JK Rowling has defended her decision to weigh in on the debate about transgender issues in the past few years.
The Harry Potter author first aired her views in 2019, when she tweeted in support of Maya Forstater, who was fired from her job at poverty think-tank, Centre for Global Development, over a series of tweets questioning government plans to allow people to self-identify as another gender.
Following Forstater’s comments, a group of supporters started a hashtag #IStandWithMaya, including Rowling.
She wrote: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
“Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”
In the years since, Rowling has shared a number of controversial social media posts and essays on the debate, leading to accusations of transphobia. She has denied that she is transphobic.
Speaking on the latest episode of podcast The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, released on Tuesday 14 March, the author said that she had been aware of the backlash she might receive from fans of her work over her views on gender and trans rights.
“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,” she said.
“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.
“I knew that this could be really bad and it has been bad personally, it has not been fun, and I have been scared at times for my safety and, overwhelmingly, for my family’s safety.”
She continued: “Time will tell whether I’ve got this wrong. I can only say that I’ve 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.”
Rowling also talked about how, when she tweeted in support of Forstater in 2019, she knew it would cause a “massive storm”.
“I was considerate enough to phone my management team and say you cannot argue me out of this,” she said, “and I read out what I was going to say because I felt they needed warning.”
The tweet, she said, was met with “absolutely fury and incomprehension”, with one Harry Potter fan telling her: “Such a shame you’ve become the evil you taught so many of us to stand up to.”
She claimed that “a tonne of Potter fans were grateful I’d said what I said”.
When asked what she would say to people who claim she’s become like the villains in her books, Rowling said: “I would say that some of you have not understood the books. The Death Eaters claimed, ‘We have been made to live in secret, and now is our time, and any who stand in our way must be destroyed. If you disagree with us, you must die.’ They 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.
“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.”
A Harry Potter fan who was interviewed on the podcast said: “I just hope [Rowling] can try to see why so many trans people are angry and hurt by this… and understand why people who are being constantly rejected and humiliated by our families and governments, who are losing our access to healthcare or being threatened with it, who are fighting for our basic ability to participate in society, why we might feel hurt and betrayed by her contributing to fear about us.”
