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

The Harry Potter author is being criticized for comments she made about the trans community.
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.”

Then, on June 10, 2020, Rowling published a lengthy post on her website and sent out a tweet that read “TERF Wars.” (TERF is an acronym that stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.)

“This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity,” she wrote. “For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

Rowling explains that she became interested in trans issues while researching a character she’s writing. Rowling also outlined “five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism.”

The fan backlash:

Rowling’s initial tweets and her subsequent doubling down have drawn a lot of ire from trans activists and Harry Potter fans, many of whom had found comfort in the story of an outsider finding a place where he belonged.