful, discriminatory treatment,” she writes.
“Twenty-first century trans activism is the very inverse of those movements. It is elitist to its core.”
Rowling concludes the essay by saying in the penultimate paragraph: “I’ll continue to speak out, continue to use my money to help women who otherwise couldn’t afford to go to court, and continue to ensure that women in my area can still access female-delivered, female-centred support after rape.”
Last week trans activists disrupted the premier of a new version of Rowling’s play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” in London by storming the red carpet.
Despite the controversy, Rowling’s brainchild “Harry Potter” continues to go from strength to strength. The 2023 Warner Bros. Games title “Hogwarts Legacy” sold over 22 million copies in the year of its release, last year’s Universal Studios theme park expansion Epic Universe saw the launch of new “Wizarding World” rides and experiences and this Christmas an epic new HBO adaptation of the original book series is set to launch with a new cast.
From Variety US