After years of directing hatred at the transgender community, the writer recently revealed that she almost never spoke about the topics of sex and gender at all. She said in a new book of essays,The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, previewed through The Times (UK), that she initially stayed quiet “because people around me, including some I love, were begging me not to speak.”
Rowling said that she “watched from the sidelines” as groups across the United Kingdom rallied against LGBTQ+ rights, feeling “guilt like a chronic pain” for not joining.
“Ultimately, I spoke up because I’d have felt ashamed for the rest of my days if I hadn’t,” she wrote. “If I feel any regret at all, it’s that I didn’t speak far sooner.”
Rowling’s “speaking out” most recently involved both mocking hate-crime laws covering LGBTQ+ people and engaging in Holocaust denial. She threw a tantrum online in April after Scotland passed a new hate-crime law encompassing transgender people, going out of her way to list 10 uninvolved trans women and claiming that they “aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.” She then dared Scottish law enforcement to arrest her.
Earlier in March, Rowling called the historically verified fact that the Nazis persecuted transgender people and burned literature about sex and gender a “fever dream.” She later doubled down on her misinformation, despite being presented with contrary evidence.
Rowling also went after Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson last month for their support of transgender rights, saying she will “not forgive” them and accusing them of betraying her. That prompted Radcliffe to respond, issuing a statement in which he said he “will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ+ people.”
