A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy

Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling came under fire in early June 2020 for controversial tweets she posted about the transgender community. Her stance has caused fans and stars of the wizarding world like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Eddie Redmayne to speak out against the author. Here’s everything you need to know:

What did J.K. Rowling say, exactly?

On June 6, 2020, Rowling retweeted an op-ed piece that discussed “people who menstruate,” apparently taking issue with the fact that the story did not use the word women. “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she wrote.

That initial tweet garnered a lot of backlash, but the Harry Potter author did not relent and wrote about her views in more detail. “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,” she tweeted. “The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women—i.e., to male violence—‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences—is a nonsense.”

She continued, “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

Fans on Twitter and TikTok widely praise Radcliffe for his allyship in the wake of Rowling’s consistent transphobia.

She’s developing a Harry Potter TV series with HBO Max.

In April, news broke via Bloomberg that HBO Max was reportedly in talks with Rowling to produce a multiseason TV series wherein each of the seven Harry Potter books would have its own season. Despite her offensive, transphobic remarks, Rowling would be directly involved in the series to keep the storyline faithful to her books. However, the outlet noted that she would not hold a major production role.

David Zaslav, the CEO of HBO parent company Warner Bros Discovery, “has met multiple times with Rowling and has spoken up in support of the author” amid her ongoing controversies, per Deadline.

It was then confirmed by Variety that a series is in the works at Max, the combined streaming home of HBO Max and Discovery+ due to launch in the spring. The series will feature an entirely new cast and Rowling as an executive producer. “Max’s commitment to preserving the integrity of my books is important to me, and I’m looking forward to being part of this new adaptation, which will allow for a degree of depth and detail only afforded by a long-form television series,” said the author.

ContraPoints calls Rowling a “useful idiot” for the patriarchy.

Natalie Wynn, a popular trans YouTuber and political commentator who posts under the username ContraPoints, started trending on Twitter on April 17, when she dropped her explanation of why there is no “witch hunt” against Rowling. It’s worth taking the time to watch Wynn’s two-hour analysis in full, which she concludes with two important points. The first: “Is the backlash against J.K. Rowling a witch hunt? Unequivocally no,” Wynn says.

But she also adds that Rowling is still “not the final boss of transphobia.” Wynn explains, “A movement can’t get along without a devil. And across the whole political spectrum, there’s a misogynistic tendency to choose a female devil. Whether it’s Anita Bryant, Hillary Clinton, Marie Antoinette, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or J.K. Rowling.” The real threat to trans people, Wynn says, is the Republican party. Rowling and other TERFs are “useful idiots who put a concerned female face on the patriarchal violence against trans people that will ultimately be enacted by right-wing men.”

Rowling mocks TV show boycotters.

With news of the HBO Max reboot, all eyes are on J.K. Rowling—and she keeps giving her critics something to talk about. The author responded to fans’ calls to boycott the show on Twitter on April 21: “Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share,” she wrote. “Activists in my mentions are trying to organize yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show.” The sarcasm speaks volumes.

To add insult to injury, she remarked that she would stock up on champagne to celebrate, then admitted in the replies that she doesn’t even really like champagne.

Professor Slughorn, played by Jim Broadbent, weighs in.

The original cast members are divided in their response to Rowling’s TERF rhetoric. Jim Broadbent, who played Professor Slughorn, revealed where he stands in an April 23 interview with The Telegraph.

“It’s really sad,” the actor said. “I think J.K. Rowling is amazing. I haven’t had to confront [the criticism] myself, but I would support her in that, I think, if it came to it.” Broadbent is among Rowling’s supporters, who include Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter.

Rowling insists she’d take prison time rather than correctly use a trans person’s pronouns.

“I’ll happily do two years if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex,” Rowling wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Her comment was in response to a follower who said she could receive jail time for her views. “Bring on the court case, I say,” she added. “It’ll be more fun than I’ve ever had on a red carpet.”

In the replies, Rowling joked with her followers about which prison duties she’d undertake.

Rowling doubles down on her offer to go to prison, with a thread targeting individual trans women.

Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which criminalizes threatening or abusive transphobic behavior (among other forms of targeted harassment), went into effect on April 1. Rowling repeated her willingness to go to prison over the law in a lengthy screed on X, per USA Today.

“It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man,” said Rowling, nonsensically, near the end of her treatise. She concluded, “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offense under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”

Rowling’s thread also named several individual trans women, arguably marking these people for targeted harassment from her followers. (We will not be linking to her posts.)

In terms of what constitutes an actionable criminal offense under this new law, First Minister Humza Yousaf said, per Associated Press, “The threshold of criminality in terms of the new offenses is very, very high indeed. Your behavior has to be threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred.”

Rowling implies she will not “forgive” Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for their support of trans rights.

Following the April 10 release of a four-year study commissioned by the NHS regarding care for transgender youth, Rowling went on yet another lengthy screed against the trans community and their supporters.

When a follower brought up Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, allies of the trans community who have publicly expressed their support for trans rights, Rowling implied that she would not “forgive” the actors with whom she was once close. Though neither actor has publicly derided Rowling, both Radcliffe and Watson shared their support for the trans community shortly after Rowling first went public with her TERF views.

Daniel Radcliffe, J.K. Rowling, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint at the 2011 premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.

 Jon Furniss
“Just waiting for Dan and Emma to give you a very public apology,” the follower wrote on X, “safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them.”

Rowling replied, “Not safe, I’m afraid. Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces.”

Daniel Radcliffe says Rowling’s anti-trans stance makes him “sad.”

In an interview with The Atlantic published on April 30, Radcliffe said that since Rowling began tweeting and writing about trans rights, he has had no direct contact with her. “It makes me really sad, ultimately,” he told the magazine, “because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”

While some people—such as the person who tweeted that Radcliffe and his Harry Potter costars owe Rowling an apology—might think Radcliffe is being ungrateful to Rowling for speaking out against her, he doesn’t see it that way. “Jo, obviously, Harry Potter would not have happened without her, so nothing in my life would have probably happened the way it is without that person,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”

Rowling goes viral again for falsely claiming an Algerian boxer is a trans woman.

At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, a women’s boxing match between Italian boxer Angela Carini and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif ended when Carini withdrew from the match just 46 seconds after receiving a single punch from Khelif. On Twitter, Rowling posted a picture from the bout, and claimed that Khelif was a trans woman. “Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered,” Rowling wrote.

In fact, Khelif was assigned female at birth and is declared female on her passport, per the Associated Press. After the controversy, Carini herself defended her opponent, per the New York Times, stating, “All this controversy certainly made me sad, and I also felt sorry for my opponent, she had nothing to do with it and like me was only here to fight.”

Rowling, however, continued to double down on Twitter.

Abby Gardner is a freelance writer and editor covering  entertainment, pop culture, royals, and a dash of politics for Glamour. She’s had a long career in women’s magazines and digital editorial—including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Allure, and Fashionista. You can also find her musing on such topics onTwitter, Instagram,… Read more