A Catalogue of J. K. Rowling's Transphobia
Just because people keep asking
J. K. Rowling is a transphobic person who regularly says and does transphobic things.
Lately some of her fans have been denying her transphobia and asking for evidence in the form of direct quotations of J. K. Rowling along with explanations of exactly how these quotations indicate transphobia.
This article is an answer to those requests.
Please note that I will not be attempting to convince anyone that transphobia is wrong. I believe that transphobia is wrong, but you don’t have to agree to read this article. The point of this article is simply to document some of the evidence that demonstrates that Rowling is transphobic. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide whether her transphobia is a good thing or a bad thing.
If you already know that Rowling is a transphobe, you may find this article tedious. I sympathize; it was certainly tedious to write it. Feel free to skip around or just skim the headings. Nevertheless, I hope this can be a resource for people who find themselves in the position of being asked to provide evidence that J. K. Rowling is transphobic. Feel free to link people to this article if they doubt Rowling’s transphobia, and if you have additional cases that I missed please post them in the comments.
Textbook Transphobia, Part 1: Rowling is personally afraid of trans women
In 2020, Rowling wrote and published an article on her website defending herself against accusations of transphobia. Her defense was that she sympathizes with trans people, but reading about trans rights triggers her memory of a sexual assault, and that if trans people are given more rights it will lead to more sexual assaults.
In that article, Rowling promotes the idea that trans people are dangerous predators. This is transphobia in the most literal sense possible - it spreads fear of trans people. Specifically, Rowling cites the fear that trans people are transitioning (or claiming to transition) in order to gain access to women-only spaces so they can assault and rape women.
This is pretty decisively transphobic. Even without all of the other evidence - the years of hints and clues and insinuations - the fact that Rowling, by her own admission, decided to speak out about trans issues because she is a sexual assault survivor, indicates quite clearly that she is afraid of trans people because she thinks they are sexual predators.
In her words:
I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor.
…
I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.
…
So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.
Please read the full piece if you think I’m clipping these quotes out of context. There is a direct line here: her main claim in this section is that she is speaking against trans rights because she fears trans rights will lead to sexual assaults of women and girls. If that’s not what you mean when you say “transphobia” then we are using the term very differently.
She goes on to describe her fear - and she couches it in terms of anger and disappointment - but what she clearly describes is fear. Of trans people. She says she was triggered (her own word) by news that the Scottish government was going to make it easier for trans people to be legally recognized as trans. The news made her recall her sexual assault (emphasis mine):
On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity. I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.
I believe Rowling deserves sympathy and help in working through these issues. But it is not helpful or sympathetic to call the experience she detailed in that paragraph anything other than a phobia - an irrational fear, perhaps one brought on by trauma. People with phobias deserve access to high quality mental health care to help them overcome their traumatic experiences. They don’t deserve to dictate policy that harms others just so they can avoid being triggered.
On the topic of policy, I think it’s important to just briefly address the substantive claim Rowling makes: that making it easier for a trans person to get a certificate recognizing their gender throws “open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside” women’s changing rooms and bathrooms. I have never been to Scotland, but I have to imagine that there, like everywhere else in the world, there are no guards standing outside public restrooms demanding to see your government-issued gender certificate. There are no men lurking around outside women’s restrooms, waiting for their government-issued certificates so they can go inside and commit assault.
Rowling, notably, is not proposing that guards be stationed at every restroom to check everyone’s gender certificate, and yet that is the only policy that would actually guarantee that people used the restroom conforming to their gender. She is not proposing a policy that would actually accomplish her stated goal of making women safe. She is, instead, opposing a policy that would make life easier for trans people, and she is doing so not because the policy is actually dangerous, but because she personally is afraid of trans people.
Textbook Transphobia, Part 2: Rowling believes that trans people are a danger to children
From the same piece:
I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.
Safeguarding is the term used in the UK to refer to practices that protect children from child abuse. So to be absolutely clear here, Rowling is saying that the trans rights movement is causing child abuse - or, to be maximally charitable, she is saying that the trans rights movement is interfering with efforts to prevent child abuse.
I’m also a teacher, and having worked with teachers from the UK, I can state that they take safeguarding very seriously. One practice my British colleagues talked about was that a teacher should avoid being in a room alone with a student. If they had to be, the door must be open. My feeling is that if schools and teachers are following safeguarding practices to the extremely stringent UK standard - background checks, open doors, and all that - the gender or identity of the teacher shouldn’t matter. A trans teacher in a room with several students and an open door is not somehow more dangerous than a cis teacher in the same position.
Once again, the implication here is that trans people are predators who are using their assumed gender to gain access to single-gendered spaces so they can commit sexual abuse against women and girls. Once again, the alleged mechanism for this abuse is never spelled out. Once again, when you think about what the mechanism might be, it is completely nonsensical. Once again, Rowling is not interested in improving the general procedures for keeping children safe - in measures that would actually prevent abuse, both by cis teachers and by trans teachers. Instead, Rowling is simply using the insinuation that trans people are dangerous to children, with no substantiation.
Is she doing this on purpose? I don’t think so. I think she really, honestly fears trans people, and so it just seems obvious to her that trans people would be dangerous to children, and she doesn’t need to think about why or how.
Rowling’s other concern for children is that she believes that making it too easy for children to transition will lead to irreversible harm:
I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility.
It is reasonable to be concerned about children making long-term, life-altering decisions. This is why we restrict minors from voting, drinking alcohol, making contracts, etc. But minors need parental consent and the cooperation of medical professionals in order to begin medically transitioning. I’m certain that Rowling believes that women should have bodily autonomy (she supports abortion rights, for example), and in the case of minors, when informed consent is not available, parents stand in and give their consent to medical interventions. But for some reason, specifically on the issue of gender-affirming medical care, Rowling does not believe that young women can make their own decisions, or that parents can be entrusted to do what’s best for their children, with the advice and consent of doctors. For some reason, specifically when it comes to young women transitioning, Rowling believes that children need to be protected from themselves, thier parents, and their doctors.
That reason, to belabor the point somewhat, is called transphobia.
It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that stirring up fear of child abuse is a time-tested homophobic tactic. Rowling is taking the anti-gay playbook and applying it directly to trans people. We know that accusations like this have consequences - that they make the world more hostile and dangerous for LGBTQ people, and that they encourage harassment and hate crimes. Rowling’s transphobia, and the way that she expresses it, is dangerous for trans people. The fact that she does not seem to care about this danger that she is creating indicates that she does not value the lives, well-being, or concerns of trans people.
Aside: Does Rowling just hate men?
I really hate to invoke the stereotype of the man-hating feminist but I’ve noticed a pattern here. Rowling opposes trans women’s rights to enter women’s spaces, because she thinks they’re men and she thinks men are dangerous rapists. Rowling opposes trans men’s rights to medical care, because she thinks that young girls are precious and need to be protected against the act of becoming more like men, which for Rowling is inherently harmful. She’s afraid of trans women because she thinks they are men, and men are predators. She’s concerned for trans men because she thinks they’re girls, and girls need to be protected from becoming like men. So maybe, as she has protested on many occasions, she has no problem with trans people per se - she just specifically has a problem with men.
I think the answer is that Rowling does fear men, and perhaps there’s a bit of hatred in there as well. However, this is not enough to fully explain all of her transphobic comments. It also doesn’t explain why she is specifically focused on trans people and typically leaves cis men alone (unless they dare to disagree with her on trans issues). There’s a lot more to her transphobia than just a fear, mistrust, or distaste for men:
Textbook Transphobia 3: Rowling fears the very concept of gender transition
From a tweet:
If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
Rowling believes that trans ideology is a threat to her identity. If anyone can become a woman, what does it even mean to be a woman? Rowling thinks she can’t “meaningfully discuss” her life without making reference to the immutable concept of biological sex. The existence of people who challenge that concept - who say “sex doesn’t matter” or “sex can mean what we say it means” or “sex is fluid and complex” - allegedly, somehow, challenge Rowling’s ability to describe who she is.
I think this is sad. Rowling is a very good writer. Sure, her work is derivative and vaguely racist and increasingly suffered from want of a good editor, but just in terms of talent I think it’s indisputable that she’s like, in the top 25% of writers. Probably even the top 10%. Objectively speaking, she created a vivid and engaging fantasy world which ignited a love of reading in almost an entire generation.
How sad it is indeed, then, that one obscure news magazine singlehandedly destroyed her ability to discuss her own life just by using the phrase “people who menstruate”.
Yes, that’s the context for this hand-wringing about the global erasure of the lived reality of women - the famous “Wumben” tweet:
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate
Note that the article Rowling is mocking here is not about women in general. It is specifically about menstruation and access to sanitatary products and facilities to manage menstruation:
An estimated 1.8 billion girls, women, and gender non-binary persons menstruate, and this has not stopped because of the pandemic. They still require menstrual materials, safe access to toilets, soap, water, and private spaces in the face of lockdown living conditions that have eliminated privacy for many populations.
Of equal concern, progress already made or underway around important gender issues is now halted or reversing. Menstruation serves as a proxy for this observation. 2020 started out as a year of progress, with a groundswell of interest and potential for improved investment to address the menstrual health and hygiene needs of girls, women, and all people who menstruate.
Investment is urgently needed, as a recent report estimates that over 500 million women worldwide do not have what they need to manage their menstruation. The inability to manage menstruation with safety, dignity, and comfort may negatively impact the physical and mental health of those who menstruate around the world.
The article is talking about the 1.8 billion people who menstruate - not the 3.9 billion women in the world. The headline is precise and specific for a reason. Rowling has no logical reason to pick on this headline. Her explanation is that saying “people who menstruate” rather than “women” erases the concept of sex and makes it impossible to discuss her lived reality.
Ask yourself: does this seem like a rational concern? Or does it seem more like a phobia? Does the use of the phrase “people who menstruate” in an article about menstruation compromise your ability to talk about your life? Of course it doesn’t.
However, as it turns out, phrases like “people who menstruate” do help trans men meaningfully discuss their lives, since trans men can get periods. Using gender-nuetral terms when appropriate includes the people who should actually be included and allows for specific and precise discussions. The thing that Rowling is pretending to care about - being able to discuss one’s experiences meaningfully - is the very thing she’s opposing when she mocks inclusive language.
Rowling doesn’t care about clarity, precision, or the ability to have meaningful discussions. Rowling, instead, fears that the existence of trans people somehow invalidates her identity as a woman. Again, this fear is unexplained and unexplainable. It is, simply put, irrational. And again at the risk of belaboring the point, an irrational fear is called a phobia, and an irrational fear of trans-inclusive language is called… you guessed it… transphobia.
Second-Order Transphobia: Denial, Gaslighting, and Promoting Transphobes
The above evidence is clear, unambiguous, and overwhelming. Rowling, in her own words, is “triggered” by reading about trans rights because it conjures up her unresolved traumas; she openly admits that she thinks trans people are dangerous to women and children in a variety of ways; she is afraid that talking about trans people using accurate, neutral language is a threat to her identity. She is literally afraid of trans people and talks openly about the threat they pose to women, children, and the very concept of womanhood.
But in addition to this clear, unambiguous, overt transphobia, it is also transphobic to deny that transphobia exists, and to promote other transphobes and their transphobic messages.
Perhaps this type of transphobia is less straightforward, and could be chalked up to ignorance rather than malice. I wasn’t convinced that Rowling was a transphobe when she initially, way back in 2018, liked a tweet calling trans women “men in dresses”. Even as a pattern of twitter activity emerged I regarded this as largely circumstantial evidence. I don’t believe in guilt by association, and sometimes I follow people I disagree with on twitter just to try to understand their thought processes, or get a better grasp of their arguments so I can respond to them.
But at this point, there is no more plausible deniability. Rowling admits she is afraid of trans people. Knowing that she’s a transphobe, we can look back at her transphobic twitter activity and understand that she was deliberately promoting transphobic content on a platform where she had millions of followers not by accident, but because she agreed with that content.
From Maya Forstater to Matt Walsh, Rowling has a history of promoting prominent transphobes and their ideas. She promoted a store selling transphobic merchandise. She has also blocked people who support trans rights - for example, she famously blocked fellow author Stephen King after he tweeted that trans women are women. Here’s what King had to say about it:
“Jo canceled me,” King told Daily Beast editor Marlow Stern. “She sorta blocked me and all that. Here’s the thing: She is welcome to her opinion. That’s the way that the world works. If she thinks that trans women are dangerous, or that trans women are somehow not women, or whatever problem she has with it—the idea that someone ‘masquerading’ as a woman is going to assault a ‘real’ woman in the toilet—if she believes all those things, she has a right to her opinion.
“And then someone tweeted at me, ‘Do you think trans women are women?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ And that’s what she got angry about—my opinion,” said King. “It’s like the old saying, ‘I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ So, nobody has ‘canceled’ J.K. Rowling. She’s doing fine. I just felt that her belief was, in my opinion, wrong. We have differing opinions, but that’s life.”
Rowling is transphobic; she supports, follows, likes, and promotes other transphobic people; she opposes, unfollows, blocks, and attacks pro-trans people.
Rowling also seems to believe that anti-trans discrimination doesn’t exist. She had this to say in a tweet:
Rowling claimed “I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.” Rowling, needless to say, has not done this. And yet, 7 out of 10 people in her country believe that trans people are being discriminated against on the basis of being trans. This widespread belief is backed by evidence of discrimination in employment, education, medical care, personal safety, housing, and access to public accommodations and facilities.
It’s impossible to say whether Rowling believes that anti-trans discrimination doesn’t exist based on this tweet. An equally plausible explanation is that she knows trans people suffer from discrimination and this tweet was simply a ‘white lie’, like if you tell your friend “let me know if you need help with anything” but then when he wants help moving you don’t show up. But either way this does come off as a denial of the reality of anti-trans discrimination.
Second-Order Transphobia: Bullying Critics and Trans Activists
The final issue I want to touch upon is how Rowling and her fans create an environment which is hostile to trans people by bullying trans rights activists and really anyone who even seems to align themselves with trans rights.
The most recent example of this is Graham Norton. Norton had Rowling on his show to promote her latest novel. Some people on twitter criticized Norton for this, and in subsequent interviewers people kept asking Norton about it. Norton first claimed that he is not the “moral arbiter” of who gets to go on TV - in other words, he did not feel that it was his place to judge Rowling or her opinions. Another interviewer asked him point blank if he thought Rowling was transphobic. His response was that he thought she was making the situation worse and fuelling the fire, but he didn’t feel that he knew enough about the issue and didn’t want to be asked about it because it would link his name to hers and stir up more trouble. Finally, in an interview with Mariella Frostrup, he was asked what he thought about cancel culture in reference to the fact that people were angry with him for talking to Rowling. It’s worth watching his whole response, but the overall theme of his comments was, again, that he shouldn’t be asked about this. Listen from 43:30 to 48:12, but I’ll summarize below.
So Frostrup starts by asking him if he worries about cancel culture, in light of the criticism he’s recieved for hosting Rowling. Norton says he doesn’t think about cancel culture, and in the case of people who complain about cancel culture, like John Cleese, Norton thinks it’s just people being held accountable for what they say.
This tracks with Norton’s experience. He faced criticism for his actions (platforming Rowling) but did not get “canceled” in any meaningful way. This is a sensible response to criticism. But Frostrup wasn’t done.
Next she asks him about Rowling specifically. Norton says that all he knows is that by asking him, Frostrup is once again making him part of a conversation that he personally does not belong in:
I mean what I feel weird about this is that when I'm asked about it then I become part of this discussion, and all I'm painfully aware of is that my voice adds nothing to that discussion, and I'm sort of embarrassed that I'm somehow drawn into it. You know, and if people want to shine a light on those issues, thjn - and I hope people do - then talk to trans people. Talk to the parents of trans kids. Talk to doctors. Talk to psychiatrists. Talk to someone who can illuminate this in some way.
...it's just, you know, it's for clicks, it's for whatever, you know, you can put my name in a headline you know: 'Graham Norton slams...', 'Graham Norton defends...', 'Graham Norton weighs in on...'. And actually, ‘Graham Norton’ shouldn't be in your headline.
Norton goes on to say that interviewers should talk to experts, and that his opinion is worthless.
Rowlings calm and measured response to these statements - to Norton interviewing her on his show and then refusing, repeatedly, to say whether he thought she was transphobic, while protesting that the media should not even be asking him about the issue in the first place - was to accuse Graham Norton of supporting rape and death threats. Rowling’s fans then harrassed Norton on twitter until he deleted his twitter account.
Rowling also threatened legal action against a kid’s news website which pointed out that one of her transphobic tweets (the “Wumben” tweet, mentioned above) was unpleasant. The publication was forced to apologize and pay an undisclosed amount of money.
Rowling also threatened legal action against a trans activist who pointed out that Rowling’s transphobia could be harmful to children. This is, of course, true - teaching children to fear those who are different is in fact harmful, and as established above Rowling opposes medical care for trans children.
Rowling very much dislikes when people talk about her transphobia or its consequences. She endeavors to create an environment in which it is difficult to do so. She directs fans towards her critics, who are then bullied severely, often to the point of deleting their accounts. She threatens spurious defamation suits while defaming kind folks like Graham Norton who just want to be left out of the whole thing. The impact of this is that it is difficult and unpleasant to confront her transphobia, and trans people and allies have to navigate hostile online spaces in order to advocate for trans rights.
Conclusion: J. K. Rowling is transphobic
The great Jay Smooth once admonished us to focus conversations on “what they did” rather than on “what they are”, because you can never prove what someone really is deep down inside. I don’t think Smooth anticipated that someone would come right out and explain in some detail why exactly they fear the group they’re accused of fearing.
I think it’s instructive to compare Rowling’s comments about trans people to the issue of race and racism, which is what Smooth was talking about. Imagine if a white person said that the reason they spoke out against black people was that they heard news about black people potentially getting more rights and that news triggered them and brought up trauma. Imagine if they justified this fear by citing statistics about how black people were more likely to commit violent crimes. Imagine if they said black people shouldn’t be allowed to use the same bathrooms as white people because black people were statistically more likely to commit crimes. Imagine if they said black rights were endangering schoolchildren. Imagine if they said language that included black people threatened their identity as a white person.
I mean, you don’t have to imagine, because people actually did say all of those things. We’ve heard all about white people’s fear of black people, including the notorious Emmett Till case, where a black child was brutally tortured and murdered for the crime of speaking to a white woman, because of fear of black people committing sexual assault. We all know that in the US at least black people used to have separate bathrooms. We know that school desegregation was considered a threat to white children. We know that many white people regard efforts to include black people as “reverse racism” - as an attack on them, based on their identity.
We don’t have any trouble identifying those ideas as racist. The idea that black people should be denied rights because they are a threat to white people is racist. So I don’t think we should have any trouble identifying Rowling’s ideas about trans people - that they should be denied rights because they are a threat to cis people - as transphobic.
> Rowling opposes trans women’s rights to enter women’s spaces, because she thinks they’re men and she thinks men are dangerous rapists.
If you make a rule saying "anyone who says 'I am a trans woman' is automatically allowed to enter women's spaces", that *in theory* allows trans women to enter those spaces, but *in practice* allows anyone to enter those spaces (as long as they are willing to say the words).
Basically, before you establish a rule, instead of only thinking how people will use the rule as intended, also think about how people will abuse the rule in ways it was *not* intended... because that definitely *is* going to happen, especially if it is a law.