This week, best-selling author J.K. Rowling commemorated her post from five years ago criticizing transgender ideology. The post sparked intense backlash for years, including from actors in the “Harry Potter” franchise. Rowling has never backed down since.
“Five years ago today and my only regret is that I didn't speak out sooner. To every girl and woman who's paid a heavy price for fighting to retain their rights and boundaries, to every person striving to halt an appalling medical experiment on minors, I salute you. We will win,” Rowling wrote on X on Wednesday with her original post from 2019.
Five years ago today and my only regret is that I didn't speak out sooner. To every girl and woman who's paid a heavy price for fighting to retain their rights and boundaries, to every person striving to halt an appalling medical experiment on minors, I salute you. We will win. https://t.co/CLwIoV6UwZ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 19, 2024
Rowling’s original statement on Dec. 19, 2019 was in support of Maya Forstater, a researcher who lost her job after she shared tweets deemed “transphobic.”
“Some transgender people have cosmetic surgery, but most retain their birth genitals,” Forstater wrote in one tweet. “Everyone’s equality and safety should be protected, but women and girls lose out on privacy, safety and fairness if males are allowed into changing rooms, dormitories, prisons, sports teams.”
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Since then, Rowling has spoken out against transgender ideology several times.
Last month, Townhall covered how Rowling ripped into HBO’s John Oliver for one of his recent monologues defending transgender athletes in women’s sports.
“An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn't,” Rowling wrote, before delving into the fact that a recent report from the UN showed that women have lost nearly 900 medals to men, which Townhall covered.
“Again and again I've come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points. With a straight face, the 'believe the science' guys will say 'actually, we don't yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls'. The 'be kind' crew can't see what the issue is. 'Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?'” she added.
“They'll stare unabashedly into a camera and insist that their audiences' eyeballs are incapable of seeing what's plain as day, and that there's something wrong with the great unwashed for believing that girls are being robbed of opportunities and put at physical risk. If you want to tell the world you're happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world's population, fair enough; you're allowed your opinion. But if you've just told girls they don't deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your 'edgy' closing joke,” she concluded.
Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video's for you. An undoubtedly intelligent… https://t.co/3IS4onzXq0
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 17, 2024
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